re: #77 EPR-radar

This is admittedly a matter of interpretation.

But discussing speculation as a factor in the 2008 crash without once noting the banks’ role in fueling and profiting from that speculation is a remarkable omission.

Especially since it is part of the job of the financial sector to prevent destabilizing speculative asset bubbles from forming if possible.

The article is not an overall analysis of responsibility for the crisis, but a focused defense of one targeted group, the poor subprime borrowers who are universally assigned a sizable share of the blame. The banks’ role in this is obvious enough; they made the loans after all. They also failed in their fiduciary responsibility to recognize a speculative bubble. This is important because the common claim in GOP America is that banks were pressured to make worthless loans to “just anybody,” in the interest of political correctness. This is not the truth at all. They would have raised hell about it at the time if it were. Instead, they gleefully joined in the speculative frenzy.