In Canada, if one wants to see Far Left Activists posing as professional journalists, just tune into CBC News. In America, like-minded zealots tend to conglomerate at MSNBC. To see an example of a Leftist apparatchik working for the state broadcaster in the UK, watch this interview with Kirsty Wark:
It would be beyond fascinating to have a noted economist like Thomas Sowell interview Ms. Wark, simply asking her b-a-s-i-c economic questions. I’m convinced the answers she uttered would be in the realm of stupendous. Here’s some more of her “great” work. So incredibly prepared each time, isn’t she?!
She couldn’t even be arsed to get his name right until corrected in the studio by the man himself.
That wasn’t an interview – that was an attempt to ruin 6 minutes of air time, thus allowing the Beeb to able to say that they had “Steen” on.
Mark conducted himself most admirably in hostile territory. I’ve yet to pick up After America, but it’s on my to-read list. As depressing as it was, I did enjoy reading America Alone.
Somebody actually pays that woman to interview people. Unreal!
As a carpenter friend would say “Dumber than a bag of hammers”.
“But, but…”
Eloquent, isn’t she?
I noticed the interviewer tried to peddle the tired leftist meme that lack of regulation created the sub prime mortgage crisis. Glad Mark didn’t allow here to get away with it.
Typical leftist twit.
I like Steyn. I think he’s witty, acerbic, incisive, and accurate.
But I have to ask – for a guy born in Canada, and living in New Hampshire, where in the hell is his accent from?
About as sharp as a sack full of wet mice.
Heh. Stein = Chicken Little. As dull as the reporter seems, nothing she could say could possibly make him look any worse than his own words.
$500 to anyone who can explain just how, exactly, the government forced banks to give out sub-prime loans. Mark certainly seems to have no interest in supporting that assertion.
Kevin,
Mark spent a lot of time in his earlier life working in England. I assume that’s where he lost his Canadian accent for the pseudo-British one he has now.
KevinB,
From Wikipedia:
“Steyn was educated at the King Edward’s School, Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. He left school in 1978 at 18 and worked as a disc-jockey before becoming musical theatre critic at the newly established The Independent in 1986.[6] He was appointed film critic for The Spectator in 1992. After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn’s focus shifted to political commentary and moved to the conservative broadsheet The Daily Telegraph (which stopped carrying his column in 2006).”
Dear Trollex,
In times past you have proven yourself over & over to be a duplicitous liar, lacking any scruples and dishonest to the core. Now you have a chance to set a new course.
The answer to your $500 challenge can be found here.
I realize that you, being you, don’t accept actual facts over your own entrenched opinions and that your $500 offer is a dishonest ploy to get someone to engage in an argument with you, but in the wild hope that you’ve turned the corner today, please donate the $500 to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, scan a copy of the tax receipt, post it on a web page, and provide the link in a future Reader Tips.
As stated above, your mendacious character dictates that you won’t stick to your word but hey, I felt a glimmer of hope on this Labour Day.
Alex, aquaint yourself with some history before you spew, You Tube has the congressional hearings from 03 where “evil” George Bush was trying to stop this practice that Obongo and Clinton both sanctioned from the late 80’s and early 90’s. When banks are forced to give loans to deadbeats bad stuff happens, and most of the time there is a stinking leftie behind the wreck. Good for Mark to trying to set that liberal slop bucket back up, but the leftie never sleeps or stops stealing other peoples money.
Alex – your use of the word ‘force’ ignores the facts; that the US govt under Clinton did set up the infrastructure that ‘obliged’ banks to give out subprime loans and not to restrict mortgages to safe income markets..but to move into riskier areas and riskier clients.
The policy was termed ‘Affordable Housing’ by the FHA and the federal govt moved in to guarantee the loans to prevent ‘discrimination lawsuits’. The term ‘discrimination’ referred to an assessment that, based on your income or your credit, ‘you are someone who can’t pay back your mortgage’ or, ‘your home is in a subprime area and will lose its value’.
The bank was just the storefront to make the loan; it didn’t cover the loan. It then sold that loan to the federal govt, to Fannie and Freddie (the federal national mortgage association). Profit was deemed to be made not on the quality but on the volume of mortgages ‘loaned out’ by the bank that were then resold to the govt. If a bank refused to enter into these ‘Sell a Mortgage to Anyone’ then, the bank was effectively losing money..because it wasn’t making any loans. Other banks were selling scads of them! The risk wasn’t to the bank; it was to the govt which bought them from the banks.
And the public is now having to bail out Fannie/Freddie for these failed mortgages.
But when the govt/Fannie and Freddie stopped buying these loans, the system imploded because those mortgages weren’t being paid back…and the govt/taxpayer was left with a huge loss.
Dear Trollex, I was going to take up your $500 challenge but Robert has won already. Bush’s greatest failure turns out to have been not curtailing Clinton’s banking policies while there was still time. One cannot cooperate and compromise with socialists, one can only defeat them.
I do hope Mummy isn’t too peeved when you raid her purse for the five Bordens you owe him.
Alex said..
“Heh. Stein = Chicken Little. As dull as the reporter seems, nothing she could say could possibly make him look any worse than his own words.
$500 to anyone who can explain just how, exactly, the government forced banks to give out sub-prime loans. Mark certainly seems to have no interest in supporting that assertion”
I will assume you left-off the /sarc on your comment because no one could be that ignorant of history right?
To add to the mix, it was the Carter Administration that enacted the Community Reconstruction Act that precipitated the sub-prime crisis. The banks sat on it as it wasn’t enforced until the Clinton Administration who, desiring to get re-elected by gathering minority votes, forced the banks to comply. Obama made a career out of it as a “Community Organizer”.
“The answer to your $500 challenge can be found here.”
Don’t be a lazy bastard, Robbie. If you want the $500, you can do better than pointing me at a google search which returns dozens of results that don’t actually answer the question. Although there was a funny link there about the government forcing banks to get rid of their bibles, so thanks for that 🙂
Trollex wins again, derailing another thread.
I almost gave up on the link, 2 minutes in, and the same spin as one would expect on CBC. Thanks for including the word “interview” in the header or I wouldn’t have lasted to see Mark. I wonder if the time slot was set, or if the segment was cut short when it turned out that Mr. “Steen” not only knew the difference between his a$$ and a hole in the ground, but started handing the interview’s a$$ to her?
Obtuse much? Some video for your edification…
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=barney+frank+fannie+mae&docid=1166365688423&mid=F6815AAC2F90BF714930F6815AAC2F90BF714930&FORM=LKVR2#
The Community Reinvestment Act compels banks to address lack of lending to the poor:
“The Act requires the appropriate federal financial supervisory agencies to encourage regulated financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation (Section 802.) To enforce the statute, federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions (Section 804.)[6]”
In 1999, Clinton increased the scope of the CRA:
‘On signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, President Clinton said that it, “establishes the principles that, as we expand the powers of banks, we will expand the reach of the [Community Reinvestment] Act”.[63]
This was the first pillar of govt involvement in the housing bubble. The second was using the govt-backed companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to insure and/or buy sub-prime debt from banks that were willing to lend it.
At the height of the bubble Fannie and Freddie (ie, the US govt) owned or guaranteed half of all sub-prime debt.
Last year, dear,dear Kirsty was protesting over reports about her BBC salary, telling all and sundry: “I earn less than £500,000”.
(That’s “less than $800,000” in Canadian dollars.)
IF this is the best the left has to counter Steyn. Than they deserve whats coming to them.
Its unraveling for them. Those old slogans just don’t work anymore in a World that has followed leftist insanity for years . WE now see the results.
Higher death rates everywhere with Bigotry reversed with myths & handout, but going straight into the toilet of history.
Education more about sex than learning.An institution devoted to Athieism plus Marxism. Education not so much.
Third generation wefare bums. Homeless people. Lower population with even lower wages. Out of control adolecents. A justice system sedigned or based on race, gender or political & religious views. A kangaroo court system of made up rights for losers to sue noraml people. An abortion system devoted to depolulating, than replacing Canadians. A 1000 more peversions all grown in the house that Marx built.
This is much better.
St. Anselm College | New Hampshire Inst. of Politics
Mark Steyn argued that the United States is destined for financial collapse and a decline in its role as a world leader if current political and cultural norms continue. The author contended that American debt has placed the
1 hour, 3 minutes
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/301129-1#
“$500 to anyone who can explain just how, exactly, the government forced banks to give out sub-prime loans.”
The answer is more accurately the Community Reinvestment Act and the overlap with Affirmative Action as interpreted by the courts.
Community Organizers used the law to demand banks not racially discriminate in issuing mortgages.
chip at September 5, 2011 4:12 PM
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was certainly a huge part of the problem. I worked for a large bank in the US in the early 2000s, and our bank was told by the Feds that additional branches would not be approved unless our bank started making more loans to “under-served communities” (i.e., those individuals with protected status). That bank failed a couple of years ago.
I’ve often wondered if the CRA has a two-fold purpose. Politicians are able to buy votes with the assets of private businesses (forcing banks to grant loans that they would not otherwise approve) and then award the assets of those businesses to political donors when the bank fails due to adhering to government requirements.
@Alex
Many have already responded with links to your $500 challenge. If you don’t like the responses so far, check this out in that pillar of the leftist American Media, the NYT, from 1999.
A nice pull quote:
“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”
Another one:
“In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.”
And one about the racial and ethnic quota aspect:
“Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.”
The U.S. home mortgage bubble was created by the government and exacerbated by private banks who were leaned on with the usual regulatory threats and assured that they would be bailed out with tax dollars when the bubble burst.
A real case of social engineering, racial politics and corrupt government practices combined with crony capitalism. Not at all a case of an unfettered free market run amok.
@Chip
“The Community Reinvestment Act compels banks to address lack of lending to the poor … was the first pillar of govt involvement in the housing bubble.”
The passages you quoted clearly show that the CRA didn’t force the banks to make sub-prime loans, and, in fact, emphasized “safe and sound operation”. You may as well say that taxes were a “pillar of govt involvement in the housing bubble”. It’s a meaningless claim.
“The second was using the govt-backed companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to insure and/or buy sub-prime debt from banks that were willing to lend it. ”
Yep, that was a problem, but the heart of the issue was that sub-prime debt was being traded at all. Trading debt on the market removes all hint of responsibility – it allows large lenders to issue loans which will almost certainly never be paid back, and then sell the debt to clueless/gullible “investors”. The involvement of Freddie Mae/Mac only made the situation worse. This was a case where government regulation could have helped prevent the bubble – instead, government organizations helped make it bigger.
None of which actually answers the question I posed. Money is still on the table!
@Fred
“Community Organizers used the law to demand banks not racially discriminate in issuing mortgages.”
Any responsible conservatives want to rebuke this? I’m always hearing about how the far-right “isn’t racist”, so surely one of you will step up to the plate.
There are a shocking number of people who want the U.S. replaced by China as a global hegemon. Should that occur, those people will find out what a difference culture makes. In spite of all its failings, Western Civilization has, as part of its core, the idea of concern for the individual transmitted through Christianity from Judaism. China, on the other hand, has a more collectivist cultural basis and much less respect for the individual.
I don’t think, for instance, that there has ever been a time, including today, during which slavery has not been practiced in China. During the latter years of the Clinton Administration, there were some very brave Chinese dissidents who smuggled tapes of life in Chinese slave labor camps to the West. After being feted for a while by western media, their story vanished from public view as the U.S. political class really started pushing an open trade policy with China during Bush the younger’s presidency.
I haven’t read After America yet, but I did find America Alone quite thought provoking.
Re: Alex at September 5, 2011 6:00 PM
@Fred
“Community Organizers used the law to demand banks not racially discriminate in issuing mortgages.”
Any responsible conservatives want to rebuke this? I’m always hearing about how the far-right “isn’t racist”, so surely one of you will step up to the plate.
I won’t rebuke this and don’t need to in order to avoid the label of racist. Racialism is at the core of the CRA. The claim was always that blacks and hispanics were being discriminated against because they were being denied mortgages. Of course, they were being denied mortgages because their credit ratings were much lower than whites.
Earlier, I posted a link to an article in the NY Times from 1999 about all this. For some reason it was flagged for review.
The link is:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit-to-aid-mortgage-lending.html
A few pull quotes that indicate that the mortgage bubble was largely justified as an attempt to give more mortgages to unqualified black and hispanic borrowers.
first quote:
“Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.”
second quote:
“By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990’s. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.”
I apologize for the length of the second quote. It’s best, if you are really interested in learning the truth and not just trolling, to read the whole article. It makes clear that lending in the subprime market was driven by racial politics and taken advantage of by some mortgage lenders. Keep in mind that the article is from the NY Times, a reliably liberal publication.
I confess I would like to meet Kristy Wark in person. I like her accent and she’s not unattractive. I would like to investigate what talent of hers landed her her job since competently conducting an interview clearly wasn’t it.
ALEX.How stupid do you think that bankers are? they are forced to make non repayable loans and then they sell these loans to others and they are the bad guys?Banks are in business to serve people and to guard depositers money so that the depositers can safely put their money in the bank and write cheques to honor their liabilities.In the 1930’s banks went bankrupt and many after put their money in a tin can so it would be safe.If you want to destroy a country,start by destroying the banking system.Pres.Obama is on that path.
Alex is our very own Les Nesmond.
Alex’s grasp of financial issues reminds me of those tweenies I studied business with, they were so dim they had to be taught an entire course on debit and credit via bank statements. Oh and let us not forget those organizations sold those mortgage debts on the open market as bonds.
Re: Alex at September 5, 2011 2:36 PM
“$500 to anyone who can explain just how, exactly, the government forced banks to give out sub-prime loans.”
Since you are unwilling to accept an answer which does not connect all the dots for you, let me provide you with one that does.
The answer lies in the coercive power the government has due to its excessive regulatory authority. There are a myriad of regulations in place regarding banking and securities trading. All the government needs to do is threaten a bank with an investigation in order to compel cooperation with just about anything the government insists on. Government regulators can shut down a bank’s operations while an investigation takes place and can otherwise punish a bank for “not playing ball”. On tactic that could be used would be to get the highly political head of Fannie Mae to refuse to buy mortgages from the bank on the secondary market citing as an excuse questions about the bank’s accounting practices. Fannies Mae underwrites a large portion, half I believe, of home mortgages in the U.S. and not having the backing of Fannie Mae would make most banks non-competitive in a large segment of the home mortgage market. The pressure of a threatened investigation can, therefore, force a bank to decide between giving out loans to unqualified borrows or being cut out a large part of the mortgage market for years as regulators drag their feet through an investigation, even if a bank is in full compliance and keeps unimpeachable books. Any accounting irregularities, however unintentional or insignificant, would, of course, allow regulators to delay, extend and broaden the investigation to the greater detriment of the mortgage lender. Now add to that stick, the carrot of a guarantee or implied guarantee, either explicit or under-the-table that the greater risk of issuing subprime loans would be offset by a future taxpayer funded bailout and the guarantee of huge, taxpayer guaranteed profits on the risky loans and the decision makes itself.
This is the kind of sleezy stuff that governments can do when they get too powerful. The only way to prevent it is to not give the government so much power in the first place. Blaming banks exclusively ignores the root of the problem which is the government.
I’ll take my $500 now. TIA
Les Nesmond has hijacked the thread once again.
*sigh*
I really wish folks hereabouts would ignore the trolls. Another thread derailed.
Folks, Trollex is a pathological liar. He has exhibited his lack of character here on SDA for at least months, possibly longer. He has proven himself in this regard once again. You could get direct testimony from 10 different U.S. banks presidents stating exactly what has been stated above but that wouldn’t be enough to make Trollex stay true to his word.
Expect him to be running as a Toronto area Liberal MP candidate in the next election.
I’ll take Alex for NDP leader for $500 Alex!
SO … how many responses did Alex get today?
10? 15? 20? I know, mine is one too, I guess.
Disgusting how many experienced SDAists take the troll bait.
I am proud of my record of NEVER EVER responding to obvious trolls.
Me No Dhimmi, very true. On the up side, we now have this thread as a definitive link to his absolutely mendacious character. He offered $500 to anyone who could prove a point. Any reasonable group of people would quickly conclude that a number of us have proved it, yet Trollex is unwilling to pay up.
I didn’t think his lack of honour could drop any further but it clearly has.
Alex this is your ()*() ass…handed to you.
If you have used the word “troll” you have posted a comment that should not have been submitted.
How hard is it to keep you finger off the post button???
“Mr Steen, this conservatism of which you speak, has it ever been tried in any advanced country?”
“Umm, yeah, I’m trying it right now actually.”
For anyone who hasn’t bought After America yet, it’s been reduced from $30 to $10 on the Kindle.
@Sadistic Eristic
“This is the kind of sleezy stuff that governments can do when they get too powerful.”
Absolutely. The question wasn’t “how could the government force banks to give out sub-prime loans”, the question was (paraphrasing) “how did the government force banks to give our sub-prime loans”. Answering that question requires just a weee bit more evidence than speculation about how it’s possible for the government to do something. You, like the rest, have provided nothing to actually support the idea which Stein put forward. You’re making the same mistake as those 9/11 deniers going on about how the government could have rigged the WTC with some super-duper-nano-quantum-thermate; it’s meaningless hand-waving meant to imply connections without actually having to provide any evidence. The idea that government intervention caused the housing bubble seems to be a gospel truth among a certain strain of conservative/republican; I’m just trying to get you to examine these beliefs instead of blindly accepting something some pundit told you.
@Kate
“If you have used the word ‘troll’ you have posted a comment that should not have been submitted.”
I find it’s best to ignore such individuals. They certainly don’t deserve a rational response, and insulting them would be a waste of my time and your bandwidth.
Alex, smarminess is a sign of insecurity. Shove it.
I think so-called journalists would love to take Mark Steyn down a peg but are unable to do so.
Wow, I think we’ve come up with a new definition of empty headed.