2017 French Election (Macron Wins 66%)

[palou]

barneystinson69 said:

palou said:

Most major banks were short on the american housing bubble. They told customers everything's going well, because highest profits can be made with people that have problems paying their debts.

 

And, in the end, the government bailed out most banks. In average, the whole situation was quite profitable. They were handing out billions upon billions in bonuses for years.

Yes, because people would've lost their life savings if they weren't. We saw that with Lehman brothers. These people were stupid enough not to have foresight in what their actions would do, and unfortunently they got away with it. They were still idiots, and its why I do my best to avoid banks when I can. These people hardly have a goddamn in giving financial advice, and in the end we saw the consequences of that. Oh and BTW, most of Europe has insanely high youth unemployement, thanks in part to the great recession. So I guess they did win

If you take the bank managment as mostly selfish (which is the case, as is for the majority of humans), their actions were fairly rational.

 

Yes, they caused an economic crisis, but they got insanely rich just before that. They literally had bonuses 5 times their salary for a good 5-6 years, thanks to the high profits they were making off of high-risk loans. I don't see how engaging in that should be considered stupid. And I'm pretty sure that they new that the US could not afford to let them fail.

 

The american government was stupid for so badly deregulating mortages.

The bankers played a game of hot potato, where the potato shed a few million on each throw and exploded in the faces of the public.