Whatever happened to all of the toxic assets that brought down the banks the end of 2008?If you think a toxic asset was a mortgage you are wrong. It is a specific type of derivative. What is a derivative? A calls up B and says will you bet me that C will not default on his mortgage? I will pay you 200 dollars a month and if he defaults you give me 500,000 dollars. Mind you A and B do not own C's... | |
One reason why AIG had to be bailed out in 2008, along with all other GOP-deregulated financial systems, was that this is the INSURER for the people or organizations whose dollars were used---far too many Americans (investors, retirees, depositors...) would have lost EVERYTHING had AIG ("too big to fail" AIG) been allowed to go under, taking all of its depositors and investors down with it. Thus was born the "Troubled Asset Relief Program" (a.k.a., TARP or "bank bailout" of $700 BILLION in appropriated funds) in the last months of the Bush/Cheney administration.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in trouble as far back as 2004 (according to "All Things Considered" on NPR) from engaging in the derivatives betting, with all government oversight and consumer protections REMOVED, thanks to the GOP's con-game "smaller government" Trojan horse policies. If you can locate Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's explanations (speeches or testimonies before Congress and the Senate) of how these "troubled assets" were being handled under the new administraton, which might be available on the whitehouse.gov website, you'd get the answer to your question. Geithner described part of the problem under the Republicans was that these financial institutions did not "keep any skin in the game" and that there was no OVERSIGHT for the derivatives market. The newly passed (now law) Financial Reforms (which Republicans tried very hard to BLOCK for some inexplicable reason) was supposed to have addressed this issue, so perhaps ReadTheBill.org or, again, whitehouse.gov would be applicable sites. I suspect that they have been "quarantined" in some way (which is what was done to my computer "viruses" by a clean-up done recently through iYogi).
Ever wonder why you don't see ads on the TV for Ditech anymore?
Ditech was actually GMAC. General Motors Assurance Company.
They are now Ally Bank.
Ditech still has a website. It begins with;
President Obama's Help for Homeowners
Having difficulty making your mortgage payments?
Get help with your home loan
Answer; You and I now own the toxic assets.
I thought the democrats who encouraged banks to loan money without any down payments to people with insufficient income who quit paying on the homes that were to big and expensive. That hurt the banks.
you know funny you should ask that. i been wondering about that too.they never talk about it.or not so i would understand.someone somewhere is just sitting on that cash and whatever else they might have.that's a very good question.im going to ask an expert friend of mine all about it..my mom might know too.
The banks still have them, they did not use the money the way it was intended..
So all of those liabilities are still on the books...
I think they wrote most of them off as losses, hence the collapse.
Most were traded through UBS so you might Google them.
The government fixed the problem with the financial reform. It won't happen again. But people don't want to realize that, they want to continue being racist. We are on the verge of recovery but they want to pull us back down again because they are easily scared by the fox news and fearmongering media.
Barack Obama is not an evil man. Get over it. The guy has our future and our well being in mind in every one of his policies. You'll thank him for it later.
er... didn't they package them up into investment funds... which of course, were sold for a lot and were worth nothing... a bunch of people bought them unknowingly with their 401ks...
and TARP probably bailed some of it out too...
NPR did a thing on it...
They lose two million on every asset, but they make it up in volume.
