Posted on 10/08/2008 7:08:00 PM PDT by markomalley
What is the root cause of the sub-prime crisis shaking the global economy? We need to know so we don’t allow it to screw up our economy even worse.
Many point to dishonesty and poor judgment on Wall Street. There was plenty of that leading up to the near-trillion dollar bailout, and even now the stock market is busily disciplining stupid, dishonest companies.
Others point to the many people who falsified loan applications to get mortgages beyond their means. That too played a role.
But dishonesty and poor judgment are as old as Adam and Eve. Something more was at work in the present crisis, a crisis of unprecedented scope. Why didn’t profit-minded loan companies run thorough credit checks? Why did they keep pumping out low interest loans to high risk borrowers, ignoring the risks?
It’s as if somebody spiked the financial system’s punch bowl with stupid juice, driving normally prudent financiers to dash, en masse, over the cliff.
It seems that way because it is that way. The brewers of the stupid juice were largely (if not exclusively) politicians in Washington who sought to redistribute wealth from the rich and middle class to poor people with bad credit. These politicians fostered various laws and institutions that directed, cajoled and legally bullied mortgage companies to extend big loans to people with little credit.
A case in point is a group called ACORN—Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Stanley Kurtz explains in an Oct. 7 essay at National Review Online:
“You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despair: You can still buy a house.” So began an April 1995 article in the Chicago Sun-Times that went on to direct prospective home-buyers fitting this profile to a group of far-left “community organizers” called ACORN, for assistance. In retrospect, of course, encouraging customers like this to buy homes seems little short of madness.
… At the time, however, that 1995 Chicago newspaper article represented something of a triumph for Barack Obama. That same year, as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.
What drove Obama and other Democrats to block reform efforts? Some point to a huge infusion of lobbying money. Fannie and Freddie contributed enormous sums to Obama and other Democrats while McCain, an influential veteran senator, was getting bread crumbs from these institutions. Clearly the skilled lobbyists at these two giant mortgage companies directed their money where they thought it would most benefit them.
There’s a less cynical explanation. Whatever influence the lobbying money might have had, it took a back seat to an ideological motivation. Obama, Pelosi, Frank and other far left Washington Democrats have long believed that giving Washington more and more power to redistribute wealth is the way to make America a better place.
The curious thing is how uninterested these politicians are in the results of their ongoing experiments in social and economic engineering. They are unfazed by the latest results in the credit markets. They are unfazed by the fact that states with the highest taxes on businesses (such as Michigan) have lost jobs and seen worker salaries decline while states with low taxes on business (such as Arizona) have been creating jobs and raising average worker salaries. They are unfazed, moreover, by the results of similar experiments abroad.
In the previous century, many European democracies experimented aggressively with centralized planning and wealth redistribution, and the results are in. Those with high taxes and heavy labor regulations generally experienced sluggish economic growth and high unemployment. Countries like Ireland and Estonia, who now have lower, flatter taxes and less regulation on their labor markets, are booming, with both workers and businesses moving ahead. Those in Washington who care about the poor, who care about workers, should take note.
Fannie, Freddie, Obama’s friends and Greed. Any more questions?
Long story short? Fractional-reserve banking and the Federal Reserve System. So long as the money supply is able to be inflated, it will be inflated, and the new money will find its way into speculative bubbles, which will eventually pop.
Independent, non-partisan, investigator time. . . with prosecution capability. Now.
An ACORN Falls from the Tree: A congressional outrage
Ken Blackwell, September 29, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=N2Y5MTc0ZTAyMmE1Mjk3NGE3OWRiY2FkMjZlN2YxYzc=
_________________________________________________________
Inside Obama’s Acorn:
By their fruits ye shall know them
Stanley Kurtz, May 29, 2008
"What if Barack Obama’s most important radical connection has been hiding in plain sight all along? Obama has had an intimate and long-term association with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), the largest radical group in America. If I told you Obama had close ties with MoveOn.org or Code Pink, you’d know what I was talking about. Acorn is at least as radical as these better-known groups, arguably more so. Yet because Acorn works locally, in carefully selected urban areas, its national profile is lower. Acorn likes it that way. And so, I’d wager, does Barack Obama."
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI
_________________________________________________________
2004 Video: Democrats Defend Fannie/Freddie from Regulation:
"We've been through nearly a dozen hearings where frankly we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr. Chairman we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and in particular at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines."-Rep. Maxine Waters, 2004
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL36nwCSYUM
_________________________________________________________
History of Fannie Mae scandal
Associated Press, December 7, 2006
"Fannie Mae announces its long-awaited restatement, erasing $6.3 billion in profit from 2001 through June 30, 2004."
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/12/07/history_of_fannie_mae_scandal/?page=1
_________________________________________________________
Bailout Politics: The Congressional Dems who enabled this crisis are now being trusted to fix it?
Thomas Sowell, September 30, 2008
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWE3OWU3OTExYzNlNTUzMzY2YmJmOWZjMzcwN2M1NjU=
IMHO, Barney (is that his real name) Frank and Chris Dodd both need to be in jail because of their part in causing this crisis....... GW Bush and Hank Paulson are not far below on that list.........
Chris Dodd should have been in jail years ago for his major role in the Clinton Chinagate scandal.
Hank Paulsen is also a Democrat and this is the burning of the Reichstag.
Informative article. Thanks.
Subprimes and other advanced types of mortages (socialist inspired) plus the new credit derivatives of the Fed Reserve System developed by Paulson during his years at GSachs were combined to allow otherwise illegal bank loans beyond the reserve capacities of the banks. This is the cause of the problem. THe Fed Reserve invented a way for banks to profit off illegal actitvities in a ‘legal’ way. Because credit default swaps insured the risks of derivative instruments off bank ledgers, the risk of the liabilitites was believed to protect banks from liabililty and exposure. WRONG!!. The results were tranches of credit derivatives, insured by more derivatives (credit default swaps) designed to insure the other credit derivatives. All derivatives were and are unregulated. The credit derivatitve swaps, the ‘insurance’ counter parties, were brought into settlement on Mon Oct 6 for Fannie and Freddie, on OCt 10 for Lehman, and on Oct 23 for Wachovia. THe suspicion is that the losses will far exceed the capital of the Credit Default Swaps in huge unpredictable numbers suspected of being in the hundreds of billions and possibly trillions (the CDS contracts are estimated at $50 to %60 trillion. I do not thing anyone has the money. It is this ‘shadow’ banking system that created the monstrous bubble now collapsing at light speed. In short, fraudulent mortgages plus off the bank sheet unregulated tranches of derivatives, impossibly leveraged (Ponzi, anyone?) insured by imaginary insurance entities (CDSs of Lehman and AIG for example) have brought us here. Those responsible are at high level. Charges and anger are centered currently only at those who practiced under the fraudulelt rule-tools given them.
Here’s my conspiracy theory:
The Democrats without shame or conscience have steered us (purposely, I believe) towards a manufactured economic crisis for political gain, and as an ideological mechanism to nationalize the financial structure of the U.S. The Republicans in Congress, being “moderate” (i.e. feckless) didn’t have the guts to stand up to them and their Media organs. The few Conservatives left in Congress couldn’t convince their linguini-spined peers to stand up against the assault despite their repeated warnings. The Media created an alternate reality narrative to protect this economic coup, then their Trojan Horse Treasury Secretary 6 weeks before the election as McCain is surging orchestrates an economic panic and convinces an emasculated center-left lame duck president that his legacy will be a second Great Depression if he doesn’t succumb to his blackmail.
The Obama-Bush Wall St. Bailout Bill will have two immediate outcomes: 1. It will set the stage for der Fuehrer Obama to socialize the entire economy of the U.S., and 2. It will do nothing to ease the self-inflicted “credit crisis” but will throw another $850 billion after the previous $900 billion already yacked this year that had no effect.
All of this is foreshadowing the Obama economy that started after the election of ‘06. At that time, businesses and productive citizens (i.e. taxpayers) started preparing for the coming oppressive regulation and high taxation; hence, the reason a vibrant economy had the breaks put on by the Democrats and Media.
The markets are down not because of the Obama-Bush $850 billion bailout, which we were told should have buoyed markets - I didn’t believe it, but the markets knew it was inevitable and factored it in before last Friday; and not because of the manufactured “credit crisis” - and it was manufactured as an “October Surprise” by the Dems along with Paulson, markets saw it coming months ago and factored it in; and not because the rate cut was too small - a intrameeting 50 basis point cut was expected and already factored in yesterday. The real reason is because the markets are convinced that Obama is going to win, and they are preparing for a prolonged economic catastrophe - “The Democrat Effect” - which started in Nov. ‘06 after the election. The beginning was the passage of the increased minimum wage, refusal to make permanent the tiny tax rate cuts of 2001-03, then the continue ignoring of Fannie and Freddie despite repeated government and financial sector warnings.
FYI: Why did the Dems allow the original 3-page bailout fail? On purpose in order to piggy back onto it many socialist precepts, in particular Patrick Kennedy’s failed Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act (HR 1424) from March of 2007!
Of course, you’d have to believe that Democrats are so power hungry to collapse our economy in order to win an election. Personally, I don’t think that is a stretch at all. I would have found it harder to believe that they tried to head it off.
Since FDR our governmental/fincial system has been based on the growth at the bottom. Nixon disconnected the dollar from
any basis other than gross national product.
Just like any other pyramid scheme things go smoothly so long as more producers are added at the bottom. IMHO two things broke the chain reaction. First demand fell off as the population of first time home buyers dropped. Smaller families came into the norm about 30 years ago due to abortions and birth control. Ironic how what goes around, comes around.
The second factor was the rise in oil/food cost brought about by the current congress. Threatening windfall taxes on oil companies, and encouraging production from corn had the double bang effect. Unfortunately, paying for food, and putting gas in the car to get to work, came before
paying the mortgage.
IMHO, GW waited too long to take a position on not extending the drilling ban. Once he did the price of oil dropped. But it was too late.
If we can hammer home the connection of high oil/food prices to the mortgage meltdown, we might get some traction.
In other words while BHO is campaigning against GW, we should be campaigning against the current Dem congress.
This article is exactly backwards.
This whole mess wasn’t designed to take from the rich and give to the poor (even though it used that ‘guise’).
This is a major power grab by major bankers and the Fed to take from the poor and give to the rich.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.