lol, what was unregulated??
banks??
there are 50,000+ pages of federal bank regulations.
+ state and local regulations that banks have to abide by.
the reason banks got in trouble because
1) they knew they could just sell those mortgages to F/F and they did not care about the quality of product
2) they knew government will always step in to bail them out if they really fuck up.
CRE was just a small peanut in this big sandwich

А вы что не помните в конце 80х кажется, было такое. Проверяли документы в кинотеатрах, спрашивали почему не на работе? Правда недолго это было.

* My comment was to Valentina's " When a police was knocking at the door, asking why are you not at work?"

"again, the mortgage crisis is a perfect example of pure unregulated capitalist greed."
Ага, это при том, что 90% рынка ипотеки контролируется квази-госкомпаниями, которыe Конгрес при Клинтоне ОБЯЗАЛ выдавать ссуды, базируясь не на возможностях берущего ссуду ее вернуть, а на классовом чутье

there could be a million pages of regulations... but if, for what ever reason, they're not being properly and consistently enforced (as was the case with the banks), they might as well not exist at all.

Любое социалистическое начинание плохо заканчивается. По крайней мере в США. Я не так много знаю про Европу, как другие, тем более что страны разные, люди разные. Я всегда привожу пример шведов - 9 миллионов людей схожего разлива и мировоззрения. Живут по принципу коммуны, тебе плохо - мы поможем, тебе хорошо, помоги ты. При этом они прекрасно осознают свою особенность и практически не впускают эмигрантов, а если впускают то социалом не делятся.
Примеров обществ в которых работает социализм - множество, но они все закрытые. Вот и всё

so the problem is not the lack of regulations, rather too much regulations, in fact the volume of regulation is so great nobody can possibly follow or enforce it..
so we have settled, the main fault in the whole banking crisis lies in Senate Banking Committee.. namely Barney Franks and Chris Dodd, whose direct responsibility was to supervise those banks properly.

I repeat, a capitalist society with some socialist aspects is not the same as having a purely socialist society. a hybrid of socialist and capitalist elements in a competetive, yet regulated free market, benefits all, instead of just a privileged few. we don't have to mirror any other nation, we only need to create a mix that is perfect for us - tweeking it as our needs change.

"competetive, yet regulated"
Вы уж решите, либо competetive, либо regulated. Вместе не работает

I didn't say that the problem was with too many regulations (I really don't know), only that the procedures were obviously not being followed and the organizations responsible for monitoring compliance, were negligent in their responsibilities.