In your opinion, are high gas and energy prices to blame for this financial crisis?

High energy prices have reduced my disposal income to almost nothing. Wall street speculation of energy has helped cause this supposed financial crisis and now we will bail them out?

Is this financial mess just a diversion from the real cause? big republican oil?

Am i alone with this thought?

Peace

More people with less money to spend will lead to more mortgage defaults. It's not the main factor, but it's definitely a contributor.

developments that people moved to, in the "drive till you qualify" rule was used, was the tipping point for entire master planned communities to collapse.

RealtyTrac Maricopa AZ and be stunned.

The excess capital generated by the tax cuts did not require investing in jobs, etc., as had previous tax incentives. So, rich individuals invested their extra capital in real estate, igniting the real estate bubble that drove the prices over valuations. Now that the bubble has burst, we should not blame the wrong factors for the problem.

Whatever created the bubble WAS the causal factor in the mortgage crisis!! ERGO BUSH and his tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

in the 90's, and there were warnings then that it would happen.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

<snip>
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people…<snip>



<snip>
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
<more at link>

On the say I realized that I changed my major to Economics and never made anything other than an A in every economics class I took after. No, its not the main reason but its certainly a part of the reason. Brought to you by the same people I might add.

Yes this monster has many heads. i am just trying to see how peoples ability to pay has been affected.

Your ability to pay depends entirely on your ability to be paid. There lies the problem. Its not that you haven't earned money or that the things you did or produced had no value. The problem is that your pay check will not be honored by your bank if it was written on another bank. That is the real problem here and it could be alieved.

...so yes, this is all connected in more ways that one.

So what may qualify someone on paper does not necessarily fit their reality to keep current on the mortgage. Would you want to keep a home when you can't afford to keep the lights on? Seems like incentive to walk away.

People can no longer buy fuel and pay their mortgage payments and their Credit Card payments. High fuel prices effect every aspect of our daily lives and that means paying your bills. Everything has increased in price because of the high fuel prices and that always means less money to go around.

This is not a crisis of fat cats stealing, or stupid decisions by Wall Street, or many other things that are alleged as CAUSES -- although these things happened.

The fundamental problem is shrinking household budgets that caused families not to be able to pay their mortgages.

DUH!!!

Why did those budgets shrink? Gas went from about $1/gal to over $4/gal.

And gas increased because Bush wanted it to. He said so in his first year. Every spike in gas/energy prices is correlated with a Bush disaster -- the Iraq War, Katrina and saber rattling at Iran.