American banks' secret subprime exposure stretches into the billions

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/12/systemic-risk.html

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Why would you expect these banks to have learned any lesson at all? THEY WERE BAILED OUT. The only lesson in that is to go do the same thing again, five times harder, because they’ll be protected from any consequences and, lo and behold, that’s just what they’re doing. The only question now is where will oligarchs get the money to bail them out next time it all crashes, since us lower & middle class folks haven’t recovered from the soaking we took (in place of the banks) the last time.

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Ugh, the fuckery.

Most people experiment with risk taking in high school, but eventually conclude that the crushing illness that results from drinking a liter of Mr. Boston Vodka isn’t worth it, and moderate their behavior. On Wall Street, risk taking is viewed as “innovation”, and drunken, short-term profit taking is always a valid justification for the poisoning of the economy that inevitably follows.

The banks keep showing us who they are; why don’t our legislators believe them?

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“We don’t need federal regulations. They should be cut.”
Yet here they are engaging in the same risky lending behavior that lead to the 2008 crash.

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My goodness, but “billions” is a big number.

Compared to what?

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If every time we drank too much vodka someone else got the hangover, then we probably would learn the same lesson they do.

“The banks keep showing us who they are; why don’t our legislators believe them?”

They keep showing us their our legislators bosses, and our legislators do believe that.

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You’re right, of course - that was a fatuous position I took.

A better question would have been, " Why do I keep expecting our elected officials to behave ethically, when they have shown over and over that they are corrupt?"

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Not risky to them. The Dodd-Frank “reform” cemented their TBTF status.

Only risky to the middle class taxpayers who will pay for the next round of bailouts.

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stretches into the billions

tenor-1

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Exactly. What lesson? I remember as a young punk kid calling my mum a name I won’t repeat here. I never did it again, and it wasn’t because she thanked me for the insult and gave me a cash allowance to prove her gratitude! Far from it.

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This is known as the “Fuck you, I’ve got mine” doctrine.

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The key is incentives. We just need to incentivize the right behavior. I therefore propose legislation to the effect of, if a bailout of the banks is required again, that the first source of funding, prior to any taxation or appropriation, be directly from Mick Mulvaney’s personal net worth, that of his family, and then let’s start in with any friends and business partners.

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Nothing to see here. The banks know we’ll bail them out again at the expense of the Public Trust. The real issue is the lunkheads who keep voting for repugnantcans who want to dismantle any and all laws to regulate and reel in the banks, the financial sector and their drunken behavior.

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