financial collapse

Oligarchs speak on the financial collapse

A guest op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday regarding the prospects of the U.S. defaulting on its debt, reminded me of a comment I had made on DailyKos about a week ago. Which led me to polishing and expanding the comment and posting it a diary.

Writing in the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard a few days before Christmas, Christopher Caldwell, reviewed Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s and Fed Chief Ben Bernanke’s erratic responses to the collapse of the financial system – and defended them::

Did the 2005 Bankruptcy “Reform” cause the world financial collapse?

Did the 2005 Bankruptcy “Reform” cause the world financial collapse?

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Report No. 358 - Seismic Effects of the Bankruptcy Reform.

Remember the Bankruptcy Abuse [sic] Reform act of 2005? Yeah, the one that the credit card companies and banks got passed by buying the very best Congress money can buy. Turns out, according to the New York Fed's research, that since people going bankrupt after the BAR found it more difficult to stop paying their unsecured debts - i.e. credit cards - they were forced to stop paying their mortgages instead. Over 120,000 of them a year, according to the NY Fed researchers.

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