Uh-oh...

[j2k4]

...the "Stimulus Package" is having an unintended (one would assume) effect-

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/futures-rise-citigroup-report/

-or maybe this is part of the plan?

[100%]

Religion seems to be rising though.

[j2k4]

Religion seems to be rising though.

How can that be?

[Skiz]

And now he's saying he's going to cut the deficit in half by the end of this term. :glag:

[100%]

Study India for details about religion vs economics.

"hope" does strange things, especially in casinos

Sorry i lack all knowledge of what the stimulus package actually does.

In third world countries, pushing in cash rarely helps,
Aiding small businesses which work, tends to help.

(Hearsay)

[j2k4]

"hope" does strange things, especially in casinos

Sorry i lack all knowledge of what the stimulus package actually does.

In third world countries, pushing in cash rarely helps,
Aiding small businesses which work, tends to help.

(Hearsay)

All true.

Truth.

[j2k4]

And now he's saying he's going to cut the deficit in half by the end of this term. :glag:

Couldn't he have saved himself some trouble, then, if he'd...oh, nevermind.

[Busyman]

...the "Stimulus Package" is having an unintended (one would assume) effect-

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/futures-rise-citigroup-report/

-or maybe this is part of the plan?

?

The Stimulus Package caused the recession?

W.....T.....F?

Wasn't there be a hole lotta fukcngi up before this?

[clocker]

The Stimulus Package caused the recession?

W.....T.....F?

Wasn't there be a hole lotta fukcngi up before this?
Silly person, you don't get it, do you?
Everything bad that happened during the Bush years was Clinton's fault.
Everything bad that's happening now is Obama's fault.

The past eight years must be remembered as a time of unicorns and rainbows because nothing bad can be attributed to Republicans/conservatives.

All we need are some tax cuts and everything will be fine.

[Busyman]

The Stimulus Package caused the recession?

W.....T.....F?

Wasn't there be a hole lotta fukcngi up before this?
Silly person, you don't get it, do you?
Everything bad that happened during the Bush years was Clinton's fault.
Everything bad that's happening now is Obama's fault.

The past eight years must be remembered as a time of unicorns and rainbows because nothing bad can be attributed to Republicans/conservatives.

All we need are some tax cuts and everything will be fine.


I love this classic line from some Republican....

"May I remind you that the Democrats have been in power for the last two years." :slap:

Btw, didn't Bush implement tax cuts? This lead to......

[j2k4]

...the "Stimulus Package" is having an unintended (one would assume) effect-

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/futures-rise-citigroup-report/

-or maybe this is part of the plan?

?

The Stimulus Package caused the recession?

W.....T.....F?

Wasn't there be a hole lotta fukcngi up before this?

Did you read the story.

[Busyman]

?

The Stimulus Package caused the recession?

W.....T.....F?

Wasn't there be a hole lotta fukcngi up before this?

Did you read the story.


Most of it. Yes.

[j2k4]

Did you read the story.


Most of it. Yes.

Then you believe the stock market's general downward trend and Obama's banging on about his "package" are two totally unrelated matters.

Fancy that.

[clocker]

While you apparently believe that the stock market is tethered to reality in any quantifiable way.
Fancy that.

[j2k4]

While you apparently believe that the stock market is tethered to reality in any quantifiable way.
Fancy that.

Here's a clue:

On the way up, it is not.

On the way down, though, it certainly is.

[clocker]

Then falling from a hallucinatory high back to a more reality based level should be a good thing, right?

[j2k4]

Then falling from a hallucinatory high back to a more reality based level should be a good thing, right?

Ummm, yeah, sure.

At what level do you believe reality will have fully re-asserted itself...after all, it's as low as it's been since Clinton, so Bush no longer figures in.

[clocker]

Reality + Wall St.= does not compute.

[Busyman]

Most of it. Yes.

Then you believe the stock market's general downward trend and Obama's banging on about his "package" are two totally unrelated matters.

Fancy that.

Somewhat, yes.

Like I remember when Bush banged on about having that huge bailout on TV and when it didn't happen immediately, we had a crash like no other in a long time.

Absent the plea for the bailout on national television, no stock tank.

It was one of the most irresponsible things I've ever seen by Bush.

Now with this, Wall Street wants more free money bailouts with little or no oversight....like the first one. Since it doesn't look like it's going to happen in that manner, stock went down.

Two tifferent tings.

One was give us what we want NOW and how we want it or we pull our money. The other is you are NOT giving us what we want how we want it so we are pulling our money.

[Busyman]

While you apparently believe that the stock market is tethered to reality in any quantifiable way.
Fancy that.

Here's a clue:

On the way up, it is not.

On the way down, though, it certainly is.

I totally disagree.


It's tethered to reality in more ways than you know, both ways.

It could be the reality of some big investor buying a lot of one stock which in turn makes other buy like "there must be something good" and in turn makes the stock rise.

A new product or idea makes stock rise. Promising cancer drug - stock rise. Not approved by FDA - stock fall.

I used to take surplus time off work (no pay) just to trade stocks until my job took surplus time away. They said it made it look like less technicians were needed.:ermm: It was me and one other coworker (his wife died of cancer and he had a lot of life insurance money) who lived on 16th St NW DC (prestigious address).

Anyway, stock are tethered to some reality. It's just that you may not see it if not paying attention to specific markets and companies.

[clocker]

one other coworker (his wife died of cancer and he had a lot of life insurance money) who lived on 16th St NW DC (prestigious address).


Back in the early seventies I lived at 16th and U St., NW.
I can assure you, it wasn't "prestigious" back then.

[Busyman]

one other coworker (his wife died of cancer and he had a lot of life insurance money) who lived on 16th St NW DC (prestigious address).


Back in the early seventies I lived at 16th and U St., NW.
I can assure you, it wasn't "prestigious" back then.

I dunno anything about back in the seventies, since I was a youngster. However, 16th and U St is still not "prestigious". Hell, that's two blocks away from the Reeves Center.

Try farther up northwest DC (probably past Military Rd) where there are no local businesses about.

That is prestigious. Hell it has Tudor style mansions.

[Rat Faced]

OK, I dont claim to know the stock market however I do know that the finance and energy sectors collapsed and that had a knock on effect on everything else.

Forgive me if I'm wrong but..

The Credit Crunch has been ongoing for over a year, so no one can blame Obama for that.

The Banks have to build up their balance books, so aren't lending.. which is their fault for stupid loans in the first place.. Obama wasn't in the picture when this happened..

The US Governemnt dont set the price of Oil/Gas, so hows he get the blame for this too?

I'm confused..

I hates Government, but I can't blame people that have just came into power for the excesses of Private Companies for over a decade.

I CAN put some of the blame on our poxy leader, as he was in power whilst all the crap was going on (although at the Treasury, not as PM) and it should have been stopped AT THAT TIME. Indeed, it was his desire to follow the American model that fuelled the British problems to their present scope.

Does this mean I blame Bush? Yes, in part, however I'd go back further.. I'm pretty sure that the deregulation happened before Bush (I may be wrong), however his administration has to take some of the blame for not changing the system. And the shit hit the fan on his watch.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

The Banks have to build up their balance books, so aren't lending.. which is their fault for stupid loans in the first place.. Obama wasn't in the picture when this happened.

Actually, obongo can take some blame on this. He in his "counseling" position with Acorn "guided" them into forcing banks to give loans to people who had no rights to these loans under the Community Reinvestment Act. People who had no qualifications, no source of income other than welfare or whatnot had to be given loans in order to get more "diversity" into homeownership.

Then when these public leeches default, Acorn swoops in to be the hero by breaking into these houses and letting the defaulters squat in order to "guide" these people in how to commit "civil obedience".

[clocker]

You really are delusional.
Obama's connection to ACORN consisted of representing them in a legal matter 12 years ago.
If you have proof of deeper more sinister ties, bring 'em on.

Furthermore, if every single one of the poor people you refer to (who, by the way, actually have a better repayment history than the mortgage industry average) DID default on their loans, it would have barely made a blip in our economy.

It was the financial industry's repackaging of mortgages/loans into ever more exotic instruments- all predicated on faulty data and projections- that lead to this mess.

I can see your point though...much easier to blame some poor folks- who are after all, known to be lazy and shiftless- than the financial fatcats who were happy to make the initial offers and rake in windfall profits.
Boy, they sure got blindsided, didn't they?
No way to see this coming when you have access to all the data, make the rules and manage the playing field.

Poor guys.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

You really are delusional.
Obama's connection to ACORN consisted of representing them in a legal matter 12 years ago.
If you have proof of deeper more sinister ties, bring 'em on.

Obama: "I’ve been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career…" (Steven Malanga, "Organizer In Chief," [New York] City Journal, Summer 2008)

"In 1992, Acorn Hired Mr. Obama To Run A Voter Registration Effort. He Later Became A Trainer For The Group, As Well As Its Lawyer In Election Law Cases." (John Fund, Op-Ed, "Obama's Liberal Shock Troops," The Wall Street Journal, 7/12/08)

I guess their little voter fraud issues were no connection also.

[clocker]

Wow, he really is the Antichrist after all.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

Wow, he really is the Antichrist after all.

Never made that claim.

[devilsadvocate]

While you apparently believe that the stock market is tethered to reality in any quantifiable way.
Fancy that.

Well Drudge tried his best. He had to change his headlines with each gust of wind :whistling

[devilsadvocate]

Wow, he really is the Antichrist after all.
So you're not on the the Hilter side of the fight then?

I was worried that the Obama dullness would ruin the comedy industry, fortunately he has introduced us to a whole new batch of cuckoos being driven over the edge.

[devilsadvocate]

Obama: "I’ve been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career…" (Steven Malanga, "Organizer In Chief," [New York] City Journal, Summer 2008)

"In 1992, Acorn Hired Mr. Obama To Run A Voter Registration Effort. He Later Became A Trainer For The Group, As Well As Its Lawyer In Election Law Cases." (John Fund, Op-Ed, "Obama's Liberal Shock Troops," The Wall Street Journal, 7/12/08)

I guess their little voter fraud issues were no connection also.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/acorn_accusations.html


Obama: Burying ACORNs


The ad says that "Obama's ties to ACORN run long and deep" – that he "taught classes" for the group, paid a "front" $800,000 for get-out-the-vote efforts, and was endorsed by ACORN for president. That last one's true – ACORN's political action committee did offer an Obama endorsement. It's also true that Obama has worked with the group in the past. In 1995, Obama helped represent (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/02/20/obama_got_start_in_civil_rights_practice/) ACORN in a successful lawsuit to require the state of Illinois to offer "motor voter" registration at DMV offices. Obama has said (http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/debates/transcripts/third-presidential-debate.html) that this is his only association with ACORN, but that's not the case – he has had other, though less direct, interactions with the organization.


When Obama was on the board of directors of the Woods Fund (http://www.woodsfund.org/about/mission), the foundation gave grants of $75,000 in 2001 (http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org//990pf_pdf_archive/363/363917968/363917968_200112_990PF.pdf) and $70,000 in 2002 (http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org//990pf_pdf_archive/363/363917968/363917968_200212_990PF.pdf) to ACORN's Chicago office. The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee cite (http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-04-2008/0004897846&EDATE=) an additional grant of $45,000 in 2000. The Woods Fund has not responded to our calls about their 2000 grants.

The Obama campaign also paid (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/09/acorn.fraud.claims/index.html) Citizens Services Inc., a group affiliated with ACORN, more than $800,000 for get-out-the-vote (not voter registration) efforts during the primary election. The nature of CSI's services was initially misrepresented (http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_584284.html) on the Obama campaign's disclosures to the Federal Election Commission, which the campaign describes as an oversight. The Obama campaign says it has not been involved with ACORN during the general election.


In addition, after law school, Obama may have had contact with ACORN when he directed (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/service/) a Chicago registration drive for Project Vote in 1992. According to Sanford Newman, who was the program’s national director at the time, ACORN may have been one of dozens of organizations that participated in registration drives that year with Project Vote personnel like Obama. But Project Vote didn’t begin contracting exclusively with ACORN until after Obama worked for the group in 1992. “Working for Project Vote at the time was by no means working for ACORN," Newman told us. ACORN had no influence on Project Vote policy and no representation on its board.

As for "teaching classes" for the group, the McCain campaign cites a March 2008 Newsday article, which says that ACORN organizer Madeleine Talbot "initially considered Obama a competitor" when both were working to get asbestos insulation removed from a Chicago housing project, but that "she became so impressed with his work that she invited him to help train her staff." Newsday does not say whether Obama accepted the invitation. An article (http://www.socialpolicy.org/index.php?id=838) by Chicago alderman Toni Foulkes says that "we [ACORN] have invited Obama to our leadership training sessions to run the session on power every year" between 1992 and 2004, when the article was written. The Obama campaign says that Obama participated in two, one-hour trainings in a volunteer capacity. Foulkes could not be reached for comment.

Neither ACORN's Chicago office nor CSI has been accused of voter registration irregularities.
–by Jess Henig, with Ronald Lampard

Update, Oct. 21: We originally said that Project Vote works closely with ACORN, implying that Obama would have had contact with the group when he directed a voter registration drive for Project Vote in 1992. We have since learned that Project Vote and ACORN may or may not have worked together in Chicago that year. The group didn’t contract with ACORN exclusively back then. We have corrected the story to reflect this.

[Busyman]

The Banks have to build up their balance books, so aren't lending.. which is their fault for stupid loans in the first place.. Obama wasn't in the picture when this happened.

Actually, obongo can take some blame on this. He in his "counseling" position with Acorn "guided" them into forcing banks to give loans to people who had no rights to these loans under the Community Reinvestment Act. People who had no qualifications, no source of income other than welfare or whatnot had to be given loans in order to get more "diversity" into homeownership.

Then when these public leeches default, Acorn swoops in to be the hero by breaking into these houses and letting the defaulters squat in order to "guide" these people in how to commit "civil obedience".

Wow you haven't a clue besides whatever shit you're shoveled by the one side you only care to listen to.

[Busyman]

You really are delusional.
Obama's connection to ACORN consisted of representing them in a legal matter 12 years ago.
If you have proof of deeper more sinister ties, bring 'em on.

Obama: "I’ve been fighting alongside Acorn on issues you care about my entire career…" (Steven Malanga, "Organizer In Chief," [New York] City Journal, Summer 2008)

"In 1992, Acorn Hired Mr. Obama To Run A Voter Registration Effort. He Later Became A Trainer For The Group, As Well As Its Lawyer In Election Law Cases." (John Fund, Op-Ed, "Obama's Liberal Shock Troops," The Wall Street Journal, 7/12/08)

I guess their little voter fraud issues were no connection also.

What happened to the housing shit you were just shoveling?

Are you rebooting now?

[Busyman]

You really are delusional.
Obama's connection to ACORN consisted of representing them in a legal matter 12 years ago.
If you have proof of deeper more sinister ties, bring 'em on.

Furthermore, if every single one of the poor people you refer to (who, by the way, actually have a better repayment history than the mortgage industry average) DID default on their loans, it would have barely made a blip in our economy.

It was the financial industry's repackaging of mortgages/loans into ever more exotic instruments- all predicated on faulty data and projections- that lead to this mess.

I can see your point though...much easier to blame some poor folks- who are after all, known to be lazy and shiftless- than the financial fatcats who were happy to make the initial offers and rake in windfall profits.
Boy, they sure got blindsided, didn't they?
No way to see this coming when you have access to all the data, make the rules and manage the playing field.

Poor guys.

What's funny is that it's not just the poor that these financial fatcats were shoveling this shit to.

When I was trying to refinance, I did have the sense to know that I didn't want an interest only-loan although initially, it looked great. However, it didn't stop me from getting a constant barrage of phone calls to refi and in two cases, even after telling them they could come to the house to discuss a refi (as long as there was no interest -only talk), after getting in they always moved toward their interest-only packages where, in both cases, I caught the reps in lies.

I do understand how people were duped because they were lied to. Nowadays you need a damned lawyer to close on a house and loan.

However, I also know folks, mostly middle-class like myself, that bought homes running $600,000 to $800,000 they didn't belong in.

One fella depended on overtime to make mortgage payments trying to have his showcase home. Overtime dries up, you dry up.

These are the people that make me sick and I think they knew what they were doing trying to be all uppity.

It ain't all black and white like HeavyracistALot makes it seem.

Hell I'm trying "move up" in a bigger and better house now because I can get an acre for dirt cheap. However, the sticker is that I'd most likely have to sell my current home and even though I didn't overpay (much) for it like most people....I doubt I'd get what I paid for it.

[Busyman]

Wow, he really is the Antichrist after all.
So you're not on the the Hilter side of the fight then?

I was worried that the Obama dullness would ruin the comedy industry, fortunately he has introduced us to a whole new batch of cuckoos being driven over the edge.

He does nothing for the comedy industry. The only decent imitation was done by Jamie Fox but other than that, he has no particular funny way of speaking or quirky mannerisms.

The Daily Show could just die.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

[QUOTE]What happened to the housing shit you were just shoveling

Do you know how to google? Do you know what the Community Reinvestment Act is?

Don't worry about it, you will just do what your people are good at and say facts are racist.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

He does nothing for the comedy industry.

Of course he doesn't. Nonblack comedians with be labeled racist if they made fun of you all's holy one.

[clocker]

[QUOTE=Busyman;3148975]

Do you know how to google? Do you know what the Community Reinvestment Act is?


I know how to google and am somewhat familiar with the CRA...so, what's your point?
Still insisting that it is the prime reason for the economic meltdown?

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

[QUOTE=HeavyMetalParkingLot;3149406]
I know how to google and am somewhat familiar with the CRA...so, what's your point?
Still insisting that it is the prime reason for the economic meltdown?

No, not saying it is. But it plays a big role. If the banks didn't have to make all these loans to uncreditworthy people they could have put this money to better use. If you had the option of loaning your money to someone who has shown through past performance that they take care of their debts or someone for the sake of "diversity" who would you choose?

[devilsadvocate]

He does nothing for the comedy industry. The only decent imitation was done by Jamie Fox but other than that, he has know particular funny way of speaking or quirky mannerisms.

The Daily Show could just die.

. . .
g4C1D_AVHTI

[clocker]

[QUOTE=clocker;3149436]

No, not saying it is. But it plays a big role. If the banks didn't have to make all these loans to uncreditworthy people they could have put this money to better use. If you had the option of loaning your money to someone who has shown through past performance that they take care of their debts or someone for the sake of "diversity" who would you choose?
No, it did NOT "play a big role".
Banks did NOT have to make loans to uncreditworthy people, they wanted to.
The more loans they made the bigger the collected fees...and what's the downside?
None, because they could package all these loans and sell them as instruments which Wall St. would call AAA, because Wall St. made a shitton of cash selling em.
So the banks were happy, Wall St. was happy, everybody was happy until the new loans started to dry up...because all the qualified borrowers already had loans.
What to do?
Offer loans to anyone who asked or anyone you could rope in...no risk since Wall St. was repackaging them and calling them riskless, so why not.

This mess was not the fault of poor people being foisted off onto poor, helpless banks.
Not a single part of the CRA forces a bank to make a loan to an unqualified person.
Banks/Wall St. brought this on themselves, primarily due to unbridled greed, not government intervention.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

I am sorry but you are wrong. Before the act was passed, banks used a practice known as "redlining". This is when instead of looking at an individual, they would look at the location where they lived. They would flat out not make a loan for any person living in areas they felt was too high risk.

The problem with that was these areas almost always were places that had a majority of minority residents.

This opened the door for groups such as Acorn to step in and claim racism.

This caused banks to have to give lower credit standards and high risk loans.

How can you say this didn't lead to the mortgage crisis which lead into the current economic problems?

[clocker]

The act did make redlining illegal because that practice eliminated a borrower solely on the basis of their location with no regard to their credit history.
Under redlining, Bill Gates would have been turned down for a loan if his address fell into a "bad" district.

What the act didn't do was force banks to ignore actual credit history/credit worthiness, they just couldn't use location as the primary determining factor.

Blaming the CRA for current problems also completely ignores the role that banks/Wall St. played after a risky loan was made.
Traditionally, loans were packaged for resale as securities (for consumption by investors) based on risk level...all the "good" loans were packaged together and since they had less risk, they returned less profit. "Bad" loans, which carried higher risk, earned more money.
The salient point is that the investor knew beforehand what he was buying and could balance the potential downside against the desire for profit.

Bundling all loans together- multiple times- meant that by the time the final security was offered for sale, no one knew what the package actually contained.
What was the percentage of safe to unsafe loans?
Who cared...there was lots of money to be made, and these "securities" were being rated AAA (most secure) by brokers eager for commissions.
Compounding the problem was the invention of the "credit default swap", in essence, an insurance policy to safeguard the purchase of the security.
In reality, another way for investment brokers to earn even more commissions.

All of this financial hocus-pocus was predicated on one simple- and demonstrably false- premise...housing prices would never fall, only continue to rise.

As long as housing prices rose, who cared if a borrower defaulted?
You just foreclose and then resell the property, making money on both sides of the deal (you've already made money on whatever the initial borrower paid before defaulting and now you get to resell the house at an even higher price).

Furthermore, both banks and investors were having so much fun (fun=making buttloads of cash, obviously) that they decided to expand the party by luring previously "good" borrowers into buying above their capability to repay...you could buy that McMansion that used to be out of reach because hey!, housing prices only go UP, so you can resell in a few years and make a tidy profit.
So everybody, from the homebuyer to the Wall St. investment buyer gets to make some money and the whole thing is risk free!.

Looking at this whole thing objectively it's apparent that it's really a house of cards and destined to fail.
At any given time there are only so many qualified buyers and housing prices only rise when it's a seller's market.
Unfortunately, there is one more component to this fiasco...what were the security buyers doing with all the profit they were making on all these bundled loans?
Reinvesting in real estate of course.

So, you have an ever shrinking pool of qualified buyers AND a growing pool of property to sell to them.
What a shock, real estate prices start to fall...who could have figured?

And another bubble bursts.

Now the banks are fucked...they own all these loans but they've mashed them up so extensively that no one can seperate the good from the bad.
Plus, they've insured all these securities, and now they're starting to fail, so they get billed twice- once for holding a bad loan and again by the buyer of the package they bundled it into.

So, you still think ACORN is the villain here?

[j2k4]

So, you still think ACORN is the villain here?

Yes, ACORN is one of the villains.

You think otherwise, apparently, and prefer not only to deflect some of the blame from ACORN, but ALL of it.

ACORN, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae...all of them, Democrat-inspired and controlled GSEs which operate hand-in-glove with Democrat leadership to favor and advance Democrat causes and constituencies.

Fact.

Truth.

Indisputably, too.

[clocker]

Oh, boo-hoo.

Democratic leadership is pursuing Democratic causes and constituencies...and the Republicans/conservatives are doing what?
Lobbying for the good of all mankind?

BTW, at some point it will become evident to you that posting "fact", "truth", and "indisputably" along with nonsense only proves you can spell, not that what you say is based in reality.
My favorite example of this is:

Take away his teleprompter and he's pretty fucking stupid, truth
This from a man who supported Bush through two disastrous terms and routinely spouts Fox News talking points as if they were gospel.

Fact.
Truth.
Indisputably, too.

[j2k4]

Oh, boo-hoo.

Democratic leadership is pursuing Democratic causes and constituencies...

And doing it with taxpayer money suits you fine?


and the Republicans/conservatives are doing what?

Perhaps they should get some taxpayer cash going into conservative versions of NPR, PBS, the ACLU, ACORN...Hell, why stop there - the "fairness doctrine" should work both ways, right?

So we want half the airtime on CBS, NBC, and ABC, and half the print media across the country.

In return (and, just to be "fair"), you can allot yourselves some time on radio.

[clocker]

Given that the Republicans are a political party- check it out, it's true, fact!- they are also quite adept at spending taxpayer money.
On Republican agenda type things.
In fact, we're just coming out of an eight year period where they did just that.

You know, on such popular and productive things like abstinence only sex education, bridges in Alaska and a war in Iraq.
Google 'em.

Poor conservatives...all the media is lined up against them.
I guess it makes sense to blame something as amorphous as "the media" for your lack of popularity rather than accept that you are spouting policies and ideals that the majority of America finds stale and repugnant.
So go ahead, keep up the good work.
Blame the media- or anyone else you can think of- rather than try to adapt to the times.
You'll lose even more seats in 2010/2012 and maybe wither away finally.

"Tax cuts, forever!"
YAY!

[j2k4]

you are spouting policies and ideals that the majority of America finds stale and repugnant.

Wrong on that count; besides which, I am a conservative...not a Republican.

Therein lies your problem.

Oh, and then there's this, which I'm sure you'd never mention:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/23/ST2008062300818.html

[clocker]

No, I would posit that being conservative is your problem and has nothing to do with me.

So now you're posting items from the Washington Post.
Aren't they the poster child for the "liberal media" you're so rabid about?
Or are they OK when they print something you like?

And you're right, I'd never mention that article.
Mainly because I see no relevance.
But, if you want to throw around weird and unrelated information, you can respond to this:conservative/religious states love porn. (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html)

So the same folks who profess to be religious, pray once a day and uphold conservative values are also the most avid consumers of porn.
Gee, is there a discrepancy there?

[devilsadvocate]

So the same folks who profess to be religious, pray once a day and uphold conservative values are also the most avid consumers of porn.
Gee, is there a discrepancy there?

Well in all fairness the most radical liberal person in history, the feminist Nancy Pelosi, married her high school sweetheart, stayed married without having an affair or use of a manwhore and has never had an abortion.:whistling

I'm sure that's reasonably accurate.

[Busyman]

[QUOTE=Busyman;3148975]

Do you know how to google? Do you know what the Community Reinvestment Act is?

Don't worry about it, you will just do what your people are good at and say facts are racist.


Huh....what do you mean....you people?

[Busyman]

He does nothing for the comedy industry.

Of course he doesn't. Nonblack comedians with be labeled racist if they made fun of you all's holy one.

....and "you all's holy one"?

I knew you were the same racist idiot that posted awhile back.

[Busyman]

I am sorry but you are wrong. Before the act was passed, banks used a practice known as "redlining". This is when instead of looking at an individual, they would look at the location where they lived. They would flat out not make a loan for any person living in areas they felt was too high risk.

The problem with that was these areas almost always were places that had a majority of minority residents.

This opened the door for groups such as Acorn to step in and claim racism.

This caused banks to have to give lower credit standards and high risk loans.

How can you say this didn't lead to the mortgage crisis which lead into the current economic problems?


Looking at an area where someone lives is a dumb way to ascertain risk. That's why.

[clocker]

Looking at an area where someone lives is a dumb way to ascertain risk. That's why.
Actually, no it isn't- even ACORN never said this.
Using location as the ONLY determining factor was the problem.

Neither ACORN nor FannieMae/FreddieMac favored wholesale lending to obvious high risk borrowers without proper safeguards...they simply wanted to erase the clearly racist practice of redlining.
In fact, by far the most avid practitioners of subprime lending were brokers/banks that weren't even covered by the CRA and it was their stupidity/greed that has lead us to this point.

Naturally, both j2 and HeavyMetal would prefer to ignore these facts and instead place the blame on the poor, abetted by the apparently god-like powers of Obama who somehow manhandled the entire entire banking industry into submitting to his will.

Not bad for a guy who j2 is convinced is clearly "stupid".

[j2k4]

No, I would posit that being conservative is your problem and has nothing to do with me.

So now you're posting items from the Washington Post.
Aren't they the poster child for the "liberal media" you're so rabid about?
Or are they OK when they print something you like?

And you're right, I'd never mention that article.
Mainly because I see no relevance.
But, if you want to throw around weird and unrelated information, you can respond to this:conservative/religious states love porn. (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16680-porn-in-the-usa-conservatives-are-biggest-consumers.html)

So the same folks who profess to be religious, pray once a day and uphold conservative values are also the most avid consumers of porn.
Gee, is there a discrepancy there?

It most certainly is relevant; no, I don't mind the Washington Post when it deviates from it's norm; and find me a credible study that says libs consume discernably less porn than conservatives and you will have found something relevant.

Humans have their peccadilloes, whichever side of the ideological fence they're on.

[j2k4]

Neither ACORN nor FannieMae/FreddieMac favored wholesale lending to obvious high risk borrowers without proper safeguards...they simply wanted to erase the clearly racist practice of redlining.
In fact, by far the most avid practitioners of subprime lending were brokers/banks that weren't even covered by the CRA and it was their stupidity/greed that has lead us to this point.


Really.

Read this-

The People Responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

By Bill Mann, Seth Jayson, Tim Hanson, Nate Weisshaar and Keith Beverly
September 10, 2008


It was a wise man who noted that the only corporate structure more insidious than a government-sponsored monopoly is a government-sponsored and investor-owned monopoly. In the end, as Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) have now so painfully proved, trying to serve the master of public policy while generating returns for investors will lead to disaster.

Fannie and Freddie collapsed because they were part and parcel of the widespread gross financial misconduct that has taken place in the United States over the past decade. It's easy to miss this fact, but the reality is that too many people were making too much money pumping up the housing market. In 2005, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the erstwhile regulator of the two, attempted to limit their use of off-balance sheet entities to groom earnings. In the end, it didn't, because, as one reform-minded politician admitted, Congress was afraid of undermining the housing boom.

Some are more culpable than others-
As part of the conservatorship, the Department of the Treasury has demanded that Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie, respectively, step down. Certainly, at the time of a corporate collapse, those in charge have to bear some responsibility. But Mudd and Syron came into their roles when the great pillaging was well in process.

At some point not too long from now, the nation's attention is going to turn from the immediate players to those who benefitted the most, shouted down the skeptics, and/or stood by as Fannie and Freddie deviated from their core business in the name of growth and/or mission. These people are keeping a low profile right now, until the taxpaying public starts paying attention to something else. As taxpayers, we don't particularly enjoy our role in this relationship, and we're hopeful over the longer term that the following folks cease to enjoy theirs.

Franklin Raines
Fannie Mae was always a political beast, but it reached its elbow-swinging heights during the time when former Clinton administration budget director Franklin Raines sat in the CEO chair. Under Raines' leadership, Fannie overstated earnings by a stunning $10.6 billion, all the while paying Raines and his senior management team massive bonuses.

It was under Raines' management that Fannie morphed from being a company in a sleepy business -- issuing debt to buy mortgages from lenders -- into a far more risky and exciting one: buying up mortgages and holding them, thus capturing the spread between its borrowing costs (which were lower than anyone's other than the federal government's) and the interest rate received. It was a great business, except that it had nothing to do with Fannie's charter. According to a May 2006 report from OFHEO, Raines became obsessed with keeping earnings per share as high as possible and motivated management to achieve that goal by setting up a bonus system that rewarded increasing earnings per share (EPS).

The thing is: Any company can hit an EPS number if it doesn't worry about little things like accounting rules, debt levels, and risk factors. All told, Raines pulled in some $90 million between 1998 and 2003, the majority from bonuses. And when OFHEO began to ask uncomfortable questions, Raines actively lobbied Congress to cut its funding. In April, Raines agreed to disburse $24 million for his role in the accounting "errors."

Timothy Howard
Former Fannie Mae CFO Timothy Howard is another major player who is probably cowering in a corner somewhere. For all of the expletives and derogatory names thrown at former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, he at least stayed around to take his punishment. Inmate No. 14343-179 pleaded guilty to fraud and is serving a six-year prison term. Howard, on the other hand, saw the writing on the wall -- largely because he was the author -- and got out of Dodge.

As Fannie's CFO from 1990 to 2005, Howard signed off on the financials that overstated the company's earnings by $10.6 billion from 1998 to 2004. His reward? A cool $14 million in salary and $16.8 million in bonuses during the period -- bonuses based on the earnings plan that Raines set up.

While Howard was not the only person at Fannie guilty of constructing fraudulent financial statements quarter after quarter, as CFO he is most responsible for the integrity of said statements. Whether he left early enough to avoid culpability remains to be seen. However, we've heard through the low-security-prison grapevine that Fastow is lonely these days and wouldn't mind talking shop with a fellow former CFO.

Barney Frank
The House Financial Services Committee chairman and Democratic congressman from Massachusetts has long been a proponent of both Fannie and Freddie, assuring the public that their mission to encourage home ownership outweighed the distortive risks they brought to the market, and that the federal government was not, in fact, on the hook for their liabilities. In fact, it seems clear now that Frank had no idea of just how poor a grasp Fannie and Freddie had on their lines of business. As recently as Aug. 25 he told Money magazine, "Fannie and Freddie are better off than the market thinks. ... Part of the problem is rumormongering by short-sellers."

What's more, though Frank will blame past political opponents for failing to further regulate the mortgage market by banning products such as subprime loans, the fact of the matter is that the very presence of Fannie and Freddie incentivized brokers to overstate the creditworthiness of borrowers and then pass on that risk to the federal government, all while being cheered for helping more people "realize the American Dream." While we can all agree (I hope) that mortgage markets only function when -- as Frank told Money, banks "do not lend money to people who can't pay it back" -- Frank's ideology in this case blinded him for decades to the realities of the marketplace and the operations at these companies, leading him to stonewall realistic reform efforts that might have helped us avoid the current calamity.

Angelo Mozilo
There's good reason for Angelo Mozilo to hide under a desk these days. Few, if any, extracted more personal profit from the credit bubble than the CEO and founder of Countrywide Financial. Mozilo's talking points always borrowed heavily from the propaganda of our government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Countrywide liked to pretend that it was performing some kind of public service -- "breaking down barriers" -- by making homes more "affordable" to the average (or subaverage) wage earner. Unfortunately, as speculation drove home prices to ridiculous levels across the U.S., "affordability" came to be the code word for gimmicky, high-interest subprime loans lavished on the riskiest of borrowers in order to get them into a mortgage that would soon be bundled and shipped off to the suckers on Wall Street.

Unfortunately for borrowers and investors in Countrywide's mortgage paper, the American Dream of home ownership quickly morphed into a nightmare. Default rates surged, followed by the inevitable foreclosures, and mortgage paper backed by Countrywide loans became as valuable as post-bubble, dot-com stock options. Countrywide was only spared the ignominy of bankruptcy when its longtime sugar daddy, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), stepped in to take it out.

As captain of this sinking ship, CEO and founder Mozilo was, for a time, very vocal in defending his company's legacy. But like so many others in America's great housing bubble, talk was one thing, and actions were another. As the housing bubble began peaking in 2003 and 2004, through the period when Countrywide's risky lending fell apart, Mozilo engaged in one of history's greatest stock dumps, selling more than $480 million worth of shares, according to the tally of insider filings on secform4.com. This graph tells the tale.

Alan Greenspan
If not the boldest of the group, then at least the most public, Greenspan, the man many are now blaming for the housing bubble (there were a brave few that piped up years ago), has refused to go quietly into his well-padded retirement. The man charged with providing the country with a financial voice of reason fell far short, so much so that it might be comical if it weren't so tragic.

Greenspan's denial of the possibility of a housing bubble has been widely derided in the past year, but a single statement could be excused as human error. However, a quick scan shows that this wasn't a single event. He also promoted the adoption and expansion of adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) products in early 2004, when short-term rates were at or near historic lows. That same year he claimed, "securitization by Fannie and Freddie allows mortgage originators to separate themselves from almost all aspects of risk associated with mortgage lending." And separate themselves they did, ceasing to perform any kind of due diligence as to the ability of borrowers to pay for the homes they were buying.

Now retired from his role as the nation's monetary conscience, Greenspan continues to espouse his, er, theories on the financial crisis through editorials in which he denies any culpability for the events of the past three years. He is also applying his experience and insight as an advisor for Paulson & Company, a hedge fund which cashed in on billions of dollars by calling the collapse of the subprime mortgage market that Greenspan helped create.

An ignominious list
To be sure, there were many more complicit in this mess, including consumers who bought more house than they could afford. And though we have to move forward now, let's hope no one forgets what's happened here.

[HeavyMetalParkingLot]

....and "you all's holy one"?

I knew you were the same racist idiot that posted awhile back.

Quite sure it was louis farrakhan who labelled him as "the messiah".

"you racist fuck"

"you racist idiot"

Typical of what I stated before...

[clocker]

Neither ACORN nor FannieMae/FreddieMac favored wholesale lending to obvious high risk borrowers without proper safeguards...they simply wanted to erase the clearly racist practice of redlining.
In fact, by far the most avid practitioners of subprime lending were brokers/banks that weren't even covered by the CRA and it was their stupidity/greed that has lead us to this point.


Really.

Read this-

The People Responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

By Bill Mann, Seth Jayson, Tim Hanson, Nate Weisshaar and Keith Beverly
September 10, 2008

An ignominious list
To be sure, there were many more complicit in this mess, including consumers who bought more house than they could afford. And though we have to move forward now, let's hope no one forgets what's happened here.
And?

Your previous tack has been that forcing GSEs to loan to poor/unqualified borrowers lead to the problem.
Nowhere in the article does it mention that at all.

Financial hocus-pocus executed on the executive level to inflate bonuses and pay is not the fault of the borrowers, is it?

Furthermore, I see no mention of either ACORN or Obama-both previously cited by yourself- as players in this mess.

Finally, you stated before that the fall of Freddie/Fanny was graphic proof of Democratically controlled government entity pandering to a Democratic constituency in furtherance of a Democratic agenda when this article makes it rather clear that personal greed was the motivating factor, not political agendas.

Unless you'd like to assert that greed is a particularly Democratic- or even political- trait, this article is completely irrelevant.

[devilsadvocate]

find me a credible study that says libs consume discernably less porn than conservatives and you will have found something relevant.

Humans have their peccadilloes, whichever side of the ideological fence they're on.

I think the relevance is that conservatives, at least politically, want to ban porn, liberals do not

[j2k4]

Really.

Read this-

The People Responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

By Bill Mann, Seth Jayson, Tim Hanson, Nate Weisshaar and Keith Beverly
September 10, 2008

An ignominious list
To be sure, there were many more complicit in this mess, including consumers who bought more house than they could afford. And though we have to move forward now, let's hope no one forgets what's happened here.

And?

Your previous tack has been that forcing GSEs to loan to poor/unqualified borrowers lead to the problem.
Nowhere in the article does it mention that at all.

My "tack" is what's contained in the article.

GSEs, to my mind, are not a solution to anything, but you seem to favor them because you prefer non-prosecutable government incompetence and corruption to the prosecutable private version.


Financial hocus-pocus executed on the executive level to inflate bonuses and pay is not the fault of the borrowers, is it?

I abhor "financial hocus-pocus" and would prosecute it wherever I find it.

In this case, the hocus-pocus comes courtesy of the democrat functionaries of a quasi-government entity, who were found to be guilty of the hocus-pocus, but were nonetheless excused by democrats and are now revered by those democrats as heroes for their efforts.


Furthermore, I see no mention of either ACORN or Obama-both previously cited by yourself- as players in this mess.

That is simply because neither of them figured in the article, which was about Fannie and Freddie.

I'm sure I can find lots about B.O. and ACORN, but you'd probably fail to deal with them in any substantive way as well.


Finally, you stated before that the fall of Freddie/Fanny was graphic proof of Democratically controlled government entity pandering to a Democratic constituency in furtherance of a Democratic agenda when this article makes it rather clear that personal greed was the motivating factor, not political agendas.

Yes, quite correct; the personal greed of democrats in service of their ideology.

I think you've finally got it.


Unless you'd like to assert that greed is a particularly Democratic- or even political- trait, this article is completely irrelevant.

Greed is practiced by individuals in both political parties, but try to catch a liberal in here taking note of democrat corruption by starting a thread or even condemning same.

I take that back, I think Busyman did it recently, however, I have no recollection of you commenting one way or another.

Call it a failure to acknowledge.

Find me an exception, and you'll have my sincerest apologies, forthwith.


[quote=j2k4;3151106] find me a credible study that says libs consume discernably less porn than conservatives and you will have found something relevant.

Humans have their peccadilloes, whichever side of the ideological fence they're on.

I think the relevance is that conservatives, at least politically, want to ban porn, liberals do not

What's your point?

[Busyman]

....and "you all's holy one"?

I knew you were the same racist idiot that posted awhile back.

Quite sure it was louis farrakhan who labelled him as "the messiah".

"you racist fuck"

"you racist idiot"

Typical of what I stated before...

If the shoe fits.....

[Busyman]

Neither ACORN nor FannieMae/FreddieMac favored wholesale lending to obvious high risk borrowers without proper safeguards...they simply wanted to erase the clearly racist practice of redlining.
In fact, by far the most avid practitioners of subprime lending were brokers/banks that weren't even covered by the CRA and it was their stupidity/greed that has lead us to this point.


Really.

Read this-

The People Responsible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

By Bill Mann, Seth Jayson, Tim Hanson, Nate Weisshaar and Keith Beverly
September 10, 2008


It was a wise man who noted that the only corporate structure more insidious than a government-sponsored monopoly is a government-sponsored and investor-owned monopoly. In the end, as Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) have now so painfully proved, trying to serve the master of public policy while generating returns for investors will lead to disaster.

Fannie and Freddie collapsed because they were part and parcel of the widespread gross financial misconduct that has taken place in the United States over the past decade. It's easy to miss this fact, but the reality is that too many people were making too much money pumping up the housing market. In 2005, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the erstwhile regulator of the two, attempted to limit their use of off-balance sheet entities to groom earnings. In the end, it didn't, because, as one reform-minded politician admitted, Congress was afraid of undermining the housing boom.

Some are more culpable than others-
As part of the conservatorship, the Department of the Treasury has demanded that Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie, respectively, step down. Certainly, at the time of a corporate collapse, those in charge have to bear some responsibility. But Mudd and Syron came into their roles when the great pillaging was well in process.

At some point not too long from now, the nation's attention is going to turn from the immediate players to those who benefitted the most, shouted down the skeptics, and/or stood by as Fannie and Freddie deviated from their core business in the name of growth and/or mission. These people are keeping a low profile right now, until the taxpaying public starts paying attention to something else. As taxpayers, we don't particularly enjoy our role in this relationship, and we're hopeful over the longer term that the following folks cease to enjoy theirs.

Franklin Raines
Fannie Mae was always a political beast, but it reached its elbow-swinging heights during the time when former Clinton administration budget director Franklin Raines sat in the CEO chair. Under Raines' leadership, Fannie overstated earnings by a stunning $10.6 billion, all the while paying Raines and his senior management team massive bonuses.

It was under Raines' management that Fannie morphed from being a company in a sleepy business -- issuing debt to buy mortgages from lenders -- into a far more risky and exciting one: buying up mortgages and holding them, thus capturing the spread between its borrowing costs (which were lower than anyone's other than the federal government's) and the interest rate received. It was a great business, except that it had nothing to do with Fannie's charter. According to a May 2006 report from OFHEO, Raines became obsessed with keeping earnings per share as high as possible and motivated management to achieve that goal by setting up a bonus system that rewarded increasing earnings per share (EPS).

The thing is: Any company can hit an EPS number if it doesn't worry about little things like accounting rules, debt levels, and risk factors. All told, Raines pulled in some $90 million between 1998 and 2003, the majority from bonuses. And when OFHEO began to ask uncomfortable questions, Raines actively lobbied Congress to cut its funding. In April, Raines agreed to disburse $24 million for his role in the accounting "errors."

Timothy Howard
Former Fannie Mae CFO Timothy Howard is another major player who is probably cowering in a corner somewhere. For all of the expletives and derogatory names thrown at former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, he at least stayed around to take his punishment. Inmate No. 14343-179 pleaded guilty to fraud and is serving a six-year prison term. Howard, on the other hand, saw the writing on the wall -- largely because he was the author -- and got out of Dodge.

As Fannie's CFO from 1990 to 2005, Howard signed off on the financials that overstated the company's earnings by $10.6 billion from 1998 to 2004. His reward? A cool $14 million in salary and $16.8 million in bonuses during the period -- bonuses based on the earnings plan that Raines set up.

While Howard was not the only person at Fannie guilty of constructing fraudulent financial statements quarter after quarter, as CFO he is most responsible for the integrity of said statements. Whether he left early enough to avoid culpability remains to be seen. However, we've heard through the low-security-prison grapevine that Fastow is lonely these days and wouldn't mind talking shop with a fellow former CFO.

Barney Frank
The House Financial Services Committee chairman and Democratic congressman from Massachusetts has long been a proponent of both Fannie and Freddie, assuring the public that their mission to encourage home ownership outweighed the distortive risks they brought to the market, and that the federal government was not, in fact, on the hook for their liabilities. In fact, it seems clear now that Frank had no idea of just how poor a grasp Fannie and Freddie had on their lines of business. As recently as Aug. 25 he told Money magazine, "Fannie and Freddie are better off than the market thinks. ... Part of the problem is rumormongering by short-sellers."

What's more, though Frank will blame past political opponents for failing to further regulate the mortgage market by banning products such as subprime loans, the fact of the matter is that the very presence of Fannie and Freddie incentivized brokers to overstate the creditworthiness of borrowers and then pass on that risk to the federal government, all while being cheered for helping more people "realize the American Dream." While we can all agree (I hope) that mortgage markets only function when -- as Frank told Money, banks "do not lend money to people who can't pay it back" -- Frank's ideology in this case blinded him for decades to the realities of the marketplace and the operations at these companies, leading him to stonewall realistic reform efforts that might have helped us avoid the current calamity.

Angelo Mozilo
There's good reason for Angelo Mozilo to hide under a desk these days. Few, if any, extracted more personal profit from the credit bubble than the CEO and founder of Countrywide Financial. Mozilo's talking points always borrowed heavily from the propaganda of our government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Countrywide liked to pretend that it was performing some kind of public service -- "breaking down barriers" -- by making homes more "affordable" to the average (or subaverage) wage earner. Unfortunately, as speculation drove home prices to ridiculous levels across the U.S., "affordability" came to be the code word for gimmicky, high-interest subprime loans lavished on the riskiest of borrowers in order to get them into a mortgage that would soon be bundled and shipped off to the suckers on Wall Street.

Unfortunately for borrowers and investors in Countrywide's mortgage paper, the American Dream of home ownership quickly morphed into a nightmare. Default rates surged, followed by the inevitable foreclosures, and mortgage paper backed by Countrywide loans became as valuable as post-bubble, dot-com stock options. Countrywide was only spared the ignominy of bankruptcy when its longtime sugar daddy, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), stepped in to take it out.

As captain of this sinking ship, CEO and founder Mozilo was, for a time, very vocal in defending his company's legacy. But like so many others in America's great housing bubble, talk was one thing, and actions were another. As the housing bubble began peaking in 2003 and 2004, through the period when Countrywide's risky lending fell apart, Mozilo engaged in one of history's greatest stock dumps, selling more than $480 million worth of shares, according to the tally of insider filings on secform4.com. This graph tells the tale.

Alan Greenspan
If not the boldest of the group, then at least the most public, Greenspan, the man many are now blaming for the housing bubble (there were a brave few that piped up years ago), has refused to go quietly into his well-padded retirement. The man charged with providing the country with a financial voice of reason fell far short, so much so that it might be comical if it weren't so tragic.

Greenspan's denial of the possibility of a housing bubble has been widely derided in the past year, but a single statement could be excused as human error. However, a quick scan shows that this wasn't a single event. He also promoted the adoption and expansion of adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) products in early 2004, when short-term rates were at or near historic lows. That same year he claimed, "securitization by Fannie and Freddie allows mortgage originators to separate themselves from almost all aspects of risk associated with mortgage lending." And separate themselves they did, ceasing to perform any kind of due diligence as to the ability of borrowers to pay for the homes they were buying.

Now retired from his role as the nation's monetary conscience, Greenspan continues to espouse his, er, theories on the financial crisis through editorials in which he denies any culpability for the events of the past three years. He is also applying his experience and insight as an advisor for Paulson & Company, a hedge fund which cashed in on billions of dollars by calling the collapse of the subprime mortgage market that Greenspan helped create.

An ignominious list
To be sure, there were many more complicit in this mess, including consumers who bought more house than they could afford. And though we have to move forward now, let's hope no one forgets what's happened here.


Damnit I wanted to read this but it's in hyper cerulean blue.

Good job.

[Busyman]

Looking at an area where someone lives is a dumb way to ascertain risk. That's why.
Actually, no it isn't- even ACORN never said this.
Using location as the ONLY determining factor was the problem.

Neither ACORN nor FannieMae/FreddieMac favored wholesale lending to obvious high risk borrowers without proper safeguards...they simply wanted to erase the clearly racist practice of redlining.
In fact, by far the most avid practitioners of subprime lending were brokers/banks that weren't even covered by the CRA and it was their stupidity/greed that has lead us to this point.

Naturally, both j2 and HeavyMetal would prefer to ignore these facts and instead place the blame on the poor, abetted by the apparently god-like powers of Obama who somehow manhandled the entire entire banking industry into submitting to his will.

Not bad for a guy who j2 is convinced is clearly "stupid".

I can attest to this since these same style brokers came to my house twice and contacted me through cold calls at least 30 times....and I'm NOT poor.

They were adamant that I move to these shoddy loan products when I wanted to simply refinance. I remember the visits very well. They were even trying to get me take out way more money than I needed (or wanted) and said that since I had a lower monthly payment, I could invest the excess that I would've paid in a normal mortgage.

Oh and after 4 or 5 years, I'd have to refi again since I'd only be paying principal (with no tax write-off).

Oh and....I'm sorry was this ACORN coming to my house and calling me all those times?

I'm pissed that Obama had ACORN come after me even for a refi. ACORN must have had me on that poor, black people list and Obama said, "go get him".

[Rat Faced]

you are spouting policies and ideals that the majority of America finds stale and repugnant.

Wrong on that count; besides which, I am a conservative...not a Republican.

Therein lies your problem.

Oh, and then there's this, which I'm sure you'd never mention:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/23/ST2008062300818.html

So?

Over half of Americans also believe that Aliens kidnap people, and a sizeable number think Elivis is still alive.

Belief in fairytails is universal around the world, but hows it relevant to all all this?