Financial Crisis Was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds

Source: New York Times

By SEWELL CHAN
Published: January 25, 2011

WASHINGTON — The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.

The commission that investigated the crisis casts a wide net of blame, faulting two administrations, the Federal Reserve and other regulators for permitting a calamitous concoction: shoddy mortgage lending, the excessive packaging and sale of loans to investors and risky bets on securities backed by the loans.

“The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done,” the panel wrote in the report’s conclusions, which were read by The New York Times. “If we accept this notion, it will happen again.”

While the panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, accuses several financial institutions of greed, ineptitude or both, some of its gravest conclusions concern government failings, with embarrassing implications for both parties. But the panel was itself divided along partisan lines, which could blunt the impact of its findings.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1296055015-D+vzwHQHhFVjZofaagyDUg

Obama has been busy trying to clean up a huge mess.

you do not hire, and in some cases, re-hire, the people who made the mess, I would think.

rules for the financial market after the crash. Kennedy knew how to take advantage of the existing situation so knew what needed corrected in order to straighten out the mess.

and nobody will speak a word about it again

coming out of the RATpubliCON Talking Heads

We could have bought up ALL the toxic loans for 1/3 the cost of the Wall St Bail Out

That will be just breathtaking, with some distance.

I have recently seen a pbs documentary "The Warning" that supports these conclusions. One of the things that was shown in the documentary was and of course this is not new, Greenspan is incredibly stupid for being such a brilliant economist, I guess that is what he is. It is obvious to me from watching is that Greenspan revered hack writer ayn rand as a prophet such as Jesus and the free market is a God or a living breathing entity such as corporations are as the SCOTUS has given them the same powers as persons.

I also saw a short doc. about the crash in '29' after seeing these Docs. I have come to the conclusion that either later this year or next year there will be another crash and it will be much worse than what happened in '08' or '29' but this cannot be because just last night the President has declare the Recession is over and everybody on Wall St. (his bosses) has survived and they are just fine. The American people? not so much.