Nassim Taleb Agitated and Animated by the Announcement of Q. E. II

In November of 2012, immediately after U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Chairman, Ben Bernanke announced the implementation of Quantitative Easing II, Professor. Nassim Taleb contacted Bloomberg News interviewer Erik Schatzker to say, “Something has to be done about Ben Bernanke".

Mr. Schatzker invited Prof. Taleb to discuss his feelings on Bloomberg Television’s “Inside Track” program. The video-clip below contains two brief 'slices' from that interview.

To see the complete interview on Bloomberg Television go to: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/64477298-taleb-interview-on-bernanke-qe.html

Michael Bloomberg, "Congress Caused the Mortgage Crisis, Not the Big Banks"

November 1, 2011 Michael Bloomberg - The Good Democrat

Speaking at a business breakfast in midtown featuring Bloomberg and two former New York City mayors, Bloomberg was asked what he thought of the Occupy Wall Street protesters."I hear your complaints," Bloomberg said. "Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I'm not saying I'm sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn't have gotten them without that.
  
"But they were the ones who pushed Fannie and Freddie to make a bunch of loans that were imprudent, if you will. They were the ones that pushed the banks to loan to everybody. And now we want to go vilify the banks because it's one target, it's easy to blame them and congress certainly isn't going to blame themselves. At the same time, Congress is trying to pressure banks to loosen their lending standards to make more loans. This is exactly the same speech they criticized them for."Bloomberg went on to say it's "cathartic" and "entertaining" to blame people, but the important thing now is to fix the problem.  
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A Few Questions: Was it only 'Congress' that created and allowed pressures motivating banks to abandon due diligence banking? Or, did pressure from, and policies supported by, the executive branch play an even greater role, than Congress’s role, in the creation of the housing and mortgage bubble - which led to the financial crisis? Who in Congress supported the policies that created the problem? Which players in the executive branch and its bureaucracy enforced and expanded the Community Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Housing Act?