I cross posted this on www.subaruforester.org in case anyone on here goes there. My friend sent this to me and all I have to say is wow, everyone in the US needs to watch this. It's 45 minutes long but WELL worth the watch. http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/6/19/115848/118/636/538392 I hope a bunch of the people on this board watch. -Steve
Yeah, I watched most of that a while ago. I thought it was a bit misleading. It's not like the banks can just create money out of nothing like they suggest. They loan money that they don't technically have, but they're only earning the interest that comes back with the payments.
Meh, a slanted attempt at Banking for Dummies with a strong pro-borrower/anti-lender theme. It spends little to no time discussing: 1. Underwriting standards or the value of collateral supporting the loans - i.e. a home/car/farmland should be as good as gold bullion and often better depending on the amount of equity in the house. 2. The consumer's insatiable desire to have shi+. There are certainly predatory lenders but the overriding "woe is me" attitude of the people that take on excessive personal debts to Keep-up-with-the-Jones is disingenuous at best and criminally negligent at worst. Grade: Fail Minus
Or you could watch Zeitgeist (6MTizzle made us watch it.)which is laid out much better and puts out some facts. It is still somewhat slanted, but doesn't have the "woe is me" air about it.
Well I mean of course you need to take that with a grain of salt, it definitely is biased. I thought it was an interesting video nonetheless. -Steve
