{"id":13930,"date":"2008-12-17T09:37:09","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T15:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=13930"},"modified":"2008-12-17T09:37:09","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T15:37:09","slug":"agreeing-with-friedman-in-part-dan-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=13930","title":{"rendered":"Agreeing with Friedman.  In Part. [Dan Collins; UPDATED]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hotair.com\/\">Via Hot Air Headlines<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/12\/17\/opinion\/17friedman.html?_r=1\">I have no sympathy for Madoff<\/a>. But the fact is, his alleged Ponzi scheme was only slightly more outrageous than the \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201clegal\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d scheme that Wall Street was running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and high greed. What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a nothing-down and nothing-to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a $750,000 home, and then bundling that mortgage with 100 others into bonds \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which Moody\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s or Standard &amp; Poors rate AAA \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and then selling them to banks and pension funds the world over? That is what our financial industry was doing. If that isn\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t a pyramid scheme, what is?<\/p>\n<p>Far from being built on best practices, this legal Ponzi scheme was built on the mortgage brokers, bond bundlers, rating agencies, bond sellers and homeowners all working on the I.B.G. principle: \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cI\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2ll be gone\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d when the payments come due or the mortgage has to be renegotiated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What&#8217;s missing, here?  Could it be any mention of . . . Congress?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, wait.  USA Today gives them <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.usatoday.com\/oped\/2008\/12\/whos-to-blame-f.html\">two lumps of coal<\/a> (h\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/instapundit\/30120\/\">Insty<\/a>), as though that were legal.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATE: At Salon, Mr. Anxious, Mike Madden asks, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/feature\/2008\/12\/17\/700_billion\/?source=newsletter\">Dude, where&#8217;s my $700 billion?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Dude!  They&#8217;re printing it as fast as they can!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Hot Air Headlines: I have no sympathy for Madoff. But the fact is, his alleged Ponzi scheme was only slightly more outrageous than the \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201clegal\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d scheme that Wall Street was running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and high greed. What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a nothing-down and nothing-to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a $750,000 home, and then bundling that mortgage with<\/p>\n<div class=\"belowpost\"><a class=\"btnmore\" href=\"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=13930\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":587,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/587"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}