Posted on 09/15/2008 5:31:42 AM PDT by KStorm
CHICAGO (AP) - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Monday the upheaval on Wall Street was "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression" and blamed it on policies that he said Republican rival John McCain supports.
"This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy," Obama said after the shock-wave announcements that financial giant Lehman Brothers was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while titan Merrill Lynch was being bought by Bank of America for about $50 billion.
Obama's statement, issued as he prepared to fly to Colorado to begin a swing through contested Western states, was intended to serve two purposes: to link McCain with the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and to express sympathy with the anxiety of most Americans who say the economy is issue No. 1 in the election.
"The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store," Obama said in a statement. "Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression."
"I certainly don't fault Sen. McCain for these problems," Obama said, "but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Enron was the monster and had hearing
Freddie and Fannie , No hearings.
Alan Greenspan pushed ARM's to get people in houses they couldn't afford and kept interest rates too low to long.
The left has been chanting “failed policies of Bush” all week, which is why I think we should start the “failed policies of socialism” counter-chant.
Barack Obama, though well-intentioned, is following the same failed socialist policies, policies that have never succeeded anywhere in the world...
Obama ‘s subprime pal - Finance chief’s bank failed in 2001, costing 1,400 customers some of their savings
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - April 28, 2008
Author: Abdon M. Pallasch, The Chicago Sun-Times
White House hopeful Barack Obama talks a lot on the campaign trail about how failing banks have used subprime loans to victimize customers.
“Part of the reason we got a current mortgage crisis has to do with the fact that people got suckered in to loans that they could not pay,” he told a crowd in Reading, Pa., last week. “There were a lot of predatory loans that were given out, a lot of teaser rates. Banks and financial institutions making these loans were making money hand over fist.”
One of the banks that went under after making a lot of subprime loans — leaving 1,400 of its customers without part of their savings — was Chicago’s Superior Bank.
At the helm of Superior Bank at least some of the time was Obama ‘s national finance chairwoman, Penny Pritzker, an heiress to the Pritzker fortune.
Obama ‘s campaign notes that Pritzker stepped down as chairwoman of the bank’s board in 1994, seven years before it failed. She then went on the board of the bank’s holding company.
But a letter obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times shows that until the end, Pritzker appeared to be taking a leadership role in trying to revive the bank with an expanded push into subprime loans.
Pritzker wrote in May 2001 that her family was recapitalizing the bank, and she pledged to “once again restore Superior’s leadership position in subprime lending.” The bank shut down in July 2001.
(snip)
These people are MORONS...
THIS is what started this mess:
“Racial Redlining: A study on Bank Discrimination Jonathan Brown and Charles Benington”
“This study, by Jon Brown and Charles Bennington, examines the issue ofracial redlining by major mortgage lenders in the nation’s larger metro areas. Our study, whichreceived nationwide media coverage, prompted Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate the 49 major lenders that have been engaging in this practice.”
This study was financed by an UBER-LEFTIST Clinton-Supporting group ROBER REICH. see thier Bullet Points HERE:
http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:H2j5ODCCdUsJ:public-gis.org/reports/redindex.html+charles+bennington+mortgage&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
It was the basis of Jesse Jackson’s “RACIST MORTGAGE BANKS!!” screed of the early and mid-90’s that led us in to this mess!!
The “money Quotes” in this thing are too numerous to mention. Funny how all this has hit the liberal Memory Hole, isn’t it?
Democrat Barney Franks should resign. No mention of him in Obama’s speech. He chairs the United States House Committee on Financial Services!!!! Why??? Did Barney Frank railroad our financial system to make the President look bad. Dumb Lenders are the problem.
The United States House Committee on Financial Services (or House Banking Committee) oversees the entire financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries. The Committee also oversees the work of the Federal Reserve, the United States Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and other financial services regulators. It is chaired by Barney Frank (D-MA) and the ranking Republican is Spencer Bachus (R-AL).
$18 billion infusion for N.J. housing - Fannie Mae program will assist urban buyers
Star-Ledger, The (Newark, NJ) - November 17, 1999
Author: George E. Jordan, Star-Ledger Staff
Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest source of home mortgage financing, said yesterday it will invest $18 billion in New Jersey over five years to encourage banks to finance tens of thousands of first-time homebuyers in the state’s urban centers.
The money is aimed at making homeowners of 180,000 low- and moderate-income families that Fannie Mae says are underserved by commercial lenders, including:
New immigrants.
People with credit problems.
Purchasers of two- and three-family homes.
Low-income buyers of “affordable” units built by nonprofit housing agencies.
Funds also are going toward home renovation loans and employer-assisted homebuying programs.
The Fannie Mae program is directed at families with household incomes of less than $38,400 a year. That figure represents 80 percent of the state’s median household income of $48,021. It’s the equivalent of providing 36,000 mortgages per year of $100,000 for five years.
A major beneficiary is Newark, where Jamie S. Gorelick , Fannie Mae’s vice chairman, announced the investment plan to a gathering of northern New Jersey’s political leaders, housing advocates and captains of the banking and construction industries.
Fannie Mae announced it was opening a Partnership Office in downtown Newark and has committed through Summit Bank to provide no-money-down, 30-year mortgages at 6.5 percent interest for 800 new homes in the city’s South Ward. The city plans to sell vacant lots to builders for as little as $1 as sites for two-family homes.
“This city is going to rock and roll, as will the rest of New Jersey,” said Gorelick , a former U.S. deputy attorney general. “One of the astonishing facts is this city is so happening, we cannot find space for our office. That is just astonishing.”
(snip)
If it was Bank Of America collapsing - instead of buying Merrill Lynch - then the average American would be worried.
But no one deposits their weekly check at their local suburban Lehman branch.
Yeah, right. First, he invents the "crisis", then blames it on Republicans. What an idiot. Does he even understand basic economics?
Sadly, the mainstream media will take his word as Gospel.
Nope, just another gift from “Congress Lost: The Pelosi Years.”
“Establish that where minority neighborhoods have been improperly excluded or underserved, the primary Fair Lending enforcement agency shall at a minimum require the lender to develop and implement an affirmative lending program for such neighborhoods.”
The basis for ALL of this comes from this UBER-LIB financed study from the Earky 90’s, that Clinton, Reno, Robert Reich, Jesse Jackson, et al, siezed on in the early 90’s to prove that “Mortgage BANKS WERE RACISTS!!!”
http://public-gis.org/reports/red4.html#C
Funny how JAMIE GORELICK’s name keeps popping up in America’s largest disaster’s, isn’t it?
Exactly.
I agree with him.
...if what he means is that Republicans were so weak in being true to conservative policy led to the Demo takeover which, if not corrected, will ruin us.
In that case, I agree.
Any specific errors that he could site for us or is it just the general “It’s bushes’ fault” taken to a new level?
Economic moron....this can be tied back to two things:
1) Greenspan’s disastrous monetary policy errors in the late 90’s and early 2000’s
2) The democrats demanding that everyone be able to afford a home.
Slightly OT:
Duke bolsters legal team in fighting lawsuit - Ex-deputy attorney general to help against lacrosse players’ case
Herald-Sun, The (Durham, NC) - February 6, 2008
Author: Ray Gronberg
DURHAM — Duke University has added a former deputy attorney general of the United States to the legal team that will defend it against a federal civil-rights lawsuit filed by three members of the 2005-06 men’s lacrosse team.
Court papers filed this week indicate that Washington, D.C., attorney Jamie Gorelick will assist two Greensboro litigators in representing the school. They’re also the attorneys of record for the Duke University Police Department, Board of Trustees Chairman Robert Steel, school President Richard Brodhead and numerous other university officials.
(snip)
http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2008/09/09/wachovia_cost_savings.html
Wachovia plans to cut expenses by $1.5B in 2009
By DAVID MILDENBERG, HUGH SON
Bloomberg News
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Wachovia Corp., the fourth-largest U.S. bank, will cut 2009 expenses by $1.5 billion and is tapping the brakes on risk, Chief Executive Officer Robert Steel told investors Tuesday.
(snip)
http://www.treas.gov/organization/bios/steel-e.html
Robert Steel
Under Secretary for Domestic Finance
All of this has both Parties in common. Republicans AND Democrats. To think that one or the other is blameless is stupid.
Last week he took partial credit for the positive developments in Iraq.
This week he blames Bush for Lehman, Fannie and Freddie.
Of course, the good Dems pushed the Community Reinvestment Act years back, which basically strong-armed mortgage lenders into qualifying low income people in poor areas, using racism as a lever. Many of these loans are now kaput.
Right.....
Let’s Nationalize the Stock Market, cuz the boy genius says he can give 95% of the population a “tax cut”, when 40% already don’t pay a dime in taxes. (Must be that “Yes We Can” mantra he has been chanting about.)
Fuzzy math........; Not Obama. He’s just so much smarter than us white boys & girls.
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