Brock Talon:
"House flipping is what led to the 2008 market crash, which hurt the little people the most. The subprime house loans were ginned up by the ever escalating home prices created by fake turnover in the market due to home purchase/flip speculation. Eventually it all collapsed (like all ponzi schemes) and I and people like me were left holding the bag for many, many years. House flippers made their money and walked away and the banks were bailed out and walked away. All at our expense. Shameful."
There are a lot of people that should be in prison that were involved in the GFC, but of course they were never charged with a crime and most continued their careers with barely a pause. House flipping, though, was not what caused the GFC.
It started with bundles of risky mortgages that were sold as investments and importantly, were used as collateral to borrow even more money. These sub-prime mortgages were deemed to be safer than normal by some shady grading practices, which allowed confidence to keep pumping them out. When house prices fell and the people who owned those mortgages defaulted on the loans, all of a sudden, the bundles of second and third grade, risky mortgages, upon which, so much money was speculated, fell apart and unraveled world markets. There are 'reputable' institutions- household names, that dont deserve to still be trading today and without government bail-outs, would have been long gone.
As an example, citigroup lost over $18 billion in 2008 and were given $45 billion in bail out money. The same year, they gave 738 of their employees a bonus of $1 million each. No-one went to jail, or lost their jobs for ineptitude- they were rewarded with tax payer money for failing.
