Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[Andylusion]

Labor laws that prevented children from working were great. Market economies can result in people making some really bad decisions. Some parents even sell their kids into slavery.

Blind faith in freedom leading to the best result is as naïve as those who thought communism would work.

Properly functioning markets will produce a certain type of good result. That doesn't mean markets always work or that a market result is always the best result.

When I 16, I wanted to work, and they wouldn't let me work more than 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. It sucked. Thanks a lot.

 

[Andylusion]

The loans to poor people were not the cause of the crash. The government played some role in the crash but there is plenty of blame to go around and the vast majority comes down to common problems markets can have..

BULLSHIT

The Government-Created Subprime Mortgage Meltdown

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

.........is the direct result of thirty years of government policy that has forced banks to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers. The policy in question is the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call "communities of color" that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria.

.

The idea that low income borrowers can crash the largest economy in the world is hilarious. All of these highly paid financial experts foiled by poor people! Hate to break it to you but you need to get past the emotional rhetoric and ask yourself if the math makes sense.

Two problems.

The highly paid financial experts, were influenced by the Government.

Second.... warning PERSONAL OPINION HERE.... I don't think it was entirely bad loans that broke the system.

Why? Because back in 2009, the sub-prime melt down, was killing jobs in the financial world. Most of the companies that flopped, were all in securities and mortgages.

So how did companies crashing that didn't hire a single minimum wage worker, cause millions of low wage workers to lose their jobs?

I can even remember 'experts' in economics pondering this question, how did something way up there in the economy, crash jobs way down there at the bottom?

AGAIN THIS IS MY OPINION

I think that the sub-prime crash was in fact triggered by the loss of low wage jobs.

I think that the low wage job losses, were caused by something else. What else happened in 2009? Does anyone remember?

In 08-09, the minimum wage went up to $7.25 an hour.

Now, sub-prime loan defaults were always bad. Always. But if you look at the number, the default rates drastically increased from 08 to 09. That drastic increase in default rates, caused the sub-prime MBS market to crash, which wiped out all those companies.

Sub-prime loans should never have been made legitimate by the Government. And certainly, without question, they would have crashed at some point. But I think the trigger for the crash, was in fact the Minimum wage increase, which killed jobs for the low-wage employees, who made up a significant chunk of the sub-prime loans.

 

[Andylusion]

Wall Street speculators and their DC cronies caused the subprime mortgage meltdown:

"The subprime mortgage boom and the subsequent crash are very much concentrated in the private market, not the public market.

"Subprime is a creature of the private label securitization channel (PLS) market, instead of the Government-Sponsored Entities (GSEs, or Fannie and Freddie).

"The fly-by-night lending boom, slicing and dicing mortgage bonds, derivatives and CDOs, and all the other shadiness of the mortgage market in the 2000s were Wall Street creations, and they drove all those risky mortgages.

"Here's some data to back that up: 'More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions... Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.'"

The majority of loans responsible for the meltdown were made by private institutions not even covered by CRA loan requirements.

No, Marco Rubio, government did not cause the housing crisis

If you want to blame the housing bubble on a part of government then look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates which had a direct impact on the prices of homes.

When did the Fed lower rates "too much"?
What level should they have made rates to prevent the bubble?
At what time?

Once again, I'll walk through the whole thing.

First, interest rates. Yes, I will agree that having interest rates that are too low, is bad. Yes the Fed encourages bad practices, by having rates too low.

The problem with that is, there were in fact places with higher interest rates, that still had problems, and there were places with low rates, that did not have problems.

So my answer to that is, I think interest rates exacerbated the problem, but I do not believe they were the cause.

Now that said, let's start at the beginning.

I think most people grasp that the primary driver of the sub-prime mortgage melt down, was of course.... sub-prime loans. So when did those take off?

This is from Inside Mortgage Finance. Prior to 1997, the sub-prime loan market was flat, and a niche market. Then in 1997, the market shot off. There are two explanations given for this. One, is "Greed™", which requires you to believe that everyone was magically 'not greedy', and then in 1997, magically became 'greedy', or that Aliens shot all the bankers with 'greed guns' that made them all greedy.

The other is that something happened in 1997, that changed the market. So what might have happened in 1997, that changed the market?

First Union Capital Markets Corp., Bear, Stearns & Co. Price Securities Offering... -- re> CHARLOTTE, N.C., Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ --

This is a press release that happened in 1997, from First Union.

First Union Capital Markets Corp. and Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. have priced a $384.6 million offering of securities backed by Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans - marking the industry's first public securitization of CRA loans.

"The securitization of these affordable mortgages allows us to redeploy capital back into our communities and to expand our ability to provide credit to low and moderate income individuals," said Jane Henderson, managing director of First Union's Community Reinvestment and Fair Lending Programs.
"First Union is committed to promoting home ownership in traditionally underserved markets through a comprehensive line of competitive and flexible affordable mortgage products. This transaction enables us to continue to aggressively serve those markets."
The $384.6 million in senior certificates are guaranteed by Freddie Mac and have an implied "AAA" rating.​

Now let's review. First Union became Wachovia. So Wachovia and Bear Stearns, signed a deal to make sub-prime mortgage backed securities, securitized by Freddie Mac, the arm of the Federal Government. Plus they gave these sub-prime MBS, a 'AAA' rating. Who gave them the AAA rating? The government did, in this deal.

But it doesn't end there.

[ame=http://youtu.be/gpj4gcdm_JQ]HowThe Democrats Caused The Financial Crisis Starring HUD Sec Andrew Cuomo & Barack Obama - YouTube[/ame]

This video is of Andrew Cuomo, in 1998, detailing... even bragging, that the Clinton Administration, sued banks, and forced them to make bad sub-prime loans. Cuomo even openly admits that the default rate on these loans will be higher than prime rate loans.

So lets review... we have government suing banks to force them to make bad loans, at the same time we have government securitizing sub-prime loans, and giving them a AAA rating.

FYI.....

Many leftists have pointed out that Freddie and Fannie, had very few sub-prime loans compared to the rest of the market.... which is what the prior poster was claiming.

This is both true, and irrelevant. Only half of the Fannie and Freddie business, is directly purchasing loans. The other half of their business, is securitizing loans. What does that mean?

Freddie and Fannie both, offer a securitization. It means that private mortgage originators, can make a loan, package them up, and send them to Freddie and Fannie for approval. If approved... the originator can sell the mortgage backed securities on the open market, with Freddie or Fannies guarantee. If the MBS goes bad, Freddie and Fannie pay a chunk of the loss.

Even though Freddie and Fannie did not even purchase sub-prime loans until 2002-04 I think, they had guaranteed millions of them. It was because of these mortgages gaurantees that caused Freddie and Fannie to go bankrupt, and need bailed out.

Further, even though Freddie and Fannie only owned a small portion of those sub-prime mortgages, it was Freddie and Fannie that ligitimized the sub-prime market to the private market. Before 1997, the sub-prime market was flat line.

Lastly, it was this action back in 1997, that caused the housing price bubble.

Again, you can clearly see, that the housing price boom, started in 1997, when the government through Freddie Mac, securitized sub-prime loans, through their deal with First Union (Wachovia) and Bear Stearns.

This is what caused the sub-prime melt down. The data clearly shows when it started, and the evidence suggests exactly why it started.

 

[P@triot]

All those companies were started by ideas which are free, I give you that. But you know in order to make money you got to spend it right? So everyone needs their own venture capitalist it sounds like...I'm joking. All those people with those free ideas came from educated backgrounds, Harvard, Reed etc. etc. and until such access and opportunity exists among the parasite classes, such visions are far and few between. You know theres a strong link between education and achievement? People with less education naturally achieve less, and it's not hard to understand why. There are dozens of other factors but education is significant.

That's simply not true. Steve Jobs never even attended college (he "audited" a few classes here and there). Bill Gates attended Harvard but never even graduated.

Yes, an education is huge. There is no denying that. But don't even try to pretend that these people achieved what they did because of education. They achieved what they did because they had a vision, they were passionate about what they were doing, and they worked relentlessly. Gates & Jobs averaged 18 hour days. Think about that for a minute. That left them with 6 hours per day to commute, sleep, eat, and spend time with their family.

Show me someone in poverty working 18 hour days. You can't. You know why? Because someone working that hard isn't in poverty (at least not for long). By the way - there is another über wealthy entrepreneur I left off this list - Chris Gardner. And guess what? He never attended college either.

And again - there isn't a large or mid-sized corporation in the world that doesn't cover the cost of college in full (and the overwhelming majority of small businesses do as well). The people doing all the crying have one problem and one problem only - their victim mentality. I once had the privilege and the honor to serve under a great leader of men. He used to tell us every day: "excuses are like assholes - everybody has one and they all stink".

So everything the left cries about is not that the opportunities aren't there - it's that everything is not handed to them on a silver platter. And that's what annoys the hell out of me.

 

[dblack]

I have to confess, the core impulse of striving for 'equality', either in opportunity or outcome, seems somewhat pointless. Everyone gets a different deal. No amount of meddling will change that. Equal rights under the law is vital. Freedom to decide for ourselves what to strive for is vital. But all these discussions of what people 'deserve' falls flat (for me). We should be free to distribute economic decision making power to those who do the things we like. If that means a few people get most of the power, why is that bad thing? As long as our freedom to make the call, as individual consumers and producers, is preserved we can always change our minds and give our money to someone else.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Yeah none of that is true.

If you want to blame the housing bubble on a part of government then look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates which had a direct impact on the prices of homes. Lower interest rates mean lower monthly payments which means people can afford a higher cost house. Ergo prices went up fast.

Once home prices started going up fast people started treating them like financial instruments which only inflated their prices more. In order for this bubble to happen there has to be a massive capital inflow into these investments. Once again we can look at the Federal Reserve for why that happened.

I am not one to blame the Federal Reserve for private citizens making bad financial choices even if they had a part in the changes in prices.

If you want to blame the housing bubble on a part of government then look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates which had a direct impact on the prices of homes.

When did the Fed lower rates "too much"?
What level should they have made rates to prevent the bubble?
At what time?

Did I say "too much" anywhere? I don't think so.

Blaming the Federal Reserve is misguided and doesn't even come close to telling the whole picture but at least they had some impact on the whole thing. Those who blame CRA are just pushing ignorance.

The bottom line is that people made investments with bad information. When that happens in a market bad things tend to happen.

Did I say "too much" anywhere? I don't think so.

You said "look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates".
Did you mean to blame them for not lowering enough?

When that happens in a market bad things tend to happen.

Moreso when the government encourages (forces) banks to loan to poor credit risks.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

In practice yes. Idealistically though it's more like wage inequality is why. Heads of companies now make so many times more than their employees it's embarassing. But they could pay their workers much more while taking much less themselves so it's more a matter of greed and a sense of entitlement than anything else. If a company has say 10 employees and after expenses there's a million dollars profit for everyone's pay, a CEO could divy up the profit evenly, everyone getting 100k. But that never happens. The CEO takes the majority of the profit leaving the remaining 9 only a fraction of the minority split to share. Thus that inequality leads to everything else.

 

[RKMBrown]

In practice yes. Idealistically though it's more like wage inequality is why. Heads of companies now make so many times more than their employees it's embarassing. But they could pay their workers much more while taking much less themselves so it's more a matter of greed and a sense of entitlement than anything else. If a company has say 10 employees and after expenses there's a million dollars profit for everyone's pay, a CEO could divy up the profit evenly, everyone getting 100k. But that never happens. The CEO takes the majority of the profit leaving the remaining 9 only a fraction of the minority split to share. Thus that inequality leads to everything else.

At the company I left most workers were making around 100k and the CEO was making 100m after stock bonuses. Was that fair? Maybe that company had too much money maybe we should make revenue illegal, that would ensure that no one gets paid to much!

 

[Bombur]

If you want to blame the housing bubble on a part of government then look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates which had a direct impact on the prices of homes.

When did the Fed lower rates "too much"?
What level should they have made rates to prevent the bubble?
At what time?

Did I say "too much" anywhere? I don't think so.

Blaming the Federal Reserve is misguided and doesn't even come close to telling the whole picture but at least they had some impact on the whole thing. Those who blame CRA are just pushing ignorance.

The bottom line is that people made investments with bad information. When that happens in a market bad things tend to happen.

Did I say "too much" anywhere? I don't think so.

You said "look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates".
Did you mean to blame them for not lowering enough?

When that happens in a market bad things tend to happen.

Moreso when the government encourages (forces) banks to loan to poor credit risks.

I specifically said I wasn't blaming the Fed. I was pointing out that there actions did have an impact on the markets though. Which is just a pretty easy thing to observe. In order to argue blame the first thing you have to establish is that there was an impact.

The theory that it was the CRA doesn't hold up to scrutiny because there is no evidence that the CRA had an impact. It is kind of sad that so many people are so ready to blame poor people and government that they can believe poor people crashed the economy. It doesn't pass a basic common sense appraisal.

 

[Bombur]

The problem is, the graph, and those who calculate 'social mobility', fail to factor in choice, and failed to factor in the scale of mobility.

For example, Country A, a maximum wage of $100,000, and Country B has a max of $300,000, and two people both earning $20,000 a year.

Five years later, Person in Country A, is earning $60,000 a year, and person in Country B is earning $80,000, which has more social mobility?

In theory, the person in Country A has greater social mobility, because he's in the upper middle of the scale. Yet the Person in Country B, actually had the greater increase in wage, and is enjoying a greater standard of living.

The other aspect is that of choice. Back in the 90s, when I was in high school, I worked for minimum wage at a fast food joint. One day a lady showed up, and announced to us, that she intended to only work long enough to qualify for welfare again. She even told us the day in which she qualified, and sure enough, on that day she stopped showing up for work.

Does that graph include people like this? Of course. But does this person reflect an social economic system that prevents moving up the income scale, or does it rather show a choice by the individual to refuse to advance themselves?

That's a choice of the individual, not a problem with our economic system. If anything, our welfare, and social programs, have setup a system of incentives to encourage people to not advance up the income ladder, and then you use the resulting statistics to justify more of the same programs that caused those statistics.

Further, no one is denying Capitalism concentrates wealth.

What we do in fact deny, is that this is bad.

If I refuse to get an education, or get an education in something that has no value, or refuse to do what is needed to advance my career, and become more productive... I choose to not concentrate wealth. Back to the prior example of the lady who only worked long enough to get back on welfare. You do realize that 75% of all McDonald's Franchise owners, started out working minimum wage as a crew member? They are rich, because they worked to advance themselves, by choice. She'll be poor till she dies, by choice.

The reason people have nothing, is because they spent all my money, and didn't save and invest.

I call this the difference between the Pinball people, and the Beer Pong people.

This comes from the story of Warren Buffet. If you read about Warren Buffet, you'll find that when he was in High school, he worked a paper route. He saved up money from the paper route, and bought a PinBall machine. He placed the PinBall machine in a local business, where it earned more money. Buffet, invested his money, and made more money.

What do most people do? I can't speak for absolutely everyone, but when I was in high school, the popular thing to do, was to buy a keg of beer, and take it to someone's home whose parents were away, and have a party, and play Beer Pong. Thus they consume their money, and are broke.

That's the difference between the Beer Pong people and the PinBall people. That's why rich people are rich, and poor people are poor.

You realize that if you save, just a mere $100 a month, every single month from age 20, to retirement, you'll retire a millionaire (or close to it)? But people don't. They buy movie tickets, premium cable TV, smart phones, eat out at restaurants every day, and buy cars and other financial boat anchors that sink in value like a rock, and then complain how the wealthy the rich people are.

There's a reason for this. Actions have consequences. Even Michael Jackson, who made over a billion dollars in his career, was on the verge of bankruptcy just before his death. In fact, it was likely because of the stress of his world wide tour, and the pressure from all his creditors and lawsuits, that drove him to his death.

But the idea that somehow it's our economic system that is holding people back, is just absolutely ridiculous. Phil Robertson, regardless of anything else, is proof our system gives the most opportunity to the lowest of people. Here's a drunk, a complete drunk guy, living in a shack, whittling duck callers, and now he's a national brand, multimillionaire with his own TV show.

1-800-GOT-JUNK, was started by a high school student, who bought a beat up pickup truck for $800, and a hand painted sign. Now he's a multimillionaire of an international company.

Allen Greenspan lost all his credibility. He claimed to believe in market principals, but in practice, he himself tried to direct and control the markets.

You can't say that "self regulating markets doesn't work" when *YOU* are the guy directing and regulating the markets. Sorry, false premise.

You are talking about entire nations worth of people. Your analysis is based on personal choice. So in essence you are saying that the entire nation has started to be lazy even though any measure of how much Americans work proves you wrong.

Once again nothing you say holds up to reality.

The alternative theory is that the markets are being impacted in some way which makes a lot more sense than the nonsense you just posted. At least try and make a good argument.

It's not just "work more". You can't just "work more" and expect to get wealthy. Have you to advance yourself. And not even just "get education".

I remember hearing this lady call in for advice on what she should do with her finances. She said she made $30,000 a year, and things were tough, but she was in school, and would be out in a year or two. The host asked what her degree was, and she said "social work".

Er.... Social Work? You are going to earn the same when you get that degree, as you already are... except now you'll have thousands of dollars in loans to pay back. That's a bad plan.

"But this is what I like to do!"

Fail! Life isn't all about "what I like to do". You don't go to someone's home and say "I want you to hire me to play video games!". Sorry, not hiring you. "But it's what I like to do!" Sorry, I don't give a crap. I need someone to mow my lawn though. "But I don't like to do that!"

If anyone wants to be wealthy, you must do something that has value in the market place. The value is determined by the customer, not your personal preference.

You can work 'long hours' at flipping burgers over, and you'll just remain a burger flipper. The people who end up franchise owners, they work their way up. I want to be shift manager. I want to balance the books. They save up their burger flipper money, and take courses in management. They sign up for McDonald's management course.

What they don't do, is put in their 8 hours, and go home, sit in front of the boob tube, and say "man I put in a hard days work".

These are all choices. Choices have consequences.

Once again we are talking about comparing entire nations. Reducing the issue to you hating on social workers and fast food workers is just bizarre. You can't even represent your own country well let alone say anything meaningful about the graph.

Stay ignorant or not I don't really care but your arguments are laughable.

 

[Bombur]

BULLSHIT

The Government-Created Subprime Mortgage Meltdown

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

.........is the direct result of thirty years of government policy that has forced banks to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers. The policy in question is the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which compels banks to make loans to low-income borrowers and in what the supporters of the Act call "communities of color" that they might not otherwise make based on purely economic criteria.

.

The idea that low income borrowers can crash the largest economy in the world is hilarious. All of these highly paid financial experts foiled by poor people! Hate to break it to you but you need to get past the emotional rhetoric and ask yourself if the math makes sense.

Two problems.

The highly paid financial experts, were influenced by the Government.

Second.... warning PERSONAL OPINION HERE.... I don't think it was entirely bad loans that broke the system.

Why? Because back in 2009, the sub-prime melt down, was killing jobs in the financial world. Most of the companies that flopped, were all in securities and mortgages.

So how did companies crashing that didn't hire a single minimum wage worker, cause millions of low wage workers to lose their jobs?

I can even remember 'experts' in economics pondering this question, how did something way up there in the economy, crash jobs way down there at the bottom?

AGAIN THIS IS MY OPINION

I think that the sub-prime crash was in fact triggered by the loss of low wage jobs.

I think that the low wage job losses, were caused by something else. What else happened in 2009? Does anyone remember?

In 08-09, the minimum wage went up to $7.25 an hour.

Now, sub-prime loan defaults were always bad. Always. But if you look at the number, the default rates drastically increased from 08 to 09. That drastic increase in default rates, caused the sub-prime MBS market to crash, which wiped out all those companies.

Sub-prime loans should never have been made legitimate by the Government. And certainly, without question, they would have crashed at some point. But I think the trigger for the crash, was in fact the Minimum wage increase, which killed jobs for the low-wage employees, who made up a significant chunk of the sub-prime loans.

ROFLMAO

It was a large number of MBS going from an A rating to a B rating over night because people all of a sudden realized they were rated wrong. This required a massive attempt at liquidation which crashed the balance sheets of financial institutions.

A sub prime mortgage is rated as a sub-prime mortgage. Investors can and do manage that risk within their portfolio effectively when they know they have this high risk mortgage. What they were doing was hiding that risk and then lending out more money based on this incorrect risk profile.

Low skilled employees lose their job because demand contracted. When demand contracts it is the most marginally hired employees which are fired. Some sectors are more sensitive to these changes in demand than others.

The bubble would have burst eventually because home prices were artificially high for multiple reasons. Interest rate being low, the use of homes as financial instruments, incorrect information making the loans look less risky than they were, and no better place to put the capital from the standpoint of investors.

 

[Contumacious]

No, Marco Rubio, government did not cause the housing crisis

Interesting, I wonder who wrote the article?

MIKE KONCZAL

A Fellow with the Roosevelt Institute, Konczal works on financial reform, unemployment, inequality, and a progressive vision of the economy.

Roosevelt Institution
Carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.


So we have a ******* socialist who works at an institute which celebrates the socialist proclivities of Franklin Del-anus Roosevelt.

Massive conflict of interests.

.

 

[Bombur]

Labor laws that prevented children from working were great. Market economies can result in people making some really bad decisions. Some parents even sell their kids into slavery.

Blind faith in freedom leading to the best result is as naïve as those who thought communism would work.

Properly functioning markets will produce a certain type of good result. That doesn't mean markets always work or that a market result is always the best result.

When I 16, I wanted to work, and they wouldn't let me work more than 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. It sucked. Thanks a lot.

Yet the economy as a whole has benefited greatly from kids staying out of the workforce. It is almost as if your anecdotal story is irrelevant.

 

[Andylusion]

Once again we are talking about comparing entire nations. Reducing the issue to you hating on social workers and fast food workers is just bizarre. You can't even represent your own country well let alone say anything meaningful about the graph.

Stay ignorant or not I don't really care but your arguments are laughable.

It's not about hate. That's what ignorant people with weak arguments resort to, a red herrings of "you hate x". Not a matter of hate.

It's about the reality that choices have consequences. I worked at Wendy's, and didn't want to be management. I was only there during high school, so I never advanced, never joined the management training program, and consequently I didn't get a raise. Nor should I have.

Sucking air, is not a reason for a raise.

Doesn't mean someone 'hates them'. That's just ignorant talk for "I have no real argument against what you said, so I'll just accuse you of hating".

If that's all you got, then you really need to find something else to do with your time. Telling everyone you can't argue with "You must hate people!" is not going to convince anyone of anything.

 

[RKMBrown]

Did I say "too much" anywhere? I don't think so.

Blaming the Federal Reserve is misguided and doesn't even come close to telling the whole picture but at least they had some impact on the whole thing. Those who blame CRA are just pushing ignorance.

The bottom line is that people made investments with bad information. When that happens in a market bad things tend to happen.

Did I say "too much" anywhere? I don't think so.

You said "look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates".
Did you mean to blame them for not lowering enough?

When that happens in a market bad things tend to happen.

Moreso when the government encourages (forces) banks to loan to poor credit risks.

I specifically said I wasn't blaming the Fed. I was pointing out that there actions did have an impact on the markets though. Which is just a pretty easy thing to observe. In order to argue blame the first thing you have to establish is that there was an impact.

The theory that it was the CRA doesn't hold up to scrutiny because there is no evidence that the CRA had an impact. It is kind of sad that so many people are so ready to blame poor people and government that they can believe poor people crashed the economy. It doesn't pass a basic common sense appraisal.

You are not listening.

 

[Bombur]

Once again we are talking about comparing entire nations. Reducing the issue to you hating on social workers and fast food workers is just bizarre. You can't even represent your own country well let alone say anything meaningful about the graph.

Stay ignorant or not I don't really care but your arguments are laughable.

It's not about hate. That's what ignorant people with weak arguments resort to, a red herrings of "you hate x". Not a matter of hate.

It's about the reality that choices have consequences. I worked at Wendy's, and didn't want to be management. I was only there during high school, so I never advanced, never joined the management training program, and consequently I didn't get a raise. Nor should I have.

Sucking air, is not a reason for a raise.

Doesn't mean someone 'hates them'. That's just ignorant talk for "I have no real argument against what you said, so I'll just accuse you of hating".

If that's all you got, then you really need to find something else to do with your time. Telling everyone you can't argue with "You must hate people!" is not going to convince anyone of anything.

Your entire argument is a red herring.

I said my argument rather clearly IMO. You are reducing the entire nation to two people you are hating on. Which you are btw. Your entire argument is an emotional argument against imaginary people who you think made bad decisions.

It is intellectually vapid and offensive.

 

[Bombur]

Did I say "too much" anywhere? I don't think so.

You said "look no further than the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates".
Did you mean to blame them for not lowering enough?

When that happens in a market bad things tend to happen.

Moreso when the government encourages (forces) banks to loan to poor credit risks.

I specifically said I wasn't blaming the Fed. I was pointing out that there actions did have an impact on the markets though. Which is just a pretty easy thing to observe. In order to argue blame the first thing you have to establish is that there was an impact.

The theory that it was the CRA doesn't hold up to scrutiny because there is no evidence that the CRA had an impact. It is kind of sad that so many people are so ready to blame poor people and government that they can believe poor people crashed the economy. It doesn't pass a basic common sense appraisal.

You are not listening.

LOL

There is nothing to listen to but people repeating a lie about the CRA.

 

[RKMBrown]

I specifically said I wasn't blaming the Fed. I was pointing out that there actions did have an impact on the markets though. Which is just a pretty easy thing to observe. In order to argue blame the first thing you have to establish is that there was an impact.

The theory that it was the CRA doesn't hold up to scrutiny because there is no evidence that the CRA had an impact. It is kind of sad that so many people are so ready to blame poor people and government that they can believe poor people crashed the economy. It doesn't pass a basic common sense appraisal.

You are not listening.

LOL

There is nothing to listen to but people repeating a lie about the CRA.

Yes or no, the CRA exists?

If you admit it does exist, explain it's purpose and what actions the government did to enforce it. Then explain how that did not change the market whatsoever.

Note: in a large market with very small margins a small number of defaults or even small amount of additional risk, can collapse the market. If your profit is based on only 1% or less of the loans defaulting and 2% of the loans default then you will have no profit. When you give people money to buy homes that act runs the price of homes up.

Note: While I fully understand that a great number of the CRA defaults are currently being banked by the tax payer, that does not mean they don't exist. Have you not heard anything about Obama's bailouts of borrowers who found themselves owing more than their homes were worth, and checks to banks to repay them for what amounts to CRA squatters who can't make house payments because they don't have jobs? Do you not know anything about current events?

 

[jodylee]

No one has benefitted more from capitalism more than poor people. Their quality of life is a million times better than it used to be.

that's due to advances in technology, and before you say, oh, but capitalism caused the rise in technology, remember which country was the worlds most technologically advanced in the 1940's - Germany. not an Adam smith in sight.

 

[Bombur]

You are not listening.

LOL

There is nothing to listen to but people repeating a lie about the CRA.

Yes or no, the CRA exists?

If you admit it does exist, explain it's purpose and what actions the government did to enforce it.

The presence of the CRA is not being debated. What is being debated is the impact the CRA had on the crash.

HTH