joey jojo
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.
That's exactly what happened. When we went over this in one of my finance courses, the thing that got everyone really angry, what the BAIL OUT AND BONUSES PAID OUT.
That's when I realized that the game was rigged!
