Forum Post: OWS victory: Washington Post prints two big truths about Wall Street's "Big Lie" !!
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 11, 2011, 8:05 a.m. EST by vets74
(344)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
"What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral."
Wall Street and the mortgage bankers would have us believe that they are not responsible for the Depression of 2008. Facts say otherwise.
So what we see in media is their Big Lie repeated over and over.
Big Truth
WaPo can't print economic details. That would show $7-trillion as stolen.
$2-trillion in bogus mortgages. Another $5-trillion in pension fund fraud, from selling bribery-driven "AAA" bonds.
The simple market-transaction facts are impossible for them.
Big Lie
Surprisingly, WaPo does allow one columnist to hit the core of Wall Street lying.
The article explains the Big Lie. Then it takes us to Mayor Bloomberg, as he performed on Tuesday as a Big Lie huckster:
-- Any Big Lie has to be so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. ...
-- Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivatives or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather the long-standing federal housing policies that were at fault.
-- Indeed, the arguments these folks make fail to withstand even casual scrutiny. But that has not stopped people who should know better from repeating them.
-- The Big Lie made a surprise appearance Tuesday when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, responding to a question about Occupy Wall Street, stunned observers by exonerating Wall Street: "It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, Congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp.”
I do know better than that, personally. We followed the housing bubble in some detail.
Those regulated low income housing loans are among the best-performing loans in the federally-supported portfolio. Not the worst. That success in a bad economy happens because the poorer neighborhoods do not see speculators/flippers and corrupt appraisers boosting their markets. Those houses are financed from wages.
The low income people bought houses to live in them, more or less permanently.
Barry Ritholtz does a solid job of presenting the white washed version of how the Depression of 2008 was generated. He gets close.
A truth
$2-trillion mortgage fraud:
-- The demand for higher-yielding paper led Wall Street to begin bundling mortgages... (including) subprime mortgages. This market.. could have (been) supervised, but Greenspan did not.
-- These mortgage originators’ lend-to-sell-to-securitizers model had them holding mortgages for a very short period. This allowed them to get creative with underwriting standards, abdicating traditional lending (standards) such as income, credit rating, debt-service history and loan-to-value.
-- “Innovative” mortgage products were developed to reach more subprime borrowers. ... These mortgages defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers....
That is the $2-trillion in mortgage fraud, with our Ayn Rand-lobotomized Alan Greenspan failing to regulate or to do normal law enforcement.
Another truth
$5-trillion in pension fraud. Trust me, it's hidden in these paragraphs:
-- Low rates (on Treasury bonds) meant asset managers could no longer get decent yields.... Instead, they turned to high-yield mortgage-backed securities. Nearly all of them failed to do adequate due diligence before buying them, did not understand these instruments or the risk involved. ....
-- Fund managers made this error because they relied on the credit ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P and Fitch. They had placed AAA ratings on these junk securities, claiming they were as safe as U.S. Treasurys.
Big Truth: Moody's, S&P, and Fitch were bribed. 10-times, even 20-times normal fees were paid to get bogus ratings.
Big bonuses. Big crimes. $5-trillion in pension fraud ensued.
Here's the piece.
http://tinyurl.com/WaPo-Big-Lie-piece-111111
This is all the truth that WaPo can stand to see on its own web site.
If you read through and look up the odd jargon terms from finance when you get boggled, you can learn one helluva a lot. Ritholtz is a good writer.
But you have to know that criminality on a grand scale -- a scale appropriate to Rupert Murdoch and James or to Goldman, Sachs -- is a condition that is impossible for an Establishment newspaper to admit. Criminal enterprises are the weak point for capitalism -- operating criminally allows thugs to operate more profitably than operating honestly.
The Murdoch empire was achieved solely through crime. They stole the news.
Crime pays.
Goldman, Sachs and the other Wall Street criminals stole their trillions of dollars -- mostly hidden, never shown as profit -- while not caring the least for the destruction they inflicted on the world.
WaPo gets some of it. 40% of the truth, maybe 50% ??? Better than nothing at all.
Agreed, it is better than nothing. A few good investigative journalists could go far in exposing the deceit.
One more truth is that we don't really need banks at all. We can borrow directly from those who are creating, manufacturing or servicing rather than those doing nothing!
That's exactly the idea behind credit unions.
Minimize overhead and salary costs. Stay out of politics. Do the job and be part of the community.
D'oh.
Let's erase them!
Money makes the Rules,The ones who control money supply control the world, government being a convenient front,Master Manipulators,story spinners,from a bought media,buying and compromising our representatives..Secrecy and coverup keep the charade intact,but it is unraveling..Old School world does not wash in the light of day..Watch as the illusion disappears and everyone sees the truth..
We have seen four major redistribution schemes over the last 30 years in America:
The Fed gave the bankers ZIRP interest-free money (net inflation) for no reason other than to enrich them, individually.
Worked to beat the band.
Hi Vets74, Thank you for this post. It puts so much into perspective. Best Regards, Nevada
$7-trillion = $7,000,000 times a million.
Helluva smash-and-grab.
They did the $5-trillion part by stealing chunks like $1.2-billion so many hundreds of times over. Gotta be floored by Goldman, Sachs as an OC gang.
Only asshole liberals could watch Europe COLLAPSING..in real time, because of failed socialism, and then continue to to try and lead America into it.
Morons..simply morons.
Funny. This is so screwed up that it's not even wrong.
Private, capitalistic investment in real estate is what splattered the PIIGS economies.
-- Trillions of euros moved south -- buying up property in a boom that lasted from 2002 to 2008.
-- Real estate prices in hot areas tripled and more.
-- Wages inflated to 40% above wages in the northern countries.
This was capitalism at its craziest. People are like that -- we make crazy-bad decisions and that's how "free markets" work.
Really bad decisions are amplified in capitalism.
Science: Daniel Kahneman: Fast & Slow Thinking
Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, says Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman: System One is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System Two is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. Examining how both systems function within the mind, Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, exposes the extraordinary capabilities, faults, and biases of fast thinking and the pervasive influence of intuitive impressions, showing where we can trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking.
Seattle Science Lectures, with Pacific Science Center and University Book Store. Series sponsored by Microsoft. Series media sponsorship provided by KPLU. Tickets were $5 at Brown Paper Tickets.
You had to live near Seattle to get there, more or less sensibly.
Read the books.
Dan Kanheman won a Nobel in Economics.
He's not an economist. He doesn't do economics. He doesn't know jack about math.
His ideas opened our minds. Frankly, he showed experimentally why Adam Smith and the NeoLiberal fantasies about "Free Markets" being infallible... were mental horse droppings.
Behavioral Economics. Big deal. Way more important than any/all of randian narcissism.
Socialism. Fails. We built the greatest country on planet Earth in record time, WE advanced the world. All through Free market capitalism, and democracy. That point can't be debated.
Fuck you and anyone who thinks you have a better idea...through growing gov't. Ain't gonna happen on my watch
Socialism vs. capitalism -- has nothing to do with it.
Crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks are crooks....
Communism had its New Class crooks. Israel had a turn of crooks in state-owned businesses. Capitalism has ENRON and Countrywide.
In fact, socialism is probably O.K. for mature, slow change industries. Fire departments, police, a small military, teaching hospitals, FEMA, schools, all of doctoring, all of general infrastructure.
I go to V.A. and medical care there is head-and-shoulders better than private doctors and our local hospital. And way cheaper when you look at the VA cost data. (Colonoscopy = $400. Put one of them on your insurance.)
"Capitalism. Fails." ... ;^) ... when crooks get in and use illegal acts to get a competitive advantage.
Murdoch, for example.
ENRON, for example.
Not bad... let's try socialism for the obvious and capitalism with very strong law enforcement for the rest.
"If you ain't cheatin' then you're not trying" -- that's why it's called temptation.
Always gonna be crooks, always gonna be poor people,
Printing trillions of dollars,backed by no goods or services,Fake Money, Fake Debt,smoke and mirrors,magic,bailout the richest corporations on Earth,giving bonuses to the very ones who bankrupted the world ecomomy..Rewarding corrupt activities,bribing silence of all accomplices,or witnesses..High Treason is the charge.. Clean House ,Senate,The Supreme Court,Federal Reserve,IRS,Forest Service,DOD,FBI,CIA, paid shills for the MegaRich..
Has the word "paranoia" appeared in the conversation ?
Honestly, operation of a national economy and a banking system is complicated. We take three or four years of Economics courses to get students to where they have a solid mathematical handle on what influences what.
May I recommend Richard Koo and Nicole Gelinas as writers. They are both brilliant.
"High treason is the charge" indicates that you're way gone into frustration with these systems.
By the way, speaking of S&P's culpability. I believe that the real reason that S&P incited the tea party members of Congress to wage the debt limit default extortion this past summer was because regulators were just getting ready to fund regulatory agencies to implement Dodd-Frank regulation ON S&P. By their attacking the budget and forcing major cuts the new regulations on S&P were subverted.
Bingo !
I just want to thank you, it gets tiresome pointing out facts to those who refuse to see them.
On the other hand it likely requires some level of Aspergers to enjoy reading emailed links to the St. Louis and Dallas and Atlanta Feds, plus academic comments.
I don't get paid for doing economics.
aw....Let's just call it curiosity and leave it at that...LOL
I don't get paid for much of anything these days anyway. So might as well learn something, never know it could come in handy for someone sooner or later.
Thanks for pointing to this column. If we don't express ourselves on the public mass media forums where the average folks are the only thing they see is the crap from the right-wing trolls.
Here are some information and action links about the cause of the collapse that you might want to use. Thanks again for the posting.
H.R.2451: Glass-Steagall Restoration Act of 2011 Find it here: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php
Write to your members in Congress and demand that they co-sponsor this bill. NOW! Senate: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
House: http://www.house.gov/representatives/
The Congress that Crashed America http://home.ptd.net/~aahpat/aandc/congcrash.html A directory of 64 current U.S. Senators & 171 sitting Representatives who repealed Glass-Steagall in 1999.
Financial Regulation Timeline November 29th, 2008 by selise (most recent update on 4/5/09) http://www.netrootsmass.net/selise/financial-regulation-timeline/
Note: This is the main page and timeline for a series on the (mostly) legislative history of financial deregulation that has contributed to our current financial and economic crisis.
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Did you write this? It's nicely done.
Wow. Thank you.
About as many Americans know that $7-trillion was stolen as know that 2,600,000 Vietnamese were killed during that war. (The latter is from the official US Army history.)
Amazing what gets hidden.
Except that much of the basis for this article is patently false. I have no idea where he's getting this:
"Those low income housing loans are the best-performing loans in the federally-supported portfolio. Not the worst. That success in a bad economy happens because the poorer neighborhoods do not see speculators/flippers and corrupt appraisers boosting their markets. Those houses are financed from wages."
Anyone can go look at any number of independent sources to see that's very clearly not the case. The only way that he can get there is by playing some games with what he's defining as terms which is misleading.
Also note that if this were true then it blows the whole "poor ignorant folks being taken advantage of by mortgage brokers" thing.
Most of the rest isn't news to anyone.
The "mortgage brokers" who took advantage of low-income home buyers did it by moving these people out of the REGULATED Federal program.
The REGULATED Federal program worked fine.
You are confusing the UNREGULATED crazy-paper mortgages with the Federal system.
FFIEC collects these data. State level reports are available for everything.
Also, the Federal low income system was the last/never used alternative for dishonest mortgage brokers serving low income house buyers. That is another contributor to why the REGULATED low income program mortgages are doing relatively well.
Vacation home mortgages ??? That's where you find defaults by the zillion.
No, I'm not confusing anything. In your post above you (or they - comments and parts of the article are mixed together) didn't distinguish loans originated under Federal low-income programs which had various restrictions from non-regulated sub-prime loans (as you have here). As I said, without further definition, that's misleading.
Obviously, loans with greater qualification requirements and restrictions and fewer structural features which increased the potential for failure will tend to have a lower failure rate. However, the failure rate versus non-sub-prime loans still is miserable regardless where originated. The "Federally-supported portfolio" includes many loans other than only sub-prime.
You (or they) need to better define exactly what you're talking about.
Low income federal program loans are doing better than non-sub-prime loans for vacation homes.
There's no equivocation -- every one of the federal low income loans was REGULATED. No exceptions. No confusion.
And the performance of these loans compares to other non-sub-prime loans about the same as it always did.
"Very low-income is defined as below 50 percent of the area median income (AMI), low-income is between 50 and 80 percent of AMI; moderate income is below 115 percent of AMI. Families must be without adequate housing, but able to afford the housing payments, including principal, interest, taxes, and insurance (PITI). Qualifying repayment ratios are 29 percent for PITI to 41 percent for total debt. In addition, applicants must be unable to obtain credit elsewhere, yet have an acceptable credit history."
These people are poor, but not house poor.
The Dallas Fed did a lot of work on these issues. They know what they're talking about.
Blaming federal low income programs is silly. Part of the Big Lie.
Btw: you want to find disaster, look at the piggybacks.
Free Market, UNREGULATED, Republican perfection -- #$%&^% shit.
You're stll playing games with definition...
The implication in the post to a casual reader is that low-income, sub-prime loans weren't/aren't a problem and, by extension, that the Federal government pushing lenders to make more sub-prime loans didn't contribute to the greater problem. That's false. No, the default rate isn't as high for Federally-originated sub-prime loans as it is for sketchy privately-originated loans; however, it's still significantly higher than non-sub-prime loans.
I'm not arguing that non-low-income sub-prime loans aren't the largest part of the problem. That's clear just looking at the areas where defaults have been greatest (NV, FL, AZ, etc.), but saying that the government's efforts to expand home ownership, although well-intentioned at the time, didn't contribute in a large way is misleading. Loans privately originated also were counted toward goals. Beyond the Feds, groups like ACORN effectively "blackmailed" banks to issue more sub-prime loans by picketting until they agreed to do so and not necessarily through Federal low-income programs. Also, it wasn't necessarily exclusively that brokers "pushed" borrowers to private loans but rather that they would not have qualified otherwise (and that includes low-income and otherwise). Not that shady brokers didn't exist and bad loans weren't pushed, but that's kind of a different discussion.
The federal programs were tightly REGULATED for every loan in the programs.
The no-federal UNREGULATED scam-loans were generated by mortgage-mafia criminal enterprises.
Government efforts in this direction had been underway for decades. Nothing new. Nothing large. Nothing that anywhere near impacted the economy in the Depression of 2008 collapse.
All of the major criminal enterprises are now out of business -- though their "books" have been taken over by the likes of Bank of America (with grave regrets.)
They took hundreds of billions of dollars of packeted-and-resold phony mortgages, which are not skewed to the poor except where utter fraud was the intent.
You've been sold on the Big Lie.
The government's efforts have held up relatively well. The bankster mortgage-mafia "efforts" have succumbed in cohorts.
Btw: blaming ACORN ??? A combination of desperation and humor.
You're not blaming Hillary Clinton ? How's about Jane Fonda ?
Millions of fraud mortgages were written by the bankster mortgage-mafia. They employed the "friendly appraisal" cutpurses. They had people write lines and forge signatures on all manner of documents. That is why the foreclosure system is in such a mess.
The criminals, here, were private parties following their own desires. Characters in a real-life "Atlas Screwed the Pooch."
Again, you're not making a valid comparison. You're simply trying to justify a position based on ideology, misleading statements of fact and, now, branching out into pure "talking points" and other areas that have little to do with the original post.
Note that I did not question that non-regulated sub-prime loans were the bulk of the problem. Nor do I question that derivatives were responsible as a direct cause of the crash. None of that eliminates the fact that the Federal government also played a large role through CRA and other requirements as did other groups who pressured banks to make sub-par loans to sub-par borrowers. There's plenty of blame to go around. Attempting to exclude the role of the government and regulators and activists groups and legislators is disingenuous at best.
Your comparison of regulated sub-prime versus only other sub-prime loans is misleading. You're only comparing crap with worse crap. Compare the number of and default rates for Federally-backed 30 year sub-prime loans with Federally-backed 30 year prime loans and then come back and post the figures.
You appear to be either unaware of or are choosing to ignore how ACORN (as well as other similar groups) received significant amounts of its revenue by picketting and threatening suits against banks to increase loans to low-income communities and then making settlements where they received money to fund their programs and the banks agreed to make more loans (INDEPENDENT of the Federally-backed programs). They also actively took advantage of the approval process for charter renewal, mergers and acquistions among banks, with direct assistance by various legislators and regulators, to the same end by testifying and receiving concessions (again INDEPENDENT of using Federally-backed programs). None of that is conspiracy theory; rather, it's fact that is very easily confirmed.
The rest of your post is just off-topic babbling....
Only six percent of all higher-priced loans were made by CRA-covered lenders to borrowers and neighborhoods targeted by the CRA.
CRA Community Reinvestment Act was zero as a contributor to the Depression of 2008. In fact, the CRA Bank loans did reasonably well. Better, not worse than alternatives.
dailydish.typepad.com/files/traiger_hinckley_llp_cra_foreclosure_study_1-7-08.pdf
Similarly from FRB:
-- The Federal Reserve Board has found no connection between CRA and the subprime mortgage problems. In fact, the Board's analysis (102 KB PDF) found that nearly 60 percent of higher-priced loans went to middle- or higher-income borrowers or neighborhoods, which are not the focus of CRA activity. Additionally, about 20 percent of the higher-priced loans that were extended in low- or moderate-income areas, or to low- or moderate-income borrowers, were loans originated by lenders not covered by the CRA. Our analysis found that only six percent of all higher-priced loans were made by CRA-covered lenders to borrowers and neighborhoods targeted by the CRA. Further, our review of loan performance found that rates of serious mortgage delinquency are high in all neighborhood groups, not just in lower-income areas.
-- The Fed, in collaboration with the other financial regulatory agencies, is currently considering what can be done to make CRA a more effective regulatory incentive and how CRA can be revised to address the new community needs that have emerged in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. As part of this regulatory initiative, the agencies held CRA hearings and invited written comments on how to improve CRA in June 2010. In December 2010, the agencies published amendments to the rule to encourage financial institutions to participate in activities aimed at revitalizing areas designated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development for funds under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12625.htm
Examining the real numbers for mortgage defaults is better than listening to some fat drug addict spew lies on the radio.
TRAIGER & HINCKLEY showed that where CRA was stronger by SMSA, the default rate was lower. Exactly the opposite of what you have been led to believe.
CRA acted in buyers' best interests. ACORN ??? A non sequitur. CRA banks are happy to participate because the program gives them good quality bookings and protection. Standards were NEVER changed in response to your alleged political pressure. Faking CRA compliance is a felony.
Btw: The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), enacted by Congress in 1977 (12 U.S.C. 2901) and implemented by Regulations 12 CFR parts 25, 228, 345.... etc.
If there had been any serious deficiency over the 15 years coming into 2002, be assured that the economists at The Fed would have homed in on it.
They see CRA as a safety system. As good regulation, working to decrease bad loans and eliminate theft. On the other hand wanting to compare sub-prime to prime customer experience makes no sense at all -- the point is that participating in CRA would have protected sub-prime borrowers from crooks (and themselves.)
D'oh.
Both of your studies address only high-cost CRA loans made to low-income areas which, as noted, represent only 6% of CRA loans. Not all CRA loans. Not all loans made to low-income borrowers under CRA and related lending initiatives. Whether intentional or not you've skewed your results to your own line of thinking.
As I've said numerous times above, again, versus the representation made in the original post that low-income loans are among the best performing in the "Federal portfolio" is not correct. Are they better than the crap no-money-down, 1-year ARMs and pick-a-payment loans? Absolutely. Are they better than prime 30-year loans? Absolutely not. The fact that you went back and added the word "regulated" to your post (which I'd cut & pasted directly in its orginal form my in post heading this sub-thread) is tacit admission that even you can see that the original wording needed clarification.
There have been numerous deficiencies cited with the CRA and GSE programs over the years, not the least of which was regulatory oversight and lowering standards, as can be very clearly seen in the debate and testimony during each of the reauthorizations.
Are you having that much trouble reading these Federal Reserve data and conclusions ?
From the pool of high-cost loans, the CRA loans are 6% of the total.
From the low-cost loans, which include a significant number of CRA loans, those loans are among the best performers of the portfolio. NONE OF THE LOW-COST CRA LOANS WENT TO VACATION HOMES. That reflects low wage steadily employed working-poor households getting the CRA protections. Those folks are excellent mortgage-payment payers.
You do not understand the mortgage market and where the CRA protections are applied.
Apples-to-apples will compare high-cost/high-risk loans to other high-cost/high-risk loans.
Oranges-to-oranges will compare low-cost/low-risk loans to other low-cost/low-risk loans.
REGULATED was added because you did not know that this condition is implied automatically by the loan qualifying for CRA protections.
Whining about anything and everything related to democracy (a.k.a. "government" in America) requires willful ignorance. The Fed's board knows what happened:
-- "Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) contribute to foreclosures and the financial crisis? ... The Federal Reserve Board has found no connection between CRA and the subprime mortgage problems."
Or perhaps you fancy that you know more about the technical details of banking than the statisticians and economists at our central bank. There are loud mouths on the radio every day, making the same mistake.
Good luck with that.
No, I didn't have any trouble reading it. Apparently, I did have trouble typing it though. lol I intended to say 6% of high-cost loans not of CRA loans. My bad. Doesn't change the nature of what I was saying (see below). That is not the universe of loans made to low-income persons as a result of the CRA (and beyond).
Let me try to make this clear once again...
Going back to YOUR ORIGINAL POST, you did not distinguish (and still don't) that you are talking about Federally-originated loans only (or more accurately, those originated to be conforming under Federal programs). CRA didn't even come up until you went off on another tangent later. You said:
"Those [regulated - added later] low income housing loans are among the best-performing loans in the federally-supported portfolio."
As I noted much ealier, obviously regulated, Federally-supported loans would be EXPECTED to be higher-performing versus non-conforming, low-income loans by their nature. They carry more restrictions and do not include many of the features that were permitted with other higher-risk loans. That's a big "duh."
But that's not what you said....
The "...federally-supported portfolio" as you called it includes many more types of loans beyond only CRA and sub-prime. Also, at least until recently, it did not include any of the other crap loans since they didn't qualify under Federal guidelines. So by definition the regulated sub-prime loans represented the more-risky loans within the "federally-supported portfolio." It is an apples to oranges comparision by its nature since there are both apples (sub-prime) and oranges (prime) in the portfolio. That was my point. Simple.
In a similar way you've distorted things by implying that CRA loans are the only loans that were made to low-income individuals and that the Act only resulted in Federally-conforming loans. (By your own citations, they represented only 6% of high-cost loans, not counting additional non-high-cost, low-income loans that did not qualify otherwise.) There were many other loans made to low-income persons, many as a result of various pressures placed on lenders, which did not comform to Federal guidelines for the simple reason that many of those borrowers did not qualify. That is, loans made under the Federal low-income programs were not the only loans issued as a result of the CRA. For example, the Act provided for the ability for the government to sue banks to force lending to low-income groups within the banks' community WITHOUT those resulting loans necessarily meeting Federal guidelines. Likewise, the actions by ACORN and similar groups. In addition, it was known to legislators/regulators that a significant number of such loans would be losers and there were long debates over whether the Federal government could force banks, legally or practically, to issue such loans that they knew would result in losses to them. They did anyway and the banks basically had no choice in the matter.
I'm sure people can get enough from the two professional papers I've cited to make sense of the thread.
dailydish.typepad.com/files/traiger_hinckley_llp_cra_foreclosure_study_1-7-08.pdf
and
www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12625.htm
It's pretty damn easy to grok that CRA loans only totaled 6% of the high-cost/high-risk mortgage loans, plus that those 6% are doing better than the others in that pool. CRA regulation/protections worked some good even there and in a bad economy.
Going off blaming ACORN for the housing bubble and mortgage broker criminal acts -- that's shear paranoia. This is fantasy. Some scheme is invented in the fantasy so's the Blacks trick them powerless White bankers into replicating the 1980s S&L Crisis on a times-20 scale.
At best, that is disordered thinking. At worst delusional.
CRA was started in 1977. Damn fine example of regulating capitalism to meet "free market" color blind behavioral standards. Literally millions of families own their homes today because of CRA strictures that worked to end racist lending practices. If you could qualify for a loan through CRA, then the CRA banks would give you a loan -- good for everybody involved and money maker for every one of the CRA banks despite racist denials from the rightie fruit cakes.
This "frankie" will surely have the last posting.
Dear frankie: enjoy !
Do you think there is a reason why Government ALLOWED this to happen? Hmmmm? Because THEY made the regulations with these loop holes, THEY FORCED banks to lend to subprime borrowers, and they benefited from it!
No one "forced" the mortgage bankers to lend to subprime borrowers.
Not at all.
You are confusing the long-term, in-place-for-20+-years REGULATED low income mortgages with the UNREGULATED subprime flipper-paper mortgages.
The UNREGULATED subprimes have nothing to do with the federal low income programs. Not one primary mortgage of it.
The only intersection of these mortgage markets is where criminals exploited the UNREGULATED market to move existing federally-supported mortgages over to their dishonest shit-paper.
No one in government service made a dime off any of it.
The criminals in the UNREGULATED markets stole every last dime that they could. Look to California, today, for the resulting economic carnage.
Would you read a book? Read "Meltdown" by Thomas E. Woods. Government programs directly black listed companies that refused to lend to borrowers in disadvantaged areas or without 20% down. The corporations, who are out to make money, said fine, you force us to sell these crap mortgages you back them. And the government did. Fannie and Freddie started buying up toxic mortgages left and right, the more Fannie and Freddie bought, the more incentive there was to take risks. Once all the risks failed, the government came in and bailed out the banks.
Corporations did EXACTLY what they are supposed to do, make money. The governments tampering into their practices is what lead to this mess we are in.
As Thomas Woods says in this book, blaming this crisis on greed is like blaming plane crashes on gravity.
Woods is selling the Big Lie.
The REGULATED low income programs worked then and work now perfectly well.
This piece of shit is lying his ass off.
This is the Big Lie.
Where the mortgage brokers went criminal, they exited the REGULATED federal low income programs -- where working-poor jobs were validated and credit records were checked -- and dropped into UNREGULATED non-federal cesspools.
FEDERAL LOW INCOME = REGULATED.
Want to read the Big Lie in paperback, read Woods.
Ok nice talking to you.
Whole mortgage companies such as Countrywide went off into criminal acts. They managed to do it by avoiding government at every turn.
ENRON, but with mortgages.
Sorry that conflicts with libertarian dogma.
EVERYTHING in this country conflicts with Libertarian dogma. If you believe what happened was a result of a Free Market, I have some swamp land to sell you on Mars.
Free Market does not imply that anybody, ever should be free of legal restraint.
When Too-Big-To-Fail companies get lobbyist control of government, that is exactly what happens.
Your ideas about "Free Market" need a course correction to account for organized crime. OC at the corporate level is 100% what caused the Depression of 2008.
Organized Crime is only possible with Government help.
Organized crime in corporate America is achieved by avoiding government altogether.
George Bush cut the SEC enforcement unit to one person.
I guess that counts as "government help." The Federal government went away.
That muffer Bush loved crime. ENRON was his single largest contributor.
What are you thoughts on Obama?
Vets, you said all I needed to hear...enjoy your liberal colored glasses, because some day you will wake up and realize you have duped just like those with Republican colored glasses. As I said earlier have a good day.
Wife and kids to worry about, raised with the Kennedy assassination front-and-center, surely aware of such as Blackwater/Xi.....
I ain't gonna ask him to be a hero.
We jailed 2,500 bankers/S&L guy at late 1980s into the 1990s. But that was a different era. Now the Republican Party is basically fascist and they're set on protecting the criminals.
Democrats will need to get a majority in the Supreme Court plus real control of Senate and House to make systemic progress. It's that bad.