Yep, handing a loaded gun to someone does not make them guilty of murder...it's the shooter who bears the guilt and responsibility. Similarly, a bartender who serves a drink to someone at 8pm who later injures someone as a result of being drunk at 2am is not at fault, it's the person who is drunk.

This current mortgage issue is the result of underfunded and unqualified speculators who felt that they wouldn't have to worry about covering their debts, that the appreciation of the real estate market would bail them out, giving them an opportunity to sell at a profit before the note came due.

Nope, the responsibility here falls in two places...the lenders who lent to unqualified borrowers, and the borrowers who really had no clear understanding of the ebb and flow of markets that there are upward trending price movements, BUT THERE IS ALWAYS A RETRACEMENT. You'd think everyone would have learned from the equities markets over the past 10 years. Speculators run up prices in the 90s, retracement from 00-02, prices moving higher through this current 5 year run.

No, I don't think so. To the right wingers, issues are black and white (at least until one of them gets caught, then everything gets hazy fast).

There is blame to go around, but the primary blame lies with people like Greenspin who allowed loan standards to be lowered--and should have known better. It should never have been permitted to purchase property with no money down or without adequate earning power to cover a worst case payment schedule.

If you lower loan standards a lot of people on the margin will take advantage of the "opportunity". A lot of sellers of debt will also cash in. People in charge of our monetary system have to know that.

A lot of financially unsophisticated people got sucked into adjustable rates. These people believed the brokers' (ie salesmen)pitch that they wouldn't have to worry about future interest rate hikes because that wasn't likely to happen. The borrowers have some responsibility, yes, but they also have the excuse of not being financially savvy.

The fact that the Fed allowed loans on such a massive scale to what any reasonable person would see to be unqualified borrowers puts the onus right on Greenspin. He didn't do his job.

Get real.

These guys know all about what they are doing, they just know that the effects of it show up way after they're out.

Do you believe that Greenspan was not aware that his own policies were heating up the economy? .. ------> http://www.youpolls.com/details.asp?pid=491
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Hey dadw5boys you need some more information.
Read: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2396.shtml

"The financial industry whittled away at Glass-Steagall for years before finally breaking down its regulatory restrictions in August 1987, when Alan Greenspan -- formerly a director of J.P. Morgan and a proponent of banking deregulation -- became chairman of the Federal Reserve Board."

"The greatest expansion of speculative finance in history." That says it all.

But no one makes the case against Greenspan better than Greenspan himself. Here are some of his comments at the Federal Reserve System’s Fourth Annual Community Affairs Research Conference, Washington, D.C., April 8, 2005. They show that Greenspan “rubber stamped” every one of the policies which have since metastasized and spread through the entire US economy.

Greenspan, Champion of Subprime loans: “Innovation has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs for immigrants. Such developments are representative of the market responses that have driven the financial services industry throughout the history of our country. With these advance in technology, lenders have taken advantage of credit-scoring models and other techniques for efficiently extending credit to a broader spectrum of consumers.”

Greenspan, Main Proponent of Toxic CDOs: “The development of a broad-based secondary market for mortgage loans also greatly expanded consumer access to credit. By reducing the risk of making long-term, fixed-rate loans and ensuring liquidity for mortgage lenders, the secondary market helped stimulate widespread competition in the mortgage business. The mortgage-backed security helped create a national and even an international market for mortgages, and market support for a wider variety of home mortgage loan products became commonplace. This led to securitization of a variety of other consumer loan products, such as auto and credit card loans.”

Greenspan, Supporter of Loans to People with Bad Credit: “Where once more marginal applicants would simply have been denied credit, lenders are now able to quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately.

With all due respect, those taking out the risky loans are the ones responsible for the situation they are in; Greenspan and the Bush administration are guilty of having created an unwise situation, but the ultimate responsibility goes to those who gambled...those people who chose to take the risk; the consumers, themselves.