bang-bang control loop (2023 Update)

Yep, there was a profit motive to do it, the customers were looking to buy despite their lack of funds, and "it seemed like a good idea at the time", no one had to pull a gun and the Civil Rights Act out on anyone to make it happen.

Business can be pretty equitable all by itself about stuff like race and class if and when it seems like there's a better buck to be made in not fretting it. Some of the first businesses to independently de-segregate in the South were railroads, hauling around two types of passenger car and paying someone to enforce the distinction, was a money-loser long before 1964.

It is absurd. The banks loaned the money because they would not hold the note for more than a few weeks. It would be someone else who actually took the risk. Meanwhile they had met all the requirements so the note could be sold.

I'm going to tell the local Lamborghini dealership they need to lease me one at $299/month or they will be violating my civil rights

The fringe banks did a lot of that. The bundled loans were "innovative financial products" and the US ratings agencies labelled them as much more secure than they turned out to be, which meant that they got sold around the world. That's what turned the US "sub-prime mortgage crisis" into the "global financial crisis" so the fringe banks weren't the only contributors. I don't think that the feds had any control of the ratings agencies.

I certainly envy his business model. His accomplishments are less impressive.

Sloman A.W., Buggs P., Molloy J., and Stewart D. “A microcontroller-based driver to stabilise the temperature of an optical stage to 1mK in the range 4C to 38C, using a Peltier heat pump and a thermistor sensor” Measurement Science and Technology, 7 1653-64 (1996)

has been cited 25 times so far - twice by me (which doesn't count). I'm fairly proud of that. There's other stuff that I'm equally happy about, but doesn't lend itself to boasting

It's a false perception. John Larkin irritates me by posting a lot of nonsense about a lot of different subject. His ideas about economics are as silly as his ideas about climate change. How he could have got through any kind of tertiary education and remained as ignorant as he is is a mystery. He does admit to not paying attention to stuff that he couldn't see as potentially profitable, but Tulane should have tested that knowledge, and clearly didn't.

Since that isn't what I'm doing, this is a misdirected appeal. Being "better" than John Larkin isn't an attractive target - it would involve the avid pursuit of flattery and waspish snarking when I didn't get it, which doesn't strike me as being in the least attractive.

First came the pressure from the Clinton administration, which is mentioned at the end of the first NY Times article I cited. Bitrex thinks it's absurd and it is, but they did it, and he voted for them.

Second came the banks complaining that the policy was going to kill them, so they demanded the repeal of the regulation preventing them from selling the debt. That regulation never existed in Europe, but the crisis didn't start there because they weren't forced to make bad loans.

Third came the left claiming that the banks demanded the repeal of the regulation out of greed. The alternative was to bail out the banks instead of bailing out the investment houses.

Forth came conservative economists predicting the crises in many articles they published between 1998 and 2005, many of which you can still read online. Liberal economists and politicians contradicted them all the while.

Fifth (after the crisis) came the liberal economists claiming that the people who predicted the crisis don't understand what cause it, but they, who never wrote an article predicting it, understand it completely.

I wasn't old enough to vote in 1996.. 8-)

The banks applied pressure to the Clinton administration, rather than the other way around. The banks wanted to be de-regulated, and they got their wish.

US banks weren't "forced to make bad loans". The loans to people who in low-income neighbourhoods were carefully regulated to make sure that they wouldn't go bad, and they didn't, even after the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

That was a large part of the banks' motivation.

What's that supposed to mean?

Predict crises often enough, ,and you will be bound to be right some of the time.

Correctly. Using bad theory to predict a crisis doesn't validate the theory when one of the many predicted crises finally happens.

they, who never wrote an article predicting it, understand it completely.

They understood what to do about it, which is why the consequences of the global financial crisis were a lot less devastating than the consequences of the 1929 stock market crash.

Can't see why Tom Del Rosso is so worried about the thought police. He doesn't think for himself at all. What he has posted is pretty much the same right wing nonsense that James Arthur was spouting directly after the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit.