I came across this interesting article: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MH16Dj01.html. and wondered if the analysis was valid.
"The trouble is that “Wall Street gamblers” didn’t do the speculating. The American public did. This was a Ponzi scheme by the people, of the people and for the people, the most democratic crony-capitalist scam in the history of humankind. Households made more money than the bankers during every year of the bubble, and ended up better off than they were before the bubble, while the bankers got wiped. "
It’s got some interesting numbers there to back it up. Legitimate?
I’m not really sure what this guy’s agenda is. It’s possible he’s just trying to get attention by spouting an angle you won’t hear anywhere else. Or he’s just an idiot (e.g. “…stayed in touch with such old colleagues as Ralph Cioffi. He ran the firm’s mortgage head fund”). Obviously it doesn’t take much to get published in the Asia Times (which I suppose should have been evident with a mononymous byline).
The short answer is no, this is not legitimate, it’s total nonsense. The guy pens a 900 word article and ends up saying nothing more than “look, if we graph bank stocks and put it next to “household real estate assets” on the same chart (with completely different scales, of course) it looks like bank stocks suffered more.” Seriously? This may actually be worse than Krugman.
Forget the numbers. Just think for a second about what he’s saying. He’s literally arguing that average Americans faired better than bankers and their institutions. Not only that, but how does he do that? By saying “look at the value of ‘household real estate assets’…it’s higher than it was…and bank stocks are lower. QED. Homeowners won. Bankers lost.” Here’s a question…who owns those household real estate assets? Obviously if we had record foreclosures over the last 3 years, it isn’t the people that owned them before that, right? So how can he say these people made out like bandits when they don’t even own any “real estate assets” any more? We’re still at almost 17% U-6 unemployment, and this asshat wants to claim regular household people are better off than before? And bankers are worse?
Don’t get me wrong, yes, regular people were speculating in the housing market, making it much easier for bankers to speculate on Wall Street…they were both gambling…but the difference is when the people lost, they lost. They got wiped out. The banks got bailed out. Where he gets off saying the bankers were wiped out and the homeowners made out (like bandits), I have no clue.
Thanks for clearing that up, haha, it did seem a like a bit of an odd claim for him to make. And yep, they aren’t too strict on who they publish there, they want a ‘diversity of opinions’. Read this for some lolz: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/MH11Dg01.html (no, it’s not satire). There are some good articles too though, like this: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MH30Dj02.html by a guy who was a director of the International Petroleum Exchange, giving some interesting insight into oil prices movements.