Posted on 09/20/2008 4:15:26 PM PDT by FreeKeys
About Nancy Pelosi. She says the Democrats share absolutely none of the blame for the current financial goings-on. She's wrong. In fact, she's lying because she knows here statement to be untrue. I'm going to unload on this when I get back, but here's your primer:
1. Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending. That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn't qualify for a loan.
2. The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the "Community Reinvestment Act." This law was then used by "activists" and "community organizers" (like Obama?) to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans ... millions of them.
3. Now we see what happens when political "wisdom" supplants good loan underwriting. When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history .. this is what you get. Enjoy it.
The Democrats have offered us a candidate who is very anti-private sector. Obama believes that America is great because of government and those who, like him, deride the profit motive. If Americans are stupid enough to believe his socialist drivel and put him in office .. .then we will get just what we so richly deserve. This week is just a preview.
....just try and get this story out through the mainstream media.
....you know how they are going to play it, if Bush causes hurricanes, and he does, he certainly caused this mess.
....that’s the deal in the media today.
I’m all for blaming Dems whenever possible, but the CRA did not create Countrywide and the rest.
Those companies were driven by naked greed, as were the people who borrowed what they knew they could not repay.
There’s a huge amount of blame to go around, but the CRA deserves little, if indeed any, of it.
I agree. I have come to the conclusion that according to the MSM Democrats are responsible for nothing. Look what happened during Katrina. The only person who was raked through the coals was the President.
HEY PELOSILINI, BUBBA, and JIMMUH: I lay all this at your feet. THIS is what happens when you Replace generally accepted Business Practices with POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!
Oh, Nancy, btw... after this gets out.. you can look for a Congressional Approval rating of 0% ... never been done before, but you can do it, you SOCIALIST useful idiot!
Between the credit crisis, bankruptcies, billion dollar buyouts and billion dollar buyouts, the economy has emerged as issue No. 1 in the presidential race. Which candidate do you think will do the best job reviving the U.S. economy?
Poll Results:
John McCain (R) - 67.4%
Barack Obama (D) - 20.8%
Bob Barr (L) - 1.0%
None of the Above - 10.8%
Total Responses -
725
What connections by family do DNC CBS/ABC/NBC/MSNBC/CNN Division personnel have to the democrat/socialist party?
Why am I not surprised this act was signed by Carter.
It is a crime that the media gets away with not even providing a history of CRA and how we got to where we are. They won’t give us the facts because it is an indicted of the Democrat party.
The CRA created the rationale for bad loans at every level. It essentially signaled the idea that if it was alright to lower standards for CRA it was in essence good enough to do so for those with bad/non credit across the board.
I missed in that article where it said to drive up home prices in southern california to half a million dollars (oh so low income) and to create numerous derivatives based on mortgages on unknowable quality.
I’m standing by the greed explanation.
vaudine
Of course it didn't. It, along with other factors*, simply helped unleash them from their own natural desire to stay out of trouble.
Those companies were driven by naked greed, as were the people who borrowed what they knew they could not repay.
So what? You mean people shouldn't act in their own self-interest? Isn't "greed" just a pious, holier-than-thou way to sneer at people who look out for themselves, deliberately confusing them with criminals who taken unwilling advantage of others? I don't use the term. It's Orwellian double-speak used mainly by collectivists, IMHO.
*The Financial Sector Meltdown
"Look, given the fact that Obama is blaming [The Financial Sector Meltdown] on Republicans and Bush policy, I'm heartened that McCain is [joining in on the] mindless populism, blaming it on "Wall Street greed." What IS it he thinks happens on Wall Street?
"The reasons for are not obscured. There are several of them.
"One of them is that the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan kept the punch bowl open for a long time with [unusually low] loan interest rates after 9-11, which led to a wild borrowing spree on Wall Street and Main Street.
"Secondly, for two decades you've had Republicans and Democrats in the Presidency and also in Congress who pushed to expand lending for housing for people who hadn't had it before, particularly African-Americans who'd been denied it because of discrimination and racism, and encouraged sub-rime loans which, in the end, collapsed in a fury and in a wave.
"And thirdly, what we had was a kind of advance in computers in which people derived these esoteric instruments of debt, which was understood, not as a way to cheat and hide, but as a way to spread the risk of mortgages. But ultimately, because it was [so] obscure, it had the opposite effect of spreading the liability in a way that people aren't even sure how much they own.
"The reason Lehman collapsed is because it looked at its books and doesn't understand how much of a liability it has, and a run starts on it, and it can't answer.
"Both [McCain and Obama] are appealing mindlessly to populism [blaming Wall Street instead of the politicians who started the whole mess when, for years and years, they blackmailed the financial sector into selling all those risky mortgages]." -- Charles Krauthammer on Special Report with Brit Hume, Sept. 18, 2008
Failure to meet CRA guidelines meant, as a bank: 1) You couldn't get FED permission to open a branch; 2) You would not be certified as a Federal Depository Bank; 3) You were limited in the dollar amount of loans you could provide. 4) you were at the bottom of the list for any other Federal Regulated Banking program.
Countrywide saw a wonderful opportunity after 1977 and filled the void with easy credit and non-stop loan approvals ---which they then sold to Fannie Mae.
Fannie Mae took on those mortgages and paid money back to the banks so they could keep on making loans.
See the Cycle?
Then we have the wholly under-reported market in unregulated Credit Default Swaps, where mortgage holders could get an "insurance" against defaults by the mortgage payer )mortagee) by pledging a split of the interest income. If the home owner couldn't pay the monthly mortgage and went into "default", the holder of the swap (AIG, Lehman, etc.) had to pay up on fake mortgage appraisals, borower credit worthiness, etc).
And AIG, Lehman, and all others, were holding assets that had no, or minimal value.
Crunch time came and there wasn't enough money to cover the obligations.
Hence, the FEDS came in to cover the losses.
I disagree. Without the loosening of credit from the top, CountryWide, et al, could not have sold their loans and there would have been no bonanza of money to make. In a capitalistic society, greed can be good and, in the proper perspective, perfectly moral, not “naked”.
This problem was the result of failed Clinton policies coming home to roost at an appropriate time (as in, way down the road) for Democrats to try to ingeniously exploit. Machiavelli at his finest.
Right you are Neal. For eighteen years the Mortgage Industry managed somehow to get around miserable legislation at the time that the Democrats approved and Jimmy Carter signed in. (I believe it was in 1977). Then in early 1990’s the Clinton misadministration forced the issue.
I think IIRC this link to “Assault On The Mortgage Industry” sums it up pretty well.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n25_v45/ai_14779796
Sure, greed can be good. This greed wasn’t.
It wasn’t based on any sort of rational decision making. Not in the least. It was based on “I think we might get lucky”.
Sorry, what happened here was not good capitalism, not just because it involved capitalists.
It was overboard, irrational, unfounded, naked greed.
Reread posts 13 and 14. It’s far more complex than you seem to imply. And I think we can both agree that bad policy, in the form of CRA, a Dem pet project, was a vital element of the downward spiral.
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