Friday, September 19, 2008

The Defense of Mortgage Act

I'm more than a bit freaked out by the fact that our banks are going Chernobyl right now. Further, it seems as though the bailouts proposed by the Fed set an unfortunate precedent for protection against the consequences of unchecked greed and incompentence on the part of august financial institutions who really ought to have known better.

It's hard for me to believe that companies didn't see the current situation as the single, inevitable result of dropping entire branches of their business balls-deep into the subprime waters. To paraphrase David Cross, it's like taking an entire hedge fund to the race tracks and putting it all on "Papa's Moustache."

My go-to in situations like this is the glorious Economist, which naturally has an piece on the current situation. The tone is a bit less outraged than I'd like, personally, but I like 'em and believe what they have to say is usually sound.

On the slighty more rant-y side of things (which is where I stand, at the moment), there's an interesting editorial from the Huffington Post by former Goldman partner Greg Zehner. Apart from the name-checking of Ayn Rand (seriously, who does that any more, especially after freshman year of college?), I think this a pretty appealing argument.