End of the Intermediate Trend?

[Hoofhurr]

Bernanke inherited a low interest rate before lowering it even more didn't he? I thought adjusting the prime rate was a tool that was invented specifically because of past depression/recessions. I think what contributed to the bubble was the ability for hedge-fund type investment firms to create value out of nothing, or value out of something that very few people really understood. If the Fed printing dollars is bad then how can it be good for these firms to create ambiguous value without having to have much by way of proven assests in the event their financial innovations were over-inflated?

The housing bubble was almost certainly paired with the interest rate but it was also paired with the fact that banks were so focused on making money that they had no internal self-regulation. As a real estate agent I dealt everyday with loan officers who were paid for the quantity of loans they made and never the quality of those loans.

It's easy to blame the fed for failing to curb these financial institutions but why is it that these banks don't self-regulate? Why is pursuing profit with reckless abandon socially acceptable? I agree that a sense of caution was completely absent in the economy for several years preceding the recession.