This post (& the previous) and others like it, "sum-up what occurred"....in all, The Washington DC Pols are in "Big Time CYA" mode.
Posted on 09/18/2008 4:53:51 AM PDT by Big Labor Hater
Everyone should know the leftist talking points over the failing banks. Larry Kudlow was on MSNBC this morning facing the "round table," including former Republican, Joe Scarbrough, and he went on to tell all of them that Congress was responsible for forcing the big banks to issue subprime loans to people who couldn't pay them. And, in typical liberal fashion, all those sitting around the table immediately said, "you are blaming this on poor people, Larry?" They pounded him with that line over and over again, trying to deflect any role in all these bank failings of Congress. To Larry's credit, he pounded his point home over and over. Of course, he is right.
It's not bad enough they made it possible to make bad loans, the actually REQUIRED them to do so! A lender who didn't make them was very restricted in the the amount of business they could do.
The whole thing is just so astounding that it defies logic. It's like their plan was to make it so big and so complicated and so ballsy that it anyone tempted to take it on would take a look, shake their head, and silently steal away into the night to pursue some other, more easily understood, crime.
Somehow we've got to find a way to present to the voting world the five or ten ways the Democrats/Liberals/MSM have spent 16 years causing the problems we are seeing now. The first eight years were the Clintons doing things we never thought we would see occupants of the White House doing, and then the next eight years the whole cabal did NOTHING but obstruct and obfuscate. You can't name a single thing the Democrats/Liberals/MSM did for 16 years that wasn't specifically intended to sink George Bush and make the country pay dearly for having the gumption to elect a Republican Congress.
McCain can’t get in front of it, unless he wants to get run over. He has sided with Democrats too many times. Heck, one of the sponsors of the bill was his campaign economic advisor.
Would 0bama have voted differently? No, but he has the cover of Gramm-Leach-Bliley being passed during his community organizer days.
The dem have held government and agency control for at least 50 years.
It’s not just Congress. It’s agency culture.
Unfortunately, this is too complex for the MSM. It is so much easier to holler “racist” over and over again. The Dems and their media allies were even calling lenders racists for making the loans that they demanded, when those loans began to fail.
You can’t blame the Clinton admin and not blame the Bush admin. They were pushing it just as hard, and Bush used to brag about it.
Good summary. Right on the money.
Get real.
The fact is the Democrats overriding agenda became getting more loans for minorities, whether they were qualified or not. The Democrats provided the kindling, and the Republicans provided the spark.
The fact is that the mortgage companies overriding agenda became getting more loans to anyone with a pulse, whether they were qualified or not. Over the last 6 or 7 years you had more and more mortgage brokers chasing fewer and fewer good credit customers. After they refinanced those with good credit they went after those with less than perfect credit, then mediocre credit, then bad credit or no credit. It was an endless chase for customers, just so they could keep the fees rolling in.
The legislation you're blaming all this on has been in place for decades. Yet it all blew up over the last few years. Put the blame where it is due, those stupid enough to throw sound business practices right out the window.
First of all, there is no “right” to own a home in this nation.
Secondly, what ever happened to the concept of “Personal Responsibility”?
Does “poor” = “No personal responsibility for one’s actions, whatsoever”?
That is the whole point - no one forced anyone to sign a contract and buy a house. Not a single gun to a head can be documented anywhere.
It is personal irresponsibility plain and simple as that. And this crisis shows that the nation is made up of millions of irresponsible people both on the buyer side and the lender side.
That is what happens when a nation becomes as Liberal and stupid as America has become, thanks to a Liberal Democrat run education system. “Liberalism is a mental disorder” - indeed.
Get real.
I read rangerette's reply and found it quite answered and refuted your objection. In your analysis, the companies themselves were solely to blame. That is certainly not true. The CRA really did require that loans be made at terms that the free market (and common prudence) would never support in locations that were and remain high-risk for the quality and value of the property. That was done to benefit the poor (as Congress defined them) and is why the panel jumped Kudlow when he dared to point out the reast of the story.
Similarly, rangerette was only giving you the rest of the story. You have a point that the companies themselves should share the blame. After all, they could lose market-share to their compliant brethren in the industry and refuse to do the stupid thing. But, I would point out that the conditions of the Act likely gave the industry the impression that, should anything go south, the government would provide back-end liquidity (as they are partly doing: the supposition wasn't entirely fanciful). Besides, it expanded the market, provided them with additional revenue, gave them good PR. And, they assumed that prices would go on rising for real estate forever.
That last would be the kicker that really caused all this: when prices ascended beyond actual affordability, demand slacked off. Prices ALWAYS DROP WHEN DEMAND DECLINES. Sorry to shout, but that should be obvious and it is the real point of the whole argument. When the prices drop, no-equity loans instantly go upside down and the borrower is instantly incented to walk away. I bet that's what has happened in a good number of cases. When that happens, the supply, which is already overloaded, increases, which further depresses prices, which puts more loans upside down, creating more incentive.
The process goes on until sustainable price levels are reached and demand rises to absorb the inventory.
I grant that's a lot, but it's all Econ 1A.
Also, when the managing editor of Fortune came on after the 8:00 hour, he instantly accused Larry of blaming the mess on the “poor and liberals” when Larry denied that three times. The roundtable insisted on putting those words in Mr. Kudlow’s mouth, and he spit them out each time.
The “poor people” line is Leftist propaganda/talking points — A lot of those houses in foreclosure now are not owner-occupied, but were either never occupied or had renters for awhile, and are owned by house flippers, who got caught with inventory after the housing bubble burst and then abandoned them to the banks.
Would that be the finance arm of Time/Life? Oh, my, surprahze, surprahze.
“GOP mantra must be that FNMA started making bad loans when Jesse Jackson and Co. complained about lack of credit to people who weren’t credit worthy”
And ignore this Administration and the Federal Govt’s pandering to ILLEGAL ALIENS and the number of them who received subprime loans? I guess the GOP wouldn’t want to bring up the *wispering* illegal alien *wispering* role in this crisis, would they?
Pat Caddell was on MSNBC or Fox News yesterday, and he made the statement several times that “Barack Obama does NOT want to go down this road (of trying to pin the blame on McCain)”. He went on to say something about there being too much evidence of Obama’s complicity in everything.
This from a guy who has been an Obama supporter.
You get real.
Where did I say it was not the mortgage companies fault as well?
I said the exact opposite in one of my paragraphs, standing out as one sentence to feature it.
Other FReepers are my witnesses.
You are in denial about Congress and certain executives behind this being in cahoots with one another, in certain instances. Again, Frank Raines and Jim Johnson, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, to name only a few.
All of the culpable ones are guilty of greed, whether for money or for political power or whatever in might be.
In addition, some were probably running the places who weren’t qualified to be doing what they were doing. Thought their practices could go on and on without the collapse we see today. Proving their lack of competence.
When some politicians saw it coming and tried to stop it, their bill died in committee, stopped by other politicians.
McCain cosponsored a bill in 05 which warned about Fannie and Freddie and their eventual collapse and attempted to legislate reforms in their practices. It was killed in committee. You have fallen for Dem and Leftist Media talking points.
I'll go with that. Illegal aliens are a broken law staring you right in the face, but so long as race-baiters own the LSM you can't get rid of them without serious finesse. I see that now happening here in NC, but I'm sure I'll never hear about it happening in the state from which I emigrated, Mexifornia. So you have something of a point, but it is not limited to this and this was going to be he-double hockeysticks without it. The whole premise allowed ANYONE who wanted to to qualify for a sub-prime loan. Strictly speaking, I think I qualified for one myself, except that I put 45% of the equity as a down. I didn't have a regular job, nor did my wife. But I got a loan with what was at the time the lowest possible interest rate. And I'm a native-born citizen, so I guess I was part of the problem too.
Execept that I made every mortgage payment, now have a job (as does my wife) and we have every prospect of being able to pay off the loan ahead of time. So, perhaps raising the IA flag when it is at best tengentially involved might be jumping the shark.
Or do you have something apposite to include, such as the actual practices of Wells Fargo and BoA in lending on CA real estate when people of questionable citizenship are likely involved?
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