Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
So one piece of legislation passed in 2000 was responsible for a global meltdown 8 years later? Is that really your theory here?
Americans lost that much net worth because Obama's policies depressed the housing market and the labor market. When he took office no one was pointing to lost net worth, which at that point didnt approach 40%. this is what 3 years of total Dem control and 5 years of Dem Congressional control give you.
Fortunately that's all over Jan 2013.
That is perhaps the most ridiculous rationalization and spin I have ever heard concerning the housing crisis.
Nice job.
What specific "Obama Policy" do you believe "depressed the housing market", and how did it cause the DJIA to drop 7000+ points before he ever took office?
The GLBA & the CFMA did not pass by 2/3 majority
AGAIN - This was Bill Clinton's Baby. He could have vetoed that bill. He allowed the Fed to grant Citigroup a waiver a year before the law was passed. Citicorp, a commercial bank holding company, merged with the insurance company Travelers Group in 1998 to form the conglomerate Citigroup, a corporation combining banking, securities and insurance services under a house of brands that included Citibank, Smith Barney, Primerica, and Travelers. Because this merger was a violation of the Glass–Steagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, the Federal Reserve gave Citigroup a temporary waiver in September 1998. They never had a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau set up at that time or even when he left office 2-1/2 years later. They were totally unregulated in 1998.
You dont get around much, do you?
Net worth is down due to 2 things: lower housing prices, worse labor market.
In several other threads I detailed exactly why Obama's policies have exacerbated both those things. And both of them were better the day he took office than today.
Let's see you "spin" those facts.
So your position is the housing market crashed prior to the recession, and has stayed there unmoved for 6 years, so Obama has nothing to do with it?You dont get around much, do you?
Net worth is down due to 2 things: lower housing prices, worse labor market.
In several other threads I detailed exactly why Obama's policies have exacerbated both those things. And both of them were better the day he took office than today.
Let's see you "spin" those facts.
The housing market crashed starting in 2006.
The credit market dried up about the time the market crashed in 2007.
Apparently I don't "get around much", because I was unaware there was a time-traveling wormhole that the housing market got sucked into, so you could blame the events of 2006, on the administration that took office in 2009.
So your position is the housing market crashed prior to the recession, and has stayed there unmoved for 6 years, so Obama has nothing to do with it?
Really?
Is life tough being that stupid?
So one piece of legislation passed in 2000 was responsible for a global meltdown 8 years later? Is that really your theory here?
Americans lost that much net worth because Obama's policies depressed the housing market and the labor market. When he took office no one was pointing to lost net worth, which at that point didnt approach 40%. this is what 3 years of total Dem control and 5 years of Dem Congressional control give you.
Fortunately that's all over Jan 2013.
That is perhaps the most ridiculous rationalization and spin I have ever heard concerning the housing crisis.
Nice job.
What specific "Obama Policy" do you believe "depressed the housing market", and how did it cause the DJIA to drop 7000+ points before he ever took office?
Obama made some banks give loans to black people with good credit back when he was a lawyer. That's what killed the market.
So your position is the housing market crashed prior to the recession, and has stayed there unmoved for 6 years, so Obama has nothing to do with it?
Really?
Is life tough being that stupid?
My position is that a major housing market crash began in 2006, and was exacerbated by shady market dealings to become a severe economic crash in 2007.
And that both crashes continued into the Obama administration, despite attempts by the administration and congress to counteract the effect, such as the 2009-2010 tax credits to home buyers.
While your position seems to be that Obama's policies CAUSED the crash (which is absurd), and continue to exacerbate it today (though you haven't mentioned any specific policies that have caused said effect).
And you should notice that I haven't blamed Boooooosh once.
As I said, he just rode the wave.
Though certainly, lowering the Capital Gains rate didn't help matters at all, and quite probably encouraged over-leveraging.
But I don't hold Bush responsible for the crash, or Obama.
AGAIN - This was Bill Clinton's Baby. He could have vetoed that bill. He allowed the Fed to grant Citigroup a waiver a year before the law was passed. Citicorp, a commercial bank holding company, merged with the insurance company Travelers Group in 1998 to form the conglomerate Citigroup, a corporation combining banking, securities and insurance services under a house of brands that included Citibank, Smith Barney, Primerica, and Travelers. Because this merger was a violation of the GlassSteagall Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, the Federal Reserve gave Citigroup a temporary waiver in September 1998. They never had a Consumer Finance Protection Bureau set up at that time or even when he left office 2-1/2 years later. They were totally unregulated in 1998.
Again, the merger didn't violate anything, because Glass-Steagall allowed up to 5 years for divestiture of the assets.
Thus, Citibank did something that was completely legal, and then lobbied the hell out of Congress to put a bill through that would make it legal for them to hold on to the forbidden assets, in the form of Gramm-Leach-Biley.
And then the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 came along and made credit default swaps largely exempt from regulation by both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and created the Enron Loophole to boot.
Without these piece of crap legislations, the housing bubble would have been a blip on the economic radar. A million mortgages could have failed, and nothing would have come of it, because they would have been correctly risk-rated.
No that is not my position.
My position is Obama inherited a bad situation and promptly made it much worse. In other threads, possibly here, I outlined what those policies weer. They included the numerous mortgage modification programs, with an 85% failure rate, and beating up on banks for foreclosing.
The tax credit were another notable failure. As typical, it was a temporary targeted tax cut. So it shoved demand from the long term to the short term. Once the credit ended demanded also plummeted. So what did it do other than cost Treasury a bunch of money? The people who bought would have bought homes in the next 12 months anyway.
The proof is that home prices are lower today than they were when Obama took office. This despite (or because of, as I maintain) billions of dollars spent propping up the market.
In 1998 Citigroup was also granted a waiver for Bank Holding Company Act of 1956.
Feb 27, 1995 TIME: CLINTON PROPOSES BANKING REFORMS - The Clinton Administration proposed sweeping changes in the nation's banking system that would permit commercial banks to sell insurance and underwrite securities. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin outlined the new proposal, which would allow banks to "affiliate" with Wall Street firms, insurance companies and other financial service providers. It would repeal several federal restrictions, including the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act, which forbids banks from underwriting securities or selling insurance.
New York Times Feb 27, 1995 White House Is Joining in Efforts To Loosen the Limits on Banking - The Clinton Administration plans to call this week for legislation that would allow commercial banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge, forming giant financial services companies that would offer everything from checking accounts to mutual funds and life insurance, Federal officials say.
In a speech prepared for delivery in New York on Monday and in Congressional testimony scheduled for Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin will urge Congress to repeal the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, the officials said. For more than 60 years, the law has forced financial concerns to choose between owning commercial banks or owning securities companies like brokerage firms and investment banks, but not both.
Mr. Rubin also plans to call for broad changes in the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, which has effectively barred most financial concerns from owning both commercial banks and insurance companies, said the Federal officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Rubin's speech will represent the first time that the Administration has taken a position on eliminating the legal and regulatory barriers among financial industries.
Regulatory changes in recent years have already allowed commercial banks, like Citibank, to begin selling stocks and mutual funds on a limited basis. But the Glass-Steagall Act still bars Citibank, for example, from merging with a brokerage firm like Merrill Lynch or an investment bank like Goldman, Sachs, which provides corporate investment advice and helps companies issue stock. The Bank Holding Company Act bars Citibank fom merging with a big insurance company like Prudential.
The Administration's plan would allow such deals, provided they complied with antitrust laws. The plan would pave the way for new consolidation in the financial system.
September 25, 1998 EIR-Economics: Clinton takes the lead on new financial architecture - “Today, I have asked Secretary Robert Rubin and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan to convene a major meeting of their counterparts within the next 30 days to recommend ways to adapt the international financial architecture to the 21st century,” the President said. “If you consider today’s economic difficulties, disruptions, and plain old deep personal disappointments of now tens of millions of people around the world, it is clear to me that there is now a stark challenge not only to economic freedom but, if unaddressed, a challenge that could stem the rising tide of political liberty as well,” the President warned. “For most of the last 30 years, the United States and the rest of the world has been preoccupied by inflation, for reasons that all of you here know all too well,” Clinton said. “But clearly the balance of risks has now shifted, with a full quarter of the world’s population living in countries with declining economic growth or negative economic growth.”
Nov 13, 1999 New York Times: Clinton Signs Legislation Overhauling Banking Laws - President Clinton signed into law today a sweeping overhaul of Depression-era banking laws. The measure lifts barriers in the industry and allows banks, securities firms and insurance companies to merge and to sell each other's products.
''This legislation is truly historic,'' President Clinton told a packed audience of lawmakers and top financial regulators. ''We have done right by the American people.''
The bill repeals parts of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act to level the domestic playing field for United States financial companies and allow them to compete better in the evolving global financial marketplace.
''With this bill,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said, ''the American financial system takes a major step forward toward the 21st Century -- one that will benefit American consumers, business and the national economy.''
Time: 25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis - President Clinton's tenure was characterized by economic prosperity and financial deregulation, which in many ways set the stage for the excesses of recent years. Among his biggest strokes of free-wheeling capitalism was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era regulation. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps from regulation. In 1995 Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods. It is the subject of heated political and scholarly debate whether any of these moves are to blame for our troubles, but they certainly played a role in creating a permissive lending environment.
So one piece of legislation passed in 2000 was responsible for a global meltdown 8 years later? Is that really your theory here?
Americans lost that much net worth because Obama's policies depressed the housing market and the labor market. When he took office no one was pointing to lost net worth, which at that point didnt approach 40%. this is what 3 years of total Dem control and 5 years of Dem Congressional control give you.
Fortunately that's all over Jan 2013.
That is perhaps the most ridiculous rationalization and spin I have ever heard concerning the housing crisis.
Nice job.
What specific "Obama Policy" do you believe "depressed the housing market", and how did it cause the DJIA to drop 7000+ points before he ever took office?
Obama made some banks give loans to black people with good credit back when he was a lawyer. That's what killed the market.
So your position is that the second graph represents prices for homes?No that is not my position.
My position is Obama inherited a bad situation and promptly made it much worse. In other threads, possibly here, I outlined what those policies weer. They included the numerous mortgage modification programs, with an 85% failure rate, and beating up on banks for foreclosing.
The tax credit were another notable failure. As typical, it was a temporary targeted tax cut. So it shoved demand from the long term to the short term. Once the credit ended demanded also plummeted. So what did it do other than cost Treasury a bunch of money? The people who bought would have bought homes in the next 12 months anyway.
The proof is that home prices are lower today than they were when Obama took office. This despite (or because of, as I maintain) billions of dollars spent propping up the market.
Notice the nosedive in 2007, the spikes from the tax credits, and the relatively steady increase since they ended.
Note especially that, despite ups and downs, the rate of sales is significantly higher now than it was in February 2009.
And here is a historical real estate price chart:
Notice, once again, that the situation is considerably better now than it was in the first quarter of 2009.
So, again, how is it that you believe that Obama's policies have negatively affected home value?
It was not just republicans. Bill Clinton and many prominent democrats pushed for the killing of "Glass Steagall". Bill Clinton personally signed all the laws that deregulated Wallstreet & turned it into a gambling casino that raises prices on citizens & steals their savings.
So your position is that the second graph represents prices for homes?
So your position is that the second graph represents prices for homes?
No, it is the change in value on the price of homes. Which means the freefall has now stopped, and the average price of homes has finally started to see a tiny bit of improvement.
And that is in fact an improvement on the situation, as I stated.
