Posted on 06/24/2011 5:16:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. -- Winston Churchill
There is history -- a chronicle of human events -- and then there is perceived history. So often, the two are wildly at odds.
In 1963, a popular Democratic president was assassinated by a Marxist named Oswald, who had actually defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the U.S. with a Soviet wife, was an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had attempted to assassinate a right-wing general named Edwin Walker earlier in the year.
Yet those who write history found these facts inconvenient. They created a different history in which the "atmosphere of hate" in the southern city of Dallas, Texas, led to the terrible political violence. In other words, it was political conservatism that led to John F. Kennedy's assassination. This perceived history was recycled as recently as the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. ABC's Christiane Amanpour, interviewing Jean Kennedy Smith, noted that the Kennedy assassination was "eerily relevant" and asked Kennedy to evaluate the "political atmosphere" in the country today.
Starting just a few years after the Kennedy assassination, American liberals began to consider anti-communism a kind of mental disorder. Hostility to communism was akin to racism, sexism and other character flaws. Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" cemented liberal suspicions that Reagan was a dangerous buffoon. Yet starting in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, liberals began to find their anti-anti-communism embarrassing. And so they created a perceived history -- one in which the Cold War was a time of consensus, a time when, as former Sen. Bill Bradley put it, "We knew where we stood on foreign policy."
More recently we've witnessed the creation of new historical narrative about the financial crisis of 2008. The perceived history, eagerly peddled by liberals and Democrats, is that the crash of 2008 was the result of Wall Street greed. It was unregulated capitalism that brought us to the brink of financial meltdown, the Democrats insisted. And they codified their manufactured history in a law, the Dodd-Frank Act, that completely avoided the true problem.
It's both surprising and gratifying, therefore, to report that a great revisionist history has just been published by none other than a New York Times reporter, Gretchen Morgenson, and a financial analyst, Joshua Rosner.
In "Reckless Endangerment," Morgenson and Rosner offer considerable censure for reckless bankers, lax rating agencies, captured regulators and unscrupulous businessmen. But the greatest responsibility for the collapse of the housing market and the near "Armageddon" of the American economy belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to the politicians who created and protected them. With a couple of prominent exceptions, the politicians were Democrats claiming to do good for the poor. Along the way, they enriched themselves and their friends, stuffed their campaign coffers, and resisted all attempts to enforce market discipline. When the inevitable collapse arrived, the entire economy suffered, but no one more than the poor.
Jim Johnson, adviser to Walter Mondale and John Kerry, amassed a personal fortune estimated at $100 million during his nine years as CEO of Fannie Mae. "Under Johnson," Morgenson and Rosner write, "Fannie Mae led the way in encouraging loose lending practices among the banks whose loans the company bought. A Pied Piper of the financial sector, Johnson led both the private and public sectors down a path that led directly to the credit crisis of 2008."
Fannie Mae lied about its profits, intimidated adversaries, bought off members of Congress with lavish contributions, hired (and thereby co-opted) academics, purchased political ads (through its foundation) and stacked congressional hearings with friendly bankers, community activists and advocacy groups (including ACORN). Fannie Mae also hired the friends and relations of key members of Congress (including Rep. Barney Frank's partner).
"Reckless Endangerment" includes the Clinton administration's contribution to the home-ownership catastrophe. Clinton had claimed that dramatically increasing homeownership would boost the economy, instead "in just a few short years, all of the venerable rules governing the relationship between borrower and lender went out the window, starting with ... the requirement that a borrower put down a substantial amount of cash in a property, verify his income, and demonstrate an ability to service his debts."
"Reckless Endangerment" utterly deflates the perceived history of the 2008 crash. Yes, there was greed -- when is there not? But it was government distortions of markets -- not "unregulated capitalism" -- that led the economy to disaster.
American liberals began to consider anti-communism a kind of mental disorder.
They still do note actions.
Good article.
Dimrats follow a similar plan.
Create a crisis, take advantage of that crisis.
The trainwreck of 2008 is just part of their whole cloward piven strategy.
Bush hated the military and urged his generals to get them killed at the fastest rate possible.
All the photo ops and speeches he gave almost on a daily basis were fakes; he gagged whenever he found out that Rove was forcing him to go out and do another one.
Here's another reform Bush proposed back in 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-oversee-freddie-mac-and-fannie-mae.html
LOL, my job is to dump the Koolaid jar. This seems to be re-write Bush history week.
See : #40 and #35
How Bush apologists can deny the obvious is beyond me. It really makes me scared of having another Republican(RINO) in the WH because it's like nothing was learned from it.
Ugh.
“I guess you don’t think Bush stood up for the military?”
Sent them over on a fool’s mission in Iraq, while doing nothing to stop the invasion from the south.
Yes, it was entirely foolish to topple Hussein.
How I wish Saddam was still there shooting at our planes, terrorizing the world with threats of WMD, funding suicide bombers, and killing his people.
Bush was entirely evil for taking him down.
USDA loan, 100% loan and you can ask the seller to pay your 3% of closing costs. $ to buy a home on this program? 0
FHA, 3.5% down but will allow buyer to borrow or accept gifts for that 3.5%. Closing costs are about the same percentage so the seller is normally asked to pay that in addition to the 6% agent commission and lower the sales price. Freddie and Fannie loans are usually these FHA loans. Freddie has now offered to pay the 3.5% closing costs and now is giving a $1200 bonus to selling agents.
VA is now and has always been a 100% loan.
A very small percentage of loans are conventional, 20% down, no mortgage insurance.
30% of home sales right now are cash, now were talking!
From his GWB speech in 2002 it looks like his reform of Freddie and Fannie were getting them to give out bad loans to minorities with bad credit to secure their votes in the next election 2004, it didnt work out too well in 2008 after they lost those homes they couldnt afford.
The Bush administration introduced 15 bills to regulate Fanne Mae and Freddie Mac. All of them never made it out of committee.
You mean the Republican controlled House?? Really? How could Democrats block anything there? You see Republicans blocking any bills when Pelosi was Speaker? You see Pelosi 'blocking' any House bills now? You understand how House rules work?
Apparently Bush got his 'Fannie and Freddie loans for minorities with bad credit' policy through:
GWB 2002 Speech :”We have a problem here in America because fewer than half the Hispanics and African Americans own their own homes. That’s a home ownership gap; a gap that we got to work together to close. And by the end of this decade we’ll increase the number of minority homeowners (future Obama voters ) by 5.5 million families
“ One of the major obstacles to minority home-ownership is financing. Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac (who I will bail out in 2008) have committed to provide more money for lenders, they committed to meet the shortage of capital available for minority home-buyers. Freddie Mac just began 25 initiatives around the country to dismantle barriers (like income requirements) and create better opportunities for home-ownership. One of the programs is designed to help families with bad credit histories to qualify for home ownership loans (by faking their income) . You don’t have to have a lousy home for first time home-buyers. You put your mind to it the first time low income home buyer can have just as nice a house as anyone else (till those adjustable rates go up). “
President Bush Mortgage Speech 2002(Helping those w bad credit buy houses)
The RINO leader Bush had to get those illegals into those new homes, jobs, credit historyor not.
Or you can get raw with these strings. Either way, the violin is sweet yet lethal.
Do it!
Illegals got high-end mortgages---with no job proofs, no proof of income like Americans had to pony up. If they could breathe and write an X, the illegal got the money. But the sly illegals would flip the houses at higher and higher prices over and over to family members---duping the banks for huge amounts every time---til the last illegal absconded leaving the banks (we the taxpayers) holding the bag.
===========================================
BUSH: "Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac (who I will bail out in 2008) have committed to provide more money for lenders, they committed to meet the shortage of capital available for minority home-buyers."
REFERENCE Franklin Raines Letter to Shareholders ---- 2003 Fannie Mae Annual Report
Excerpt ...Ten years ago the typical conforming mortgage required a down payment of 10-20%, and low-down payment mortgages were considered too risky. But then we helped to standardize the 3-5% down payment loan, brought it to global capital markets, and made it available to lenders and communities nationwide. Now low-down payment loans are commonplace. And we just adopted a new variance in our underwriting standards that will make the $500 down payment loan widely available as well...
In 1994, we pledged to provide $1 trillion in capital to ten million underserved families by the end of 2000. Thanks to our housing and industry partners, we met that goal early.
Then in 2000, we launched our American Dream Commitment, a pledge to provide $2 trillion in capital to 18 million underserved families by the year 2010, including $400 billion targeted specifically for minority families (later raised to $700 billion in response to President Bush’s Minority Homeownership Initiative). After four of the strongest years in housing and mortgage finance history, we’ve already surpassed the top-line goals of this commitment. But our work is far from complete.
So in January 2004, we announced our Expanded American Dream Commitment and pledged significant new resources to tackle America’s toughest housing challenges. Our new commitment has three main goals.
First, we will expand access to homeownership for six million first-time home buyers in the next ten years, including 1.8 million minority first-time home buyers.We also will help raise the national minority homeownership rate from 49 percent to 55 percent, with the ultimate goal of closing it entirely.
Second, we will help new and long-term homeowners stay in their homes through a series of initiatives, and commit $15 billion to preserve affordable rental housing and $1.5 billion to support the revitalization of public housing communities.
Third, we will increase the supply of affordable housing and support community development activities in at least 1,000 neighborhoods across the country through our American Communities Fund, and through targeted investments like Low-Income Housing Tax Credits that help finance affordable rental housing.
It is because of initiatives like our Trillion Dollar Commitment and our American Dream Commitment that we have exceeded our HUD affordable housing goals for ten consecutive years.
"Hey Al, could you please help Weiner put it back in his pants til he gets home."
Yep, Weiner was a gift to us. Too bad they finally got him to leave. The Democrats, even liberal/progessives were split and couldnt agree on what he should do arguing with one another (which is what we want) about him. But Ma-Ma Pelosi knew what to do, dont lie to Ma-Ma Pelosi (if a Democrat) getting in the way of her agenda or you get the horses head in your bed.
I should have emailed him and told him to stand 'firm'.
” “Hey Al, could you please help Weiner put it back in his pants til he gets home.” “
Sharpton: “ Puts it back? I’ze about ta whips mine out!
BTTT
And Bush made no attempt to communicate with voters and get them to put pressure on the dems. Says to me he had little respect for the people who elected him to office.
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