Don’t blame the homeowners who bought into a bogus mortgage scheme for the worldwide recession – look at the Wall Street gamesters. Montclair resident Les Leopold has just written a new book dissecting the current financial crisis: The Looting of America: How Wall Street’s Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What we can do about it. (Chelsea Green Publishing), now available on Amazon.
For the past several years, before the crash, I had been watching these “opaque and exotic” financial instruments that everyone said were too complicated to understand. So I thought I’d try to understand them….. and then the economy crashed under their weight. As I started to put the book together I realized how much this economic meltdown had to do with the rising income gap between the super rich and the rest of us, and the distended profits and compensations packages on Wall Street. Helping others understand this mess became a mission. I honestly believe the book will help you understand more about the meltdown and that it will provoke your thinking about what should be done. This is a very important time in our history. I never thought our economy would teeter on the edge of another Great Depression. But here we are. I hope this book will make a small contribution to developing a safer, greener and saner economic world.
You can hear Les rant on line here.
Thank you.
Huh? Folks signed onto mortgages they could not afford, lied on their applications and did not read the paperwork.
But somehow they have not culpability?
You can offer me crack and I’ll say no……..
You can offer me a great mortgage at 2% for 2 years, which will adjust… and I’ll say no.
You can’t always blame the salesman.
Okay, truce once the idiots have signed up, you don’t have to go collateralizing the loans…
But let’s not let the dumb homebuyer off the hook.
It’s just like the drug user and the king pin.
Did you watch the video? You don’t get it.
Mr. laser,
For those paying attention this isn’t some new story.
But this guy’s idea that no financial person should earn more than the President is arbitrary, dumb and against every free market principle this country was built on.
And why the President?
He probably thinks A-Rod and Jeter make too much money.
Pass….
What a letdown. I thought we’d started a thread on Halliburton.
Bloated executive compensation has a lot to do with our current economic crisis. The people who have the mortgages they can’t afford applied for them and were approved as part of lax leaning practices. People were given raises and bonuses based on those loans – not on the security behind those loans. The average home buyer wasn’t researching changes in lending practices.
There is no one in the US auto industry who has earned 6 or 7 figure salaries. That industry has been dying for the past 30 years. My entire life has been stories of mass layoffs. At most they should have been earning high 5 figure salaries – including any and all bonuses. Maybe it wouldn’t be in such a mess if the greed hadn’t seeped in – and that goes for the unions as well.
Personally, I lost my job a few years ago so the company could pay for the new CEO’s 20 million dollar raise above the person he was replacing. My income took a 20% hit and has yet to recover. I’m luck I didn’t purchase a home in the good times but if I had it wouldn’t be all my fault that I couldn’t afford it today – the need to pay someone 20+million when he didn’t bring any additional funds to the organization would be a large part of the problem. (before anyone starts on other reasons my office brought in double our quota every year. Our office was trimmed to the bare bones as far as overhead and we were one of several dozen small sales offices shut down. The sales reps were told you can work from home or hit the bricks)
People who buy things that they cannot afford are never to blame. The man stuck it to them. Stupid is as stupid does.
You know what would be great? If we had some extra money in our budget to pay off this mess. Oh yes, I forgot we spent it all on this nonsensical War on Terror. How’s that going by the way?