Is there a chance that the financial crisis was 'contrived' by those profitting from it now?

[Blackhatjack]

Look back at the landscape BEFORE the Congress was told they had to act within hours or days to avoid a total financial market meltdown.

Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, WaMu, Countrywide, Wachovia, etc. were all still around.

Within weeks decisions were made to 'force' selloffs to BOA, Wells Fargo, Citicorp, etc. Now today, we have an even smaller number of Financial entities that are 'too big to fail.' In many cases the acquiring entities could not have acquired the selected victims without the help of the Government.

Now, look at the Billions of dollars in taxpayers' money which has gone largely to the surviving financial entities, which they used to shore up their balance sheets and make acquisitions of smaller entities.

Is it possible that these Wallstreet financial entities acted in concert to acquire their opposition for bargain prices, and then proceeded to use the so-called crisis to scare Congress into handing over taxpayers' money?

Or in other words, was this all a complex coordinated scam to consolidate assets and power, and obtain Government taxpayer money as an investment which would protect them from being 'nationalized' in the future?

[Occam Bandage]

1. Not really.

Way too many actors required. As in, tens if not hundreds of thousands. Fun fodder for tinfoil, but doesn't really pass the 'reasonable' test.

I mean, seriously: "Yes, you guys build a lot of houses, and then when housing prices explode, you lenders will offer lots of cheap mortgages that nobody will be able to repay, and then we'll have you credit rating guys misrate them so we can sell them to them to you investment bankers, and then when everything collapses we'll all lose so much money that the Feds will either have to nationalize us, destroy us, or give us some money to partially recoup our enormous, economy-destroying losses! "

[napoleon_in_rags]

7. I don't think its infeasible, or that it takes that many people.

The key is where you say: "and then when everything collapses we'll all lose so much money" who loses so much money? Not the people who got in and out at the right times. Its the ones left holding the bags.

[Occam Bandage]

12. "Not the people who got in and out at the right times."

Who are not the ones being bailed out, for the most part. The investment banks ended up holding the bags.

[rollingrock]

18. But the individuals who run them

made off with millions, if not billions.

and then got even more millions with the government bonus money.

[FarLeftRage]

2. It's possible...

I wouldn't doubt it.

[Joe the Revelator]

3. MIHOP

no

[Autumn]

4. I think so

:tinfoilhat:

[Skip Intro]

5. We, and our governments, are pawns in a grand scheme.

Yep.

Watch zeitgeist, for starters.

If this cycle doesn't do it, the next one will.

[stillcool]

6. I can't see it happening any other way...

Look at who is left standing... but then I'm sure that all of those that 'fell' have won big somewhere else. Just like the Savings & Loan bullshit but on a grander scale.

[msongs]

8. scammers make $$ on the way up, then down, and back up again. count on it nt

[nonconformist]

9. I don't know that it was contrived, but it's really easy to be risky with someone else's money

If things go good, great. If things go bad, I've got mine, fuck you. Besides, we're way too big, so the government would bail us out.

You know that had to be at least part of the mindset that led to all of this.

[Occam Bandage]

13. That is a much more realistic position than

the idea that they were deliberately trying to lose money. Indifference is one thing; malice is another.

[rollingrock]

19. Criminal negligence vs. malice

you're actually trying to defend these crooks?

one is hardly less criminal than the other, and the results are as devastating just the same.

[southerncrone]

10. Like so much of what passes for reality nowdays......keep the population

overworked, underpaid, overstressed & ill-informed. Then people are too tired or too busy to be able to discern what is REALLY going on. Governments & "the power brokers" have used these tactics for generations to maintain their control of the people. It has now become a fine art.

I'd venture to say 99% chance.

(For those of you who differ in opinion, I will now don my :tinfoilhat: for you enjoyment.)

[spin]

14. I call it the mushroom theory of politics...

keep the citizens in the dark and feed them bullshit.

[Hannah Bell]

11. There's some historic precedent.

[MadMaddie]

15. Well if contrived equals 28 years of bad Republican

fiscal policy...well then okay....

[AdHocSolver]

16. Financial collapse is the endpoint of a Ponzi scheme. Enron is an example. Collusion is not needed.

The perpetrators know how to play the scheme. No getting together and actively planning strategy is required.

The insiders to the scheme siphon profit from the scheme until the suckers stop pouring money into it at which time the scheme collapses. No overt coordination is needed.

Farmers don't have to coordinate their planting of vegetables. They know how to grow vegetables without "colluding" with other farmers.

[billyoc]

17. No. The cycle of endless misery that is boom and bust capitalism began before they were born.

[Blackhatjack]

20. Now it is reported that BOA needs ANOTHER $36billion in taxpayers' $$$ ....

You have to wonder how the $$$ is being spread around among the 'too big to fail' institutions allowed to survive on the taxpayers dole, and why none of them is worried that the Government might actually require them to fire management and strip shareholders of equity rights.

BTW adding another $36Billion to BOA would bring the total to around $200Billion in taxpayers' $$$ they have received so far.

And that $$$ is not disappearing into a deep dark hole -- there are creditors out there raking in the $$$ to the tune of 100% of the original obligations.

THis goes way beyond coincidental financial crashes of unrelated financial behemoths.