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1. 

   JonD17 said, 6 months ago

   I wanna say something here, but I don’t know where to start!

2. 

   SherlockWatson said, 6 months ago

   How about this: Is the guy in the red shirt able to talk while Dick Cheney drinks a glass of water?

3. 

   JonD17 said, 6 months ago

   yeh, sherlock, that works. I also love the irony of the last frame.

4. 

   pschearer said, 6 months ago

   Banks originally started making bad loans because the Feds forced them. In order to avoid severe penalties for supposed racial discrimination, banks were required to start lending into low-income areas which very often also means mostly-minority areas.

   The banks then needed to find ways to distance themselves from these risky loans. That was how Wall Street got involved, bundling mortgages into securities which disguised actual degrees of risk, spreading financial uncertainty throughout the economy. This would eventually lead to a cascade of failures as major financial institutions began to realize they had no idea how much they were really worth.

   No single straw broke the camel’s back; he died under several tons of straw. But one of the first straws was the Community Reinvestment Act in the 1970s that targeted “red-lining”, the name for the policy of excluding certain areas for bank loans, supposedly on racial grounds. (Ironically, red-lining began in the 1930’s as a racist policy of the federal government! I could take the whole story back to 1913, but that’s just more straw on the dead camel.)

5. 

   pilotx said, 6 months ago

   Not true. The first straws were the deregulation of banks allowing them to invest in exotic vehicles that no one truly understood. I know it’s popular to blame everything on poor people but the vast majority of loans made to low income people are paid on time. Sean and Bill may try to lead us down that path but it’s not correct.