Pill-osi.
The Anchoress revisits her suspicions…
It seems to me that there is an illusion being worked in the middle of all this frenzy; if during this crisis, the Democrats can still worry about laying themselves out for ACORN, and Harry Reid can take the time to try to sneak a ban on oil shale mining into new legislation, then that tells me something. It tells me there is time and room, here, and that more is driving this than we can see. It makes me wonder if we should not hit the brakes before we go over a cliff, because we couldn’t clearly see the bend in the road.
Kate you is my new HERO. I never was none no good at that cypherin’ business but I done used all my fingers and toes and figured this out. Democrats have 37 more seats than the republican’ts. So even if the two parties had equal representation that is……….. take away 37 yes votes from Democrats to even it out and they still voted as a party a majority YES by 8 votes. Now just for fun add them there 37 yes votes to the republican’ts total. Hmmmm. SEEMS that they still woulda done voted it down over there at the GOP side of the NON-PARTISAN congress by a vote of 133 to 102. So it still woulda been voted down by them there NON-PARTISAN GOP party fellas by 31 votes. Yep I am convinced now it is Nancy Pelosi’s fault. Sure feel sorry for McCan’t after all the hard work he put into this thing puttin’ it all together and such ya know! Well gotta go now. Got’s me a romantic date with my republican’t cousin.
“Saying ‘the State forced the banks to lend to insolvent minorities’ or other similar blame games don’t cut it. ”
The problem with this statement is that it simply isn’t true. Its now quite well documented(including videos on u-tube) that this whole mess started under Carter, continued under Clinton and due to intense interference by the dumocrats, committees were unable to stop it.
In Canada we have a simliar movement trying to get housing for the homeless. Next they will want the government to loan mortgage money so these lazy sots( most of them) can own their own home-even if they can’t possibly pay for it.
Whoda thunk that the USA is really becoming a lot more socialist than Canada.
Thank god for Harper.
Horny Toad
Newt Gingrich has some interesting things to say about the role of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and the “mark to market” or “fair value” accounting rules in the current financial market meltdown.
“It is true that the root of this crisis is bad mortgage loans, but probably 70% of the real crisis that we face today is caused by mark-to-market accounting in an illiquid market.”
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/29/mark-to-market-oped-cx_ng_0929gingrich.html
“The problem with this statement is that it simply isn’t true. Its now quite well documented(including videos on u-tube) that this whole mess started under Carter, continued under Clinton and due to intense interference by the dumocrats, committees were unable to stop it.”
And it could have been stopped anytime during the administrations of Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. They didn’t because for all that time everyone profited from it.
And yet the sub-prime mess is just part of the problem, the exposure to the derivative casino is a much more serious problem. They let Wall Street be turned into an East Coast Las Vegas. Much of the derivative ‘wealth’ is just thin air and will eventually be liquidated.
In any event, like others said above, this is not the end of the world. Economic collapses are a commonplace occurence worldwide, people may lose most of their assets, but they live on to rebuild. Just look at the Asia meltdown in 1997, Russia in the 90s, and Argentina in 2002. Those places are doing just fine a few years later.
Re: GreenNeck at 12:35 AM
Although the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was on the books since 1977, it had no teeth and was largely unenforced. One of Bill Clinton’s first acts on becoming President in 1993 was to order new regulations for the CRA. Thus, Reagan and Bush I can be exonerated. Bush II did reverse some of Clinton’s CRA initiativies in 2005, but was opposed by the Democrats.
See here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act.
These aspects of Clinton’s changes are truly frightening: “Using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks“. One of the organizations benefiting significantly as a “community group” was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a radical left group with whom Barack Obama has a long if not distinguished relationship.
I agree with Toadie, this problem was a long time coming and more than a few politicians have dirty hands. To continue with the often refered to situalion as a “crap sandwich”, when the sandwich hit the fan more than a few were covered.
Of course we all know it is George Bush’s fault even if he warned of this several times. The Dem’s Barney Frank spent quite a lot of time extoling the virtues and stability of Freddie & Fannie. Hank Paulson already got his golden parachute from Goldman Sachs so it doesn’t hurt him. Alan Greenspan has made several faux pas during his tenure and quite rightly might have contributed to the housing bubble with the Adjustable Rate Morgages. His consulting for a hedge fund company after leaving treasury also seems to have made him weathier.
The point I’m getting at is that there are a lot of players from both teams involved with this mess and the desire to play partisan politics rather than agree to anything is not helping.
Karl, I need to apologize to you, I thought you were mocking Kate’s 7-year recession watch posts, but you were actually quoting Kaplan, who was the fool doing the mocking. By the looks of the market reaction, the fallout seems to be about as bad as the whole dot-com bubble bust. In the end, I don’t think it’s going to be nearly as bad as all the doomsayers are predicting. There’s some great real estate deals to be had, the banking industry has learned a valuable lesson, the price of oil is down again, and the US dollar got stronger.
rsp: You might try to respond to the points I made instead of a knee-jerk reaction.
I believe in personal responsibility and liability. I also support what you label as a “romantic and naive view”; gainful employment and decent jobs for everyone. That is the working ethic that informed my parents’ lives, and still resonates for me and my children.
The banks and credit card companies got us all in this mess by flogging credit as though it were a commodity.
What’s your alternative rsp? Slave labour camps in penitentiaries run by private corporations?
The banks and credit card companies got us all in this mess by flogging credit as though it were a commodity
deBO, with respect: Credit *is* a commodity. Ask instead who told (not asked) them how it was to be flogged 8 years ago.
DBO:
You write “The banks and credit card companies got us all in this mess by flogging credit as though it were a commodity. ”
That statement illustrates precisely how you romanticize the common man. Nobody forces us to load up on credit. You talk as though we are all just the helpless little playthings of sinister capitalists. That is the language that demagogues use when they flatter us by blaming our errors on someone else. Since, by your own testimony, you are the child of sensible parents, I’m astonished that you buy into it.
As to the closing line of your post, it is the sort of non sequitur that usually betrays a lack of confidence in one’s own position.