Subprime Bail-outs?

Hell no. At least, that’s my instinctual response. This should be handled by economics, not emotion. While analyzing issues like this, I can easily picture myself as a curmudgeonly old conservative bemoaning the decline of personal responsibility while harboring a deep-seated hatred towards those who turned me into a liberal patsy during my youthful days. Here’s a host of quotes from The Economist, Sept. 8th-14th 2007:

“So it is easy to see why the call for more regulation is tempting. But it is also easy to descend into caricature, portraying borrowers as victims of villainous banks, brokers, rating agencies and hedge funds. By one estimate, half of all subprime borrowers lied about their income. Many chose to ignore the risk that house prices might fall. Heaping all the blame on Wall Street and its clients ignores the role of broader forces.” (p.15)

“Over 2m Americans – many of them poor and black – face sharply higher mortgage payments over the next year or so, as the low introductory rates on their loans reset. A lot of these people could lose their homes. If the economy slows and overall house prices fall by the 15% of more that some Wall Street seers are now predicting, the problem could spread far beyond the weakest borrowers.”

50 Years to Freedom

This job looks like it would be interesting. There’s some legitimate responsibility here, I wonder what kind of experience it takes to get the higher-ups to trust you with a position like this? As my browsing of job listings expands beyond UC Irvine’s ZotLink database of entry-level jobs – most of which I am not qualified for – I am confronted with descriptions of what real jobs entail.

12-16 years relevant experience with a bachelor’s degree, or a far more lenient 8-12 years with a master’s. That’s when it hit me . . .