Groundhog Day

If you read financial blogs on a regular basis then you might feel like everyday is Groundhog day. Scroll down to the comments and you will see liberal use of "Wall Street", "Crooks", "Bankers", "Greed", blah, blah, blah. Why are these people so angry?



I borrow $/£500k from a "banker" because all my friends are doing it and house prices are soaring and maybe, just maybe I'll make $/£100k.



For no work whatsoever.



Lets call this scenario Lazy/Greedy/Casino Capitalism.



But wait. NO! HOUSE PRICES ARE GOING DOWN! I took a huge, huge risk and it didn't pay off.



Ah, ok the government will bail me out........No, they're bailing the bankers out. It was the bankers fault. The bankers fault! They took a huge, huge risk and it didn't pay off....



Let's call this scenario Greedy/Casino Capitalism (unfortunately we can't call it lazy as they work 14 hour days).



Ok, we have to stop this happening again. Let's stop people from buying a house without a 25% down payment. Let's stop people taking huge risks that they don't really understand. No, that will be unpopular. People want big houses. People want easy money. So...let's make a lot of noise about how we have to split up retail and investment banks (even though it was your plain vanilla mortgage lending retail banking that got us into this mess). Let's criticise the banks. And you know what, somebody sold me a kitchen knife last week and I cut myself! Let's start a campaign against him because he sold me something I could cut myself with!



Wow, this feels great. Something bad happened, and I guess you could say I should have thought about taking on an enormous debt and chopping onions with my eyes closed, but it wasn't my fault! The governement says so, the newspapers say so, everyone says so!