Reagan/Bush & Bush/Cheney fraudulent home loan schemes strike fear in voters for real

[merrill]

Often, government plays a role in bubbles. The housing bubble was in part generated by the Federal Reserve maintaining low interest rates. Easy money meant readily obtainable loans and, at least in the short run, low monthly payments.

Also, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the housing bubble’s existence—not fraud exactly, but deception that kept the bubble going. (Greenspan, whose view was ideologically driven, got support in his bubble denial from the academic work of the man who was to be his successor, Ben Bernanke.)

In addition, government regulatory agencies turned a blind eye to the highly risky practices of financial firms, practices that both encouraged the development of the bubble and made the impact all the worse when it burst.

Moreover, the private rating agencies (e.g., Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s) were complicit. Dependent on the financial institutions for their fees, they gave excessively good ratings to these risky investments. Perhaps not fraud in the legal sense, but certainly misleading.

During the 1990s, the government made tax law changes that contributed to the emergence of the housing bubble. With the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, a couple could gain up to $500,000 selling their home without any capital gains tax liability (half that for a single person).

Previously, capital gains taxes could be avoided only if the proceeds were used to buy another home or if the seller was over 55 (and a couple could then avoid taxes only on the first $250,000). So buying and then selling houses became a more profitable operation.

And, yes, substantial fraud was involved. For example, mortgage companies and banks used deceit to get people to take on mortgages when there was no possibility that the borrowers would be able to meet the payments. Not only was this fraud, but this fraud depended on government authorities ignoring their regulatory responsibilities.

Dollars and Sense

You know who else was complicit? Barney Franks, Chris Dodds and a whole cluster of other Democrats.

Long ago, I did a post laying out the guilt on both sides of the aisle, outlining how both sides played a substantial part in the housing debacle. Difference between your post and mine... mine was non partisan, honest, contained rational, independent thought... and blamed ALL those responsible... not some partisan bullshit whining about the GOP.

You should be ashamed of your lack of intellect.

Again where are the fraudulent home loan schemes under Clinton and Carter administrations?

Why is it when there is a Bush nearby the entire economy goes straight to hell?

What is it about repub administrations that attract mammoth fraudulent home loan schemes?

Why did the GW Bush admin lie about how many financial institutions were in fact weakened substantially?

Why did the Bush admin force some banks to take bailout money they did not want?

 

[g5000]

Because it has become an established standard operating procedure(SOP). This pattern spells RINO dominated behind the scenes agenda. Can this be documented?

Of course:

* Bailing out The Reagan/Bush Savings and Loan Heist aka home loan scandal sent the economy out the window costing taxpayers many many $$ trillions (Cost taxpayers $1.4 trillion), Plus millions of jobs, loss of retirement plans and loss of medical insurance.
The Bush family and the S&L (Savings and Loan) Scandal

The S&L crisis cost taxpayers about $100 billion. Nowhere near $1.4 trillion.

 

[g5000]

Funny how you leave out Carter and Clinton, the one's respectively who established the CRA and put the screws to banks to make the loans under provisions of the CRA....

FAIL.

Please explain how the CRA brought down Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, or AIG.

None of them were subject to the CRA. In fact, these institutions had their own mortgage loan broker supply chains in order to ensure the supply of loans they needed to stuff into their CDOs were not interrupted.

When asked by an idiot in Congress how much the CRA had to do with his company imploding, Dick Fuld disappointed the jackass by replying, "De minimus."

Please show us one Wall Street CEO who backs up this CRA meme bullshit. These guys have given every excuse for their tremendous fuckup, but NOT ONE has ever tried to pin it on the CRA. Because only an idiot who knows nothing about a credit crisis which was GLOBAL believes it was because of too many loans to negroes. Christ, you can hear them laughing all the way in Iceland at that one.

 

[merrill]

What is important to note about the S&L scandal is that it was the largest theft in the history of the world and US tax payers are who was robbed.

The problems occurred in the Savings and Loan industry as they relate to theft because the industry was deregulated under the Reagan/Bush administration and restrictions were eased on the industry so much that abuse and misuse of funds became easy, rampant, and went unchecked.

Additional facts on the Savings and Loan Scandal can be found here:

In The 80s - Savings and Loan Scandal

There are several ways in which the Bush family plays into the Savings and Loan scandal, which involves not only many members of the Bush family but also many other politicians that are still in office and still part of the Bush Jr. administration today. Jeb Bush, George Bush Sr., and his son Neil Bush have all been implicated in the Savings and Loan Scandal, which cost American tax payers over $1.4 TRILLION dollars (note that this is about one quarter of our national debt).

Between 1981 and 1989, when George Bush finally announced that there was a Savings and Loan Crisis to the world, the Reagan/Bush administration worked to cover up Savings and Loan problems by reducing the number and depth of examinations required of S&Ls as well as attacking political opponents who were sounding early alarms about the S&L industry. Industry insiders were aware of significant S&L problems as early 1986 that they felt would require a bailout. This information was kept from the media until after Bush had won the 1988 elections.

Jeb Bush defaulted on a $4.56 million loan from Broward Federal Savings in Sunrise, Florida. After federal regulators closed the S&L, the office building that Jeb used the $4.56 million to finance was reappraised by the regulators at $500,000, which Bush and his partners paid. The taxpayers had to pay back the remaining 4 million plus dollars.

Neil Bush was the most widely targeted member of the Bush family by the press in the S&L scandal. Neil became director of Silverado Savings and Loan at the age of 30 in 1985. Three years later the institution was belly up at a cost of $1.6 billion to tax payers to bail out.

http://rationalrevolution0.tripod.com/war/bush_family_and_the_s.htm

 

[California Girl]

Often, government plays a role in bubbles. The housing bubble was in part generated by the Federal Reserve maintaining low interest rates. Easy money meant readily obtainable loans and, at least in the short run, low monthly payments.

Also, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the housing bubble’s existence—not fraud exactly, but deception that kept the bubble going. (Greenspan, whose view was ideologically driven, got support in his bubble denial from the academic work of the man who was to be his successor, Ben Bernanke.)

In addition, government regulatory agencies turned a blind eye to the highly risky practices of financial firms, practices that both encouraged the development of the bubble and made the impact all the worse when it burst.

Moreover, the private rating agencies (e.g., Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s) were complicit. Dependent on the financial institutions for their fees, they gave excessively good ratings to these risky investments. Perhaps not fraud in the legal sense, but certainly misleading.

During the 1990s, the government made tax law changes that contributed to the emergence of the housing bubble. With the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, a couple could gain up to $500,000 selling their home without any capital gains tax liability (half that for a single person).

Previously, capital gains taxes could be avoided only if the proceeds were used to buy another home or if the seller was over 55 (and a couple could then avoid taxes only on the first $250,000). So buying and then selling houses became a more profitable operation.

And, yes, substantial fraud was involved. For example, mortgage companies and banks used deceit to get people to take on mortgages when there was no possibility that the borrowers would be able to meet the payments. Not only was this fraud, but this fraud depended on government authorities ignoring their regulatory responsibilities.

Dollars and Sense

You know who else was complicit? Barney Franks, Chris Dodds and a whole cluster of other Democrats.

Long ago, I did a post laying out the guilt on both sides of the aisle, outlining how both sides played a substantial part in the housing debacle. Difference between your post and mine... mine was non partisan, honest, contained rational, independent thought... and blamed ALL those responsible... not some partisan bullshit whining about the GOP.

You should be ashamed of your lack of intellect.

Again where are the fraudulent home loan schemes under Clinton and Carter administrations?

Why is it when there is a Bush nearby the entire economy goes straight to hell?

What is it about repub administrations that attract mammoth fraudulent home loan schemes?

Why did the GW Bush admin lie about how many financial institutions were in fact weakened substantially?

Why did the Bush admin force some banks to take bailout money they did not want?

So the only pertinent point is which Administration it was? How absolutely fucking ridiculous. But, it does help us to understand why you are so stupid. I suggest you stop getting your 'facts' from partisan sites and study the process properly instead of getting pieces of information, and forcing them together into something that you can represent as a whole picture. Right now, you are being remarkably stupid - and more than a tad disingenuous. Neither of which is good for you.

 

[g5000]

Jeb Bush, George Bush Sr., and his son Neil Bush have all been implicated in the Savings and Loan Scandal, which cost American tax payers over $1.4 TRILLION dollars (note that this is about one quarter of our national debt).

I don't know why you keep repeating this ridiculous figure.

As of December 31, 1999, total direct costs attributable to the closing of insolvent thrift institutions over the 1986–1995 period amounted to $145.7 billion.

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/banking/2000dec/brv13n2_2.pdf

You are off by literally a factor of 10.

 

[ClosedCaption]

Often, government plays a role in bubbles. The housing bubble was in part generated by the Federal Reserve maintaining low interest rates. Easy money meant readily obtainable loans and, at least in the short run, low monthly payments.

Also, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the housing bubble’s existence—not fraud exactly, but deception that kept the bubble going. (Greenspan, whose view was ideologically driven, got support in his bubble denial from the academic work of the man who was to be his successor, Ben Bernanke.)

In addition, government regulatory agencies turned a blind eye to the highly risky practices of financial firms, practices that both encouraged the development of the bubble and made the impact all the worse when it burst.

Moreover, the private rating agencies (e.g., Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s) were complicit. Dependent on the financial institutions for their fees, they gave excessively good ratings to these risky investments. Perhaps not fraud in the legal sense, but certainly misleading.

During the 1990s, the government made tax law changes that contributed to the emergence of the housing bubble. With the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, a couple could gain up to $500,000 selling their home without any capital gains tax liability (half that for a single person).

Previously, capital gains taxes could be avoided only if the proceeds were used to buy another home or if the seller was over 55 (and a couple could then avoid taxes only on the first $250,000). So buying and then selling houses became a more profitable operation.

And, yes, substantial fraud was involved. For example, mortgage companies and banks used deceit to get people to take on mortgages when there was no possibility that the borrowers would be able to meet the payments. Not only was this fraud, but this fraud depended on government authorities ignoring their regulatory responsibilities.

Dollars and Sense

I agree with most of what you said.. but you lose me at the idea the people were duped into borrowing money they could never afford to repay. When you take on a mortgage, BY LAW, you are apprised over every aspect of that loan from the rate of interest, to the term of the loan and the payment terms. If you have $1,500 disposable income, a $2,000 mortage probably isn't going to work out well.

Are you suggesting or believe that most of the loans given where to people who knew they couldnt afford the mortgage but did it anyway? Where are you getting this from? I-really-couldnt-afford-my-home.com?

Meanwhile heres what happened at Countrywide:

Countrywide Financial forged documents in Pennsylvania bankruptcy case - BloggingStocks

The botched Shakespeare reference aside, this is big trouble for Countrywide. According to the New York Times, "The emergence of the fabricated documents comes as Countrywide confronts a rising tide of complaints from borrowers who claim that the company pushed them into risky loans. The matter in Pittsburgh is one of 300 bankruptcy cases in which Countrywide's practices have come under scrutiny in western Pennsylvania. "

You dont have to disclose stuff when you can just make it up

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Bush tried twice to regulate the Housing Market, McCain tried once. Guess who lead the charge to stop them?

Barney Frank in the House and Chris Dodd in the Senate. They succeeded all 3 times in stopping new regulation. Guess who was another player? Obama as a lawyer represented groups that sued banks for not giving home loans.

Barney Frank went on National TV just before the collapse in 2008 and INSISTED that the Housing Market was solid and SAFE. That the ONLY threat to said Industry was new regulations.

But you live in your little bubble, it would be funny if not so damn stupid,

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Often, government plays a role in bubbles. The housing bubble was in part generated by the Federal Reserve maintaining low interest rates. Easy money meant readily obtainable loans and, at least in the short run, low monthly payments.

Also, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the housing bubble’s existence—not fraud exactly, but deception that kept the bubble going. (Greenspan, whose view was ideologically driven, got support in his bubble denial from the academic work of the man who was to be his successor, Ben Bernanke.)

In addition, government regulatory agencies turned a blind eye to the highly risky practices of financial firms, practices that both encouraged the development of the bubble and made the impact all the worse when it burst.

Moreover, the private rating agencies (e.g., Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s) were complicit. Dependent on the financial institutions for their fees, they gave excessively good ratings to these risky investments. Perhaps not fraud in the legal sense, but certainly misleading.

During the 1990s, the government made tax law changes that contributed to the emergence of the housing bubble. With the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, a couple could gain up to $500,000 selling their home without any capital gains tax liability (half that for a single person).

Previously, capital gains taxes could be avoided only if the proceeds were used to buy another home or if the seller was over 55 (and a couple could then avoid taxes only on the first $250,000). So buying and then selling houses became a more profitable operation.

And, yes, substantial fraud was involved. For example, mortgage companies and banks used deceit to get people to take on mortgages when there was no possibility that the borrowers would be able to meet the payments. Not only was this fraud, but this fraud depended on government authorities ignoring their regulatory responsibilities.

Dollars and Sense

I agree with most of what you said.. but you lose me at the idea the people were duped into borrowing money they could never afford to repay. When you take on a mortgage, BY LAW, you are apprised over every aspect of that loan from the rate of interest, to the term of the loan and the payment terms. If you have $1,500 disposable income, a $2,000 mortage probably isn't going to work out well.

Are you suggesting or believe that most of the loans given where to people who knew they couldnt afford the mortgage but did it anyway? Where are you getting this from? I-really-couldnt-afford-my-home.com?

Meanwhile heres what happened at Countrywide:

Countrywide Financial forged documents in Pennsylvania bankruptcy case - BloggingStocks

The botched Shakespeare reference aside, this is big trouble for Countrywide. According to the New York Times, "The emergence of the fabricated documents comes as Countrywide confronts a rising tide of complaints from borrowers who claim that the company pushed them into risky loans. The matter in Pittsburgh is one of 300 bankruptcy cases in which Countrywide's practices have come under scrutiny in western Pennsylvania. "

You dont have to disclose stuff when you can just make it up

And who had dubious dealings with Country wide? None other then Chris Dodd.

 

[California Girl]

Bush tried twice to regulate the Housing Market, McCain tried once. Guess who lead the charge to stop them?

Barney Frank in the House and Chris Dodd in the Senate. They succeeded all 3 times in stopping new regulation. Guess who was another player? Obama as a lawyer represented groups that sued banks for not giving home loans.

Barney Frank went on National TV just before the collapse in 2008 and INSISTED that the Housing Market was solid and SAFE. That the ONLY threat to said Industry was new regulations.

But you live in your little bubble, it would be funny if not so damn stupid,

You are absolutely right. Much as I thought Bush was an idiot, it was one of the few things he did that I actually agreed with.

The problem that the OP has is his inability to seek out and consider ALL the facts - of course, he wouldn't because if he did, then he would realize that both sides own this fuck up.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Funny how you leave out Carter and Clinton, the one's respectively who established the CRA and put the screws to banks to make the loans under provisions of the CRA....

FAIL.

Please explain how the CRA brought down Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, or AIG.

None of them were subject to the CRA. In fact, these institutions had their own mortgage loan broker supply chains in order to ensure the supply of loans they needed to stuff into their CDOs were not interrupted.

When asked by an idiot in Congress how much the CRA had to do with his company imploding, Dick Fuld disappointed the jackass by replying, "De minimus."

Please show us one Wall Street CEO who backs up this CRA meme bullshit. These guys have given every excuse for their tremendous fuckup, but NOT ONE has ever tried to pin it on the CRA. Because only an idiot who knows nothing about a credit crisis which was GLOBAL believes it was because of too many loans to negroes. Christ, you can hear them laughing all the way in Iceland at that one.

Loans to Negroes? I don't know nothing about all that.

Anyhoo... It is all part of the colossal cluster that was created by this desire to have everyone in on homeownership. Banks were making risky loans to avoid hassles with the regulators over allegations of redlining, then they covered their asses with insurance, then this shit got all bundled up as securities bundled with worthless loans and bought and sold on the open market.

 

[California Girl]

The OP clearly demonstrates the truth in the saying "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

 

[ClosedCaption]

I agree with most of what you said.. but you lose me at the idea the people were duped into borrowing money they could never afford to repay. When you take on a mortgage, BY LAW, you are apprised over every aspect of that loan from the rate of interest, to the term of the loan and the payment terms. If you have $1,500 disposable income, a $2,000 mortage probably isn't going to work out well.

Are you suggesting or believe that most of the loans given where to people who knew they couldnt afford the mortgage but did it anyway? Where are you getting this from? I-really-couldnt-afford-my-home.com?

Meanwhile heres what happened at Countrywide:

Countrywide Financial forged documents in Pennsylvania bankruptcy case - BloggingStocks

The botched Shakespeare reference aside, this is big trouble for Countrywide. According to the New York Times, "The emergence of the fabricated documents comes as Countrywide confronts a rising tide of complaints from borrowers who claim that the company pushed them into risky loans. The matter in Pittsburgh is one of 300 bankruptcy cases in which Countrywide's practices have come under scrutiny in western Pennsylvania. "

You dont have to disclose stuff when you can just make it up

And who had dubious dealings with Country wide? None other then Chris Dodd.

How does change the fact that Countrywide forged documents to trick people into believing they could afford homes?

 

[merrill]

Bush tried twice to regulate the Housing Market, McCain tried once. Guess who lead the charge to stop them?

Barney Frank in the House and Chris Dodd in the Senate. They succeeded all 3 times in stopping new regulation. Guess who was another player? Obama as a lawyer represented groups that sued banks for not giving home loans.

Barney Frank went on National TV just before the collapse in 2008 and INSISTED that the Housing Market was solid and SAFE. That the ONLY threat to said Industry was new regulations.

But you live in your little bubble, it would be funny if not so damn stupid,

You are absolutely right. Much as I thought Bush was an idiot, it was one of the few things he did that I actually agreed with.

The problem that the OP has is his inability to seek out and consider ALL the facts - of course, he wouldn't because if he did, then he would realize that both sides own this fuck up.

Republicans don't bring up new regulations unless they know new regulations will be defeated.

It seems to me plenty of regulations are on the books as we speak. What was the need for new regulations? Please explain.

Guidelines for buying homes has been around for several decades:
*10%-20% down
* Gainfully employed
* loans were not more than twice the income
* credit history examined
* Employee status verified as well as income
* credit score meets demand
* 30-45 days minimum closing period
* Fraud will not be considered to move the process forward

Perhaps there has not been a need for more regulations.

 

[California Girl]

Bush tried twice to regulate the Housing Market, McCain tried once. Guess who lead the charge to stop them?

Barney Frank in the House and Chris Dodd in the Senate. They succeeded all 3 times in stopping new regulation. Guess who was another player? Obama as a lawyer represented groups that sued banks for not giving home loans.

Barney Frank went on National TV just before the collapse in 2008 and INSISTED that the Housing Market was solid and SAFE. That the ONLY threat to said Industry was new regulations.

But you live in your little bubble, it would be funny if not so damn stupid,

You are absolutely right. Much as I thought Bush was an idiot, it was one of the few things he did that I actually agreed with.

The problem that the OP has is his inability to seek out and consider ALL the facts - of course, he wouldn't because if he did, then he would realize that both sides own this fuck up.

Republicans don't bring up new regulations unless they know new regulations will be defeated.

It seems to me plenty of regulations are on the books as we speak. What was the need for new regulations? Please explain.

Guidelines for buying homes has been around for several decades:
*10%-20% down
* Gainfully employed
* loans were not more than twice the income
* credit history examined
* Employee status verified as well as income
* credit score meets demand
* 30-45 days minimum closing period
* Fraud will not be considered to move the process forward

Perhaps there has not been a need for more regulations.

Seriously, you're boring me. Your partisan hackery is of absolutely no interest. Either learn ALL the facts and understand what really happened or continue to assert that the GOP was responsible. Either is fine. One makes you smart, the other makes you a fool. Can you work out which is which?

 

[g5000]

I agree with most of what you said.. but you lose me at the idea the people were duped into borrowing money they could never afford to repay. When you take on a mortgage, BY LAW, you are apprised over every aspect of that loan from the rate of interest, to the term of the loan and the payment terms. If you have $1,500 disposable income, a $2,000 mortage probably isn't going to work out well.

They weren't offered a $2,000 mortgage. They were offered a $300 mortgage.

I actually contacted a reporter I knew before all this blew up. I had looked at a $320,000 house and was offered a mortgage that would cost $300 a month for the first two years. This was obviously a massively negative amortization loan. Not only that, that same house had started at $245,000 just two years earlier when it was just a dirt plot.

I followed the bubble very closely over the years.

My reporter friend did not understand what I was trying to tell her. She didn't get it.

Too bad for her, she would have had a gigantic leap on the competition if she had listened and understood what I was trying to tell her.

I sat down and did the math and figured out that when that $320,000 mortgage loan reset in two years, the principal would have risen to $360,000.

It was about this same time that I came across an internal Wachovia memo outlining the gigantic success of their Pick-A-Payment program. And it was then I knew our financial system was going to crash.

Now, it is true that many mortgage brokers committed outright fraud. Ameritrade forged signatures on loans. They had the customer sign a 30-year fixed loan and then forged the signature onto an ARM.

So yes, there was rampant fraud.

But most sub-prime loans like the one I just described were completely legal. It is just the buyers were too mathematically ignorant to understand what they were getting into. They didn't understand all the fine print. LIBOR? WTF is that?!?!

Everyone saw house prices were skyrocketing and so they believed they could buy a house and sell it at a profit two years down the road.

Their broker told them this. Their appraiser told them this. Their banker told them this. Everyone was drinking the bong water.

The banks loved this shit because ARMs meant a revival of the refinancing market which had been seriously languishing. They openly bragged about this in the press.

When your sub-prime loan resets to a higher amount, come on back and sees us again and we'll refinance you into another one! Mo' money! Mo' money!

Everybody was doing it. And then after they bought their house, they got a "home equity loan" or "home equity line of credit (HELOC)".

Those used to be called "second mortgages" and people used to be ashamed when they had to get one. Now they were being used to pay for Disney vacations and SUVs and boats.

So that was more principal added to the mortgage when it ultimately blew up.

People were just plain stupid.

What the CRA-memers don't understand is that this was being done predominantlyl by the middle class. Sub-prime loans were meant to be for the wealthy, but the middle class went wild for them.

All. Over. The. Western. World.

Not just in the slums. Not just in America.

Ireland. Iceland. England. Spain.

And banks all over the world were screaming for more and more loans to bundle into their CDO packages to sell in cities, town, villages, and governments all over the planet.

You really believe this was about negroes, for chrissakes?

 

[g5000]

So you have a housing development which starts out with just dirt plots. Each future house was priced at $245,000. As each plot was sold, the house would be built on it. Two years later, the same house in the same development was now going for $320,000.

You are offered a mortgage which will cost $300 a month for two years. You have seen the prices of these houses jump 30 percent in two years.

Even if you could figure out the math and knew your principal would rise to $360,000 over the next two years, you simply had to believe the value of the house would rise another 30 percent in the same period.

So while your principal would climb by $40,000 the value of the house would rise by $98,000. You would make a $58,000 profit!

So why not take out a $50,000 HELOC to get that GMC Yukon you always wanted while you are at it?

This actually worked. Until it didn't.

 

[merrill]

You are absolutely right. Much as I thought Bush was an idiot, it was one of the few things he did that I actually agreed with.

The problem that the OP has is his inability to seek out and consider ALL the facts - of course, he wouldn't because if he did, then he would realize that both sides own this fuck up.

Republicans don't bring up new regulations unless they know new regulations will be defeated.

It seems to me plenty of regulations are on the books as we speak. What was the need for new regulations? Please explain.

Guidelines for buying homes has been around for several decades:
*10%-20% down
* Gainfully employed
* loans were not more than twice the income
* credit history examined
* Employee status verified as well as income
* credit score meets demand
* 30-45 days minimum closing period
* Fraud will not be considered to move the process forward

Perhaps there has not been a need for more regulations.

Seriously, you're boring me. Your partisan hackery is of absolutely no interest. Either learn ALL the facts and understand what really happened or continue to assert that the GOP was responsible. Either is fine. One makes you smart, the other makes you a fool. Can you work out which is which?

Haha there is one big issue that really pisses me off about the democrat leadership. They have refused to bring on a special prosecutor to investigate the home loan frauds to which I say let the chips fall where they may. If the investigation takes some democrats down to that I say take them all to jail!

Vote Ralph Nader!!!

 

[g5000]

Guidelines for buying homes has been around for several decades:
*10%-20% down
* Gainfully employed
* loans were not more than twice the income
* credit history examined
* Employee status verified as well as income
* credit score meets demand
* 30-45 days minimum closing period
* Fraud will not be considered to move the process forward

Perhaps there has not been a need for more regulations.

Regulations for home loans are probably fine. Just not enforced enough. Regulations for derivatives, however, are severely lacking. And it was derivatives which were the cause of the global credit crisis.

 

[francoHFW]

Blaming the CRA and the out-of-power gay guy is brainwashed idiocy. Change the channel. Pub dupes are misled by myopic, ignorant greedy bought off Pub corporate tools.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." - Mark Twain

Who Has Passports... And Who Doesn't? And For Which Party Do They Vote?
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It was hardly great literature but former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler's autobiography, Fire-Breathing Liberal, made some points that stuck with me. One was about passports, congressional passports, something we covered here before a couple of times, like in this brief mention in 2009 as I was getting ready for a trip to Albania:

There aren't many members of Congress who have traveled extensively out of the country. In his delightful book, Fire-Breathing Liberal, Rep. Robert Wexler marvels at how many of his Republican colleagues seem to think not possessing a passport is a badge of honor! Last weekend I spent some time with Rep. Barbara Lee who is no longer surprised when she talks with Republicans who haven't been-- and don't want to be-- outside of the U.S. The opposite extreme would be one member who certainly qualifies for the Century Club, Rep. Alan Grayson. When I told him I was going to Mali he was able to give me some travel tips for remote, seldom visited villages like Bandiagara and Sanga, and a few weeks ago he told me about some odd customs I can expect to experience in Albania.

And again in 2010 as NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg railed against provincial GOP isolationists:

Visiting China this week, Bloomberg, NYC's globalist, multinational mayor, growled about congressional attempts to prevent China from illegally dumping solar panels into the American market with the express purpose of driving U.S. firms out of business. “If you look at the U.S., you look at who we’re electing to Congress, to the Senate-- they can’t read,” he said. “I’ll bet you a bunch of these people don’t have passports. We’re about to start a trade war with China if we’re not careful here,” he warned, “only because nobody knows where China is. Nobody knows what China is.” Former Rep. Robert Wexler, then a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, made the same observation in his book, Fire Breathing Liberal, about Know Nothing members of Congress, including members of his committee, for whom not having a passport-- or even eating "foreign" food-- was a badge of honor. Wexler endorsed Charlie Crist for the open Florida Senate seat and Crist lost to one of the bunch of Know Nothings Bloomberg was whining about, Marco Rubio, who's waltzing into the Senate-- and, many fear, the national stage-- after a 49% win, Crist and Kendrick Meek splitting the non-teabaggy vote.

A tip from Paul Krugman last week, America's Superiority Complex, had me thinking about Wexler again as I read a post by Richard Florida, America's Great Passport Divide. You'll notice on the map above that, generally speaking, the states with the smallest percentage of passport holders-- i.e., states with people who don't travel outside the country-- are also the states that elect Republicans that most regularly. Mississippi is the worst, closely followed by West Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama and Arkansas.

"It’s a fun map," writes Florida. "With the exception of Sarah Palin’s home state, it reinforces the “differences” we expect to find between the states where more worldly, well-travelled people live versus those where the folks Palin likes to call “real Americans” preponderate. Mostly to entertain myself, I decided to look at how this passport metric correlates with a variety of other political, cultural, economic, and demographic measures. What surprised me is how closely it lines up with the other great cleavages in America today." And, as he says, the statistical correlations are striking across a range of indices.

People in richer states tend to hold passports and people in poorer states tend to not. Same for educated people versus ignorant people. The kinds of folks who elect Haley Barbour, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, Jeff Sessions, David Vitter don't hold college degrees-- or passports. They watch Glenn Beck instead and listen to Hate Talk Radio.

What party has passports? - Google Search