Interesting facts for the anti-capitalists
The US Mortgage Banks who lent umpteen billions to people who couldn't repay were in forced to do so by the US government, as part of a scheme to get low-paid workers on the property ladder.

The banks didn't want to do this, but the US government made it illegal not to put a certain percentage of their borrowings into the sub-prime bracket. In exchange, the government underwrote the debt via Fannie May and Freddie Mac...

...who promptly ran out of money and had to be bailed out by Joe Taxpayer when it turned out that the people the banks didn't want to lend to because they couldn't pay, er, couldn't pay.

Early in the 2000s, Citibank were subject to a class action lawsuit for not lending enough sub-prime money, as mandated by the law. The name of the dynamic young lawyer leading the suit?

Barack Obama

Who now reckons he can sort out this mess. Good luck with that.

So #1 on your list was caused directly by the US government interfering in the market for reasons of wealth redistribution:

Otherwise known as socialism.

And the clusterfuck you describe took place. Once it was clear the US government was underwriting sub-prime debt, every bank in the world decided to get themselves some of that and bought up the supposedly underwritten debt. European banks used this supposedly 'safe' debt to hedge against sub-prime lending over here as well, and when the US government's underwriting scheme proved to be worthless they got stung for billions.

Messing with the market is what will come to bite you in the ass.
(Axeman Jim, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 11:48, 1 reply)

Ooh, this could open a can of worms...
I see what you're saying but I also think that this doesn't excuse the situation.

Yes, I like to think of myself as being a socialist, but I am also aware that Adam Smith's original prinicples were the right ones, and the capitalism that we currently see today isn't the one that the Scottish Economic Genius wished for.

Someone's fucked up at the end of the day, and we're all paying the price.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 11:59, closed)

Of course
the blame is to be found all over, and the banks were as stupid as everyone else. But the point is that this situation was caused by socialist actions just as much as capitalist ones.

And anyway, as a few people have said, I'd rather live in a capitalist country where some people can win than a socialist/communist one where everyone is guaranteed to lose.
(Axeman Jim, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 12:12, closed)

This^^
Depends on your definition. In what way is encouraging property ownership a socialist principle? Dunno if Karl Marx may have mentioned it in "Capital" his groundshaking work on the subject..

Nope, what you had there was the government trying to increase property ownership in the hopes that it a) Kept more of the population prepared to stick at a job they hated for minimum wage in order to keep up their payments, and b) Gave them some collateral to borrow further against, and/or use to consolidate existing debt, hence take the fear out of credit ("We'll always have the house to fall back on") In it's effects it could be likened to the "Right to Buy" scheme for public housing in the UK, because it was set up for the same purpose. IE to control people's behaviour, and got them used to spending more than they earned and being in debt. I'd also like to give any UK city centre on a Friday night as evidence of what can happen if people can't afford to buy houses and hence have a larger disposable income..
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 12:48, closed)

Whoah
I wasn't talking about Marxism, I was talking about redistributive Socialism, which an entirely different outlook, which acknowledges private property but seeks to shuffle it around according to some big economic plan (pure Marxism does away with monetary exchange value altogether).

And in a way we agree - if governments didn't fiddle with and distort the market in an effort to push spending above sustainable levels, then we wouldn't be in this mess (or at least in such a big one).

Ah, this is just like being a student again...
(Axeman Jim, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 18:36, closed)