Hoovervilles in LA... or is that Bushvilles?

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

This is really shocking to the conscience (via SadlyNo)

I don't think we have a full appreciation of what's really happening in these exurbs.  This is a crime.

By the way, the most lucid explanation I've seen about how this housing crisis happened is in this Web comic, of all places.  Basically the investment banks tried to put together a pyramid scheme, knowing that it was fated to fail but hoping that they were more clever than everyone and nobody would find out, and the housing market would hold out at the historically anomalous levels it was headed in 2004-2005.  I remember being told in 2005 when I was looking for a house that "nobody gets a fixed mortgage anymore."  That was the mentality from the banks, the lenders, the investors.  The goal was to shovel more and more people into mortgages, no matter their credit history.  Everybody benefited; government, industry, financial institutions.  There was no check on this forward motion, the regulation that was needed.  Unregulated capitalism will always step in the "Shitpile" this way.  And the banks and the lawmakers will all get bailed out, at the expense of these people in the Hoovervilles Bushvilles.