Printable View
Yes I have. Spent many a sleepless night wondering why everywhere I go there are Venezuelan engineers. Grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, even in the men's room at Cabela's. They are everywhere. They are almost as omnipresent as Cossack plumbers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry Britton
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hntojuBOgo...SpaceAlien.jpg
Those damn Venezuelan engineers are everywhere. Now they are even infiltrting my pornography.
Funny. I know of at least a dozen personally here in the Tulsa area. What they are seeing here is what Chavez did years ago. I hope history doesn't repeat itself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Losthwy
How about we look at 8 years ago? Clinton had just left office and Bushie was entering.
How lets look at Bushie's leaving and Obama's entering.
The picture changes does it not?
Let me try to answer some of your drivel, Mr. Photog.
Quote:
Originally Posted by YardleyLabs
Just an aside, concerning your statement about adding to the deficit, Jeff,..."which at least makes sense during a recession/depression." Here's a 'slightly' differing view. I'm not sure who to believe???
*** The closer you look, the more you realize that government meddling in the economy is a fraud. Just look at Geithner's new hedge fund, for example. It's such a scam that a Nobel prize winning economist - Joseph Stiglitz - refers to it as "robbery of the American people." The fund is a public/private partnership' that buys toxic assets from the banks. Its goal is to help the banks...and give investors (and the government) a chance to make some money. But it doesn't help the banks if the fund buys assets for what they are worth; the banks merely exchange one asset for another of equal value.
The banks only benefit if the fund buys them for MORE than they are worth. On the other hand, the fund only benefits if it buys them for LESS than they are worth. In practice, the fund will pay more than it should...otherwise the banks won't participate. But the fund is structured so that the losses will not fall on investors and the government equally. Instead, the public will get the losses...while the investors get a profit.
What's a mother to do? It seems so tacky to go against the proposals of the devine administration, but then I have my doubts they hold the values expressed by the founding fathers in the same light as I do.
UB
I'll take your post in pieces:
I said: None of which had much to do with our economic collapse. The mortgage crisis was not brought on by new home buyers -- qualified or not -- or by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
--------------------------------
You replied: I love it when you get all Princetonian! Put your high-priced education to work explaining how Bush should have overcome your yahoos in the congress...or don't your see this as a "good enough" try?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1
My response:
There are several issues at play here:In looking at each of these, it is important to keep timing in mind. Beginning in 2003/2004, and peaking in 2005 and 2006, almost every mortgage in America was refinanced because of interest rate reductions. Until about 2001, Fannie/Freddie had dominated the sub-prime market while private banks and investment banks looked on with envy at the large spreads between the cost of funds and the return on these mortgages despite default rates much higher than were experienced with customary mortgages. Between 2004 and 2006, Fannie/Freddie went from owning 48% of sub-prime mortgages to owning 24%, partly in reaction to the tighter regulatory controls placed on them following accounting problems in 2004-05. Who picked up the balance? Was it community banks responding to the requirements of the CRA? No.
- The political influence of Fannie/Freddie (which was bipartisan)
- The growth of the sub-prime market
- The role of Fannie/Freddie in the sub-prime market
- The actual role of the sub-prime market in the collapse.
Federal Reserve Board data show that:Fannie/Freddie played a role in the secondary market for low income loans. However, these were a tiny fraction of the overall mortgage market and have not played a significant part in the general financial collpase which has been associated more with the mortgage industry as a whole.(source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/53802.html)
- More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
- Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
- Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.
--------------------------------------
I said:
Our current collapse started with the unfunded Bush tax cuts, combined with massive growth in spending, primarily for an unfunded war, and an economic boom that did little or nothing to help the majority of the population.
---------------------------------------------
You replied:
I suspect you were railing against subduing Hussein, like your messiah was doing...and about as loudly eh? Have you told any of the families that were the real losers of 9/11, about your stand against fighting Hussein?
My response:
Not that this is particularly relevant to the discussion of the economy, but yes, I opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning because Iraq had nothing to do with the attack on the US, the war against Iraq was supplied by drawing resources away from the battle in Afghanistan against the Taliban, which had everything to do with the attacks, and the entire invasion appeared from the beginning to have been planned by crackheads. Happily, my father died two days before we invaded Iraq. However, in his honor and consistent with his desires, we served only French wine at his memorial service because the French were right about GWB and his insane plans of war. I spent much of my working career in the shadows of the WTC. I was there when they filmed King Kong. I watched the "Big Ships" sail into the harbor for the Bicentennial from the 56th floor. I had meetings there on a regular basis, and I knew many people working there including members of my own family. I am happy that none of my friends was killed even though several were in the buildings when they were hit. How many people did you know that were there?
------------------------------------
The regulatory breakdown had nothing to do with CRA or, for that matter, mortgages issued prior to 2001. It had everything to do with high risk, unregulated investment instruments used to "spread" risks, unreasonably low interest rates, and a massive current accounts imbalance. In any event, the record on regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is pretty mixed and the Republicans only look good on conservative blogs which pick and choose the few facts they publish to reinvent history.
------------------------------------------
Hmmm, might be a revelation to Fox News that they are only a conservative 'blog'. Guess they were lying eh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1
My response:
See before. Fox is doing what it normally does -- selectively report all the news that fits with their opinions. It is hard to tell the difference between the commentators on Fox and the conservative blog posts that you usually post here without even a pretense of fact checking. The places that needed greater regulation were the private investment banks and mortgage banks. That regulation was uniformly opposed by the administration, which took credit in 2004/2005 for the rapid growth in home ownership by lower income families.
--------------------------------------
I said:
I believe the regulatory failure belongs to both sides, but the massive growth in the deficit belonged to Bush.
Obama is now going to add to the deficit, which at least makes sense during a recession/depression.
--------------------------------
You said:
YOU KNOW THAT TO BE A COMPLETE FALSEHOOD! That only extends the misery. But you and your socialistic believers will continue supporting that bad idea, until this nation goes completely under with no hope of ever getting back to a real America, as was envisioned by those that sacrificed their blood, sweat, and tears to keep this nation one of liberty, freedom, and following the Constitution.
My reply:
I'm not sure what you're talking about. There is no question that GWB and a Republican controlled Congress were primarily responsible for a doubling of our national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. When the Democrats gained control of Congress, the rate of growth actually declined. However, the tax cits and an unfunded war were the causes of the deficit growth. I have posted graphs of the growth several times. The numbers actually came from the Heritage Foundation and the Bush White House. So no, I do not know that to be a complete falsehood. I know it to be a fact. With respect to the "value" of deficits in a period on economic contraction, that has been the argument used consistently by Republicans under Reagan and Bush for passing recurring tax cuts that resulted in massive increases in our deficits.
------------------------------
I said:
However, his current budget plans call for continuing large deficits even after the economy begins to grow at a hoped for 4%. That, if done, would be as stupid as what Bush did and lay the foundation for a further economic reversal a few years later. During times of growth, large deficits are insane. It makes no difference whether they result from tax cuts, spending, or both.
---------------------------------
You replied (?):
And you, along with your minions, will no doubt explain that to him eh? You can do all the braying you want, but your leadership isn't interested in doing anything American. They are too invested in making this nation into a complete socialistic country, despite all the history that's so easily found to show it hasn't ever worked before. But that's not the point is it? You democrats think it wasn't the right people that were in charge that caused it to fail. Trust me, you are so far from having the right people in charge now, my guess is Christ Himself couldn't bail you out.
My reply(?):
I can't think of any appropriate response to hysterical whining with no basis in fact. If I have any minions, I am not aware of them. I express my reservations about Obama's budget proposals openly but have not yet been invited for a meeting in the white house. I am not a socialist (a fact that I've mentioned before), but I am definitely to the left of Attila the Hun, which in your eyes seems to be the same thing.
I share some of Stiglitz's reservations about the manner in which banks will be protected from the toxic assets on their books. Stiglitz assumes, in his analysis (see his Op-Ed piece at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/op...iglitz.html?em) that the only way for the banks to benefit from such a move is to purchase the assets at more than their market value.Quote:
Originally Posted by Uncle Bill
As I understand it, the plan is actually to purchase the "toxic" assets at their market value. What the banks get in return is liquidity where now they have an asset that is unmarketable. Over time, the tax payer may profit since part of the low valuation placed on the assets now is tied to their illiquidity rather than to questions about whether or not they will be repaid over time.
In addition, given the manner in which the assets are structured currently, there is no one in a position to renegotiate loan terms even if those loan terms would provide a total value exceeding the current value of the mortgage. This is producing irrational foreclosures in some cases -- that is, foreclosures that will yield less money than holding onto the loan under revised terms simply because there is no way to handle the renegotiation.
It is scary when I feel much more qualified to run this country, and kick start the economy than our current adminstration!!!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerry
Innovations are what broke the past major recessions. This administration is putting things in motion that will hinder Innovations for years much like Chavez has done down south.
Stalin had economists killed that showed that innovations were the best way to break these downward economic cycles.