Wachovia stock was around $52 a share earlier this year. It's trading at around $1.80 right now. My parents lost a chunk of their retirement in this bank's downfall. I guess the crisis has finally hit home.

I don't even want to know how my Dad's investments are doing.

And here I thought this problem was all fat cats on wall street.

I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not being sarcastic in regards to my family, because that post can be read in a couple of ways.

you know better than that.

yeah, never give yb the benefit of the doubt

mccain better suspend his campaign again stat!

stu, sorry to hear it. my mom is shitting bricks too.

Ah HA! So it IS the Democrats fault:

"...has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."

This isn't the first time I've seen this and while the proof is there in the pudding, what happened that caused it to take so long to blow up???

It is also worth noting that there are plenty of low to moderate income people that I know who are making their mortgage payments just fine, and I know of people who make a ton of money who got in over their head.

On the radio this morning they were talking about legislation from 2003 or 2004 that supposedly required banks to provide loans to low income people with bad credit. Seemed like a slight exaggeration to me and I'm not familiar with the legislation but from what I've heard, it seems like something the Clinton Administration sort of got started and Bush pushed over the edge.

yesterday was a good day to buy shares. today might be even better.

You do all realize that we should be blaming the gays for this, right?

Fundamentalists blame Wall Street's woes on gays

I KNEW IT ALL ALONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

it all makes sense now!

(crosses fingers) Dear jebus,

please let sara palin say this out loud thursday night.

thanks a million.

-Squirrgle

Give me a fucking break... yeah, the crisis is all the fault of trying to give people who are marginalized economically the ability to buy houses. Oh, and let's add the RDA into the blame...

Oversight in the last 8 years has been woeful, and our capitol markets are predicated on a consumer market model in which the trend lines depend on most American consumers borrowing money to keep market growth moving... and that's just one of seven root causes of the crisis.

This is a profound moment in our history, and traditional (centrist economics and free market mythologies') analyses of problems and possible solutions are insufficient. Ultimately this could be very healthy for us, but that remains to be seen.

My wife's theory. A hard rain is gonna fall, but in the long run, probably an over-due one.

This appears to be a new youtube video getting passed around to pass more blame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYdsU8996zo.

I figured if I was going to be subjected to and irritated by this, then you all should be too.

Before watching, keep in mind that this is essentially a 10 minute plug for McCain and don't say I didn't warn you.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/29/ ... pstoryview

Nice that even the economists disagree on what to do.

i think it's silly to blame wall st. this idea that a few cowboys down there got greedy is nuts man. here's the culprit: personal credit card debt. the national saving rate is negative. all wall street did was help people postpone some trouble by shuffling papers and refinancing and draining equity. nowhere in any of this bailout talk do i hear anyone talking about it being a good idea to cool it with the spending if you ain't got it.

yeah, seriously. not just credit cards, though.

i think the stat is the u.s. pays $400bil in interest every year. for most people, their house *is* their retirement plan (or at least it's been the predominant model since wwii) and cheap loans meant folks could buy too much home and use that "equity" to take out more and bigger loans using their house (i.e. their only real collateral) to back them--compounding the trouble.

There's enough blame to go around. Consumers/idiots, wall street, bankers, government, politicians, republicans, democrats, independents, etc. Huge collapses like this are not the work of anyone group but rather system wide failure.

When have things been worse in this country? The fucking 30s?

here's a genuine question:

what's the difference between $700bil from congress and a $630bil emergency loan from the fed. clearly the fed has reserves, but when depleted, isn't it the same source that refills the coffers?

edit:

and another one. reading that article on the fed injecting more cash into the *global* system. . . i'm thinking that the big investment banks on wall street weren't the only ones feeding at the trough of the real estate bubble. . . what responsibility to foreign banks have in perpetuating this mess?

brother, can you spare a dimebag?