Posted on 10/05/2008 12:20:12 PM PDT by AFreeBird
My timeline is mostly in step with Fox’s presentation. At least some of the data points are there for anyone that needs them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2097789/posts?page=2
Gee and from the headline I was expecting something directed at the future and a positive action or contribution of some kind.
I'm sure you were. I looked you up in the Thesaurus and, lo and behold, there you are!
Main Entry: sourpuss (aka JasonC)
Part of Speech: noun
Synonyms: complainer, crab, crank, grouch, grump, killjoy, sorehead, spoilsport
Main Entry: grouch (aka JasonC)
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: A person who habitually complains or grumbles.
Synonyms: complainer, crab, faultfinder, growler, grumbler, grump, murmurer, mutterer, whiner
Next search, pompous know-it-all! ;^)
Oh, hey, that’s exactly ANOTHER question I had: Did the bankers and such believe the Fannie and Freddie paper was, as you put it, “implicitly “insured” by the U.S. government”?
Ok, thanks! I’ll still try to get the tape, too, as video on dialup (another budget reality) is gonna be pretty tedious...
“”McCain should use it as a campaign ad!””
He absolutely should use the video clips and have one ad per clip! We had friends drop in so we missed the last 30 minutes of it so I’m glad it’s going to be on again.
Well, there are lots of areas I’d disagree with Rep. Shays on, but, on his website right now, he presents some interesting history, including:
“How did things get this out of hand? Banks, brokers and Congress encouraged people to buy homes they couldn’t afford, often with little or no documentation, and compelled institutions to extend credit to individuals incapable of making their payments. Members of Congress put tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy subprime loans. Subprime, by its very definition, is a loan extended to high-risk borrowers.”
Note that line: “Members of Congress...” It sounds to me like Shays could absolutely name names. What do you want to bet Barney is one of them?
More at: http://www.house.gov/shays/news/2008/september/septshaysfinancialcrisis.shtml
And then there’s this, on Bill O’Reilly, Frank says: “The fact is it was 1994 that we passed a bill to tell the Fed to stop the subprime lending. We tried to get them to do it. The first time we were in power again in 2007, we passed the bill to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
Huh??? “Stop the subprime lending”?! What a bald-faced lie!! Just HOW the heck could the FM’s have existed and functioned as they did, without pushing banks into excessive subprime lending?
As I understand it, there’s actually nothing wrong with a subprime loan, as long as somebody’s backing it with adequate and REAL assets, and it’s only a small portion of one’s portfolio. (Ie., you can afford to default on it.) But when the system has been pushed so far out of kilter that (if I read this right, elswhere) HALF of the U.S. mortgage market value is in subprime loans, and 70% of new mortgages are subprime, sheezo, man, that is obviously asking for a problem.
Transcript of O’Reilly and Frank here:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432173,00.html
The scary thing is, from the transcript alone I’d say O’Reilly WAS boorish, ranting, bullying, yelling, dumb, and irrational in spots, and he still comes off as being more in the right than Frank. Yikes!
Great show - was on last night and again this afternoon - particularly good in showing how Republicans including Secretary Snow and John McCain tried to reform the FM’s way back in the early 2000’s.........
Oops, I meant to say “you can afford a default on it.”
I agree that BOR would have been more effective to just keep confronting Frank with the truth, playing the clip, putting the quotes up on the screen.
However, the fact is that that would not have garnered nearly as much attention as this smackdown-—so it’s six-to-one, half-a-dozen to the other on this one, I guess.
I also am not the biggest Shays fan, but he has been smart on this for a long, long time, and he seems willing to go out there and tee this up for the sake of our country.
I encourage people to support Shays on this-—look at the committees he is on, including the one Waxman chairs.
Good catch about Shays’ website. However, I wish he would go on to say that “Members of Congress aggressively, affirmatively and explicitly STOPPED and DEFEATED attempts to regulate Fannie and Freddie so as to limit the risk their business practices posed to the entire economy.”
According to the articles I’ve read, yes, they did believe Fannie paper was implicitly “insured” (and, as I’ve also pointed out, they were right, weren’t they? The U.S. government did swoop in a pay the claims when they defaulted).
Also there was an idea that the U.S. housing market had never crashed, and that the government would not “let” it crash. This was a more general view of the matter, not just focused on the risk associated with the actual paper.
Because of this, it’s my view that it is not the investment banks that are to blame so much as it is almost 100% Congress’ fault in how they handled “affordable housing” and Fannie and Freddie.
The banks and corporations did what they were born to do: take advantage of almost free money in the marketplace. Sure, they had an obligation to limit risk for the sake of their shareholders. But look at it from their perspective: no matter how risky the paper was standing alone, it *wasn’t risky* if it was backed (implicitly or explicitly) by the U.S. government.
Moreover, the U.S. government (through “affordable housing” scams) was more or less FORCING lenders to literally give money away to people who could never pay it back. The lenders had some “right” to proceed as if the outcome for that government give-away (for which they were only a conduit, albeit making money along the way) was NOT THEIR PROBLEM.
The more we focus blame on Wall Street, the more we play into the Rats’ playbook that “corporations are evil,” “kill all the fat cats” and other forms of lethal class envy. Moreover, we help perpetuate the despicable myth that the Rats are “for the little guy” and “better on the economy.”
If that Depression-era anachronism is passed on once again to the next generation, that is what will truly take our country to Marxism.
This mess was 100% CAUSED by the U.S. Government, through the Democrats. Others took advantage of the situation, but without the Democrats enlarging and propping up and protecting FANNIE and FREDDIE, none of this would have happened.
One other question: O’Reilly says SEC Chairman Cox admits to having screwed up. What has he admitted to doing or not doing? The way I understand it, the SEC wasn’t actually empowered to regulate Freddie Mac & Fannie May. Is Cox perhaps talking about the credit default swaps?
You may be right about BOR. I just think he could have been a little more effective in painting Frank guilty, while preserving the “confrontation” / righteous anger aspect. :-)
I agree with you about Shays, although he also writes positively about Frank’s work on the new regulations. Is it possible that even Frank eventually saw where this was going, but too late?
I guess I can partially agree with you, but, I’d think some of these investment banks and such would see that the housing market problems were becoming so big that even the U.S. gov’t couldn’t really keep the bubble from bursting. And, if the outcome of something a business is doing will eventually harm that business itself, it is their problem.
I also think I can largely, though not entirely agree with you about the banks’ position. I just think they were so busy trying to get rich that they forgot the word “Tanstaafl”. Or they forgot about some form of self-discipline or self-regulation. And, what about AIG? They were not being pressured by the Gov’t, to insure contracts without having the collateral to do so, so far as I can tell.
It looks to me like there is some blame on “Wall Street”, some blame even on Republicans in Congress & maybe even the Administration, for not tackling a problem that at least a few of their number tried to work on (Shays, McCain)... and a whole LOT of blame on the people who protected the FM’s.
In arguing this with people, I’d be inclined to concede that part of the problem is with the former 2 groups, but that the MAIN cause, and so far the really unpunished party, IS the Party who pushed loans that couldn’t be paid for.
As an aside, I see that 60 Minutes is doing a segment on the credit default swaps. Oh, I’m sure it will be fair... (sarc)
The Fox program was the first and best that I’ve seen, too. Fingers need to be pointed at the Demoncraps who’ve perpetrated this whole mess, for YEARS, I might add! D@mn! At least SOMEONE’s trying!
Cheers!
Cheers!
You are right about AIG (although even they went forward on the assumption that Uncle Sugar would stand behind them in a crunch).
And, yes, there was greed on Wall Street. I guess my point is: yeah? Greed is not really a financial problem until it leads to gambling and an utter lack of discipline. But here again, the motivation to gamble to more than usual was Deep Pockets Uncle Sugar always looming in the background combined with a usual “it’s someone else’s problem [i.e., Congress’] to stop the madness.”
Rather like expecting NFL teams to stop “lucrative” but dangerous plays because people get hurt, when the fact is that coaches will wait for the League to change the rules.
Anyway, be all that as it may-—and let me be clear that I do agree Wall Street AND the lying, defrauding consumers who deliberately got liar loans, etc. are not blameless-—as a political matter, I firmly believe that NOW IS THE TIME TO FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY break the stranglehold of the lie that “Democrats are better on the economy.”
Look at this last week. McCain’s campaign did nothing to suffer the drop in the polls it did; likewise Obambi to rise in the polls. All that happened was a huge economic crisis and the sheeple ran back to the Rats-—ghosts of FDR dancing in their heads.
But FDR made the Depression worse, in the same ways that the Rats today caused this mess and will also make it worse (longer and deeper) if they get their hands on it in the future.
To break that stranglehold, we can’t play into the “corporate greed” and “kill the fat cats” and “hate the rich” mentality that keeps our country enslaved to the false saviorship of FDR.
We must focus on the “first cause”-—Congress, specifically the Rats in Congress.
Is there a transcript of this Special? I would appreciate a link. thanks in advance......
I don’t know.
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