"Ofnuts" wrote in message
...
On 21/08/2010 14:21, Peter wrote:

There is a difference between free market energy and greed. A very fine
line, but it is there

... and crossed everyday.


Banks, ATMs and convenience stores, etc... are also robbed everyday.
Should we eliminate them?

I wasn't talking abojut robbery. But since you address the subjet:
when the poor use violence to rob the rich, it's illegal, when the rich
use small print to rob the poor, it's legal.



Small print illegal.
If a poor person buys a house he cannot afford, whose fault is that.
If you bought a camera you could not afford and you could not buy food for
your family, would that be the fault of the camera salesman? - The credit
card company -- your bank because you withdrew your money to buy the camera?
For what reason would it not be the fault of the purchaser of the home. The
concept is accepting responsibility for one's own acts.

What may be illegal was packaging these high risk mortgages and selling them
as mortgage backed securities, without adequate disclosure. Some of those
derivatives were so complex that it's almost impossible to decipher what
exactly they are.
What also may be illegal, civilly wrong, was selling derivatives while
taking a short position without disclosing the seller had more to gain if
the derivative went bad, while making a healthy profit on the sale.

--
Peter