Roger Perry's Bush Support Comparison

[caryalsobrook]

Buzz and Yardley, I'm not going to quote either of you and don't even argue that the republicans certainly shared in the blame. If either side knew about the housing problem, they did not realize the seriousness of it because any idiot would have fought to correct the problem had they known. Yardley likes to give statistics but his sstatement was galringly lacking of them. let me give some according to the Census bureau. Housing ownership 1980-64.4% 1990-64.2% 2000-66.2% 2009-67.4% down for 5 straight years from a highof 69.0% in 2004. while these are 10 year increments, it appears to me that the rise was fairl steady from 1990 2009. During that period both the democrats and the republicans have had control of both houses and both have had control of the presidency. we all can point fingers but these are the facts and you can make your own conclusions.
Now some facts about the housing bubble. If you look at Fannie Mae and Freddy Mack as quasi governmental agencies(the congress set them up), and not finantial institutions which is the way I look at them, Fannie Mae as of 2008 held about 80% of ALL home mortages. They set the criteria for loan acceptance and mortgage orriginators were required to meet those standards if Fannie Mae were to purchase them. Granted there was abuse and fraud but I contend that it was Fannie's responsibility to see that the loans they purchased met those criteria. It was THEIR JOB. All those criteriayou mention-0% down interest only for the first years were in fact those standards that Fannie had as their criteria. don't you believe that if Fannie had 80% of the business then the other 20% had to go along with their criteria in order to compete?? Now for the other 20%. While it caused problems for some of them, the loans in and of themselves were not the major problem(they were the core of the problem), those things called "credit default swaps" were the massive problem. It has been estimated that there were 55 trillion $ of these things outstanding most of which were owned by finantion institutions and pension funds. Forclosure of homes would trigger these instruments causing finantion destruction. Credit default swapswere not regulated and to my knowlege have never been regulated. Iwould challenge Yardley's statement that Bush deregulated them. In fact, as I understand it, they still are not regulated even though the congress and the President signed a 2000 page + finantial bill. In fact there is no regulation in the bill of Fannie Mae even though they now have aproxomately 90% of the home mortgage business and continue to receive tens of billions of dollars to this day due to their continued insolvency.

the very core of the housing bubble, inadaquately secured mortgages, something I think that we agree on, continues to this day. While you can make a case to blame either party of blame both for that matter, how do you make a case that now the party in charge chooses a policy that ignores the problem. You can find realestate signs glaringly advertising 0% down this very day and without a doubt Fannie Mae is buying them. Do you really believe that the problem will go away continueing the same policies??

Instead of dealing withthe problem, we have a 2000 page plus finantial bill that deals with everything but the problem. A lot of people wuold not line my bill but at least I can advocate it in ONE SENTENCE. 20% DOWN NO MARE THAN A 15 YEAR MORTGAGE NO MORE THAN 25% OF YOUR TAKEHOME PAY AS MORTGAGE PAYMENT. I guarentee you there would be no future housing bubble. Now I guess that plan will bring out the crying towels, so be it.

[Buzz]

While it caused problems for some of them, the loans in and of themselves were not the major problem(they were the core of the problem), those things called "credit default swaps" were the massive problem. It has been estimated that there were 55 trillion $ of these things outstanding most of which were owned by finantion institutions and pension funds. Forclosure of homes would trigger these instruments causing finantion destruction. Credit default swapswere not regulated and to my knowlege have never been regulated.

the very core of the housing bubble, inadaquately secured mortgages, something I think that we agree on, continues to this day. While you can make a case to blame either party of blame both for that matter, how do you make a case that now the party in charge chooses a policy that ignores the problem. You can find realestate signs glaringly advertising 0% down this very day and without a doubt Fannie Mae is buying them. Do you really believe that the problem will go away continueing the same policies??

Instead of dealing withthe problem, we have a 2000 page plus finantial bill that deals with everything but the problem. A lot of people wuold not line my bill but at least I can advocate it in ONE SENTENCE. 20% DOWN NO MARE THAN A 15 YEAR MORTGAGE NO MORE THAN 25% OF YOUR TAKEHOME PAY AS MORTGAGE PAYMENT. I guarentee you there would be no future housing bubble. Now I guess that plan will bring out the crying towels, so be it.

I will not argue one bit with you on the cause.

Also, I am not familiar enough with the reg bill to discuss that. I thought that they were at least going to force derivatives to be sold on an exchange instead of over the counter, so there would at least be some record of what's out there.

Can't argue with you on mortgage requirements either. Although I did take out a 30 year, I put down 30% on my current house and kept the payment to 14% of my take home. I wouldn't want it to be higher than that, but then I like to be able to afford my addiction to running dogs.

[caryalsobrook]

So Buzz you would agree that if what went on during the bush presidencies aand during the clinton presidency were at least poor policy if not ignorant then the policy today has to be that of an ????.

[Eric Johnson]

Well....you seem to be confusing the formal power of the presidential position with the power of individual Presidents. We've had very little change in the actual power and authority of the presidency in the last 100 years. Nevertheless, the presidency and the legislative branches and risen and fallen in pretty much a zero-sum game. The powers granted to the office remain the same. What is different is the "personality" of the office-holder.

Eric

[ducknwork]

Bush's presidency started in 2001. Do you expect me to remember everything during his presidency from 9 years ago? No, but if he bothers you that bad, you should be able to remember a few things other than WMD's and whatever other junk you repeatedly bring up. Be real. Even though these were not my own words they happened never the less. You and the rest of the right wingers started on Obama before he even took over as President and continue on a day to day basis.Because we disagreed with his ideals and the things that he ran on. We didn't have to wait until he did the things he said he was going to do to be unhappy about it. There is no way anyone could go back day to day when Bush took over office of the presidency without the use of Google.

You asked me to bring up the things that Bush did. He was in office for 8 years and made alot of decisions along with his Congress. Sorry you do not have the time to reply to them all.

I responded to all of the things, just not specifically. Until you spend the time to come up with your own ideas, I will not spend hours responding to what took you 5 minutes. It's not respectful and it is not fair. It seems that you can't think for yourself, but I would like for you to prove me wrong on that statement.

[cycler]

Jeff, if I am not mistaken, the first warning of the Credit Derivative Market, came during the time of the Clinton Administration. I don't remember the woman's name, but, she was a government employee tasked to monitor/watch/regulate, the commodities market in Chicago. There is a very good episode of Frontline (PBS), which covers the timeline and surprisingly enough, some of the people who coerced this woman to downplay the potential risks, are all too familiar names. Greenspaun, Geithner, and so on. Point of this post? The difference between Republicans and Democrats? Republicans s**k and Democrats b**w. And CF#2 is doing well.

[troy schwab]

What makes it drivel is that it equates control of Congress with control of the United States government. We have three branches of government and all have a hand in what happens along with such quasi-public entities such as the Federal Reserve. The single most powerful voice in all of that is the President's, but his powers remain constrained by the others. Throughout most of our history, control has been split among the institutions of government -- Republicans in the White House and Democrats controlling one or more branches of Congress, or the reverse. That has never changed the fact that there are certain arenas in which Presidents have tended to be more powerful than Congress - including foreign affairs, the economy, and the actual administration of the departments of government. In other, including appropriations, Congress has tended to be more dominant.

Bush had stronger control over more branches of government for a longer time than almost any other President in our history. He also systematically used the war on terror (one of the less threatening wars in our history) to help in asserting his philosophy of the Unitary Executive which greatly expanded the ability of the President to operate while ignoring the wishes of Congress and the decisions of the Courts.

Clearly, with Democratic victories in the 2006 elections, Bush came under increasing pressure to compromise. However, that did little to mitigate the activities of his presidency. By the time the Democrats assumed majority control, the collapse of our economy was set in stone. Th balloon in housing had reached its peak and the seams were already beginning to tear. No action of Congress made the situation worse. Rather, Congress was actually a factor in taking the acions that ultimately avoided an even greater disaster.

To pretend that the housing bubble popped because Democrats took over is simply stupid. To pretend that Bush was somehow a champion against speculative financial excess in housing or in other parts of the market is to ignore the fact that they claimed credit repeatedly for the extension of what they dubbed the "ownership economy" and took the lead in the type of deregulation that made the excesses of AID and the rest of the credit derivative market possible. To even think that Democrats were the source of the deficits run up under Bush is to ignore the fact that deficits began to shrink as soon as the change in control happened.

Yardley,
If this is the best argument of "drivel" you can offer, then I say your full of crap. Thanks for the history lesson, but unfortunately, you were unable to dismiss any of the facts. I never said I blamed the democrats for this mess, but I will say it was certainly not Bush's fault. He had repeatedly reminded congress of the problem, and they chose to do nothing. Period.

[Julie R.]

If we are lobbing blame around for the housing bubble burst, then bursting the bubble of Bush Blame is long overdue. Let's take a look at when the government, or more specifically the Exective rather than the legislative branch, became heavily involved in the lending business. Anyone else remember? It was long before Bush took office. And why did it end so badly? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even into the early 1990s, weren't the juggernauts they'd later become.

The groundwork for this was actually laid back in 1977 when Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act, which pushed Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities. But Clinton supercharged the process. After entering office in 1993, he extensively rewrote Fannie's and Freddie's rules.

In so doing, he turned the two quasi-private, mortgage-funding firms into a semi-nationalized monopoly that dispensed cash to markets, made loans to large Democratic voting blocs and handed favors, jobs and money to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and the Fannie-Freddie collapse. And, despite warnings of trouble at Fannie and Freddie, in 1994 Clinton unveiled his National Homeownership Strategy, which broadened the CRA in ways Congress never intended.

To save Yardley the trouble of googling/researching, I tried to include links for quotes. Most of the above is firmly imprinted in memory as in addition to being a licensed Realtor I was a business reporter for a DC area publication during the above time period. Below, from a 1993 New York Times article:

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. Note: the program including sanctions for not meeting quotas, indeed went nationwide the following year

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

emphasis mine, and remember good ole Franklin? He became a top advisor to the current administration. The above excerpt as well as the next one were all enabled by a heretofore little-known piece of legislation called the Community Reinvestment Act which became a club used to force banks to make loans to minorities in decaying inner city areas, regardless of their creditworthiness or the property appraisal, in the name of racial justice. Here's an example of the CRA at work (note for Yardley et all, excerpted from Ebony magazine 1993 article, so not exactly right-wing op ed):

Following a landmark lending discrimination settlement, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno recently issued a stern warning to all banks which practice red-lining--you're breaking the law and face possible litigation.

Reno's warning came on the heels of a recent settlement of an unprecedented lending-bias case against Chevy Chase Federal Savings Bank, a suburban Washington, D.C., bank that was accused of bias in marketing services to predominantly Black and minority areas.

It was revealed that until recently, Chevy Chase had no branches located in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

As part of the settlement, Chevy Chase and its B.F. Saul Mortgage unit agreed to invest $11 million in neighborhoods that the Justice Department claims they refused to serve.

USA Today reported that from 1976 to 1992 that Chevy Chase underwrote 97 percent of its loans in predominantly White areas.

The bank denied the charges of bias, but did agree to make $140 million in subsidized or below-marketrate mortgage loans to neighborhoods it is accused of discriminating against.

U.S. Attorney Eric Holder added the settlement is also unique because the cash will be funneled directly to the community rather than to the government.

Note another familiar name in connection with the CRA? Current top Legal Eagle on the Presidential team engineered policies that led to the housing collapse? Eeeeek! Say it aint so! Now let's take a closer look at some of the policies put in place by him and another champion of uber-liberal causes, Janet Reno, that helped fuel the exponential increase in high risk mortgage loans, during the middle 1990s (Clinton years).

QUIETLY, behind the scenes, the Clinton Administration is preparing for the biggest regulatory crackdown of recent years. Attorney General Janet Reno is linking up with banking regulators and with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to end the supposed epidemic of discrimination against minorities in making home loans. The implications for society at large are ominous.

Here, as in affirmative-action efforts in hiring, college admissions, and the drawing of voting districts, the Washington establishment is obsessed with "disparate impact," which it equates with racism. In the mortgage-lending area, there is ample evidence of disparate impact to feed this obsession. Data collected by the Federal Government reveal that in 1992, while 16 per cent of white applicants for mortgage loans were rejected, 36 per cent of black applicants were rejected.

But does disparate impact indicate racism? According to Lawrence Lindsey, the Federal Reserve governor who oversees the collection of mortgage lending data, even the celebrated Boston Fed study that inspired this crusade found that factors other than race--such as one's credit record and whether one has sufficient income to meet the payments--are enough to account for nearly all the difference in rejection rates.

Any licensed Realtor (TM) will remember the landmark case that actually pre-dated the Clinton Administration---the case against the Decatur Federal Savings & Loan of Atlanta, commonly used as a case study in continuing education requirements. That case was referred to Justice during the Bush I Administration, and, under the threat of litigation, Decatur Federal agreed to a draconian settlement that resonated amongst mortgage lenders for the next decade. It mandated Maoist-style sensitivity training for Decatur's loan officers and established quotas with bonuses for those who brought in minority loans.

Long before the housing bubble burst, the low- and no-down-payment policy and the pressure on banks to make CRA-related loans led to foreclosures. Though bankers commonly acted as cheerleaders for the CRA for fear of being branded as racist if they did not, the CEO of one midsize bank grumbled in 2000 that 20 percent of his institution's CRA-related mortgages, which required only $500 down payments, were delinquent in their very first year, and probably 7 percent will end in foreclosure. "The problem with CRA," said an executive with a major national financial-services firm, "is that banks will simply throw money at things because they want that CRA rating." From the banks' point of view, CRA lending is simply a price of doing business—even if some of the mortgages must be written off.

[Alex]

Here ya go, big boy. You asked the question. We all know what it is. Now give us specific things that Bush did for us to give you an opinion of.

There, I did the hard work for you. Since Bush 'made decisions every day' like you said, it should be easy for you to list the good and bad things that he did for us. I promise, we'll answer you.

So far Duck it looks like Rog is owning you on this one!

[ducknwork]

So far Duck it looks like Rog is owning you on this one!

Actually, Alex, I gave him my opinion of anything Bush may have done wrong. Read the entire thread carefully. You won't miss it. And besides, as I have stated numerous times, I want to have a discussion with Roger, not the author of an obscure online blog. When he comes up with ideas of his own, not those that belong to someone else that he googled, I will spend my time responding to him. I refuse to spend hours of my time researching and responding to 5 minutes of google work.