"Bring me the head of Nancy Pelosi!"
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.
Closing costs should be rolled into the loan. There is no sane reason I can think of to rob one’s savings so the process of a loan can be financed. So far as down payment is concerned, they sell insurance to cover those loans with small colateral. I assume those companies are now paying up when someone defaults before that mortgage insurance term is up.
I’m an advocate of let the chips fall. I think both borrower and lender should suffer for bad decisions in the marketplace. It’s no different than your minimum wage neighbor buying an Escalade. It’s a dumb decision for both the borrower and lender. They should have to bite the bullet.
So far as a crisis is concerned, I object to the use of the term crisis. The sun rose this morning, I had breakfast, went out for a while, visited a friend in the hospital, and returned home.
Everything was going on same as usual.
"Bring me the head of Nancy Pelosi!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
Good points.
When I asked her who she would believe she said she saw a round table news show on Cable TV where both the Democrats and Republicans agreed that it was Bush's fault for the Deregulation of the Banking Industry.
When I asked her for the names of the Republicans she says she doesn't pay attention to stuff like that.
Now I have loved and lived with this woman for 38 years but she is stuck on stupid no matter what I say or prove to her!
PS: she is not voting this year!
Loss “quotas”...
sounds like gov’t.
Consequently, Senator Gramm, head of the banking cmtte. basically caved to his buddies in the banking business. They were greedy and the CRA requirements led to more greed because it introduced another pool of home buyers not previously available for exploitation. The banks and financial inst. began a bundling, betting, and hedging operation heretofore unknown. Even foreign banks got into the act--the Swiss Bank Gramm went to work for was an early loser of billions.
So you see, there is plenty of room for censure all around and all of it leads back to Congress, lobbyists, and enforcement of political correctness.
Incidentally, I believe it was an addendum to Gramm-Leach-Bliley that took oversight away from Enron, and removed restrictions which had kept auditing firms from getting too close to the firms they were auditing ---one of the problems that occurred at Enron, where, incidentally, Wendy Gramm landed a lucrative job and brought in over a million dollars into the Gramm coffers before Enron went under.
Clinton era appointees went to Fannie and Freddie and they became a Democrat playground, enriching Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, andmany others and contributing almost 2200 thousand to Obama's campaign.
vaudine
...including corporate welfare cheats.
I thought Wendy & Phil Gramm were honorable economists, who hated rent seekers!?
Shameful!
The worst part is that an enormous number of these worthless home mortgage loans have been packaged together with good loans an sold to banks and investment funds all over the world. As a consequence, financial institutions can’t quantify the extent of their liabilities.
This is a financial cluster f**k worthy of Sub Saharan Africa or Latin America. And it all started when the mortgage industry got coerced into making bad loans on a massive scale.
Coerced by whom? Not the Mafia. We’re not talking about shaking down bottomless bars. And it’s not the “Corporations”. They’re out to make money, not destroy it.
Giving this kind of economic power to people like Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi (or, I assume, Obama) is like putting a small child at the wheel of a large truck. These people are traffickers in illusions, who talk in terms like “hope” and “change” without letting us know what we’re supposed to hope for or change into. God help us but maybe we’re about to find out.
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My son is a California (and Idaho) real estate broker. He had 60 employees up until November last year. The sales came to a grinding halt. He is now putting in lots of work on short sales. Weeks of work to close single deals. Lots of lazy, uncooperative and uninformed people at the banks make it a tiresome task. He's going to have to find a 2nd job with steady income to keep food on his table. Many foreclosures could have been avoided, but the banks pocket more money by sitting on their hands and letting it happen. It's appalling to see the level of laziness, stupidity and illiteracy among the employees in the financial sector that are content to watch the house of cards fall down.
The CRA in effect required lenders to loan to people who “could not repay”. Yes, the lenders were trying to make a profit and stay out of jail. I guess that qualifies as “naked greed”.
I’m standing by the greed explanation.
Don't quit your day job to teach economics.
[I’m all for blaming Dems whenever possible, but the CRA did not create Countrywide and the rest.]
Here’s some help on the Dem’s help to Countrywide & vice versa:
1. House REPUBLICANS Darrell Issa (California) and Mark Souder (Indiana) complain that DEMOCRAT Henry (Nostrilitis) Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (gasp) has been stalling on their demands for an investigation into COUNTRYWIDE’S sweetheart mortgage deals to DEMOCRAT Senators Kent Conrad (North Dakota) and Christopher Dodd (Conn).
2. Meanwhile, it has also been reported that FORMER CLINTON CABINET MEMBERS Donna Shalala and Alphonso Jackson, as well as (CLINTON’S former United Nations Ambassador and John Kerry’s wonna-be Secretary of State) Richard Holbrooke also received VIP mortgages from COUNTRYWIDE.
3. The Community Reinvestment Act did not create Countrywide, but it did force mortgage companies into making the bad loans that threaten to cause a world wide depression. And the Democrats were the force behind the CRA.
(link concerning 1&2) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2051154/posts
Yep. "This country has come to feel the same when congress is in session as when a baby gets hold of a hammer." -- Will Rogers, here
I’ll agree cheap interest had a lot more to do with the problem than the CRA.
Care to explain how CRA created derivatives then?
I’ll wait here.
Thanks very much for the ping. Thanks very much for the post!
You might want to check out this thread...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2086488/posts
bttt
Worse, these Demagogues are like drug-addled psychos at the helm of large super-tankers bearing down upon various US ports and cities. For sure, plenty of the Republicans aren't a lot better, but it is consistently the socialist Demagogues ala Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and pals who drove much of the worst in debates and policies about "discrimination" and "red lining" and menacing banks to stop caring about who received mortgages (except to be sure to fulfill politically correct mandates if the banks wanted any future govt. approvals and cooperation, etc.).
Well , the MSM as we know will cover this up. But, Talk Radio and the Net bloggers could help especially in battleground states by spreading these facts to them.
I am curious what the demographic profile is of the avg. talk radio listener. I am assuming most are conservatives, but it would be interesting to know who else listens.
I am sometimes in a parking lot or next to someone in traffic and will be next to a guy with talk radio on and I get excited because I want to know what he is listening to. More often than not it's sports talk radio. Of course I am in Massachusetts so that may help to explain it some. LOL!
The CRA did not ‘create’ derivatives, debt swaps, etc., but the CRA especially after Clinton put it on steroids resulted in over a Trillion dollars of subprime debt pouring in to pouring into Fanny/Freddie, most of it junk. The Wall Street crowd did fan the flames, but Clinton, and the crooks the democrats installed there lit the fire. Greed, like the poor, is something we always have with us, but Clinton and the democrats bear most of the responsibility for providing the flame and the oxygen for the current conflagration. If they had not insisted on lenders reducing standards and had not suspended normal risk management standards at the Fannies we would still have a problem due to greedy bastards, but the problem would be manageable. Crooks have been gaming financial markets since Jesus was a boy, but when the democrats used the full force and majesty of the government to assist them the house burned down. The republicans can be faulted for not screaming loudly enough for oversight but their sins at worst are sins of emission. The democrats committed the acts that led ineluctably to the current situation for political reasons and they bear the greatest guilt. We can round up the Wall Street cads and hang them and we will feel better, but if we let it go at that the real culprits (some one else mentioned above) are going to skate and the folly of affirmative action lending will remain to burn us again somewhere down the line.
Just a few Rat fingerprints.
Post 25: You have my sympathies.
marker
“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?”
Free Keys, I’m familiar with your position, and with Rand’s, but I think it’s misapplied here. “Greed” is an obsessive, base and short-sighted motivation that places immediate interests above rational self interests. It is applicable here, promoting bad loans for the immediate expansion of wealth and power while ignoring evidence that they’ll damage the economic foundations and reputations of friends, team members and loved ones. But I agree that denouncing greed should be qualified so that it’s not confused with denouncing profit.
Well put. Thank you.
We know Air America influences very few. Yes, Rush et al do speak to the choir but there are also Indies who listen in as well as Reagan Dems. The problem of course is the drum beat of hate and bias that the MSM puts out toward any GOP candidate. The fact that the Messiah is a socialist pacifist does not alarm the media or at least 50% of Americans. That is very scary. Class warfare works well for the Dems though they have as many or more millionaires than the GOP especially if you count Hollywood.
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