Of Banks and Crisis

Reading about Obama and his socialist cronies baying for blood of the banks got me thinking once again about the recent financial crisis.

Government tells banks to lend to people who are not credit-worthy. Banks are not sure, so Government decides to guarantee such loans. After all the American dream means at a least an owned house for every individual. No matter if he is a worthless bum. By virtue of being a human being and an American citizen he deserves the loan. Nevertheless, the risky loans demand high interest rates. If Government wants to gamble the money that it has earned so painstakingly from tax-payers, who are banks to interfere? Besides, getting interest rate reserved for junk bond while holding Government backed AAA+ investment was too good to let go I guess. However, like the proverbial mosquito who drinks so much blood that it is unable to fly, reality caught up with the banks and the Government. Of course the Government cannot be wrong, especially as it thinks about people. Didn't it help its citizens to go on a debt-fuelled consumer frenzy by keeping interest rates artificially low? My, it really cares for its people. Especially the tax-payers and savers. So, banks were the devils who created this spectre of mortgage based securities that threatened to swallow the world. But were they the only ones to blame? I guess not.

My question is simple: why should banks lend money to any worthless idiot because the Government wishes it so? And if they are forced to, why cry foul if they manage to take advantage of it? That is what you get when two looters play chess with each other. Might is right, so the Governments escape blame in name of helping people. But let no one delude themselves into thinking that banks could have pulled this one off all alone. I don't think that banks should suffer the price of socialist dreams because I do not believe in socialism. People who expected banks to self-immolate to satisfy their mediocre vote-banks got a well-deserved shock. And, by all means, the people who allowed and accepted such a system in name of social justice have only themselves to blame. It is a world governed by the laws of cause and effect, and everything we do or don't do has consequences. The banks simply turned a cannibalistic system against itself, but they did not invent it.