If GOP Wins in 2016

Discussion in 'Politics' started by cosmictraveler, Feb 20, 2015.

  1. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/if-gop-wins-in-2016.145058/page-2#post-3277985
    Well the "others" don't seem to have a problem seeing it as we have been discussing it for several posts over several days. Below is the shortcut to my original post on the matter.

    http://www.sciforums.com/threads/if-gop-wins-in-2016.145058/page-2#post-3277985

    As for Bernanke, he applied for a refinance of his home and his effort to refinance his mortgage was rejected. Additionally, Bernanke didn't apply for a run of the mill mortgage. Bernanke applied for a jumbo loan. As the name implies, a jumbo loan are big loans and are for high income individuals. Jumbo loans are not for your run of the mill median income earner.

    Jumbo loans are riskier compared to conforming mortgages as they don't enjoy all the governmental protections afforded regular mortgages. Additionally, the market for higher priced home is not as liquid as the market for lower priced homes. I know of several cases where individuals built some very expensive homes, myself included, and had difficulty selling them. Because when you have that much money, you tend to build your home rather than buy a pre-owned home. In California wealthy individuals buy nice homes, demolish them and rebuild them. The land is worth more than the home in some cases. Wealthy individuals don't buy as many pre-owned homes. So the market for high end homes is less liquid than it is for lower priced homes.

    So the message here is not all mortgage loans are created equal. Bernanke doesn't own a median income home. Bernanke didn't apply for a conforming mortgage. He applied for a jumbo mortgage. Most Americans cannot afford to purchase a 700k or better home like Mr. Bernanke. And most Americans are unaware of jumbo loans because most Americans will never apply for a jumbo loan as they will never purchase such a highly valued home or be able to qualify for such a loan.

    http://www.bankrate.com/financing/mortgages/bernanke-rejected-for-mortgage-refi/

    Further, when Bernanke changed jobs his credit rating took a hit. Banks don't like to loan money to people who have changed jobs. Recent disruptions in employment damage your credit rating even if you were chairman of the Federal Reserve.

    So the bottom line is you cannot legitimately say Bernanke's experience is representative of home affordability in America. Bernanke isn't representative of the typical American home buyer.
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2015
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Cool, you were using median instead of mean from them. I admit I simply assumed you were not digging that far, because in the past I have had to work pretty hard to get a median out of those people, and you were saying that I was "completely ignoring income" and other cluelessness. Mea culpa. You do know the difference.

    OK, now you can deal with the invalidity of "family income". If you recall, I used median hourly wage, for explicit reasons that still hold - family income, what was termed household income earlier, conceals and omits key issues of affordability, in particular how much work one must do to afford something (you do agree that if it takes more work hours to buy a house it's less, not more, affordable? I hope).

    You are, for starters, assuming that the National Association of Realtors naming something an "Affordability Index" means it is an index of affordability as an ordinary person would understand the term in a thread like this - easy to afford. You don't argue for it, you just assume that name is the thing. That's a politically influenced sales pitch, and you are taking it as an analytical result or fact.

    Having changed jobs and taken a credit rating hit is pretty common among those searching for a house to buy in America. I don't think you can leave that factor out, any more than you can ignore the negative and marginal equity in currently occupied houses, or the stagnation of hourly wages, or the extra expenses beyond sales price in purchasing one of the foreclosed homes still filtering into the market, or the increase in sales, excise, and property tax financing of local governments.

    Which brings us to thread relevance, in that Republicans universally favor greater reliance on sales, excise, and property taxes rather than income taxes. That makes housing less affordable for lower income people, which is the expected consequence of further increases in Republican political power.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2015
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  5. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    22,910
    Here is the bottom line, you were as usual, writing about things you know absolutely nothing about.

    No now you can deal with reality. There is nothing “invalid” about family income. That is why it is used by the Federal Reserve as well as the National Association of Realtors. Family income is the income of purchasers. It includes all income. This may come as a shock to you, but not all families are wage earners. There is no rule or law that requires mortgages to be paid only from wage income. Mortgage companies don’t care where the money used to make mortgage payments comes from as long as the money is legal.
    There is nothing wrong with how the Federal Reserve and the National Association of Realtors measure home affordability.

    What didn’t you get about the equation and explanation of the metric given by the Federal Reserve? Apparently everything, it went in one eye and out the other, just as you do with everything that doesn’t comport with your ideological beliefs. Unlike you, I assumed nothing. The Federal Reserve gave a very detailed and good explanation of the metric. The Housing Affordability metric I referenced is used by economic and businesses around the globe every month. Funny, none of them see it the way you do. Politically inspired sales pitches don’t put money in their pockets and that is why business professionals and academics are just fine with the Housing Affordability Index published by The Federal Reserve and the National Association of Independent Realtors.

    Who is leaving out job changes? Was it not I who brought it up? What didn’t you get about Bernanke’s jumbo loan? Yeah, job changes are fairly common. But a job change isn't a significant credit event for most people. Bernanke isn't most people, and most people don't get jumbo mortgages.

    And as I previously pointed out, Bernanke applied for a jumbo refinance. As I previously pointed out, jumbo mortgages are a different animal and far more risky. Jumbo mortgages require a very high level of credit worthiness because they are more risky.

    Republicans do favor more regressive taxation schemes; however, that isn’t the subject of our discussion. Regressive tax schemes affect disposable income but the degree of impact varies by tax authority. Red states have more regressive tax schemes but they also tend to have a lower cost of living.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2015
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  7. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The current tax system and tax code is a who's who of crony capitalism. It is not the tax rate that decides what people will pay, but rather it is the exemptions and the deductions that will decide.

    Deductions are where the rich and connected can pay very little taxes, even with a 90% tax rate. The tax rate is a smoke screen set up for the dumb Americans, to hide the back door loopholes. Mitt Romney suggested getting rid of all deductions, which meant closing all the loopholes. This would make the system honest. This was resisted, by powers to be, because too many people in high places benefit by loopholes bought with campaign contributions.

    For example, because the solar industry contributed heavily to the democratic party, they got a special tax status loophole, so the corporate tax rate was a joke to them. The same can be said of industries connected to both parties, with the middle class never getting their share. The middle class is not organized to lobby and grease the right palms with big money donations.

    Maybe the middle class needs to organize and lobby, collectively, for its share of loopholes. All it takes is big block money for campaign contributions. This is where organization is needed. This may sound like a lot of money up front, but the loopholes industry is based on a high rate of return. The solar industry may have contributed $5 Million but got back $100's of millions; 20-50 to 1 rate of return. The middle class needs to get in on this investment.

    This suggestion is not for the democrat or for the republicans. Rather it is for all hard working americans from both parties, who have been politically divided, by those in power, so they remain side tracked with nothing. Don't expect the morons in office to help, since they benefit by this division of the middle class sheep. These people are mercenaries. So let us organize and play the game until we don't pay any taxes, like GE. All it takes is a united lobby group of middle class American, so we have the buying power to grease any palm than needs grease.

    If this hypothetically occurred, it would ruin the good ole boy system of tax deductions and exemptions. The system is not designed to allow the middle class to benefit. The role of the middle class is to provide wool to the shearers from both parties. The mercenaries in office would go where the money is, since they have no real loyalty. The middle class would dominate. There will be a need to simplify the loophole system, less the middle class own the country like the founding fathers envisioned; power to the people.

    The leader and leaders of this union of middle class, would wield as much power as the president with even the president beholden for their charitable donations to his/her reelection.
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    In this thread? Sure there is. See my posts above.

    They have their reasons for choosing their formulae. Those reasons do not apply in this thread.
    Sheesh, I overlooked that major flaw. So not only is a house it takes two or three jobs to pay for going to be just as "affordable" as a house one could purchase with one job, not only is the loss of down payment equity in the bubble going to be ignored, but the entire diversion of the last thirty years of productivity into the capital stores of the wealthy is going to be used to make bubble priced housing look affordable for the classes who get essentially none of their income from investments, trust funds, and the like.

    You honestly don't see the problem there? It's not exactly subtle. But then again, iirc you were asserting a while ago that there had been no housing bubble in the US, so your ability to not see stuff should never be underestimated. Like this:
    Uh, the job changes tens of millions of lower and middle class people have experienced in the past three decades have been significant credit events for almost all of them. For starters, consider: for every foreclosed house on the market there is a foreclosed former house owner looking for a place to live.
    Not if you want to make the prospects for the housing market look good, or sell everyone on an improving economy, no.

    But this thread is not that arena. If you want to discuss the effect of more Republican governance on the ability of the middle and lower classes to buy a house, then there are some obvious problems with using that index as the measure of affordability - as you and I have just pointed out together.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2015
  9. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    LOL, sure there is.

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    Here is the thing. Your posts don’t make sense for the aforementioned reasons.
    Yeah, they have their reasons for choosing the methodology they use to determine housing affordability and it isn’t political. The Federal Reserve and the Association of Realtors have chosen their methodology because it works…that is why they call it the Housing Affordability Index.
    The bottom line here is you are desperately grasping for straws to support your ideological notions…just like our conservative neighbors do when they find their private parts in wringer. In your latest attempt, you are mixing income inequality with housing affordability. Those are two very different issues.
    You either have a very poor memory, perhaps battling dementia, ignorance, or are being dishonest. I never said there wasn’t a housing bubble. I said the housing bubble wasn’t responsible for The Great Recession. I said so called “bubbles” occur all the time in markets. I said derivative trading enabled by deregulation was the proximal and root cause of The Great Recession not housing prices or “bad loans”. And that is a true statement. We have bubbles all the time in market and they don’t bring about the global collapse of financial markets, and I cited the Housing and Loan Crisis of the 80’s and 90’s as evidence.
    So this is where the grand conspiracy comes in. I have been waiting for it. So you think there is a grand conspiracy to fudge the economic numbers. You my friend are doing the exact same thing our so called “conservative” Limbaugh and Fox News inspired zealots do.
    The Federal Reserve isn’t political. It is one of the few remaining US institutions that aren’t political and thank God for that! Fortunately a century ago, Congress saw the wisdom of an independent nonpartisan Federal Reserve and no congress since then has changed that.
     
  10. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    Except for your machinations about the Democratic Party you do have a point. The US political system is corrupted by special interest money. The old adage, “he who has the gold makes the rules” is a reality in America.

    What is needed isn’t a new political party. What is desperately needed is to reform our electoral processes. We need to change how we elect our officials and we need to ensure that once elected our elected and appointed officials are not challenged by conflicts of interest as is the case today. We need to take all the billions of money spent on elections out of our elections and we need better informed voters. In short, we need an amendment to our Constitution which creates better informed voters, ensures our elected representatives do not have interests which conflict with those they represent and takes special interest money out of our elections, because the current system isn’t working.

    PS:
    One of my biggest disappointments with Ronald Reagan (Republican POTUS) was his avid support of crony capitalism.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    There are no "aforementioned reasons" from you. You haven't dealt with anything I've posted, yet.
    At the time I was so struck by your denial of the existence of a housing bubble that I asked you to repeat it twice, to make sure that's what you wanted to say. You said, plain and flat, that the US had not had a housing bubble. You said it at least three times, once in direct response to my incredulous and specific query.
    WTF? Where do you get this stupid shit, and why do you post it instead of dealing with the content of my posting?

    Nobody's "fudging numbers". The PR needs of the National Association of Realtors are not a "grand conspiracy". That special purpose affordability index formula is right there, accurately calculated from perfectly solid data. It just doesn't work on this thread. It's almost useless here. You can't use it to discuss the effects of Republican governance on the middle and lower class house buyer, for example, because it's based on family income and interest rates. No big deal - just don't use the number in inappropriate ways.

    And the hits keep coming.

    So Greenspan's lobbying Congress for, say, privatizing Social Security and deregulating banks and cutting taxes on rich people - often during campaign season, opinions delivered and timed to support Republican candidates and Republican legislative initiatives - was in your view apolitical behavior?

    Dunno why anyone would be "disappointed" by that - he did what he said he was going to do, and what he had always done in the past, and what his backers expected from him.
     
  12. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    Oh, just what haven’t I dealt with exactly? Just because you don’t like those aforementioned reasons, it doesn’t mean they have not been addressed. By all means, keep doing the “hear no evil, see no evil” routine.

    The fact is you have made some pretty nonsensical claims and have repeatedly ignored evidence. The fact is the Federal Reserve and the National Association of Realtors has a very good metric to measure housing affordability which is used by academics and business professionals every month. And that has been repeatedly explained to you in detail with supporting links to the Federal Reserve.
    What I said has been explained to you. Your refusal to understand is your problem, not mine. Further, bubbles aren’t even remotely relevant to this discussion. Markets trade every day. Prices go up and prices go down for a whole host of reasons. It’s that whole supply and demand thingy in action. And has been explained to you, bubbles/housing prices didn’t cause The Great Recession. Deregulation did.

    What you are doing here is using bubbles to distract from the nakedness of your positon here, your position that you know how to calculate the housing affordability index better than academics and business professions who use the housing affordability index.
    Translation, you can’t use it because the Housing Affordability Index used by the Federal Reserve, academics and business professionals because it doesn’t support your ideological notions. Where is your evidence that the National Association of Realtors uses the Housing Affordability Index for PR? Does the Federal Reserve use the Housing Affordability Index for PR too? You keep forgetting to mention the Federal Reserve.

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    Below is an extract from the Christian Science Monitor referencing Chairman Yellen’s testimony before Congress this week.
    “Housing market affordability has proven a concern for Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who began a two-day series of testimonies before Congress Tuesday.” – Christian Science Monitor

    So is Yellen using the Housing Affordability Index for PR purposes too? Yellen is concerned because in recent years the Housing Affordability Index has been falling as demonstrated in the aforementioned graphics of the Housing Affordability Index.

    As I said before, you are mixing two very different topics. Income inequality isn’t home affordability. They are two very different issues which you are conflating as one. You don’t seem to be able to discern the difference yet you want to tell the professionals they are wrong and you are correct.
    And you keep mixing apples and oranges. There is an income inequality problem, but that doesn’t change the fact that homes are much more affordable today than they were decades ago back in the “good olde” days.
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2015
  13. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    One Gore elector abstained, but that would not have made a difference. So how did fail to work in any significant way?
     
  14. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    Good job! Gold star!

    Just missing a few facts. In 95' HUD authorized Fannie and Freddie to purchase subprime and other risky securities. This signaled to the banks and investors that the government (since these are GSEs) was backing subprime mortgages. This was new and was absent in the S&L crisis.

    The strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act.

    For all the attention it received, the Shawmut decision was an isolated case. But it is clear that the Clinton Administration, led by the Justice Department, is intent on prodding the Fed and other agencies that regulate banks into taking more action on lending discrimination.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/28/business/lending-bias-rules-create-quandary-for-banks.html


    The top priority may be to ask more of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies are now required to devote 42% of their portfolios to loans for low- and moderate-income borrowers; HUD, which has the authority to set the targets, is poised to propose an increase this summer. Although Fannie Mae actually has exceeded its target since 1994, it is resisting any hike. It argues that a higher target would only produce more loan defaults by pressuring banks to accept unsafe borrowers. HUD says Fannie Mae is resisting more low-income loans because they are less profitable.

    http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807/2

    What were you saying? Oh right. Mindlessly repeating Democrat memes.


    The effective Glass-Steagall repeal was a bipartisan vote signed into law by Clinton. Same with the CFMA. So remind me how legislation in 99' and 00' were to blame on a president not sworn in until 01'.

    Aside from your humorous affinity for inaccurate alliteration, considering he is the eldest Bush child...

    Do you have any non-partisan sources for this prosecutorial discretion by Bush? And yes, Bush is most widely criticized, in a non-partisan manner, for being fiscally liberal.

    You do know what derivative is, right? Hint, it is in the name.

    Derivatives have been widely traded since the 80's. Their value is "derived" from some other asset. It was the weakness and risk-exposure of the subprime mortgage as a derivative asset that made derivative trading risky. Otherwise derivative trading would have become a critical problem much earlier.

    [6] Non-agency securitizations were only a few years old when they received a pow-
    erful stimulus from an unlikely source: the federal government. The savings and
    loan crisis had left Uncle Sam with $402 billion in loans and real estate from failed
    thrifts and banks. Congress established the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) in
    1989 to offload mortgages and real estate, and sometimes the failed thrifts them-
    selves, now owned by the government. While the RTC was able to sell $6.1 billion of
    these mortgages to Fannie and Freddie, most did not meet the GSEs’ standards.
    Some were what might be called subprime today, but others had outright documen-
    tation errors or servicing problems, not unlike the low-documentation loans that
    later became popular.

    RTC officials soon concluded that they had neither the time nor the resources to
    sell off the assets in their portfolio one by one and thrift by thrift. They turned to the
    private sector, contracting with real estate and financial professionals to securitize
    some of the assets. By the time the RTC concluded its work, it had securitized $25 bil-
    lion in residential mortgages.The RTC in effect helped expand the securitization of
    mortgages ineligible for GSE guarantees. In the early 1990s, as investors became
    more familiar with the securitization of these assets, mortgage specialists and Wall
    Street bankers got in on the action. Securitization and subprime originations grew
    hand in hand. As figure 5.2 shows, subprime originations increased from $70 billion
    in 1996 to $100 billion in 2000. The proportion securitized in the late 1990s peaked at
    56%, and subprime mortgage originations’ share of all originations hovered around
    10%.
    Securitizations by the RTC and by Wall Street were similar to the Fannie and
    Freddie securitizations. The first step was to get principal and interest payments from
    a group of mortgages to flow into a single pool. But in “private-label” securities (that
    is, securitizations not done by Fannie or Freddie), the payments were then “tranched”
    in a way to protect some investors from losses. Investors in the tranches received dif-
    ferent streams of principal and interest in different orders.

    http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf

    I have shown otherwise, so only naivety or bias can account for any further denial. There was pressure from the AG, it did have to do with accusations of racism, and the market only jumped on board after GSEs started buying such securities. All primarily a result of Clinton-era policy.

    I guess that is what happens when you get your history from partisan news and entertainment. No accounting for what baby birds are spoon-fed.
     
  15. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    Well, the will of the people wasn't reflected in the vote. Instead, the Supreme Court, which has NO legal basis for intervention anointed Baby Bush by stopping a legitimate recount. And the people of this country got stuck with an incompetent spendthrift as POTUS whose spending has more than doubled the nation's debt, involved it in fruitless wars, and bungled those wars to boot.
     
  16. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    LOL, you had better save your gold stars. You are going to need them.
    Now where in all that crap does it say anything about requiring banks to make loans to individuals and institutions that are not credit worthy? Oh, that’s right, it doesn’t. There is nothing in any of that which requires banks to make loans to individuals who are not credit worthy. It just rules out racial discrimination. And there is nothing in there that even insinuates the government will back subprime mortgages.
    LOL... said the kettle to the pot. Here is the unfortunate rub for you and those like you. Truth and reason are not memes, nor are they partisan.
    Remind me where I blamed a president who was not sworn in until 01 for legislative actions that preceded him. I blame Baby Bush for not recognizing the problem with our banking system and doing something to fix it. I blame Baby Bush for weakening financial regulations and appointing weak regulators (e.g. repeal of the Uptick Rule) and for the deregulation which occurred under his reign. I blame Baby Bush for his profligate spendthrift fiscal policies and his bungled wars.

    Did you read the part where I apportioned blame to Clinton? To be fair, Clinton isn’t a businessman or an economist. He is a lawyer and politician. Clinton subsequently blamed Fed Chairman Greenspan and other lobbyists for convincing him to sign the repeal of Glass-Steagall. Either way, the system didn’t work.

    What is more telling is the current position held by both parties on bank regulation. Democrats reregulated banks with Dodd-Frank when they controlled congress. Now that Republicans control Congress, Republicans are again deregulating the banking system by dismantling key portions of Dodd-Frank. Thanks to Republican Congressman Yoder of Kansas banks can once again gamble with depositor money.

    http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/barbara-shelly/article4646082.html

    Thanks to our Republican friends, too big to fail is back. Just as I correctly expected a banking crisis when Glass-Steagall was repealed, I expect another in a few years thanks to your Republican brethren.
    This bothers you?
    Excuse me, where did I say anything about prosecutorial discretion, much less prosecutorial discretion under Baby Bush? Oh, that’s right I didn’t. That is you making stuff up again. Baby Bush has been criticized in some circles for being fiscally profligate and incompetent because he was. But that isn’t liberal. Baby Bush wasn't by any stretch "liberal". You do know Baby Bush was and is a Republican who was supported by the Republican entertainment industry?

    Don’t look now, but your partisan undergarments are showing.
    Since I trade derivatives every day, yeah I do know what derivatives are. Derivatives are inherently risky period. Derivatives are all about risk and risk mitigation. And if you think otherwise you are an ignorant idiot. It’s just that simple. Derivative trading can be very profitable. That’s why banks want to do it. It’s why I do it. But it is also very risky. It’s that old risk-return rule in action.

    Actually, if you knew anything about derivatives, you would know they have been traded for much longer than the 80’s as you stated. Derivatives have been traded for centuries. But here is another unpleasant rub for you, in the 80’s banks were prohibited from trading derivatives. It wasn’t until the repeal of Glass-Stegall and the enactment of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that the casino opened up for banks. And here is the thing, if my derivative investments go belly up; it doesn’t bring the global banking system to its knees as is the case with banks. There is a very legitimate role for derivative trading. But that doesn't mean banks should be engaged in derivative trading - especially with depositor money.
    The above material addresses the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 80’s and early 90’s under the Reagan and Bush Senior presidencies….a little dated. Below is the conclusion of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report which you referenced:

    We conclude widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision
    proved devastating to the stability of the nation’s financial markets.

    It’s funny, but not unexpected, how you managed to overlook it.
    LOL, you mean when you don’t get your news from the Republican entertainment industry, the same industry that is now trying to explain Bill O’Riley’s misreporting with the excuse that he really isn’t a news reporter. The Republican entertainment industry likes to pawn itself off as news until they get called on their inaccuracies. Then all of a sudden the journalistic standard that applies to mainstream journalism doesn’t apply to them because they are “opinion” reporters. I guess O’Riley just opinioned himself into a war zone.

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    Actually, you have done nothing but mindlessly repeat Republican Party memes and refused to acknowledge evidence and reason. You are a party zealot, it is just that simple.

    Pressure from the AG…? There had only been one, one prosecution of a bank for racial discrimination. Of the nation’s nearly 7,000 banks only one had been prosecuted for racial discrimination. So you think that one prosecution was enough to scare the bejesus out of the banking system and cause them to make bad mortgage loans.

    As I said and have said many times before, yeah, Clinton signed the legislation which deregulated the banking system, but it was also a Republican controlled Congress which initiated, drafted and passed the legislation Clinton signed at the behest of banking lobbyists and with the recommendation of a Republican Federal Reserve chairman. Your memory is rather selective, though I am not surprised. And it was the Democrats who were swift to reregulate the banking industry after the banking crisis and it was the Republicans who vehemently opposed banking reregulation and are now in the process of dismantling that reregulation now that they have control of both houses of congress again.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2015
  17. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    Well, since the recount was not completed, you really do not know the actual outcome, or whether it did or did not reflect the will of the people. But after the SCOTUS ruling they did do a recount, following Gore's strategy of recounting predominantly Democratic counties. They found that it would not have changed the outcome. And this has nothing to do with the Electoral College being a problem.

    But speaking of spendthrifts, I guess you do not mind that we are stuck with a bigger one now, just so long as you can blame the people for it. And this spendthrift has double the national debt and bungled a war already won. Wait, were you one of the people to blame? If so, good job! Way to take personal responsibility for your actions. But that would also make you one of the voters Jonathan Gruber called stupid, so I would not blame you for wanting to keep that a secret.
     
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    There were several recounts. The ones that included the whole State said Gore won it.

    And that was without amending the touch screen vote totals that were so weirdly skewed from the exit polls - and always skewed the same way.

    That is false. The Bush administration was much less responsible in its expenditures.
    You mean "already lost", don't you? To win, we had to have Iraqis allied with us in military and political control of the country by about spring of 2005.

    Clinton also signed those provisions largely as cryptic inclusions in larger bills he could not in practice veto - remember he was coming off impeachment.

    Every so often someone brings up the question of why, exactly, the Republlican corporate political machine was so keen on impeaching Clinton. It remains a mystery, in most views. But if the results obtained can be credited to the means employed, it's not that mysterious any more.
    And I read your "explanations", which are in fact si9mply denials. I was there, joe. I was quoting you, and asking you whether you meant what you had posted. And you said yes.
    Any of the content of my posts, other than the erroneous assumption the Feds were using means rather than medians in that case as they do in all similar issues. That's the only thing you have addressed, in my posts.

    One post after denying the political roles and interests of the Fed, you post that.

    Not for the middle and lower income classes. Working 25 thousand median wage hours instead of 4 thousand, to buy the median house on the market, is a greater hardship - not a mark of greater affordability.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2015
  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    Actually, we do know because the ballots were subsequently counted. And if all the ballots were counted, Baby Bush lost.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount#Results

    As for the Electoral College, it is a problem if you believe in democracy. Because every vote isn’t equal, a vote cast in a small state like Alaska with a state population the size of the average congressional district has the same number of votes as a very populated state like New York or California. The Electoral College is a very unequal institution and that is why we can have a situation in which a candidate like Gore win the popular vote and lose the election. I don’t think that was the intent of our founding fathers.
    And that post makes sense to you? If your statement was true and Obama was a spendthrift, I would be. But he isn’t, and I’m not. Actually, Obama has been pretty good fiscally. Obama inherited an economic nightmare. The economy was in a state of collapse. When Obama was sworn into office the nation’s projected deficit for that year topped a trillion dollars. We were losing nearly a million jobs a month and more with each passing month. The economy was contracting at a 10% annualized rate and more with each passing month. In the waning days of the Baby Bush administration Republicans in Congress failed to pass the financial bailouts on the first attempt and drove the economy to the brink in the process. Treasury Secretary Paulson is on the record saying we were only hours away from the ATMs not working. That is how serious and how dire things were when Obama was sworn into office. The trillion dollar deficit Obama inherited was Baby Bush’s deficit. You don’t want people blaming Baby Bush for things he inherited, you shouldn’t be blaming Obama for things he inherited.

    Under Obama, the nation’s deficits have been cut in half and continue to fall. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. That isn’t fiscal profligacy. Instead of losing nearly a million jobs a month and more with each passing month, we have been adding between 200k and300k private sector jobs to the economy every month for 6 years now. Instead of shrinking at an annualized 10% and more with each passing month, the economy has been growing consistently at a 2 to 3 percent annualized rate for 6 years now. That too is a good thing, and not a bad thing. We haven’t seen growth like this since Clinton.

    As for the wars, the Iraq War is over. We are no longer spending billions a year to support a large army in Iraq as we were with Baby Bush. Troops are being drawn down in Afghanistan too. We no longer have the huge troop presence in Afghanistan that we did under the Baby Bush administration. And did I mention, Obama found and killed Bin Laden in less than 2 years…something Baby Bush couldn’t do in nearly 8 years…even with torture. Baby Bush clearly had the opportunity to get Bin Laden at Tora Bora. But he bungled it, just like everything else Baby Bush did including the 12 billion dollars in cash he simply lost in Iraq.

    And try as you might to paint me with the liberal brush, I am an independent. I have supported and voted for both Republicans and Democrats. As I told you earlier, truth and reason are not political, partisans are. Liberals can be just as nutty as you right wingers. But in recent years Democrats have been far more reasonable than you right wingers --probably because they don't have a left wing entertainment industry.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2015
  20. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,738
    Start learning Spanish.
     
  21. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    HUD says Fannie Mae is resisting more low-income loans because they are less profitable.
    http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/31/news/mn-42807/2

    It is not rocket science. "Less profitable" loans are those more likely to default, which is a direct correlation of credit worthiness. Even just assuming racial discrimination existed, the simple fact that the discrimination itself would have barred people from having established credit histories, alone, would necessitate making loans to the less credit worthy. And this even ignores things like job history. By definition, subprime lending is lending at a higher credit risk, again, which HUD authorized Fannie and Freddie to purchase in 95'. IOW, there was now a market for subprime securities guaranteed by GSEs.

    I am not going to spell all this out for you endlessly. I am disappointed. I really gave you more credit this.

    Ye of short memory. It was you who initially said:
    Take your own advise.

    Nice try, but the uptick rule was eliminated by the SEC, which is independent of presidential control.
    But if you want to blame the sitting POTUS for everything that happens under their watch, the lion's share of the blame is still Clinton-era.

    So excuses for things actually signed into law by his own hand, but no excuse for the actions of an independent agency of his successor. No double-standard there.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    To really be fair, Clinton signed things into law while Bush simply made appointments. The former establishes laws the market operated on, while the latter merely appointed those to execute those already severely flawed laws.

    Dodd-Frank did nothing to end TBTF. To the contrary, it doubles down on TBTF. Just like HUD authorizing Fannie and Freddie to purchase subprime securities signaled to investors that the government was then guaranteeing such securities, the supervision and regulation of Dodd-Frank signaled to investors that any risks those large banks take is now also guaranteed by the taxpayers. Dodd-Frank Orderly Resolution plans meant to stave off bailouts and economic instability lack creditors to purchase the restructured bankruptcy debt.

    This means that, without creditors to buy that debt, these bank are still wide open to either fail and greatly harm the economy, or be bailed out by the taxpayers. Removing this false sense of security would at least keep investors from following suit.

    You said:
    But it looks like you did not mean any actual executive enforcement, but rather the actions of an independent agency. Seems the longer you talk the more stained your Republican blame game gets. Not that there was not some blame, but it was always going to be an uphill fight against things that had already been developing in the economy.

    I can see why you would be confused by the term "fiscal liberal", because liberal has both a classical and modern context now days. Bush was a fiscal liberal, in the classical liberal sense, in that he did not believe in large government intervention of the market. He was also a fiscal liberal, as opposed to a fiscal conservative, in that he did not avoid deficit spending, greater government spending, increase of the national debt, or fight for balanced budgets. These two, together, were indeed a bad mix. Faith in an already compromised market followed by a lack of restraint in trying to buy his way out of the problem.
     
  22. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    Bravo! Another gold star! I am actual surprised that you know that derivatives have been around for centuries, and did not want to confuse you with that fact if you did not. Selling derivatives hedges against losses in the underlying asset by defraying risk. The problem with the 95' HUD authorization of Fannie and Freddie is that it implied no real risk due to liability being shifted from lender to taxpayers. Again, you only reference Clinton-era (bipartisan) legislation as the loci of the problem. We seem to agree.

    The FCIR also concluded:

    We conclude collapsing mortgage-lending standards and the mortgage securitization
    pipeline lit and spread the flame of contagion and crisis.

    Did you overlook that? Can you guess what caused the lowering of lending standards? Fannie and Freddie were in the "pipeline". And you probably did not bother with the dissenting statement:

    Th is dissenting statement argues that the U.S. government’s housing policies
    were the major contributor to the financial crisis of 2008. These policies fostered the
    development of a massive housing bubble between 1997 and 2007 and the creation
    of 27 million subprime and Alt-A loans, many of which were ready to default
    as soon as the housing bubble began to deflate.

    http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf

    The FCIC was composed of a majority of democrat appointees (6 to 4), so you do the partisan math.

    Yes, the S&L crisis could have spurred a recession if GSEs had been similarly authorized to buy subprime securities. That is why the S&L crisis is discussed in the FCIR.

    Are you equally willing to say Jon Stewart is a news reporter, or is this just your double-standard rearing its ugly head? What is the difference between parody-commentary, commentary, and journalism? Commentary is opinion. Do you think news is only opinion, and has no greater standard than commentary? If so, that is a problem with journalism, not commentary. And any inability to distinguish the two is a personal failing.

    Does lying while actually working as a bona fide journalist tarnish your journalistic credentials? Sure. Does that reflect on commentary? Not really, as opinion is not the matter of trust that relaying facts is assumed to be. Use your reason occasionally. You know, that thing you use when Jon Stewart is not around to tell you what to think.

    You have yet to refute any of the evidence I have offered, and you have even confirmed most of what I presented, even if denying the conclusions. Buck up, I know you are doing the best you can. Good job!

    "HUD also is authorized to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to
    undertake various remedial actions, including suspension, probation,
    reprimand, or settlement, against lenders found to have engaged in
    discriminatory lending practices in violation of the FH Act or the
    ECOA."

    https://www.federalregister.gov/art...e-department-of-housing-and-urban-development

    So no, not prosecutions alone. Among the agencies this policy tasked with identifying lending discrimination was the Department of Justice. Janet Reno's "one prosecution"?

    Chevy Chase denies any wrongdoing. The bank says it settled to avoid costly litigation. No matter. The agreement it signed this week sends a clear message to banks across the nation that racial bias, whether artful or naive, is intolerable and that the Justice Department will crack down hard.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/26/opinion/justice-cracks-down-on-redlining.html


    The Justice Department said today that it had settled its large lending discrimination case against the Shawmut National Corporation, New England's third-largest banking institution

    http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/14/business/us-settles-bias-case-with-bank.html


    In that case, it reached a landmark settlement in September 1992 with the Decatur Federal Savings and Lo an Association of Atlanta. But the department has plainly signaled recently that more such cases are on the way.
    ...
    But it is clear that the Clinton Administration, led by the Justice Department, is intent on prodding the Fed and other agencies that regulate banks into taking more action on lending discrimination.

    http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/28/business/lending-bias-rules-create-quandary-for-banks.html

    And not to be out done, her deputy, now AG Eric Holder:

    But industry analysts fear Attorney General Eric Holder is rekindling an anti-bank witch hunt launched by Attorney General Janet Reno in the 1990s, when Holder served as her deputy.

    http://news.yahoo.com/doj-begins-bank-witch-hunt-225100582.html

    Continuing that proud tradition.


    Republican controlled but passed with bipartisan support. And even at anyone's "behest", Clinton is still responsible for what he signs into law. But excuses seem to abound with you.

    Nothing selective at all about knowing that Dodd-Frank doubled-down on TBTF. If not, where are the creditors that would supposedly buy the bad debt of bank in bankruptcy?
     
  23. Syne Sine qua non Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,515
    If SCOTUS had not intervened, only the Gore strategy would have mattered. You know, the one where he still lost.

    Great conspiracy theory!
     

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