Comments on: We Actaully Need the Recession http://blog.leadcritic.com/lead-generation/featured/we-actaully-need-the-recession The Home for Lead Industry News & Opinion Sun, 01 Aug 2010 06:19:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Jorge Borbolla http://blog.leadcritic.com/lead-generation/featured/we-actaully-need-the-recession/comment-page-1#comment-171023 Jorge Borbolla Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:38:51 +0000 http://blog.leadcritic.com/featured/we-actaully-need-the-recession#comment-171023 After reading your post and watching the video, I could not agree more with the fact that we need a recession to cure the economy. The reality is (or, optimistically, was) that far, far too much of our economy was based on fiction - sand as you say. How many layers of fat and commissions were built onto mortgages that didn't had an icecube's chance in hell of being paid back. Like the $720,000 loan in Bakersfield made to an undocumented Mexican immigrant with -undocumented- $14k annual salary. 0 down. That got repackaged, sold and resold, slapped a AAA Moody's rating on it and ended up in some poor suckers retirement account. Oh wait, the poor sucker was me! If the '000'000's of people who have lost their jobs in the finance industry (sad as it is on a human level) were to take up jobs in something *productive*, would the economy not be better off? If the PhDs that have been whisked away to wall street to do fancy financial engineering, would actually do some *real* engineering and deliver more efficient production processes, factories, oil-consumption alternatives, etc. - would we not be better off? Now, I do see the requirement for a bail out. As harsh as the medicine is that we need to recover, and mind you, the medicine is the recession itself, we can't afford to kill the patient while it's being administered. It's important to secure the financial system, and it is important to handle the human fall out of all this with great compassion and mercy. But the recovery will be slow and painful - much like chemo. Now, given all that, how does it strike you that the top brass at Wachovia is scheduled to walk away with a nice pay package of 100m when the Wells acquisition closes? But, I rant. After reading your post and watching the video, I could not agree more with the fact that we need a recession to cure the economy. The reality is (or, optimistically, was) that far, far too much of our economy was based on fiction – sand as you say. How many layers of fat and commissions were built onto mortgages that didn’t had an icecube’s chance in hell of being paid back. Like the $720,000 loan in Bakersfield made to an undocumented Mexican immigrant with -undocumented- $14k annual salary. 0 down. That got repackaged, sold and resold, slapped a AAA Moody’s rating on it and ended up in some poor suckers retirement account. Oh wait, the poor sucker was me!

If the ’000’000′s of people who have lost their jobs in the finance industry (sad as it is on a human level) were to take up jobs in something *productive*, would the economy not be better off? If the PhDs that have been whisked away to wall street to do fancy financial engineering, would actually do some *real* engineering and deliver more efficient production processes, factories, oil-consumption alternatives, etc. – would we not be better off?

Now, I do see the requirement for a bail out. As harsh as the medicine is that we need to recover, and mind you, the medicine is the recession itself, we can’t afford to kill the patient while it’s being administered. It’s important to secure the financial system, and it is important to handle the human fall out of all this with great compassion and mercy. But the recovery will be slow and painful – much like chemo.

Now, given all that, how does it strike you that the top brass at Wachovia is scheduled to walk away with a nice pay package of 100m when the Wells acquisition closes? But, I rant.

]]>