I know in Ireland as people stopped buying houses etc. but USA? uk? are the banks to blame?

Because money is boring so there is less demand for it. 

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
From FactCheck.org. I like it. It's concise.

That's pretty much it.

A lot of businesses rely on loans.  They do longer term projects that don't play out every month and can't afford to pay their employees without loans. 

Tell me about it. I've dropped the price of my house by 60k and it still hasn't generated any interest. I have even offered to pay the stamp duty and the buyers mortgage for two years. It's fucking unbelievable.

It turns out the US really is the center of the world.  Go figure.

Didn't the Bush Administration try to create some sort of oversight, but were cockblocked by the Dems since they MUST be against any and all Republican ideas no matter what?

Yes. 2005. I believe it was a commission to oversee Fannie and Freddie.

Eddie_the_Hated


Yes. 2005. I believe it was a commission to oversee Fannie and Freddie.

You would be correct. The democrats created the problem, blamed the republicans, and now offer the solution via the muslim turned christian for the sake of an election.

All religion is stupid.  I don't care what religion someone is because no matter what it is rooted in idiocy.

I couldn't give two shits about his religion either. If he supports policies I'm in favor of, he could be a LaVeyan Satanist for all I care.

All politics aside, you'd think that if Obama was a closet muslim, he'd choose a congregation a little less inflammatory than Trinity United Church of Christ.

Im not saying I care about his religion, Im saying I dont trust someone who can go from Islam to an anti-white, hate group sect of Christianity.

I don't hate muslims but I hate Islam.  They're trying to bring Sharia law in Britain...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ox2-Wun2dIg

Fucking insane!

Agent Ghost


I don't hate muslims but I hate Islam.  They're trying to bring Sharia law in Britain...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ox2-Wun2dIg

Fucking insane!

Thats my view as well. Arabic people are fine, people who practice Islam are ignorant and/or violent.

I don't have a problem with violence but the ideas are just so primitive and stupid.  Islam is where Christianity was 1500 years ago.  The idea of having Sharia courts in London is nucking futs!  So much for human rights. 

Agent Ghost


I don't have a problem with violence but the ideas are just so primitive and stupid.  Islam is where Christianity was 1500 years ago.  The idea of having Sharia courts in London is nucking futs!  So much for human rights. 

Its not so much the violence, its the violence without gain, and typically violence with their own loss. Thats stupid, from a religious, secular, and species standpoint.

Arabic people are fine, people who practice Islam are ignorant and/or violent.

Thats a lot of ignorant and/or violent people...including me apparently.  Thanks Dan.


As far as this crunchy credit is concerned, I'm no economist, but I dont think the world economy will ever be balanced.  Its strange because theres more than enough resources out there for everyone, so someone must have it stashed away somewhere!

The problem isn't Islam or the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of practicing Muslims in the world, ...it's the comparatively small number of people using Islam as a tool to preach hatred and further their own agenda.

The most obvious effect I personally experienced firsthand is the ridiculous inflation of house prices.

In around 2003 my friends, relatives, etc. were buying brand new houses for 150-200k, which was about the median range here at that time . In 2004/2005 most of them sold those houses for 400k+, I thought it was bullshit that people were just making up the #s, no way a house can more than double its value in a year, untill I saw my parents actually sell a 150k house for 450k, I was there seeing the transaction, couldn't believe something like that was actually possible.

So that's why we're fucked.

emofag


The most obvious effect I personally experienced firsthand is the ridiculous inflation of house prices.

In around 2003 my friends, relatives, etc. were buying brand new houses for 150-200k, which was about the median range here at that time . In 2004/2005 most of them sold those houses for 400k+, I thought it was bullshit that people were just making up the #s, no way a house can more than double its value in a year, untill I saw my parents actually sell a 150k house for 450k, I was there seeing the transaction, couldn't believe something like that was actually possible.

So that's why we're fucked.

And we have a winner!

Speculation and lack of any true standard value.