Free Republic

Take the hyper-inflated mortgages, bundle them up as securities, get the ratings agencies to call dogturd lobster bisque, sell them into the international bond market to investors at all levels (many of whom would never be allowed to invest at the actual risk they actually were, see, ratings agencies above), and then get the Fed to sign off on outrageous leverage limits so it is possible to make more money than Croesus until the ponzi scam winds out. And when the hole opens up and begins swallowing banks, use every manner of backdoor and front-door deal from Washington, putting a gun to the head of the larger economy and claiming that without a payout, the nations gets it.

Free markets bought off regulators, wrote preferential deals, bought influence, drafted bad legislation, and otherwise scammed the system for all it was worth, and those people are still at it. There is plenty of blame to be placed at the government for all their complicity, but a market that runs on ponzi finance has plenty of cash to grease the wheels before the thing runs off the tracks. Free markets must have a real and enforced rule of law, and a meaningful regulatory apparatus or they will quickly become a free-for-all.

No signatures, nothing binding, no meaningful transparency, and no enforcement; this was nothing more than a PR position so that the leaders could crow that they did something, when, in fact, they could not agree on much of anything. This was a deal that could have been done by all concerned while watching football in an easy chair; Copenhagen was a farce, and now the MSM is trying to score this farce so they can sell it on stage.

You don’t have a 13% mortgage and a high monthly if you had a real down payment and solid credit. I just bailed out another loser.

How do you “modify” someone 40 or 50% underwater? The banks are already toast, that modification would be their end. And why does the modification need to be done? If they had a 30 year with money down, they could afford payments, right? How many of these are ALT A or Option Arm loans with Heloc loans on top? How many of these people pulled thousands out of their ATM/House to pay for their stuff. The people who took these loans are liars and fools, and the banks are predatory villains who knew these suckers would default eventually—and then sold those timebombs as AAA investments to the entire world. Now the pigmen, the realtors, the suckers, and the Feds all want to prop that housing bubble up with my taxes so they can prevent the biggest fail in US history. When housing goes back to x3 (or less) of gross yearly income, the houses will sell, and the bottom will begin.

He can still drink out of one side of his mouth, and he can still take my hard earned paycheck with his one good hand.

Ah, that was the university experience I recall quite vividly; it was a daily nuthouse of misplaced sentimentality, bad ideas, childishness, and race-class-gender, race-class-gender, race-class-gender. All those idiots running around pretending to be oppressed between beer bongs, basketball games, and 4 hour workdays. Sigh.

The author has is exactly right, especially the part about having to read the most odious and indefensible books to become a “better teacher.” Remember, a whole bunch of professors of education (or some equally specious degree)supposedly read those books thoroughly and then actually recommended them as essential texts to give to other teachers as a criteria for moving along the academic ladder.

No, you are exactly correct. The banks want it both ways, they liked the market when it overvalued their holdings so they could then leverage out of their minds, and now they want nothing to do with the market while it discounts their crappy, overvalued holdings now.

The Level 3 lie that is going on is a way for the banks to continue to BS about the value of something. The market has a value for their “assets” and they don’t like the answer. Steve Forbes should know better.

Basically, powerful people made bazillions on driving up real estate values through every form of fraud imaginable. Now they have been called on it: “If it’s so valuable, why don’t you sell it and raise cash?”

“We can’t in a down market,” is the reply, so we need to turn to Washington to change the rules so we can wait out this mess. Eat $#$% and die, the house is worth what smart money is willing to pay for it, %$%$%#&@%, no more, no less.

I'm feverishly working on presenting all the comparative contributions to the well-being of society from the Palestinians, I'll get back with you that...

It looks like a who’s who list of wealthy donors to the Democrat Party.

So will we continue to allow Muslims from around the world to attend our universities and learn how to construct advanced weaponry?

Anyone honestly have a problem with doing anything we need to in order to extract information from this terrorist witch?

Right answer, like him or not, he does not have any meaningful experience running anything to be president.

OK, as a longtime cyclist, I see both points of view.

Bikes are NOT to ride on sidewalks, those are for pedestrians. Bikes ride WITH the flow of traffic at the edge of the road or on a bike lane. Cyclists should obey traffic laws as if they were any other vehicle. Cyclists who ride like idiots all over should be corrected by cyclists who obey the laws; police should also ticket idiot bikers. Here in LA, the biggest problem is all the third-world bicyclists riding everywhere and in every direction.

That said, I have had many confrontations with autos, mainly from terrible, inattentive drivers, and I fully understand the impulse to chase down a car and throw a water bottle at the driver. I have had many fistfights with motorists right out in the street because they think it amusing to throw things at me or see how close they can ride past me. Considering how exposed you are on a bike, when a car nearly kills you, the adrenaline takes over and I don’t hesitate to chase down some idiot and give them an earful.

I suspect that radical Islam is beginning to realize that they will have much greater success in attaining their aims by using western courts, institutions, and the endless credulity of the self-hating left, than through outright violence at this time. Islam needs to repackage itself as a religion of peace for a while, at least until it is in a better position to impose Islamic culture on the infidels--then the violence will resume.

The enemy of Israel is on the left, and is at the worst on campuses in the US and Europe. Given the opportunity, the American and European intelligensia will insist on policies that are certain to get Israeli Jews killed on a vast scale.

As long as she continues to look like Iggy Pop, I think he’ll stick to the cookies.

When a man who is so obviously guilty games the system for decades it leads to an increasing contempt for the rule of law; and contributes like nothing else to the lure of ignoring the judicial system altogether and reverting to a much older, more privative and less reliable form of punitive retribution.

Gary Wills and Michael Lind come to mind as conservatives who defected; Lind, however, still wrote a great book defending the US war in Vietnam. Lind is more of a old-style liberal, not a member of the New Left. Wills is another creature altogether.

Welcome aboard, Mr. Mamet.

Actually, no, Saddam was an opportunist, and a traditional one. He used religious rhetoric extensively when it suited him, and he was well aware of the religious fervor of the region. Saddam and AQ were natural allies if only in their united hatred of the US and Israel; they may not have liked one another, but they complimented each other’s attempts to undermine the West. Saddam supported many terrorist groups who were fanatically religious. Your assertion is false; Saddam’s secularism never prevented him from utilizing religious terrorists to further his ends.

Actually, the AQ presence has been under significant attack by those very elements you mention for some time, and are under danger of being driven out of Iraq quite soon. Maybe you haven’t been following progress in Iraq lately (probably because it’s not in your interest to do so), but the Sunnis have been increasingly helpful in assisting the “occupiers” in rooting our AQ (the Kurds have been helping since the onset, and the Shiites are just as likely to be the target of AQ)

I’ll let the “Bush lied” part walk; it’s too stupid (and cliche) to redress at any real length; when you can express yourself in complex sentiments, I’ll reply.