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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Slider, post: 1733922, member: 44205&quot;]I don&#039;t know where the mobs are today.&nbsp; That wasn&#039;t the point of the discussion at hand.&nbsp; I will say that Kramer is infinitely more mainstream than Heller, though, and that&#039;s the likely reason right there.</p><p><br /></p><p>Moreover, I work in higher education and the only thing that I know, without a doubt, is that &quot;studies&quot; rarely prove anything to be 100% conclusive.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>That said, I have absolutely no problem assigning a portion of the blame upon people who had no business applying for a loan in the first place.&nbsp; I&#039;ll even set aside the well-proven fact that lenders were commonly, almost criminally, deceitful about the instruments they were selling.&nbsp; But home buyers only deserve a portion of the blame.&nbsp; We can all choose for ourselves as to how much blame to assign to idiots who didn&#039;t know any better (home buyers) or the villains who knew exactly what they were doing (financial markets).&nbsp; Both are at fault and both deserve blame.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Lastly, the financial crisis was more than just a mortgage or foreclosure crisis. Had the damage just been limited to a collapse in housing prices because too many unqualified buyers were defaulting on their loans, it wouldn&#039;t have been the crisis it was.&nbsp; The real issue at hand - and the reason that Kramer was called to the carpet - was because these bad mortgages were being packaged and monetized into all sorts of increasingly risky investment instruments that were being bought and sold by institutional investors managing OUR money through retirement programs, pension funds, etc.&nbsp; Examples abound of the criminally negligent behavior among the large investment banks, all while Kramer pumped the firms and let their leadership come on his show and spin fairy tales about their financial health.&nbsp; Pointing to the foreclosure issue among unqualified borrowers only obfuscates and distracts from the original point about Kramer being called out by Stewart over the financial crisis.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>At any rate, I&#039;m going to bow out of this debate.&nbsp; I appreciate your posts, Medoraman, and enjoy your perspectives on metals.&nbsp; I&#039;ve learned a lot since coming to the boards and I generally try to keep my posts on topic, although I do go off on a tangent from time to time.&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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