Free Republic

In mid 2007 the Bank for International Settlements (The central bank of central banks) released a statement predicting an impending “Great Depression” caused by a credit market implosion. That same year the International Monetary Fund also published warnings of “subprime woes” leading to wider economic strife. I started writing alternative economic analysis only a year earlier in 2006 and I immediately thought it was strange that these massive globalist institutions with far reaching influence on the financial world were suddenly starting to sound a lot like those of us in the liberty movement.This was 16 years ago, so many people...

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission tapped Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive Adam Storch on Friday to serve as the agency's first-ever chief operating officer of the enforcement division. The new hire represents the latest personnel change at the SEC in its effort to improve its operations following its failure to detect Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme. Enforcement Division Director Robert Khuzami created Mr. Storch's position of managing executive as part of the major re-structuring effort he announced earlier this year. Mr. Storch will oversee division operations that include budget, information technology and administrative services. He will also supervise...

[I begin] with the story of a series of Socialist scholars conferences that Barack Obama attended when he lived in New York City between the years 1983 and 1985. And when I finally reconstructed what had gone on at these Socialist conferences that Barack Obama attended, I truly was amazed because what I saw was a kind of map of Barack Obama’s entire subsequent political career. It was at this Socialist conferences in New York in the mid-’80s that Barack Obama encountered the groups, the strategies, and the mentors who would guide him throughout his entire political career. [T]hese Socialist...

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York has announced a guilty plea in a bank fraud and bank bribery scheme. Several banks were defrauded of at least $10 million after a man and his compatriots obtained commercial loans and lines of credit using ...

(Reuters) - Ally Financial Inc, the United States' largest maker of car loans, hopes that people have forgotten the time when "subprime" became a synonym for "disaster." Ally, once known as GMAC Financial Services, is getting ready to go public this year, and is making the case that subprime loans for used car buyers are not about to produce the same results that they did in the housing market a few years ago -- a near-collapse of the financial system. Auto loans performed relatively well during the downturn, and demand for cars is up, so auto lending is one of...

There was a newsflash this morning on Reuters that "Mark to Market is NOT going to be suspended", allegedly sourced from someone at the SEC. MTM was put into place after ENRON due to the amazing abuses on their balance sheet with asset "valuations" in an attempt to prevent re-runs of that debacle. It has been circumvented to a large part by "Level 3" assets, which are in fact marked to model (same thing as non-MTM eh?) So why the furor? Let's say you are a bank and have $1 billion of some bond issue that was stuffed to the...

Credit-rating analysts saw the housing collapse coming four years ago due to their "house of cards" game - but did nothing because of huge profit windfalls. A House panel probing the loose ways of credit-rating agencies that issued seals of approval on junk securities........introduced damning e-mails, cited in a bombshell July SEC report. "Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters," said one Standard & Poor's employee, one of the top credit-ratings agencies at the center of junk mortgage paper. Another e-mail said rating firms created a "monster."

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire. Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family's 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama's national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her -- and perhaps to the campaign. Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a...

While it may look superficially similar to the recent implosions of such investment giants as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman, the takeover and bailout of AIG is quite different, and means that the market is entering the next and even more dangerous phase. What is driving the fall of AIG – and potential government losses that may far, far exceed the $85 billion bailout announced late on September 16th - is not mortgages or real estate (directly), but fears that AIG’s huge, global credit-default swap positions will unravel. The $62 trillion dollar credit derivatives market is 50 times the...

Blocked pipes Oct 2nd 2008 | LONDON AND NEW YORK From The Economist print edition When banks find it hard to borrow, so do the rest of us Illustration by David Simonds ANY good tradesman will tell you the importance of the bits of a house that you cannot see. Never mind the new kitchen: what about the rafters, the wiring and the pipes? So it is with financial markets. The stockmarkets are the most visible: as they soar or swoon, the headline-writers get to work. The money markets, however, are the plumbing of the system. Normally, they function efficiently...

I know people are going to hate me for saying this, but I'm not sorry that foreclosures nearly doubled last month and are increasing every day. I'm not sorry that real-estate prices are creeping down by the glut of desperate "for sale" signs all over Southern California. I'm not sorry that all those developers building lofts downtown and in Hollywood and North Hollywood with no parking might have to eat their investment when they find they can't get half a mil for the 400-square-foot corner of a former sweatshop. I'm not sorry that people who kept taking the "free" home-equity...

Uncovering the roots of the disastrous home mortgage bubble that popped last year will keep economic historians busy for decades. Yet, one factor has so far been largely overlooked: the bipartisan social engineering crusade to drive up the rate of homeownership by handing out more mortgages to minorities. More than a negligible amount of the blame for the mortgage meltdown can be traced back to multiculturalism: government-mandated affirmative-action lending, demographic change, illegal immigration, and the mind-numbing effects of political correctness. The chickens have finally come home to roost. About half of all mortgages for blacks and Hispanics are subprime, versus...

Seems I’ve gotten a ton of correspondence regarding the nations current financial fiasco and where to ’stick the blame’. We may not be good at a ton of things but man can we assign blame like nobodies business. I’m curious to see the reaction to this article and the implications that are clear both party wise, and more specifically candidate wise. Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — The financial crisis of the past year has provided a number of surprising twists and turns, and from Bear Stearns Cos. to American International Group Inc., ambiguity has been a big part of the story....

“Nationalizing Every Bad Mortgage in America Is Not the Answer” Washington, Sep 22 - U.S. Congressman Mike Pence is circulating the following “Dear Colleague” letter among his fellow House Republicans today: Republicans Should Oppose the Bailout Plan “Nationalizing Every Bad Mortgage in America Is Not the Answer” Dear Republican Colleague: Our financial markets are in turmoil and the Administration was right to call for decisive action to prevent further harm to our economy, but nationalizing every bad mortgage in America is not the answer. As Bill Kristol wrote in “A Fine Mess” in today's New York Times: And I acknowledge...

By nationalizing nearly 80% of AIG for $85 billion, the Fed is doing a lot more than simply flushing taxpayer money down the toilet. The greater wrong is allowing the agency that has the power to print money to take control of a private enterprise, especially without the approval of the company’s shareholders. The move represents the largest lurch toward socialism that this country has ever seen, and signals the end of the vibrancy of America’s once vaunted free market economy. Since there is no limit to the amount of money the Fed can create, there is no limit to...

Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend. But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance...

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

The possible collapse of one of world's biggest investment banks could be "catastrophic" and lead to the "implosion" of the banking sector, Sky sources say. British bank Barclays had appeared to be the frontrunner to take over the struggling Lehman Brothers but has pulled out of the bidding, a source close to the deal said. And a consortium led by the Bank of America is reported to have also dropped out. ~ snip ~

...From the current hand-wringing, you'd think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards- at the behest of community groups and "progressive" political forces. In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining"- claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants.... In fact, minority mortgage applications...

All Things Considered, January 30, 2008 · The booming city of Fontana, Calif., is a thick sprawl of closely packed subdivisions. People who couldn't afford a home in Los Angeles or San Diego could buy one here — in San Bernardino County, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. But as housing values tumbled — and subprime mortgages ballooned — Fontana became one of the many epicenters of foreclosures in Southern California. In San Bernardino County last year, more than 7,700 homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure — a 719 percent increase in just one year. Janice Rutherford is a...