Who really warned of the economic crisis?

[Wetzelbill]

Three of them that I knew and have paid attention to for awhile made it. Joe Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and Byron Dorgan. This is a good list, excellent videos too. -WB

Economic Honor Roll (with video)


Now that a full-scale economic crisis is upon us, many are left asking the complicated but necessary question of how did we get here. While there are numerous individuals and institutions who deserve their share of the blame, it is also important to recognize those issued warnings about the fragility of the financial system and sounded the alarm about an impending collapse before it all came crashing down.

Below is the beginning of our look at some of the figures--politicians, economists, pundits--whose observations about our financial situation have come to seem all too prescient. Please check back as more names are added to our list and by all means let us know who else deserves credit for having seen our current meltdown coming.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/12/economic-honor-roll_n_133928.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. More than three years ago, I was reading articles by Paul Craig Roberts

Economic Tsumani by Mike Whitney
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04082005.html

[Wetzelbill]

2. Woo hoo! Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman ! Big kick

[ixion]

3. Mogambo Guru has been on this for years

he totally flipped out when the Fed stopped publishing the M3.

[Hubert Flottz]

4. I think that Abe Lincoln was the last republican that did that...

"The present, chaotic tyranny of unregulated international banking creates, in Lincoln's words, a "great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, belching forth the lava of political corruption."

[Wetzelbill]

5. Great quote!

Where did you dig that up from? I might have to use it.

[Hubert Flottz]

12. I read it somewhere a while back and I just wrote it down and now

I can't remember where I saw it.

Getting old I guess!

[ret5hd]

6. I believe Warren Buffet did.

[Wetzelbill]

10. he's at the link too

[moondust]

7. Don't forget these guys.

Business Week, October 9, 2008

They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis
State whistleblowers tried to curtail greedy lending—and were thwarted by the Bush Administration and the financial industry.

More than five years ago, in April 2003, the attorneys general of two small states traveled to Washington with a stern warning for the nation's top bank regulator. Sitting in the spacious Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with its panoramic view of the capital, the AGs from North Carolina and Iowa said lenders were pushing increasingly risky mortgages. Their host, John D. Hawke Jr., expressed skepticism.

Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Tom Miller of Iowa headed a committee of state officials concerned about new forms of "predatory" lending. They urged Hawke to give states more latitude to limit exorbitant interest rates and fine-print fees. "People out there are struggling with oppressive loans," Cooper recalls saying.

Hawke, a veteran banking industry lawyer appointed to head the OCC by President Bill Clinton in 1998, wouldn't budge. He said he would reinforce federal policies that hindered states from reining in lenders. The AGs left the tense hour-long meeting realizing that Washington had become a foe in the nascent fight against reckless real estate finance. The OCC "took 50 sheriffs off the job during the time the mortgage lending industry was becoming the Wild West," Cooper says.

~more~

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_42/b4104036827981.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis

[lonestarnot]

8. Why are some of these people on the watchdog committee?

[orwell]

9. Nouriel Roubini...n/t

[Wetzelbill]

11. he's at the link too