USA election = Choosing a new captain for the Titanic?

[SamuelRSmith]

NJ5 said:

SamuelRSmith said:

 

 Well, yeah, it's all essentially just damage control, though.

What gets me, though, is that in the UK every right-wing newspaper is blaming the government for the entire problem, when really it was the banks' fault (the UK banks kept buying over-valued houses from the likes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before they realised that, really, they were worth nothing).

I think it was the banks' fault as well as the government's fault for not regulating who can receive loans. What happened to fiscal responsibility?

From the government's perspective... if you're going to end up downplaying the free market (by bailing out banks), you might as well do it earlier (by regulating) and avoid all the trouble that we're seeing now.

 

 

 Well, the bailing out at this stage was kind of neccessary, as without it the economy would have had a massive drop. I believe it's best to "delay" the inevitable, as it allows for things to go down in a staggered manner.

I don't think the government stepped in earlier is because, from the fronts of things, everything looked really good. Even if the government had realised what had happened, they might not have stepped in thanks to the controversy that would have surrounded it. People, or shall I say, voters, would have seen banks reporting recored profits and such on one page of the newspaper, and on the next they would have seen the government putting down restrictions on it all, without any apparant reason.

At the end of the day, it's all just the nature of a free market. Things go up, then they go down, people learn from their mistakes, and, when it goes up again, it goes up even further as people don't repeat their missteps. However, the government must step in to try and curve the plummet, in order to keep people alive.

Sorry if that made little sense, but it made sense to me.