ParanoiA

The part that really insults is that they don't even think they should have to. They actually bitch and cry that the government isn't doing it for them. That's how we're becoming a socialist country. Politicians pandering to crybabies that abdicate their basic, survival responsibilities.

Oh, no you're not the only one. Loans are between two entities - that contract is for both entities to agree with. The lenders are on one side, the borrowers on the other. Each person has a duty to understand what one agrees too, a responsibility to be accountable for their choices and decisions in life. It's absolutely unfathomable that they should not be held accountable for signing their name on something they didn't understand. I'm not sure I'd really sympathize if they signed their kids over to live in Gitmo. Why in the hell do people agree to shit - multi thousand dollar deals that could effect them for the rest of their life - without being absolutely sure about what they're agreeing to? Answer: Bankruptcy and ignorance. Ignorance by choice, which goes along way to explaining their poverty ingrained lifestyle to begin with. Learning things, reading, writing - all way too much effort for a huge percentage of the poor. My wife has family that live 10 or more to a household with the highest present intellect achieving a 6th grade education - and I'm not exagerating. Aunts, uncles, cousins out the ying-yang, and they are a living study on the culture of poverty - the propensity to be stupid by choice while fooling themselves into believing they're not. Subsequently, all of their problems are caused by the rich and successful...the people who learn things, read and write. I could write pages on this and never run out of disparaging things to say. I've grown up around it, and it has never failed to sicken me. I simply have no answer. Those idiots have just as valuable a vote as you and me, and they can barely count to one hundred and read road signs. Bankruptcy is their safety net. This is for the slightly more sophisticated of the willful ignorant. They'll just file bankruptcy if things don't work out and try again. Why not? Their credit sucks already. What's to lose really? For a couple years they might have problems securing a loan? Big deal, for their whole damn life they've had problems securing credit. Nothing new here. So you add those two concepts, and you get a careless idiot at the closing table signing everything pushed to their end without a care in the world what it all means, notoriously with the asinine reasoning "the government wouldn't let them screw me" mentallity. So much for personal responsibility. So much for taking care of yourself. In contrast, the lender has all of their shit together. That's how they got in this position - knowing what the hell they're doing. Why do we constantly beat on the rich rather than learn from them? You'd think a rational human being would say, Gee, he's got all the money and he knows what all of these pieces of paper mean...maybe I should know too...maybe I could do better with money by knowing this stuff too. No, no, of course not, the poor got poor because of the rich, and there is nothing to be learned from them. Sorry, kind of went off there a bit. But I said all that stupid stuff to point out that we're not bailing them out, as far as I can tell so far. So maybe that's why no one is bitching so much about them at the moment.

I'm still reading on this too. I keep reading about appeals to banking crises, like the Panic of 1907 to justify the notion of a central bank, and that the federal reserve was the third, more thoughtful attempt at a central banking system. But I'm apparently not understanding the fundamental structure in order to understand why a central bank solves problems like this. Would that still be the case when the currency is backed by a static asset like Gold or Silver? I guess it's possible for Gold and Silver to lose value in the mindset of participants as well... I would like to give that a good read too. My understanding of Austrian Theory is like watching a man hanging from a cliff by his fingernails. So far, I appreciate the mode of deduction over induction. To my elementary grip, it would seem that deduction be more appropriate for systems made up of pieces we know. Whereas induction would seem more appropriate for systems made up of pieces we still don't yet understand, like the universe. I don't know. I'm just getting my feet wet too, but I find it very interesting. What kind of economic understanding would I need as a prerequisite to reading that book?

Interesting. What is the answer to the banking and currency issues we ran into prior to the federal reserve? I like the idea of abolishing it as well, but I'm hard pressed to come up with a worthwhile alternative to their service.

That's exactly the kind of fundamental change in our attitude towards the economy that worries the hell out of me. I'm afraid I'm going to see the transformation to socialism in my lifetime now. True, but then their credit takes a smacking too. Maybe that's justified, due to their poor judgement and willful ignorance, but it doesn't help their situation any and certainly could be equated as a loss for them.

Yeah, I've always been annoyed with the classic assumption that the president should "know what it's like" to be me, or to be poor, or whatever quaint connection we seem to think has merit for leading a nation. The president should be way beyond me. He should be intellectually brilliant and an expert on the constitution, law, international savvy, and etc. That's why I get so dissappointed election after election. I feel like we're all equal to McCain and Obama. Well, maybe not on military matters when it comes to McCain, but there's really nothing else I can think of that I'd turn to McCain or Obama and ask their opinion on. Nothing.

Unfortunately, it looks like it's going to go through. I'm terribly dissappointed. To me, it feels like a pivotal, historic moment that will redefine the dynamics of the economy. President Bush also scared the crap out of me with the statement about how we need to update our regulatory disposition for a modern economy - by giving more authority to the damn federal reserve! What...the...f*ck? Is no one paying attention to where our power is going? Are we not seeing how people that are NOT elected by us are dictating the terms of our economy? And we want to empower them with more authority? I'm just stunned.

I'll take your post as a history lesson. Interesting. I'm still a subprime mortgagor, and it might hurt me yet. The adjustable rate hasn't kicked in yet. I never tried before 2000, but I'll take your word that I couldn't have achieved it. Although, I did hear about such loan terms in the late 90's when we bought our first house via HUD, and my mother warned me of adjustable rate mortgages, although I'm not sure if they were subprime or not. So far the loan has worked out, but I can't claim victory until I sell my house and successfully dodge the adjustable rate that's going to attempt to nab my entire income. Of course, I knew that going into it and made a calculated risk. My previous subprime loans worked out well for our house flipping venture. We sold those houses with tens of months still remaining before the premium payments would have kicked in. In terms of our business, they worked out ok. It took less money out of our profit than hard money lenders - most demanded a $5,000 loan fee right off the top, before you even get out of the room. And I would recommend those loans on those terms. I would only recommend a subprime loan for anyone planning to risk - maybe they think they can get a better fixed rate in a couple of years, so they take a subprime and work on their house to build equity and then refinance before the adjustable rate kicks in...stuff like that. But, as a mortgage to keep to term? No way. Not in a million years. I would never recommend such a thing, and I'd like to think if I was a loan officer, I would go out of my way to be sure the poverty stricken ignorant understand just how dangerous and stupid it is for them. If nothing else, for their kids' sake. And yes, I do personally hold that against lenders for not rising above supposed "business ethics". I've never really accepted the line "it's just business", when you know damn good and well you're screwing somebody. But that's just personal, and I could never justify legislating it.

My best guess is that it's about getting Obama's fingerprints on the financial bailout issue - something to put him on record, in some polarized position. That and Palin, of course, could use all the time anyone can buy her to get ready for a foreign policy debate in hopes she can fool us into believing she really grips the subject.

On the first point' date=' it's all academic anyway, but I'd point out the practice of redlining which apparently drove the push for CRA regulations in the first place. If they're making plenty of money on secured markets, why bother with nickle and diming a secondary mortgage market? I suppose you could make the case that profit would have manifested that market anyway, to which I'd have to question the necessity of CRA in the first place, and I'd point out that I have more faith the market would have evolved in a more balanced manner since there would be no "unnatural" push to create it. Like I said, I believe CRA helped to create that culture of lending to risky borrowers - it's their agenda for crying out loud. And you do realize that an independent mortgage company that isn't regulated by the CRA, is often a middle-man that arranges loans with banks - [i']like CRA regulated banks[/i]? It's a nice diversion, but it would be a better point if we could quantify the number of these loans that ended up being served by a CRA regulated bank. CRA regulations produce an unnatural current in the market. It's akin to dropping off a major cattle population in the middle of Africa. It doesn't mean a collapse of the natural order of things, but you sure as hell wouldn't blame the Lions for eating them while the Gazelle population inflates. You're judging the Lion for being a lazy eater. I'm judging the act of dropping off the slow running prey into his environment. I don't know that it's a problem, on its face. From what I can tell, it's implementation went pretty decent. I think Clinton intensified them for the benefit of the poor and that helped to create the saturation of demand. After that, it seemed to grow on its own, and like you mentioned, secondary lenders swooped right in. I'm sure the relax of regulation in 2004 helped it too - probably in answer to the demand that wasn't being met. I remember having to wait for long periods to process my loans, with the excuse that they were swamped. But remember, we're not talking about a total absence of regulations. Rather, we're talking about a cherry picked removal of regulations. The whole housing market is regulated out the ying-yang, from the Fannie's and Freddie's, to the mom and pop mortgage brokers - to pick a few lines from 2004 and pretend like THAT's the cause, just seems silly to me. Again, just like the Healthcare market, we have another socialist bubble within a capitalist framework - and now we're getting close to eliminating the capitalist framework altogether. You can't regulate the shit out of a market like that and pretend that what few "choices" they still have left is the reason for the debacle. Give me a break. No, when you regulate as heavy as we do, in the financial market, then you are automatically to accept a heavy burden of the blame. Way too many forces are being controlled by you. If you like to regulate, fine, but understand the regulation is not natural and so the consequences of your interference must be calculated correctly by you. And if they don't turn out like you wanted - then I say that's a failure of your understanding of those forces. You chose to regulate it, but you didn't understand it well enough to control it. Now you want to blame the forces you failed to control successfully? My question to you: What about those forces changed in the last 200 years, so much so, that regulation did not foresee?

Yes, because all forces are natural and expected. Regulations, present and absent, are designed to negotiate these forces within the context of a capitalistic economy. You're making a value judgement on forces that we depend on as well as shit on when we don't want to admit we designed the cage with a gap in the bars. You can judge the lenders, the borrowers and etc - and I do too on a personal level - but the correction is not about punishment and discipline, it's about design correction. It's a structural problem with the framework of the market. I never said against their will. I just said that CRA regulations have been intensified over the past decade to catalyze more and more home ownership by low income individuals. This subprime loan culture has become popularized over the years by this intensity, in my opinion. Had the act not passed in 1977, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I also wouldn't be a homeowner, and the gap between the rich and poor would be even more prevalent. Try as you might, but I have no rotten words for those mixed up in this. I don't think anyone really did anything wrong in promoting the CRA regulations. And I still think we need them. I don't blame them entirely, and I said as much in my long winded post. There are many dynamics to this, but in terms of regulatory correction, that's the most glaring to me. The worst thing we could ever do is bail these companies out. This suggests consequences in the other markets of the economy besides just the financial one. Will the government let AT&T go out of business? Microsoft? Where is exactly is the line when government decides that some private industries are too important not to be saved by the government? Even more sinister...what can we expect in the way of business practices from big companies once they all realize they are insured "implicitly" by the tax payers? This appears to be our excuse for socialism. Blame the forces we fail to negotiate properly so we can get the green light to control them outright and own them. Brilliant...

Sorry, for the ridiculously long post, but I've been chewing on this for a bit...feel free to ignore it, I really just needed to get this out of my head. The housing crisis has created a strange current in my thinking. I’ve listened to regular folk. I’ve listened to the media. I’ve read the stories. I’ve researched the origination and evolution of the mortgage business cycle. And everywhere I look, rhetoric and political agenda trumps the truth of what happened. CRA regulations, established in 1977 were a noble attempt to get lenders to take a chance on low to moderate income families. Without it, redlining can create this gulf between ownership and leasing in terms of real estate – helping to maintain ownership by investors, and keeping lower income folk capitulated to the investment class. In 1995 Clinton stepped up on the regulations; changed the assessment to be more performance based; helped to add more teeth and intensity to the CRA objective and the market responded with even more low and moderate income loans. Institutions were even judged by their loan practice particulars; the classic “personal review” by a bank assessor was even disparaged in favor of quantifiable verification alternatives – such as the infamous “credit score”. Another attempt at creating an objective criteria for loan qualification. Certainly good intentions. These changes in regulation were reviewed in 2002, with regulatory changes for 2005. In short, intermediate lenders weren’t subject to the three part test previously required – supposedly a compromise between lenders and “community groups”. The CRA regulations, and their increased intensity post 1995, helped to create a flood of home buyers – a rise in demand. The rise in demand means a higher market value for the capital – our homes. The capital increased in value, which in turn created equity – that point is crucial. If I bought my house for a ninety grand a few years prior, then I put it up for sale for 105 grand, while it appraised for 120 grand due to the surge in demand, then the borrower already enjoys 15 grand in equity, before they even attempt to hassle me into taking a lower price. The bank also enjoys that equity in terms of security – it’s like a 15 thousand dollar down payment on the loan. Everybody is happy, except one crucial flaw – the borrower can’t really pay it back, like they thought. Going solely by their credit score, and overlooking medical bills and debt to income ratios, they have made a highly risky loan. They think there’s enough of them that the laws of statistics will prevail – more will pay it back than will foreclose, but they were wrong. Enough folks foreclosed, defaulted, and etc that the market essentially lost its demand – that demand that drove the price of the capital up in the first place – it was fake demand; a willingness to demand, but a lack of resources to secure. So now home prices are falling since the demand just dropped in a flurry of loan defaults – instantly all of that equity that was enjoyed by the home buyers and loan institutions is erased as our capital tumbled in value. Hello, housing crisis. Are lending institutions to blame? Why? They did what the CRA regulations wanted them to do. Are the borrowers to blame? I think so, since they know their income and their true ability to pay it back – but essentially, they too did what the CRA regulations wanted them to do. You could say, they simply took a chance – just like any business venture one might make in life. Is Fannie or Freddie to blame? Turning mortgage contracts into liquid for mortgage lenders is a service. How do you make loans to other people when all you have is monthly payments trickling in? You do it buy selling those paper contracts for currency – currency to make more loans to low to moderate income families. This is business. Pure and simple. Everyone appears to have played their respective roles – the problem was with the structure of market; structure created by our government. You may or may not agree with my analysis of this housing crisis, and there are other dynamics to consider (such as the number of lenders that weren’t regulated by CRA at all, yet contributed to inflating the subprime loan market), but it’s all about business and economics – not “good guys” and “bad guys”, like we’re children reading comic books. Biden got thrashed about his gaffe over the stock market crash occurring during Roosevelt’s term, but his sentiment was lost. His statement suggested a welcomed tone: indifference to the “princes of greed”. I have no idea what point he actually made on this, but hopefully he went on to point out that contempt for business and profit is silly when discussing business and profit. It’s not unhealthy profiteering that’s to blame. We understand the forces that drive capitalism; we understand the nature of man and the compliment capitalism provides – a system that isn’t built to be asymmetrical to this nature, but rather utilizes this nature and exploits it; it’s designed to accept that input. So when markets crash, or business cycles poison the well, these are market problems, structural issues – not “rich people are greedy and caused this”. Of course greed is codified in profiteering, but we already knew that and designed the system for that input. If we forgot or misunderstood, that’s our fault – an argument from ignorance is not helpful here. The rich, the investors, the borrowers – everyone played their roles as they are to be played and is counterintuitive and counterproductive to behave as if they should be punished, or scorned for doing what we fully expect and count on them to do. So this is what I find most perplexing in dealing with this issue. The contempt leveled at capitalism. Folks are using the word “rich” and “profit” as pejoratives. We all pursue profit everyday; we spend the majority of our lives pursuing profit and security. Most of us aren’t content with our level of success at this effort, yet we have replaced aspiration with envy. Rather than let the rich and successful inspire us, we instead label them greedy and rationalize taking their profits. We didn’t level a good principled argument before they made the profit, we only came up with it after they made the profit – and that’s what lawyers do. They look at opportunity X, and then look for loopholes to gain an advantage. I believe that’s what we are doing as a country, despite our pop cultural plural agreement that lawyers are bad, we are behaving identically. We are fully engaged in class warfare now. Being rich is wicked, being poor is noble. How utterly stupid can an animal be? We have managed to fool ourselves into believing that superior hunter and gatherers are bad. Or are we simply responding the threat of a highly successful few surrounded by the not-so-successful many? Is this our evolutionary, Darwinian response? Or are we just dumb as a box of rocks? I’m guessing the latter. And in that context, we are not going to fix what happened in the housing crisis. We are going to dump on the rich investors and the poverty ridden borrowers, we are going to point fingers at Barney Frank and George Bush. We would never dream of clinically recognizing the unnatural force created in the intensity of these CRA regulations for the market to negotiate. We’re going to do everything except fix what happened. I wish Biden was right. I wish Roosevelt really was president and really did go on TV in 1929 and talk about what happened, rather than scoring political points by slamming capitalists. It could have been the last time we ever rationally analyzed a market problem.

A question is a strawman? Questioning the report is reasonable. Questioning the questioner questioning the report is reasonable, too, I would think. Hell, I just assumed he was skeptical about the oil from 3 to 50 miles since he's skeptical about the report on oil from 3 to 50 miles. Would his skepticism of the report even be germane if he wasn't skeptical about oil from 3 to 50 miles? Looks to me like you all have your guns drawn, ready to fire at anything that moves.

This is awesome: Where's the three "items" in the Post? We know that those three items came from this profile on July 16, but we don't know how the Post used that same profile in those three items. I would sure like to see if the Post was consistent in downplaying the connection in those three items. Depending on how they sensationalized it or not, should go directly to responsibility. If they flew off the handle, themselves, and printed inaccurate information, then I can hardly see how that's McCain's fault. It would sure be interesting to see those 3 articles. _____________________________________________________________ What I heard this afternoon insulted the hell out of me. Barack Obama, mister 2nd from the top recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money, pointing fingers at "politicians looking the other way". He's got a lot of damn nerve. What the hell was he doing? Oh yeah, running for president. Send these jokers home people. This is ridiculous. We are doing exactly what the two party machine wants us to do - choose between the two hacks. Don't we deserve better than hacks?

It almost sounds like you give up your privacy rights if official government communications are required to be preserved. Unless they're heavily investing in the word "preserved". I suppose they can preserve them, without sharing them with anyone.

If Obama or Biden can/will show they don't use their personal email accounts for any government business, then I'd be inclined to take this seriously. Only because that would prove it's not a common practice. I have a feeling it's not, but I haven't heard any other politicians come clean on it either. Regardless, it sounds like the "mandate" needs some teeth.

Interesting article. I just read recently that John Adams was called "His Rotundity" due to his short and fat size and it pissed him off so much he declared he would challenge the next person to a duel that called him that' date=' and that supposedly put an end to it. So, maybe the threat of a duel would require honesty and respect from one another. Or I guess we could be civilized about it and do it your way... Yeah I remember this. I can certainly understand if that bothers you, but I do remember when this first came up and McCain got beat to death by the republicans for his "amnesty" provisions. I don't know if this qualifies as a shallow flip-flop or not, but I remember a defeated McCain later replying that he "got the message".

Well wait a minute though, is it already mandated? If it's already a government mandate, then didn't she just violate it? And isn't that bad?

Ah, I see. Yeah, that's nasty. I'm on a do-not-call list also. Of course, I still get called from time to time, but I've been having fun with them.

So, here's the latest. Obama puts up an ad and misrepresents McCain and Rush Limbaugh. Rush barely even tolerates McCain and has only recently started saying good things about him and it started with the Palin pick. Rush and McCain are on opposite sides in the immigration issue and Rush was pro-NAFTA, which is where the main comments come from. The Politico actually agrees with Rush on this and defends him, but oddly enough, I can't find the story on their page. http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/18/obama-ads-linking-mccain-to-rush-limbaugh-stir-controversy/ Let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do it, as opposed to stupid and unskilled Americans. Sounds like Rush to me. As usual, if you don't listen carefully, you can get the wrong idea. What else is new?

Yeah, I can see a mandate on communications for the government to follow for security reasons, going forward. But I couldn't imagine instant guilt just because somebody used their personal account, in absence of such a mandate or whatnot. I conducted business over my personal email account on behalf of my company a number of times. Namely because I couldn't get access to my work email from home, and I needed to correspond on a matter from home, so I just used my "yahoo" account. I've even done it a couple of times just because I happened to have that email account open when I wanted to correspond. Anybody know what the emails said? John says there's no evidence she conducted government business anyway. iNow presented a blog where somebody said a newspaper said she uses it for government business. So, is there any evidence or are we trying by forum now?

I guess I'm not clear on this tactic. It sounds like they're calling people and asking them if they would change their vote if that knew "X" about one of the candidates. That's quite misleading, and of course you could cherry pick ugly, specious factoids and smear somebody. That said though, would you have an issue with calling these people and straight up telling them these things about Obama? And I mean the facts, not the lipstick junk or blog fodder. I've never experienced a push poll, so I don't really know what they're like. I'm trying to figure out if you don't like it because it's disguised as a poll, when it's really an excuse to share disparaging information about a candidate, or if you don't like it because of what they're saying. It doesn't seem too much different than TV or radio or here on the net - it's just over the phone instead.

What's wrong with those questions though? Isn't it fair to pursue conclusions based on his actions and potential cabinet associations? If you're a Jew, america's position on Israel is probably extremely important to you. In fact, it may be a single issue voting position for some. If I was jewish, I would be concerned about Obama's point of view. That only seems reasonable. Of course, if it's a "push" poll, then it's a little ugly I think. I think they would do much better questioning him on it. Unless of course he beats around the bush on that subject too - in which case, I have no sympathy for the Obama camp. These people need to know where he stands and it's important to them. Many of them have family in Israel and equate american support with security for their loved ones, right or wrong.

It's not tax cuts. It's tax cuts while spending money like you own a printing press. It's not living within our means that lead to record budget deficits. It's irresponsible and is a failure of the most basic function that all of us must master. I don't get to pull accounting tricks to make it til next payday.