Greed

Buddha taught that there are Three Poisons: Greed, Hatred and Delusion.

The current housing crisis is certainly caused by Greed. The banks, the investment houses, the investors all wanted to "increase their margin" as usual. Don't they make it sound innocuous? Our governments allowed them to do it. So mostly innocent folks are now losing their homes, losing the value of the primary investment and suffering increased crime.

Meanwhile, what's up with these greedy banks? This from the New York Times this morning on one of them, Deutshce Bank:

''Conditions have become significantly more challenging during the last few weeks,'' the bank said. ''Reflecting this environment, Deutsche Bank anticipates in the first quarter 2008 markdowns in the region of 2.5 billion euros, related to leveraged loans and loan commitments, commercial real estate and residential mortgage-backed securities.''
Despite the write-downs, the bank said it expected to stay on its course and its shares rose 2.8 percent to 73.70 euros ($116.53)."

In other words, "we're writing off $4 billion and it's going to stay bad but our shares are rising because other greedy investors think that we are still relatively a good opportunity for a little more margin."

The world will end this way, for the benefit of a little more margin.