Tracking down where it started

[The Big Dog]

Oct 3, 2008 20:31:44 GMT -5 Mink said:

Bush's hands aren't exactly "clean", as if he had nothing to do with the problem. In a 2002 speech, he encourages people to be homeowners (this is quite lengthy)

That's it? The best you can come up with is "Bush's hands aren't exactly clean"?

For the record, I do not disagree that the President could have been much more forceful, as could have any number of Congressional Republicans, in calling for reform. However it is absolutely undeniable that Bush, McCain and many other leading Republicans both on and off the controlling committees in Congress were sounding the alarm as far back as 2002.

Yet the vast overwhelming majority of Democrats did not call for reform of any kind. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters, the list goes on and on, said repeatedly that nothing was wrong and to not worry about it. That is a difference as vast as the Grand Canyon. And your continued denial of the truth is nearly as comical as the canyon is wide.

If you would let go of your preternatural obssession with pinning everything on Bush, who still isn't running for anything by the way, and accepted the undeniable fact that the Democrats you support and idolize have sold this country's economic future down the river (with the help of some Republicans) for nothing more than a bit more political power and influence, then you might have a little bit better understanding of what is really wrong with this country today.

Barack is going to get elected. I'm becoming certain of it. The millstone of this Democrat inspired perfidy is going to hang heavy for decades and our children's grandchildren will likely still be paying for it when our graves are nothing more than a forgotten and neglected patch of weeds.

But I am betting right here, right now that the allure of ever more government intervention, control and spending will be more than even a politician as saintly as Barack can resist. His administration will almost certainly do what it is that Democrats do best. They will continue to curry power and votes by throwing taxpayer money around. To pay for even half of what he wants to do, he will have to tax and spend the nation straight into a depression. But that would create yet another crisis du jour for government to save us from, wouldn't it? Others like him will come along and they'll kill it off.

I predict that by the time he stands for re-election in 2012 that our economy will have completely collapsed under the weight of forced redistribution of wealth by the government. I sure hope I am wrong, but God help us all if I am right.

Either way, I hope you are happy and I wish you luck with it. You will be getting exactly the government that you and your fellow travellers on the progressive left deserve.

Just be prepared for the I told you so's.

[Mink]

Did you read what Bush said in his 2002 speech to the country?
I am not tying this mess solely on one person or one party. Bush is just as guilty as any at fault, if not more because, as president, instead of warning the country in a speech to do the opposite, he encouraged the melt down with the help of Fannie & Freddie.....and this is with a Republican Congress.

quote:

"And so, therefore, I've called -- yesterday, I called upon the private sector to help us and help the home buyers. We need more capital in the private markets for first-time, low-income buyers. And I'm proud to report that Fannie Mae has heard the call and, as I understand, it's about $440 billion over a period of time. They've used their influence to create that much capital available for the type of home buyer we're talking about here. It's in their charter; it now needs to be implemented. Freddie Mac is interested in helping. I appreciate both of those agencies providing the underpinnings of good capital."
_____________________________________

The Republicans are in another deficit (this time,the highest in history), no surprise. I think they are handing the office to the Democrats so they can "fix" it (the deficit) again!

It is common knowledge years ago our grandchildren and great-grandchildren would pay for Bush's bad policies and the only way to rewrite history for Bush and party is to give this mess to the Dems so it appears like the Dems got us into it.....in the meantime, the future Bush/Cheney and top 2% families will thrive unscathed.

[The Big Dog]

Oct 4, 2008 0:54:26 GMT -5 Mink said:

Did you read what Bush said in his 2002 speech to the country?

And did you see what Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and other Congressional Democrats were saying all along?

I am not tying this mess solely on one person or one party. Bush is just as guilty as any at fault, if not more because, as president, instead of warning the country in a speech to do the opposite, he encouraged the melt down with the help of Fannie & Freddie.....and this is with a Republican Congress.

Until you accept and start castigating by name and deed the Democrats who gave us the CRA, who passed regulations that encouraged and rewarded the bad behaviors of the market, and who said NOTHING WAS WRONG when the President warned in public comments 17 seperate times, including during one State of the Union speech, that there was a problem, I would suggest that your posts are absolutely trying to to tie this mess to one person.

And that person's name is Bush.

You're as wrong about the mechanics and history of the issue as the Democrats were about the programs in the first place.

[Mink]

Oct 4, 2008 23:15:37 GMT -5 The Big Dog said:

Oct 4, 2008 0:54:26 GMT -5 Mink said:

Did you read what Bush said in his 2002 speech to the country?

And did you see what Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and other Congressional Democrats were saying all along?

I am not tying this mess solely on one person or one party. Bush is just as guilty as any at fault, if not more because, as president, instead of warning the country in a speech to do the opposite, he encouraged the melt down with the help of Fannie & Freddie.....and this is with a Republican Congress.

Until you accept and start castigating by name and deed the Democrats who gave us the CRA, who passed regulations that encouraged and rewarded the bad behaviors of the market, and who said NOTHING WAS WRONG when the President warned in public comments 17 seperate times, including during one State of the Union speech, that there was a problem, I would suggest that your posts are absolutely trying to to tie this mess to one person.

And that person's name is Bush.

You're as wrong about the mechanics and history of the issue as the Democrats were about the programs in the first place.

I have accepted this mess is the fault of both Democrats & Republicans. For some reason, you can't acknowledge that Bush has encouraged it, regardless of the 17 times warned against it.

Quote:

"And so, therefore, I've called -- yesterday, I called upon the private sector to help us and help the home buyers. We need more capital in the private markets for first-time, low-income buyers. And I'm proud to report that Fannie Mae has heard the call and, as I understand, it's about $440 billion over a period of time. They've used their influence to create that much capital available for the type of home buyer we're talking about here. It's in their charter; it now needs to be implemented. Freddie Mac is interested in helping. I appreciate both of those agencies providing the underpinnings of good capital."
_____________________________________

[jgaffney]

Oct 4, 2008 23:39:15 GMT -5 Mink said:

Quote:

"And so, therefore, I've called -- yesterday, I called upon the private sector to help us and help the home buyers. We need more capital in the private markets for first-time, low-income buyers. And I'm proud to report that Fannie Mae has heard the call and, as I understand, it's about $440 billion over a period of time. They've used their influence to create that much capital available for the type of home buyer we're talking about here. It's in their charter; it now needs to be implemented. Freddie Mac is interested in helping. I appreciate both of those agencies providing the underpinnings of good capital."
_____________________________________

What was the status of Fannie and Freddie in 2002? How did it change between 2002 and 2008? Who ran Fannie and Freddie during that time period?

Wasn't the House hearing on the report of the regulators, the hearing that has been widely cited here, held in 2004? How could President Bush, who has been accused of being dumber than a rock, have foreseen what the regulators would report two years later?

You're grasping at straws again, Mink.

[Mink]

Here is another great article Great article that helps raise the clouds around the financial meltdown we are seeing now.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/16/AR2008091603732_pf.html

Quote:

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

In a speech in Golden, Colo., Obama blamed the economic crisis on an "economic philosophy" that he said McCain and President Bush supported blindly.
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Alas, though, they will never admit it.

[The Big Dog]

Oct 6, 2008 21:14:55 GMT -5 Mink said:

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

Nice distortion by the New York Slimes. Said "de-regulation" would have been the reforms that were needed to keep what happened from happening.

As much as you, the New York Slimes, who ever, wants to you can not lay this current state of affairs at anyone's feet besides a bunch of Democrats. This bit of spin by the Slimes is so ludicrous... to blame someone for a situation when the rules they proposed weren't even passed? What a leap of liberal logic that is.

In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

Gramm-Leach-Bliley has been discussed in length elsewhere. It is a red herring in this discussion. Do a few minutes research before you post spun lies and propaganda.

[Mink]

My link was from the Washington Times re: regulation and the other link posted about Bush (Fannie & Freddie) was from Whitehouse.gov. Spin?

[The Big Dog]

My bad... and yours. Your link is actually to the Washington Post. The Washington Times is a very conservative paper, while the Post is exceedingly liberal.

So what am I spinning? The de-regulation McCain stood up for was what was blocked by the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, to keep Fannie and Freddie doing the "business as usual" that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd wanted them to. The Democrats blocked S.190 and stopped it cold. Please see other threads on point that have links speaking directly to this.

The "business as usual" that McCain proposed to stop with the reform bill that you and the Washington Post are spinning, got us to where we are today.

In the words of Dr. Phil, how's that working for you?

Again, Gramm-Leach-Bliley has been shown clearly on analysis to not be the root cause.

Better head back to where ever you get your talking points and get some more.

[Mink]

Good catch Big Dog....it is late and I am tired

I don't see Phil Graham as being an innocent in this crisis at all.
This is the same man who wrote Mccain's economic plan-his economic adviser, who called us "a nation of whiners" and said we're going through a "mental recession," "It's all in our heads",
very recently.
Bear Sterns, IndyMac, Smith Barney, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Bros, Merrill Lynch, AIG, WaMu...That didn't really happen. It's all in our heads.

Highest number of foreclosures since the great depression? Not real. All in your head.
Highest number of job losses in 5 years? Pfft. You're imagining things!
Highest inflation? Give it a rest. Your grocery bill didn't go up. That gallon of milk actually cost you $1.99!
What $7.7 Trillion deficit are you talking about buddy? You need to see somebody. Your imagining things.

This man did major damage and he is not a Democrat although I do hold Frank and Dodd just as responsible!

[jgaffney]

Ah, yes. This was predictable. Now that Congress has begun holding hearings on "What Just Happened", the spin is starting to come out:

Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated.
The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country's mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act.

He said that blame is misplaced, because those loans are issued by regulated institutions, while far more foreclosures were triggered by high-cost loans made by unregulated entities.

"They get to take things out on poor people," Frank said at a mortgage foreclosure symposium in Boston. "Let's be honest: The fact that some of the poor people are black doesn't hurt them either, from their standpoint. This is an effort, I believe, to appeal to a kind of anger in people."

So, when all else fails, play the race card. Frank also tries to divert any criticism of his party's concerted effort to block the regulatory efforts of the Republicans, which are clearly documented in the YouTube videos of the 2004 House hearings on Freddie and Fannie:

Frank also dismissed charges the Democrats failed on their own or blocked Republican efforts to rein in the mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The federal government recently took control of both entities.

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio called Frank's remarks "a lame, desperate attempt to divert Americans' attention away from the Democratic party's obstruction of reforms that would have reined in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and helped our nation avoid this economic crisis."

"Congressman Frank should retract his ridiculous statements and start taking responsibility for the role he and other top Democrats played in putting Main Street Americans in this mess," Boehner said.

Frank said Republicans controlled Congress for 12 years and passed no regulation, while Democrats passed a Bush administration Fannie and Freddie regulation package since gaining control of the House and Senate in January 1997.

"If I could have stopped a Republican bill during the Bush years, I would have started with the war in Iraq. Then I would have gone to the Patriot Act. Then I would have gone on to the hundreds of millions in tax cuts," said Frank, to applause from the audience.

It must be great to be a Congressman. You can say anything you want in Boston, and a majority of your constituents will believe you because they never bother to check it out themselves. However, this is the 21st Century, and you can't get away with that s**t anymore.

[jgaffney]

Minyanville.com is a techie website for traders and economists. They have some pretty interesting articles about the market and market trends. They have this explanation for why the bailout bill won't work:

One aspect of a debt crisis, as opposed to a liquidity crisis, is that a debt crisis reduces access to credit, and so we begin to see credit availability for even productive areas of the economy dry up; Salle Mae (SLM) cutting back on lending to students due to a combination of credit market turmoil and changes to federal law, for instance, American Express (AXP) cutting back business loans, commercial paper market becoming more fearful and even locking up, and on, and on, and on.

What must be remembered about what I have characterized as "the inevitable failure of the Bailout Bill" is what that failure means. It is not a "failure" in the absolute or idealogical sense; that ANY proposal or government intervention must be viewed as a failure. It is a failure in the sense that it will not return this broken economy to "normal" as so many are hoping.

After two full decades of credit expansion, having finally reached the point where debt is abhorrent, the new reality will be a more NORMALIZED credit market, not a return to the grossly abnormal market many of us have come to view as typical.

Think about it this way; it is not "normal" to be able to walk into virtually any retail store in the country and within 10 minutes be able to access $2,000 in credit by simply showing a drivers' license. It is not "normal" to buy a home with zero money down. This is not "normal" behavior. Adjusting to the new reality of normalcy will be a painful process.

On the one hand, Federal Reserve officials, Federal Government officials, many Wall Street executives and salespeople, believe it is "necessary for our economic security" to return to that place of easy credit. I disagree with that. I believe the American people disagree with that. And so the disagreement over the Bailout Bill, though pegged in the Mainstream Media as a war between battling economic classes, might really be a much deeper and more significant faceoff; a battle for the economic soul of this country.

So, there was some truth to it when McCain and others were saying that the fundamentals of the economy were sound. They were basing that on a return to the situation where credit was easy and the economy was humming along. This author argues that, no, that's not the desired goal, that there will be a shakeout to the economy - as long as Congress doesn't muck things up - and we will return to the time where a buyer had to have 20% down and 4 times the monthly payment in verifiable income before he could buy a house. That, of course, runs counter to the liberal idea that everyone should be able to buy a house, regardless of the risks involved, and it is the government's duty to make sure that happens.

We're in big trouble.