It's time to allow the Columbian drug cartels the chance to run the War on Drugs, too. It's time to let Al Quaeda run the War on Terror.

 

I thought we already did!

Yes, but we need to formally sanction them and give them seats in the Cabinet.  After all, they have as much right as the Fed.

Yep, you got it. 

I think you have to at least lay some of the blame on the people that got suckered in to these subprime mortgages.  Certainly Greenspan and the Fed shares most of the blame for pushing ARMs back in 2004, but there needs to be some personal responsibility here, too.

Anyone with half a brain knows that an ARM is a bad idea, but the problem is when a craze happens like the housing bubble, people tend to take their brains and lock them in a chest in the attic.  It's no wonder.  We have a culture of idiocy in this country, a culture where critical thinking and skepticism is all-too-often pushed aside for insanity.  Then, when it bites everybody in the ass, the fingers start flying. 

Home ownership became a religion in itself.  Everyone was preaching the gospel of the American dream.  "Home values haven't dropped since 1987.  You're a fool to rent, you're just throwing your money away!"  The problem with that logic is that if you buy a house you can't afford (and if you need an ARM to buy a house, YOU CANT AFFORD A HOUSE!), all those payments to the equity of the home do you absolutely no good when the bank repossesses it.  You end up stuck in the same situation as a renter, except a renter still has a place to live.

It's not surprising really.  40% of us believe Jesus is coming back this year.  We're having fights about evolution in the classroom while Europe laughs, puzzled that we still haven't worked it out.  We simply don't value critical thinking in this society.  We teach our children to just believe whatever the authority tells us, never to research anything for themselves.  We can abolish the Fed, we can add more laws so mortgage lenders can't give people these kinds of loans, but none of that will stop a fool and his money from parting ways.

Certainly Greenspan and the Fed shares most of the blame for pushing ARMs back in 2004, but there needs to be some personal responsibility here, too.

Oh, absolutely.  I was selling these mortgages back in '03, telling people to refinance when they had the first chance.  Even so, I feel guilty over it, in a way.  On the flip side of that, these people were bundling them and selling them as investments, and they were doing so unwisely, so a lot of that blame does pass on to the investment firms and banks.

I disagree about the evolution thing, but your premises make sense.  Critical thinking is needed above all else, followed by suspicion of government.  The Federal Reserve is an independent bank with a government-mandated monopoly that is entirely unconstitutional.  That we would even consider giving them regulatory authority and SWAT teams is entirely wrong and evil.