Quote from Angrycat:
Okay. Where have you encountered a free market recently?
I'm just asking for one. Since you claim to be surrounded by them, it should be easy to name just one.
One, unregulated market.
For all intents and purposes, the mortgage market acted as an unregulated market for 10 years. The banks and mortgage lenders could do anything they want. Taking money off the bank balance sheets and move it onto these SIVs and Conduits for the sole purpose of avoiding regulation. Moving the lending into private corporations out sight and scrutiny of federal regulators. How else could undocumented, penniless, people with no skin in the game get hundreds of thousands (in same cases millions) dollars, of OUR bank deposits and use it to buy houses which they have no intention of ever paying for.
Now, that is only part of the little Ponzi scheme, which everyone in the Bush administration knew about, warned about and did nothing about. Why? Because they believe in Free Markets. lol. Maybe, because they have a bunch of naive people running around spouting about Free Markets, while they run off with the goods.
In any case, the scheme doesn't work, unless the investment houses can get into the games. So the investment houses are deregulated (i.e., no one is watching them any longer), and they slice and dice this junk so no one can figure out what is going on. Then they pull in these rating agencies, who are suppose to be regulated and watched over, but while the cats were away (Bush was too busy claiming victory in Iraq to watch the store), the mice did play. In a totally unregulated environment (no laws were broken), the rating agencies, for a good price, rated all of this junk as AAA, allowing the investment houses to get rid of this stuff on the public. It ended up in mutual funds, pension funds, etc. The banks got the gravy, the mortgage lenders got the gravy, the investment houses got a whole turkey dinner, the rating agencies got plenty of leftovers to take home, and the public got the .... Well you know the end of the story.
And that my dear friend, is a sad tale of what happens when you don't regulate the scam artists and let the Free Market work its magic. Or do you believe that Ponzi schemes should be legal?

lol.