#Replay : Lehman Brothers, aéronautique et cité volcanique

Comme d’habitude chez Arte, le documenteur sur Lehman Brothers est d’un niveau anxiogène élevé mais passe à côté de l’éléphant : les subprimes sont la conséquence directe de l’interventionnisme du gouvernement US (la clique Clinton en particulier, mais aussi certains Républicains) sur le secteur bancaire afin d’assouplir l’accès aux prêts immobiliers pour les populations raciales non blanches, celles soit disant délaissées par le secteur. Ces règles prudentielles préexistaient pour une bonne raison : quand vos moyens ne vous permettent de rembourser un crédit, il n’y a pas lieu de prendre ce crédit.



C’est du bon sens.



Mais voilà en politique, des solutions débiles peuvent être imposées pour résoudre un non-problème (typiquement américain dans ce cas, c’est à dire racial). Et c’est le cas ici : les subprimes (la titrisation et mise sur le marché mondial des prêts US pourris) ne sont que la réponse du marché résultante de la volonté des Démocrates US (essentiellement) à résoudre un problème inexistant et créer (+/- non intentionnellement) un nouveau problème bien plus important [1].



Rajouter à cette sauce les errements de la Fed US et vous obtenez la recette pour un désastre annoncé [2].



Bref comme d’habitude Arte fait dans le larmoyant en oubliant les fondamentaux.



[1]https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/clintons-legacy-the-financial-and-ho…



“I believe that the sine qua non of the financial crisis was U.S. government housing policy, which led to the creation of 27 million subprime and other risky loans — half of all mortgages in the United States — which were ready to default as soon as the massive 1997-2007 housing bubble began to deflate. If the U.S. government had not chosen this policy path — fostering the growth of a bubble of unprecedented size and an equally unprecedented number of weak and high-risk residential mortgages — the great financial crisis of 2008 would never have occurred. … The financial crisis of 2008 was caused by government housing policies…. If we don’t learn that important lesson, we will make the same mistake again, and then we really will have another financial crisis.”

• Peter Wallison, 2011. Un des 10 membres de la commission d’enquête sur la crise financière de 2008 appointée par le Congrès.
  
  
  
  [2]http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Austrian_predictions/Housing_bubble
  
  
  
  “(The exceeding $2 billion line of credit from the United States Treasury) helps the GSEs (gouvernment sponsored enterprises as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) attract investors who are willing to settle for lower yields than they would demand in the absence of the subsidy. Thus, the line of credit distorts the allocation of capital. More importantly, the line of credit is a promise on behalf of the government to engage in a huge unconstitutional and immoral income transfer from working Americans to holders of GSE debt.
  
  
  
  Ironically, by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges granted to Fannie and Freddie have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.
  
  
  
  Despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policy of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
  
  
  
  I hope today’s hearing sheds light on how special privileges granted to GSEs distort the housing market and endanger American taxpayers. Congress should act to remove taxpayer support from the housing GSEs before the bubble bursts and taxpayers are once again forced to bail out investors who were misled by foolish government interference in the market.”
  


• Ron Paul, 2003. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee.