What caused the eonomic meltdown?

[Quantum Windbag]

How quickly they forget.

Some 30% of respondents have voted that Democrats were the major reason for the economic crash.

Is that stupidity or dishonesty?

Is it dishonesty, or stupidity, that caused you not to respond to my challenge to prove that the thousands of pages of financial regulations amount to a lack of regulation?

 

[Saigon]

QW

I tend to ignor questions that that the questioner could answer themselves.

It doesn't matter how man pages of legislation there are if there is not the right legislation. Companies like Goldman have acted above the law for the past 20 years. This does not mean there are not laws. It means there are not the laws required, nor perhaps the desire to enforce those laws that there are.

 

[Toro]

QW

I tend to ignor questions that that the questioner could answer themselves.

It doesn't matter how man pages of legislation there are if there is not the right legislation. Companies like Goldman have acted above the law for the past 20 years. This does not mean there are not laws. It means there are not the laws required, nor perhaps the desire to enforce those laws that there are.

What laws have "companies like Goldman" been acting above for the past 20 years?

 

[Unkotare]

QW

I tend to ignor[sic] questions that that the questioner could answer themselves.

It doesn't matter how man[sic] pages of legislation there are if there is not the right legislation.

 

[editec]

Rabbi -

Actually the lack of regulation dates back to Reagan. While it is a bit of a stretch to blame Reagan for the actual crash, he did remove oversight in a way that helped move some of the chest pieces into the positions which would contribute to the crisis.

What wasn't "regulated"?

DERIVATIVES.

And FWIW the failure to regulate that rapidly expanding banking process wasNOT the GOP's fault.

THAT MISTAKE belongs to WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON and his economic advisory committee.


And yes what I am telling you is this: without that unregulated (it was never regualated, because it was never very important until the mid 90s) derivatives market the run up in RE prices, the liars loans, and the meltdown itself, WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.


There are, of course, many reasons why the economy is (and WAS then, too) in the crapper. But the derivatives market was the mechanism that is more obviously the primary part of the many economic conditions and policies that allowed this meltdown to happen.

 

[regent]

Rabbi -

Actually the lack of regulation dates back to Reagan. While it is a bit of a stretch to blame Reagan for the actual crash, he did remove oversight in a way that helped move some of the chest pieces into the positions which would contribute to the crisis.

What wasn't "regulated"?

DERIVATIVES.

And FWIW the failure to regulate that rapidly expanding banking process wasNOT the GOP's fault.

THAT MISTAKE belongs to WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON and his economic advisory committee.


And yes what I am telling you is this: without that unregulated (it was never regualated, because it was never very important until the mid 90s) derivatives market the run up in RE prices, the liars loans, and the meltdown itself, WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.


There are, of course, many reasons why the economy is (and WAS then, too) in the crapper. But the derivatives market was the mechanism that is more obviously the primary part of the many economic conditions and policies that allowed this meltdown to happen.

In any case when the smoke cleared from Reagan's trickle-down, the debt had tripled, and that was our beginning for new recession/depresssion. When REagan pulled out that little 3by 5 card and told us it was governments that caused problems he knew whereof he spoke.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Rabbi -

Actually the lack of regulation dates back to Reagan. While it is a bit of a stretch to blame Reagan for the actual crash, he did remove oversight in a way that helped move some of the chest pieces into the positions which would contribute to the crisis.

What wasn't "regulated"?

DERIVATIVES.

And FWIW the failure to regulate that rapidly expanding banking process wasNOT the GOP's fault.

THAT MISTAKE belongs to WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON and his economic advisory committee.


And yes what I am telling you is this: without that unregulated (it was never regualated, because it was never very important until the mid 90s) derivatives market the run up in RE prices, the liars loans, and the meltdown itself, WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED.


There are, of course, many reasons why the economy is (and WAS then, too) in the crapper. But the derivatives market was the mechanism that is more obviously the primary part of the many economic conditions and policies that allowed this meltdown to happen.

The derivatives market was merely the conduit for hedging and mitigating loss. Without out the bundling and use of ways to do so, through a supposed regulated derivatives market (which is actually regulated), the only change that would have happened is too big to fail would have been even bigger on the need for bailout money.

 

[HUGGY]

What caused the eonomic meltdown?

What do you consider to be the MAIN driving force behind the 2008 economic meltdown?

It does not matter. It does not matter any more than what the true CAUSES for the events of 9/11 were.

In a word GREED caused the melt down. That was the main cause. Big greed ..little greed .... speculative greed ... predatory greed.. People who get paid billions when our economy wins... and the same people who get paid billions when the economy loses.

People that report on the economy every day from the corporate owned media that keep selling bubbles and those that build the bubbles and hide the evidense from the public and investors that fraudulently extend the bubbles.

Weakening regulations and defunding what little resources regulators had access to caused the economic melt down.

Unregulated capitalism is as and end game pure greed. Selling homes to unqualified buyers is pure greed and fraudulant when there is knowledge that the high likelyhood that these mortgages will default is puposefully disguised as derivatives and resold to unwary investors.

The media's right to lie causes economic melt downs.

In a way free speach caused the melt down.

The theater was in fact on fire and our so called leaders stood up and assured us that there was no fire.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

QW

I tend to ignor questions that that the questioner could answer themselves.

It doesn't matter how man pages of legislation there are if there is not the right legislation. Companies like Goldman have acted above the law for the past 20 years. This does not mean there are not laws. It means there are not the laws required, nor perhaps the desire to enforce those laws that there are.

Then you agree with me that the problem was not a lack of regulation.

 

[bripat9643]

How did Clinton "force" banks to loan money?

Regulators threatened to prevent banks from expanding if they didn't grant mortgages to "undeserved clients" - deadbeats, in other words.

 

[bripat9643]

What a complete load of racist bullshit.

Clinton required banks to make loans to QUALIFIED minorities that banks would never consider not because thy were not qualified, but because they were minorities. To a racist no minority is ever qualified for a loan. Making loans to the unqualified did not happen until Bush's Dec 2003 ADDI. Starting in 2004 everything went to hell.

Banks shuffled money around in phony ways out of pure greed and nothing else.

Horseshit. Banks were already making loans to all qualified applicants. Under Clinton, regulators threatened banks if they didn't grant mortgages to "under served applicants."
That's code for "deadbeats," people with bad credit.

How is it "racist" to point out actual government policy?

 

[bripat9643]

Frank -

There are times when you come across not as simply stupid, but as a veritable haruspex of stupidity.

You're the one who whines about posters who insult you, aren't you?

 

[bripat9643]

QW

I tend to ignor questions that that the questioner could answer themselves.

It doesn't matter how man pages of legislation there are if there is not the right legislation. Companies like Goldman have acted above the law for the past 20 years. This does not mean there are not laws. It means there are not the laws required, nor perhaps the desire to enforce those laws that there are.

What laws has Goldmann Sachs violated in the last 20 years?

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

George Bush... just ask any lefty moonbat.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Frank -

There are times when you come across not as simply stupid, but as a veritable haruspex of stupidity.

You're the one who whines about posters who insult you, aren't you?

Haruspex? Good God.... how long must he have waited to trot that gem out, and then use it completely out of context.

Typical lib...

 

[edthecynic]

What a complete load of racist bullshit.

Clinton required banks to make loans to QUALIFIED minorities that banks would never consider not because thy were not qualified, but because they were minorities. To a racist no minority is ever qualified for a loan. Making loans to the unqualified did not happen until Bush's Dec 2003 ADDI. Starting in 2004 everything went to hell.

Banks shuffled money around in phony ways out of pure greed and nothing else.

Horseshit. Banks were already making loans to all qualified applicants. Under Clinton, regulators threatened banks if they didn't grant mortgages to "under served applicants."
That's code for "deadbeats," people with bad credit.

How is it "racist" to point out actual government policy?

Bullshit!

"Under served applicants" were QUALIFIED MINORITIES, as you well know, but to RACISTS no minority is ever qualified, they are all "deadbeats" with bad credit. If you remember the banks got "stung" when a newspaper sent minority couples to banks for a loan, who were rejected, and then sent white couples with the EXACT SAME PAPERWORK with only the name changed and every white couple got the loan.

Again people with bad credit were not allowed no downpayment loans until Bush's ADDI was passed in Dec 2003. Bush owns the housing market crash.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Bush owns the housing market crash.

our great newspapers and economists on left and right agree it was liberal government that caused the current depression.

"First consider the once controversial view that the crisis was largely caused by the Fed's holding interest rates too low for too long after the 2001 recession. This view is now so widely held that the editorial pages of both the NYTimes and the Wall Street Journal agree on its validity!"...John B. Taylor


" The Federal reserve having done so much to create the problems in which the economy is now mired, having mistakenly thought that even after the housing bubble burst the problems were contained, and having underestimated the severity of the crisis, now wants to make a contribution to preventing the economy from sinking into a Japanese Style malaise....... - "Joseph Stiglitz"( uber left economist)

You may not have heard of the Federal Reserve system but it exists to inflate and deflate the currency supply through the housing market. They inflated too much for too long. This caused what they call a housing bubble. While the bubble was inflating all the big banks and many insurance companies bought bubble mortgages thinking they were sound rather than merely purchased or made possible by newly printed funny money. When the bubble deflated they all lost money on the mortgages. It would be analogous to the government making cars and giving them to GM so everyone could have a car. If GM got them by the ton and for very little money of course they would find a way to move them . This is essentially what the Banks did with the free money. In addition to the Federal Reserve System you had Fanny and Freddie which bought and guaranteed many of the mortgages so no one had to worry about them failing. Then you had CRA, FHA, Federal Home Loan Bank Board( 3% down payment loans) and several others that were designed to get everybody in their own home.

When the states tried to move against predatory lending by national banks they were blocked by the bank's federal regulator, the office of the comptroller of the currency, That empowered money lenders say Lynn Turner.

Just as significantly you had very badly conceived accounting rules that hid the problems from everyone until it was too late. Accounting rules are supposed to do the opposite, not move billions in potential liabilities off the balance sheet onto tiny footnote on the bottom of a page as happened at Citibank, or onto on sentence at the end of a 10-Q report as happened at AIG, or as generally happened with SIVs (structured investment vehicles). Then you had gov't rules from the last crisis, the Enron Crisis, the created mark-to- market accounting rules for this crisis that many believe greatly exacerbated this crisis.

Then you had the problem with the government backed ratings agencies that simply failed to rate the mortgage backed and related securities, properly. Sorry, it had little to do with Bush, but had everything to do with inane attempts by the liberal to regulate the free market!


Warren Buffett: "There are significant limits to what regulation can accomplish. As a dramatic illustration, take two of the biggest accounting disasters in the past ten years: Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We're talking billions and billions of dollars of misstatements at both places".

Now, these are two incredibly important institutions. I mean, they accounted for over 40% of the mortgage flow a few years back. Right now I think they're up to 70%. They're quasi-governmental in nature. So the government set up an organization called OFHEO. I'm not sure what all the letters stand for. [Note to Warren: They stand for Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.] But if you go to OFHEO's website, you'll find that its purpose was to just watch over these two companies. OFHEO had 200 employees. Their job was simply to look at two companies and say, "Are these guys behaving like they're supposed to?" And of course what happened were two of the greatest accounting misstatements in history while these 200 people had their jobs. It's incredible. I mean, two for two!

“Whatever regulatory changes are made, they will pale in comparison to the change already evident in today’s markets,” he said. “Those markets for an indefinite future will be far more restrained than would any currently contemplated new regulatory regime.”-Alan Greenspan

Courtesy A. Smith:FDR created Fannie.
LBJ Privatized Fannie - creating an "enron" like environment:
Greg Mankiw's Blog: Thanks, LBJ

Carter's Community Reinvestment Act - accelerated by Clinton - pushed risky loans:
Community Reinvestment Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clinton pushed Fannie into Subprime - the most critical mistake:
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie - Page 1 - News - New York - Village Voice

Even the NY Times figured this out: Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending - NYTimes.com

Bush and McCain attempted to reform Fannie on 17 occasions
Bush Called For Reform of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac 17 Times in 2008 Alone Only To Have Dems Ignored His Warnings :: Political News and commentaries :: Hyscience

The risky subprime loans fueled another layer of risk - derivatives
https://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/2947518

The LA Times reported on Clinton's "subprime" success in 1999:
Minorities' Home Ownership Booms Under Clinton but Still Lags Whites' - Los Angeles Times

 

[bripat9643]

What a complete load of racist bullshit.

Clinton required banks to make loans to QUALIFIED minorities that banks would never consider not because thy were not qualified, but because they were minorities. To a racist no minority is ever qualified for a loan. Making loans to the unqualified did not happen until Bush's Dec 2003 ADDI. Starting in 2004 everything went to hell.

Banks shuffled money around in phony ways out of pure greed and nothing else.

Horseshit. Banks were already making loans to all qualified applicants. Under Clinton, regulators threatened banks if they didn't grant mortgages to "under served applicants."
That's code for "deadbeats," people with bad credit.

How is it "racist" to point out actual government policy?

Bullshit!

"Under served applicants" were QUALIFIED MINORITIES, as you well know, but to RACISTS no minority is ever qualified, they are all "deadbeats" with bad credit. If you remember the banks got "stung" when a newspaper sent minority couples to banks for a loan, who were rejected, and then sent white couples with the EXACT SAME PAPERWORK with only the name changed and every white couple got the loan.

Again people with bad credit were not allowed no downpayment loans until Bush's ADDI was passed in Dec 2003. Bush owns the housing market crash.

Wrong, they weren't qualified. The banks already gave mortgages to qualified applicants. To meet the requirements imposed on them by the regulators, banks had to give mortgages to people with bad credit. that's the meaning of the term "under served applicant." Anyone who denies it is simply a damn liar.

 

[edthecynic]

Horseshit. Banks were already making loans to all qualified applicants. Under Clinton, regulators threatened banks if they didn't grant mortgages to "under served applicants."
That's code for "deadbeats," people with bad credit.

How is it "racist" to point out actual government policy?

Bullshit!

"Under served applicants" were QUALIFIED MINORITIES, as you well know, but to RACISTS no minority is ever qualified, they are all "deadbeats" with bad credit. If you remember the banks got "stung" when a newspaper sent minority couples to banks for a loan, who were rejected, and then sent white couples with the EXACT SAME PAPERWORK with only the name changed and every white couple got the loan.

Again people with bad credit were not allowed no downpayment loans until Bush's ADDI was passed in Dec 2003. Bush owns the housing market crash.

Wrong, they weren't qualified. The banks already gave mortgages to qualified applicants. To meet the requirements imposed on them by the regulators, banks had to give mortgages to people with bad credit. that's the meaning of the term "under served applicant." Anyone who denies it is simply a damn liar.

Their "lack of qualification" was their skin color, not their creditworthiness.

Again that's bullshit, as the newspaper sting proved. They sent black couples and white couples to the same bank to buy the same house in a white neighborhood with the exact same paperwork and none of the black couples got the loan and every white couple got the loan.

 

[TakeAStepBack]

Prove it.