Re: Difficult to back out
Actually, the politicians themselves were duped by the bad faith bankers and in general people who got compensated in options. It can even look like good intentions.
The deregulation that allowed for evil things like CDS (being able to buy fire insurance on your neighbor's house...without his knowledge, and even get a can of gasoline in the deal) - was sold as a way to make getting loans easier for minorities so they could buy homes and have a stake in society - a good thing that would result in less crime and violence and more self-policing.
What it actually was is more interesting - in the insurance biz it's illegal to sell insurance to other than the entity directly involved, and there are also regulations that the insurance company has to keep the buck to pay claims in hand - this was all missing from the Frank-Clinton removal of Glass Steagall.
The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, or at least can be sold as such.
In hindsight, we know that some of the financialization tech new instruments invented as a result by Blythe Masters of JP Morgan and some others developed in the City of London turned out to be "weapons of financial mass destruction".
There was plenty of blame to go around (in this case the left side of the aisle started the ball rolling, but...no one was at all innocent). From the banks making loans that were obviously never going to be paid off - no need to care as now Goldman Sachs, AIG, JP Morgan, and of course Deutsche bank were standing there buying the loans to sell tranches at a profit - to the people taking those loans, to the people buying the tranches of them....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
