Posted on 10/02/2008 7:22:04 AM PDT by safetysign
In the early 1990s, I attended a conference designed to teach journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted investigative reporting. One of the hottest sessions explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating against minority borrowers in making mortgages. One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including the Washington Post and Detroit Free Press, had also weighed in with their own analyses based on government loan data. Everyone sounded keen to learn if their local banks were guilty, too.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
Really! I read it in 12 billion different vanity posts on FR.
I remember Jesse Jackson ranting about “Racist Mortgage Banks” for several years during the mid-90’s. Now we pay for yet ANOTHER Bad Democrat Idea...
A BAD DEMOCRAT IDEA that is being blamed on REPUBLICANS, despite the FACT that Democrats got filthy rich ripping off the system (Again).
The world has turned upside down, and the thinking people have laft.
Yup, that's where it's at. And the last thing the WarshPost wants is for trouble to happen anywhere near that plant.
We should be attacking them for turning the worlds largest financial market into another tool for social engineering, with disatrous consequences.
Its obvious you don’t think that the financial institutions have any culpability in this mess? Do you honestly believe that? If they hadn’t given loans to people who can’t pay them back, would we be in this mess? If the government hadn’t colluded with lending institutions and implied guarantees from the federal government, do you think this would have happened?
Lending institutions made pathetically stupid loans on over-valued assets. This is a fact. Prove me wrong.
You keep hacking at others posts, but i don’t see any substantial arguments from your end. So while you go around knocking posters of what you consider “vanity” posts, take a look at yourself. Either offer a substantial argument or shut your pie hole.
The collusion of government and business has culminated in this economic crisis. I suggest you take a look a the the years of 1928-1933. Same thing. And if you bother replying, don’t reply with a smart ass comment, please be substantial.
Said like the idiot liberal you are.
Obvious to you maybe, but in fact, that's no more the case than all the other twaddle you've generated on this topic, and I have said so many, many, many times.
You keep hacking at others posts, but i don’t see any substantial arguments from your end.
Try looking a little further back.
This is my business. When I started writing about this I was trying to help... I was trying to educate people a little about how the system actually works. But when I tried discussing facts and evidence only a very few people were interested, and most of them already knew the facts anyway. What happened most was that I would write about how the finance system really works and would then be attacked because it didn't match the delusions of some of the less well informed posters.
In the meantime people who had no knowledge of the subject still felt perfectly justified in casting about in the conspiracy firmament looking to identify some bizarro cause and effect. Backroom deals were invented, public information was assumed to be secret, and all manner of crazy stupid nonsensical BS was imagined. Facts were utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of them. Like your post about the "knife to the throat" earlier ... it had nothing to do with facts... it was just a statement of anger that falsely accused whoever seems to you to be the most unpopular. It's just verbal bullying for a sympathetic audience. It touches reality not at all, and never tries to.
There are people posting on this topic who are saying substantive things and therefore deserve to be taken seriously. Even when I disagree I try to do that. But most of the vanity posts are just blowing smoke. Right now there is a lot more opinion around here than knowledge, and that means there are a lot of people who shouldn't be taken seriously at all.
So I'm done trying to educuate on this topic, those that are really interested in the facts will learn them on their own. But if some members want to spout conspiratorial nonsense even though they don't understand the first thing about it, when the mood strikes me they can count on me ridiculing them for it. If all it does is get one person who doesn't' know what they're talking about to back away from the keyboard it will all be worth it to me.
And if you don't like it I couldn't care less.
I was sarcastically calling attention to all the ridiculous conspiracy BS that's come up on this topic.
Sorry for the confusion.
BTW ... I don't think there is a person alive who could call me a liberal... (or am I the one who's missing the sarcasm here?)
Well,
Thanks for taking the time to make a thought out reply. I agree with your sentiment about some of the conspiratorial stuff. But, we are not experiencing a liquidity crisis, we are experiencing a massive tightening of available money/credit. A couple of questions for you:
1. Do you think the bailout is in the financial interests of these banks?
2. Is it not feasible that in order to maintain their existence they would want to encourage the bailout bill?
3. We can sit here and argue about whether or not they are tightening their lending policies due to legitimate concern, or to influence the US Government’s decision. But do you think this would indeed be in their best interest?
With that being said, if i were the president of a lending institution, it would be obvious to me that it is in my interest to encourage the bailout bill. And i have the ability and the cover to tighten lending policy, why would i not?
The term conspiracy has connotations of people sitting in smoke filled backrooms. But i believe that individual as well as institutions will act in their own self-interest. That doesn’t mean that Bernake and Pualson and Reid and the Buffet’s of the world met and made this plan. The leaders of the lending institutions know that they face destruction without the bailout bill.
The simple fact is, that the irrational lending on overvalued assets has to be accounted for in some real way eventually. My point is, they are intentionally tightening their lending policies to better their chances of getting this bailout package. Its not a conspiracy, its what is in their own interests. Which is exactly what capitalists do. If you look at the collusion that led up to the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Committee and its successor, the Federal Reserve, you will see many of the same things in play.
Bottom line, we operated outside the realm of reality, the only path back to reality will require suffering. The lending institutions don’t want to suffer, so they want this bailout package from the already non-existent reserves of the federal treasury. My problem with the bailout is that it exposes a much more serious problem, the value of the $. Once foreign lenders come to the conclusion that they can longer loan money to the US Treasury, the gig is up. That is the end of the US Government. A much larger problem than the depression we are about to experience, with or without this bailout.
Government should stay out of businesses all together. Our worst depressions have occurred since the founding of the Fed Reserve and the meddling of Congress.
BHO advisor Raines left Fannie Mae with a $240M golden parachute.
Obama blames his economic advisors for financial crisis, unwittingly – records show BHO close associates collected $288M in golden parachute payments from Fannie Mae.
BHO advisor Raines left Fannie Mae with a $240M golden parachute.
BHO advisors and close associates Johnson and Howard got golden parachute payments of $28M and $20M respectively.
Watch this:
www.saltytexan.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=5693&d=1222793801
And, then e-mail it to everybody you know.
“
Lending money to people who can’t ever pay it back was never a good idea.
Democrats, socialists and do gooders don’t have a clue.
“
In a friendly way...I disagree.
Those Democrats, socialists and do-gooders were BRILLIANT!
They knew that “Political Correctness” would paralyze Republicans,
Conservatives and sound economists (of any party) into being mostly
SILENT about their scheme to create more impoverished (DEMOCRATIC) voters.
And it’s worked so far.
Given how they’ve even rolled otherwise sane Republicans to vote for
a “bailout” that will prolong the situation.
But, we are not experiencing a liquidity crisis, we are experiencing a massive tightening of available money/credit.
Actually we're experiencing both.... the latter was caused by the former.
Do you think the bailout is in the financial interests of these banks?
In as much as without it or something like it we're going back to the 15th century ... yeah .. I'd say it's in their interest. But they won't profit from it, they'll only fail to be sucked down the drain along with everyone else. Even if the deal goes through we are very likely to see at least a few more insolvencies, and the banks that remain will post near term losses related to the deal. None of them will get rich off it.
If there were another viable method out there that didn't involve the government, then they might be for that, but there isn't. At least nothing that isn't guaranteed to cost the taxpayers a lot more than this.
My point is, they are intentionally tightening their lending policies to better their chances of getting this bailout package.
I disagree with this. A money center bank is not some thrift. First National Bank of Odessa may be able to do what you say but not a moneycenter bank. They have thousands of decision makers who are trying to generate profit and doing what you say simply couldn't be done. It'd be like herding cats.
What you're saying here is like saying that the Saudi's control oil prices. They don't control the price they control their production, but prices are determined by supply and demand. Demand for credit has not fallen off yet, but the supply has, sop the price goes up. It's no conspiracy, it's the way a market works.
Irrational lending policies are what led to an inflated and unrealistic supply. The market will correct itself. The bailout is a stop gap that poses more serious consequences in my opinion.
We are going to suffer with or without the bailout. The bailout is like giving an alcoholic another drink to avoid the DTs or even death. All it will accomplish is increasing the debt of the bartender (the taxpayer) who is already 10 trillion $ in debt.
What i fear is not so much the collapse of the lending infrastructure, as it is the devaluation of the US $ and the exposition that the US Government is an insolvent entity.
There is no reason to believe that the bailout as structured will lead to any more inflation than we would otherwise have. Like you said, (maybe it was you ... it might as well have been) our unfunded liabilities dwarf this. If we're getting inflation (and I agree with you that we eventually are getting some) then one trillion more or less won't matter much. But in a much shorter term, lack of capital will drive economic output to frighteningly low levels. We shouldn't be cavalier about that. Lots of innocent people are going to suffer and some may end up suffering greatly if this doesn't get worked out soon.
If you aren't afraid of the consequences of the lending infrastructure falling apart, then you don't really understand the issue as well as you think. some government is going to buy this debt because they are the only ones with that kind of money. If you try to sell it on one of the 'free market' versions of a plan then it all gets sold to Kuwait and the Saudi Royal Family. If not, it goes to the government. Once the pipes are unplugged we can worry about solving the bigger problem.
bump
I agree with you about the dire consequences of the lending infrastructure failing. It will be terrible, and our entire society will suffer through it. But does it make sense for a lender (the US Treasury) who is so far in debt it could never repay its own debt to bail out a trillion dollar industry? From a realistic and practical viewpoint, the US Government is insolvent and needs to be bailed out itself. The only reason it is still in business is because the world economy has tagged itself to our fiat currency.
Chinese banks aren’t stupid, they know things are getting bad and there is a serious danger in tagging their economies to the US $. No one has broken away yet because the entire world economy knows the chaos that result in the collapse of the US $. This bailout and its price tag has the potential of setting off a chain of events that will cause the implosion of the US $. Just watch. What we need to be doing is making moves to get back to reality and do what we can to alleviate the suffering.
Since 1993, we have gutted our industrial and manufacturing base with NAFTA and other trade treaties. The only sectors of the economy that have produced real wealth have been the medical and IT industries. The service industry only lives to service people and businesses who create real wealth. The infusion of such massive credit artificially created a housing boom and the associated jobs. Those jobs are gone and won’t be coming back unless we prop back up this ridiculous fantasy land system of loaning money out on bad investments. In other words the only thing that has kept us from suffering the loss of manufacturing, industrial and energy production jobs is this irrational infusion of money through negligent lending practices.
Its just a matter of time until no one wants US treasury bonds. China has already threatened to stop loaning to US Banks, how long before they stop buying US treasury bonds? Then how do we pay government employees, including the military, air traffic controllers, power infrastructure and on and on and on. I won’t even bother mentioning the trillions of entitlement spending that people have come to rely on. When the US government fails and the world’s economy becomes decoupled from the US $, the credit crisis will look like a picnic.
Deny reality at your own peril. This bailout is simply a delaying tactic that threatens to expose the more serious threat, the collapse of not only our economy, but our government.
Please refer to Soviet Union for details.
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