Quote Originally Posted by jp1 View Post
And QE was $4 trillion of purchases of bad debt from the banks.
And the feds have made about $500 billion on that program since 2008. The "bad debt" they bought were largely securities the government had already guaranteed, or in the case of agency issues formally accepted the "moral hazard" at the outset of the crisis. I do think QE has some shortcomings from a monetary policy standpoint that we will pay for in future years, though.

There were plenty of private and public players in the 2008-2009 crisis. Simply identifying "banksters" as the scapegoat may play well politically, but it falls short as an explanation of what happened. I don't think you can reduce it, as Bernie Sanders has, to a sort of morality play.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...109-story.html