Replies

"You were telling freepers THEY HAD to 'vote McCain' or they were idiots..."

If that's how you choose to paraphrase what I cut-and-pasted above, there's nothing I can do about it. It's a misrepresentation. I did say it was idiotic to vote third-party or not vote at all, given the stakes. I clearly wasn't upholding McCain as a great candidate for whom any Freeper should be enthusiastic. Can we at least agree I was advocating holding-one's-nose and voting for McCain? I thought I was pretty clear on that, and I would not modify that advice today.

"...but you also told them that TARP was necessary, contrary to your denial above! Before you deny it again, remember your posts are still here."

Sure they are. Go read them. And consider them together with the background and reasoning I provided in those posts. Such as: Ports were jammed with ships that could not offload goods for lack of credit instruments. Lenders could not cut loans because the credit market was simply frozen. The root cause was the Community Reinvestment Act and the trillions of bad mortgages that politicians had strong-armed banks into making to unqualified borrowers, including millions of illegal aliens. This bought them votes. Meanwhile, the mark-to-market provision of Sarbanes-Oxley put financial institutions at risk of thunderclap technical default if the real-estate market softened, which it inevitably did. Meanwhile, the brilliant paper-folders on Wall Street had taken those bogus mortgages and created new kinds of derivative securities out of them and sold them worldwide. And so, on top of the thrombosis in the credit markets, the global credit derivative pyramid was instantly cavitated, and it was about to topple. We could let it, at the cost of civilization, or we could print enough paper to spackle over the holes in the pyramid and maybe stabilize things. Nouriel Roubini called this "socializing the defaults" and he's very correct in that. Wholly distasteful.

Although I'm not a McCain fan, I must admit: One of the few legislators who had tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from their abuses of the CRA through public statements and actual legislation was John McCain. And he and I came to the same conclusion: the TARP program, like the S&L bailouts of the '80s, was the best of a sorry menu of choices. It should never have come to that. And it should never have been extended beyond restoring liquidity to the financial markets; in particular it is an abomination that the Federal Government, together with the unions, now owns a controlling share of GM and Chrysler, with their bondholders summarily discarded. And now, more than a year later, CRA--the root of it all--is still with us. Barney Frank wants to extend and expand it. With majorities in the Senate and House and a Marxist in the White House, he'll get his wish. And so I ask again: how's that hope and change working out, eh? McCain in the White House would have been terrible. But better than Obama.

RE “ McCain in the White House would have been terrible. But better than Obama.”

You are wrong about McCain (that we would be better off if he was elected, he would be a disaster) , wrong that those who voted for Ron Paul in November 2008 were idiots , wrong about TARP (you being for it, me against), wrong about the main reason for the economic crash( being CRA) and wrong about GW Bush being a hero in the housing boom bust disaster by opposing CRA.

So don't lecture me about the constitution!

RE :”Although I'm not a McCain fan, I must admit: (McCain was) One of the few legislators who had tried to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from their abuses of the CRA through public statements and actual legislation was John McCain. And he and I (McCain) came to the same conclusion: the TARP program, like the S&L bailouts of the ‘80s, was the best of a sorry menu of choices ”

Yep, McCain and TARP, our Saviour's... Now lecture me about the constitution...

By the way, you lectured Freepers to ‘vote McCain’ or they are idiots. But you say you are no fan of his. You see any problems with that?