Disaster Capitalism

[CrusaderFrank]

"These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis," -- Barney Frank

They were the swirling black hole at the epicenter of the disaster

No, they weren't Frank.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were victims, not culprits

There’s a dangerous — and misleading — argument making the rounds about the causes of our current credit crisis. It’s emanating from Washington where politicians are engaging in the usual blame game but this time the stakes are so high that we can’t afford to fall victim to political doublespeak. In this fact-free zone, government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the real estate bubble and subprime meltdown. It’s completely false. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were victims of the credit crisis, not culprits.

Start with the most basic fact of all: virtually none of the $1.5 trillion of cratering subprime mortgages were backed by Fannie or Freddie. That’s right — most subprime mortgages did not meet Fannie or Freddie’s strict lending standards. All those no money down, no interest for a year, low teaser rate loans? All the loans made without checking a borrower’s income or employment history? All made in the private sector, without any support from Fannie and Freddie.

Look at the numbers. While the credit bubble was peaking from 2003 to 2006, the amount of loans originated by Fannie and Freddie dropped from $2.7 trillion to $1 trillion. Meanwhile, in the private sector, the amount of subprime loans originated jumped to $600 billion from $335 billion and Alt-A loans hit $400 billion from $85 billion in 2003. Fannie and Freddie, which wouldn’t accept crazy floating rate loans, which required income verification and minimum down payments, were left out of the insanity.

There’s a must-read study by staff members of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York analyzing the roots of the subprime crisis that came out in March. I don’t think it got much attention then as the conclusions seemed uncontroversial at the time. But now that Washington politicians are trying to rewrite history, it should be mandatory reading for every American interested in knowing how we got here.

The study identifies five causes of the subprime meltdown:

-Convoluted loan products that consumers didn’t understand.

-Credit ratings that didn’t do a good job highlighting the risks contained in subprime-backed securities.

-Lack of incentives for institutional investors to do their own research (they just relied on the credit ratings).

-Predatory lending and borrowing (which I think means fraud perpetrated by borrowers).

-Significant errors in the models used by credit rating agencies to assess subprime-backed securities.

You’ll note in the Fed’s five causes that there’s some culpability for lenders, borrowers, investors and credit raters. There’s no blame for Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae which had little or nothing to do with the entire situation.

They set the underwriting standards for the paper they would guarantee, Dear.

Without googling, can you please explain the role and mission of Fannie and Freddie? Go ahead and Goggle, its OK

 

[Avorysuds]

So funny to see TM get thoroughly raped in her own threads. TM claims other parrot talking points given to them but just like Sarah Palin TM is a walking talking point. She hates Bush for all his policies but loves Obama for doing all the same policies, it’s hypocrisy so old and out dated even children that are new to the term can’t help but be embarrassed for TM.

I mean what’s the point of the thread? TM pretends that Democrats don’t do the same thing and in fact she seems to believe that there were not a shit ton of Democrats supporting Bush and his efforts. I would not be surprised for a moment TM herself supported the Iraq invasion at one point, she surely supports it now that Obama is killing civilians there.

To engage in a conversation with a person (TM) that as often as she possible can will claim to be on the intellectual and educated side of the political spectrum while seemingly lacking any meaningful education herself is just ironic. There are few people stupid enough to go out of their way to say “you’re uneducated” when they themselves are the definition of the word uneducated.

So here we are, another thread about how capitalism mixed oddly with big ass Government (that TM supports as long as the Democrats is doing all the spending/killing) has failed and TM is here to tell us all how Capitalism has failed us…. The fact, not opinion but fact that TM can’t grasp the simple concept that Government has knowingly or unknowingly gone out of it’s way to enable recessions, depressions, wars and walfare state to fumble out of control, destroying 10’s of millions of people lives is more than a bit humorous in itself.

So TM, please, tell us all again how that ever expanding Government you love has diluted itself with corporations to create poor corrupted choices, 1 after another . Prove what we have been telling you the whole time that socialism is great until it inevitably corrupts itself and can’t pay it’s bills.

 

[The T]

Of course, we could fully transition to Socialism which is always a disaster where prices never recover.

And Government sets the price of everything. Death knell to the free market, and economic liberty.

 

[Truthmatters]

How sad that they have to pretend a capitalists like me want socialism and not democracy.

They lie to them selves all day long about everything

 

[Dot Com]

Looks like Frank is a lock-step, idologue. The facts are right in front of his face & he refuses to acknowledge them Why are so many Righties here ideologues?

 

[Avorysuds]

How sad that they have to pretend a capitalists like me want socialism and not democracy.

They lie to them selves all day long about everything

Girl, the last thing you want is a free society.

 

[peach174]

It has been The Dems who have passed legislation for low income families to own homes.
They were the ones pushing for no money down and variable rate mortgages, along with not regulating Fanny and Freddie.
Low income people can not afford the maintenance and property taxes to keep a home.
But Dem's never even considered these facts. When Repubs brought it up Dems just dismissed a right wing talk tactics and said that they were against the poor.
That seems to be a problem for the left, FACTS.

 

[Truthmatters]

How sad that they have to pretend a capitalists like me want socialism and not democracy.

They lie to them selves all day long about everything

Girl, the last thing you want is a free society.

You dont have the right to tell me what I believe.

You have to right to tell us what you believe.

i believe in capitalism and Democracy.

Captialism is a tool to keep Democracy alive and well.

Do you agree or do you just want to find ways to hate me?

 

[Truthmatters]

It has been The Dems who have passed legislation for low income families to own homes.
They were the ones pushing for no money down and variable rate mortgages, along with not regulating Fanny and Freddie.
Low income people can not afford the maintenance and property taxes to keep a home.
But Dem's never even considered these facts. When Repubs brought it up Dems just dismissed a right wing talk tactics and said that they were against the poor.
That seems to be a problem for the left, FACTS.

The CRA act had limits in it to the amount of the loans they needed to write.

Those limits could have NEVER produced this mess.

Tell us why so many non CRA lenders wrote so many sub prime loans when the law didnt cover them?

Why do you ignore so many facts?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

See, when real estate prices collapse, rents go down, except in places like NY City where government policies guarantee that rents will never go down and new renters will always have almost insurmountable barriers to entry.

 

[Avorysuds]

How sad that they have to pretend a capitalists like me want socialism and not democracy.

They lie to them selves all day long about everything

Girl, the last thing you want is a free society.

You dont have the right to tell me what I believe.

You have to right to tell us what you believe.

i believe in capitalism and Democracy.

Captialism is a tool to keep Democracy alive and well.

Do you agree or do you just want to find ways to hate me?

First I do have the right to tell you what you believe you moron.

Second you believe in highly controlled Government capitalism, nothing less.

last I don't have to find ways to hate you as your a torture supporting, war supporting, homeland security loving, civilian killing Bushbama supporter. You're discussing as all it took to sell out your morals was a black Democrats in the oval office.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

So no takers on explaining what Fannie and Freddie actually do?

I'll give you another hour to Google it

 

[Truthmatters]

Looks like Frank is a lock-step, idologue. The facts are right in front of his face & he refuses to acknowledge them Why are so many Righties here ideologues?

They ignore court documented evidence, deny science, try to rewrite history, deny the definition of words and pretend their opponents are monsters by lying about what we believe.

They can not live in the real world and retain their historically failed ideas at the same time.

I just dont understand why they dont just get some new ideas that actually may work?

 

[Avorysuds]

Or maybe you can give us a list of repealed Bush policies the Dems and Obama have done over the last 6 years.

 

[auditor0007]

Hell maybe the republicans will vote to ruin the country by not raising the debt limit.

Maybe they have been promised a piece of the pie after we all get fucked.

hey, moron. you have it backwards.

Ruining the country would be raising the limit. Tell me, is it better to pay credit card debt with credit cards or better to just pay your bill? Honestly.

So cut some spending and raise taxes enough to pay the bills. How about we come up with a one time tax to pay off the entire $14 trillion all at once, since we're all responsible for it?

 

[Avorysuds]

Hell maybe the republicans will vote to ruin the country by not raising the debt limit.

Maybe they have been promised a piece of the pie after we all get fucked.

hey, moron. you have it backwards.

Ruining the country would be raising the limit. Tell me, is it better to pay credit card debt with credit cards or better to just pay your bill? Honestly.

So cut some spending and raise taxes enough to pay the bills. How about we come up with a one time tax to pay off the entire $14 trillion all at once, since we're all responsible for it?

Cool, show us all, please, show us who and how much of a tax is needed in this 1 time tax to "pay our bills." Show us how much revenue the Government will be getting and then we'll talk about cutting because you're gonna need fucking shit tons of cuts to make up the difference that a tax, even on everyone and high simply won't be able to cover.

Oh, and good luck getting the disaster capitalist President, Obama to end all 4 of his wars, lol.

 

[LordBrownTrout]

Yes they created the problem then got bailed out and are now stiffing us with our own money.

Thank a republican

Here's who you can thank:

Alphabetical by Senator Name


Akaka (D-HI), Yea
Alexander (R-TN), Yea
Allard (R-CO), Nay
Barrasso (R-WY), Nay
Baucus (D-MT), Yea
Bayh (D-IN), Yea
Bennett (R-UT), Yea
Biden (D-DE), Yea
Bingaman (D-NM), Yea
Bond (R-MO), Yea
Boxer (D-CA), Yea
Brown (D-OH), Yea
Brownback (R-KS), Nay
Bunning (R-KY), Nay
Burr (R-NC), Yea
Byrd (D-WV), Yea
Cantwell (D-WA), Nay
Cardin (D-MD), Yea
Carper (D-DE), Yea
Casey (D-PA), Yea
Chambliss (R-GA), Yea
Clinton (D-NY), Yea
Coburn (R-OK), Yea
Cochran (R-MS), Nay
Coleman (R-MN), Yea
Collins (R-ME), Yea
Conrad (D-ND), Yea
Corker (R-TN), Yea
Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
Craig (R-ID), Yea
Crapo (R-ID), Nay
DeMint (R-SC), Nay
Dodd (D-CT), Yea
Dole (R-NC), Nay


Domenici (R-NM), Yea
Dorgan (D-ND), Nay
Durbin (D-IL), Yea
Ensign (R-NV), Yea
Enzi (R-WY), Nay
Feingold (D-WI), Nay
Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
Graham (R-SC), Yea
Grassley (R-IA), Yea
Gregg (R-NH), Yea
Hagel (R-NE), Yea
Harkin (D-IA), Yea
Hatch (R-UT), Yea
Hutchison (R-TX), Yea
Inhofe (R-OK), Nay
Inouye (D-HI), Yea
Isakson (R-GA), Yea
Johnson (D-SD), Nay
Kennedy (D-MA), Not Voting
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
Kohl (D-WI), Yea
Kyl (R-AZ), Yea
Landrieu (D-LA), Nay
Lautenberg (D-NJ), Yea
Leahy (D-VT), Yea
Levin (D-MI), Yea
Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea
Lincoln (D-AR), Yea
Lugar (R-IN), Yea
Martinez (R-FL), Yea
McCain (R-AZ), Yea
McCaskill (D-MO), Yea
McConnell (R-KY), Yea


Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
Mikulski (D-MD), Yea
Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
Murray (D-WA), Yea
Nelson (D-FL), Nay
Nelson (D-NE), Yea
Obama (D-IL), Yea
Pryor (D-AR), Yea
Reed (D-RI), Yea
Reid (D-NV), Yea
Roberts (R-KS), Nay
Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea
Salazar (D-CO), Yea
Sanders (I-VT), Nay
Schumer (D-NY), Yea
Sessions (R-AL), Nay
Shelby (R-AL), Nay
Smith (R-OR), Yea
Snowe (R-ME), Yea
Specter (R-PA), Yea
Stabenow (D-MI), Nay
Stevens (R-AK), Yea
Sununu (R-NH), Yea
Tester (D-MT), Nay
Thune (R-SD), Yea
Vitter (R-LA), Nay
Voinovich (R-OH), Yea
Warner (R-VA), Yea
Webb (D-VA), Yea
Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
Wicker (R-MS), Nay
Wyden (D-OR), Nay

 

[GoneBezerk]

I think you're a lonely idiot that likes to talking to yourself on the internet.

I think you don't know your mouth from your butthole like you don't know liberals are bent on destroying this country.

It's not by chance liberals want to keep spending with our credit card maxed out while denying us the chance to improve the economy with fossil fuel drilling, less regulations on companies, less support for public/private sector unions draining the cash flow from the economy, etc, etc, etc.

Now get back to talking to yourself with your blow-up doll.

Hell maybe the republicans will vote to ruin the country by not raising the debt limit.

Maybe they have been promised a piece of the pie after we all get fucked.

 

[The T]

So no takers on explaining what Fannie and Freddie actually do?

I'll give you another hour to Google it

They won't Frank. They know they'll have to chow down on some shoe leather with no condiments in sight...

 

[Toro]

How many of you know what it is?

I do.

And its tough to take Naomi Klein seriously.