An Ant’s View: Financial Crisis Facts At a Glance

[ProSense]

An Ant’s View: Financial Crisis Facts At a Glance

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Boehner criticized the financial regulatory overhaul compromise reached last week between House and Senate negotiators as an overreaction to the financial crisis that triggered the recession. The bill would tighten restrictions on lending, create a consumer protection agency with broad oversight power and give the government an orderly way to dissolve the largest financial institutions if they run out of money.

“This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon,” Boehner said. What’s most needed is more transparency and better enforcement by regulators, he said.

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had its roots in a decade of failure to properly regulate our financial system, acknowledge and address obvious and growing problems and to invest in growing our economy. Irresponsible lending and complex derivatives transactions led to a mortgage meltdown that sent the nation into recession in December 2007. The financial collapse happened in the fall of 2008 with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the implosion of AIG and the subprime mortgage crisis. Here is an ant’s view of just some of the financial crisis’ impact on Americans:



American workers have paid a huge price—we lost 8 million jobs.



American families have paid a huge price—$17.5 trillion in American
household wealth was wiped out during the last 18 months of the Bush
Administration.



High-cost Payday Loans are preying on nearly 12 million Americans—
they pay a chunk of interest each pay day, costing them nearly $5 billion per year
along with other predatory lending. These loans can ultimately carry annual
interest rates of 400% or more, with the typical borrower paying about $500 in
interest for a $300 loan, and still owing the principal.



2.8 million homes were in foreclosure in 2009 alone. Subprime and
predatory home loans, in which mortgage brokers lured families with low, teaser
interest rates that later skyrocketed to unaffordable levels, hidden fees and
charges, and incomprehensible terms and conditions that brought on the housing
crisis and undermined the financial system. More than 60% of subprime loans
went to people who could have qualified for lower cost loans.



Total retirement assets, Americans’ second-largest household asset
behind their homes, dropped by 22%, from $10.3 trillion in 2006 to $8 trillion
in mid-2008.



Financier Bernie Madoff was allowed to defraud investors out of as
much as $65 billion in the largest Ponzi scheme in history. The Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC) missed red flags that could have put a stop to
his asset management business.

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[DJ13]

1. What kind of person would unrec this?

[ProSense]

2. Don't mind them. n/t

[boppers]

5. Person?

Curious that you assume that it's a person.

[Scurrilous]

3. K & R

[Jennicut]

4. That is a lot of ants. But drunk oompa loompas don't get it.