Reform...a few days late and a few billion dollars short. At least they're starting to listen now..

Obama pushes for Economic Reform

by John McCormick

GOLDEN, Colo. - As the most severe financial crisis in at least a generation continues to shake Main Street, Sen. Barack Obama delivered a forceful new speech today to try to seize the economic reform upper hand.

Seeking to move the presidential campaign debate to an arena that typically favors Democrats, he called for more aggressive regulation and a greater emphasis on innovation.

remainder of the story here

I was interested in the comments at the end of the article (link above), as well. Having had some experience in the residential real estate / lending industry myself, and having commented some weeks ago at JonesAlley about my unwillingness to make money and participate in the sub prime bubble using "investors" to make some quick cash, I was interested to see the following comment:

I worked in the subprime market before common sense with my career took over. Mortgages were given out to illegal immigrants, people on welfare, unverified income, poor credit, 0 down, etc. Why? It was all about the numbers. The more loans/the bigger the loans, the better for those monthly, quarterly, yearly bonuses. That's all that mattered. & when loans went bad, no one lost anything because it was always assumed the value of the home at the time of auction will be great enough to pay the loan off. That was your business model in a nutshell & all the lending regulators would do is sign-off on their reviews without batting an eye. The sub-prime lender even advertised on tv how they helped write legislation in DC (with all their republican buddies well lobbied) that helped the consumer, which was either useless of blatantly ignored. I pointed all these problems with an executive on my exit interview, & his only real response was "that's just the media talking" That was four years ago.

So go ahead & convince yourself there's nothing wrong with the economy, that McCain, the "I'm not good at economics" candidate is the right choice. It will be interesting what he has to say at the debates, once he can't hide behind his running-mate's skirt.

There were "investors" (especially lots of first-timers) and owner-occupants caught up in this mess, as well as their neighbors, who's values are now tanking because of the storm around them. Those in neighborhoods, cities, states where there are high foreclosure rates will suffer, too. The victims are more than those who lost because of poor decisions on their OWN part...the ripples in the pond go far and wide...

If you'd like to hear more about Wal-Street's handling of the sub prime boom, see this link:
FreshAir on NPR, July 8th, 2008