Obama’s Economic Adviser Was Proponent Of Subprime Loans

• November 30, 2008

That’s right. Austan Goolsbee, who has been chosen to be Obama’s Chief of Staff at the Economic Recovrery Advisory Board and in that role will be helping to guide Obama as he seeks to fix the current economic predicament we’re in, was an outspoken proponent of the sort of loans that got us into this mess in the first place.

Goolsbee believes that incentives matter, and because of this he believes that goverment can, therefore, manipulate tax rates and market prices (through various fiscal and regulatory tools) to get people to act more along the lines the policy-makers would like.
One form of intervention that Goolsbee favored was extending mortgage loans to the the uncredit worthy. In a March 29, 2007 op-ed for “The New York Times,” he said that it was good that financial institutions were being prodded to lend money to those who would not meet normal standards for home loans.
Why? Because people should be evaluated on the basis of what their future income is likely to be in deciding whether or not they can offord to buy a house and meet the monthly payments, not their present income status.
Banks and other lending institutions were clearly misjudging who, therefore, was a “good risk” by only looking at someone’s ability to make a reasonable downpayment and meet those montly payments today.
Thus, Goolsbee was delighted that political and regulatory tools were being used to get those uncredit worthy into new homes. The private sector was not thinking far enough ahead, and that’s what the government needed to get them to do, Goolsbee said.

That’s not change we can believe in.
You’d think that Obama would want someone who didn’t think subprime loans were a good idea to get us out of an economic crisis that subprime loans caused.

Tags: Asshats, Domestic Issues, Politics

http://Array RebTex

BWAHAHAHA!
Your messiah was directly involved in causing the trainwreck.
It seems that un-biased proof isn’t enough for you.
But, then again, you’ve shown in this short time that you will make statements on 1 thread that contradict your statements on another thread.
Maybe you’re just an antagonist, or maybe you’ve indulged in too many butyl nitrates in your past.
I dunno.
One thing I DO know is that I’ll not waste any more of my time debating the likes of you.
Dino

Robbie, rebtex and mickey. Dumb, dumber and dumb as a bag of hammers.

Your posts say nothing, refute nothing and honestly, don’t deserve this post. But I like to keep pointing out your party lost because they caused the economic meltdown.

And you’ll keep losing as the years wear on and the effects of your party’s dismal failures are felt. Tell your kids how happy you are to have handed them a declining country that severely limits their futures.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

Obama was essentially a “red diaper baby” who was raised and educated by Marxists to be Marxist.

Communism is no longer “strange”; it is taught in our schools, sometimes by Marxists. Obama went to such schools, took such classes and personally sought out Marxists.

“To avoid being mistaken for such a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets.”
Brack Obama- Dreams From My Father
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/author/realitybasedbob/ realitybasedbob

Still pushing that Scaife funded ISI bunk, joel?
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

This was a social policy –under no circumstances did this meet any kind of rational business plan-and then, at the turn of the century, some of the people who work at these institutions- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-were saying wait a minute we have a problem-we don’t have enough capital here-we have all this debt- if something happens to the housing market we’re going to be stuck with all this stuff-but it didn’t matter when a handful of people tried to put stricter measures in place –like independent auditors-like SEC requirements –certain debt to asset requirements –debt to capital requirements they were opposed by barney frank and Chris Dodd and all the other liberals on capitol hill. Meanwhile the federal reserve is shoveling money out the door because the objective of government is to get as many people into homes as possible whether they can afford it or not-so these subprime loans nothing down 100% loans –these tickler rates taking people who had poor credit and so forth –they move the poor people and minorities who had poor credit out of the cities and into the suburbs-
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

And they were encouraged to do it by the government. Section 8 housing –people were encouraged to leave their rental facilities their rental apartments and to buy-under the current administration-then big companies like AIG steeped in and others and they said, you know what, we will insure these loans in case they’re defaulted on –we will insure them-called derivatives in effect- so it goes from banks to these two massive government chartered companies into insurance companies that are involved , into investment houses and the federal reserve keeps printing money and has extraordinarily low interest rates for an enormously long period of time . The we have a recession [which is normal –that’s the way the business cycle works- up s and downs. so we have a recession- the problem was and is that the housing market which was so heavily inflated by the government by pushing these policies in extremely loose monetary policy, very low interest rates -trillions of dollars –up to 4.5 trillion dollars under this community reinvestment act they kept blowing it up and blowing it up — blowing up the bubble until finally it burst. And when the housing market burst –the banks that were involved burst-Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae burst — AIG an other companies that insured those loans-they burst- and now the parties that were involved in this –the treasury department, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd are now spending trillions of dollars of our money to try and fix what they broke.
RebTex

No one forced anyone to loan anything.

Again…strive to be more than just an ignorant recepticle.
Mickey

Blaming the advocates of sub-prime loans for the mortgage meltdown is like blaming the manufacturer of the matches for what the arsonist does.

That is without a doubt one of the dumbest arguments I have ever heard.

That’s like saying the advocates of Nazi Germany were not responsible for the holocaust.
Dino

Rebtex shuts down for lack of anything to say.

Akajoel on a rant about nothing in particular, just regurgitated crap due to his failure to understand or read anythinf of substance.

And Rob thinking that owning bad loans is the same as making them.

Just for curiosity, I am wasting my time arguing with kids on here? Are any of you beyond 25?
Wing Chun Geologist

So you admit the man in the video is a prominant Democrat?
Dino

Ok, not a viable rebuttal in the bunch! Just a collection of paranoid delusions and unintelligible rantings.

I guess I won that little debate.
robert108

Your chew toy wiped the floor with you on this topic.

Delusional. You’re a legend in your own tiny mind.
robert108

Wallstreet gave almost twice the amount in campaing donations to the DEMOCRAT candidate than the REPUBLICAN candidate. By the way, trial laywers gave almost three times the amount to the DEMOCRAT candidate than the REPUBLICAN candidate

Which only proves that the Dems were doing the damage, so it cost more to try to buy them off. Duh.
syn

It’s not the poors fault. It’s mostly the fault of rich, white liberals.

This must be said time and again; shouted from the roof tops. White liberals hate poor people, which is why they do everything in their power to crush the poor into oblivion.

There is a reason why there is never seen a minority in Manhattan’s Upper West Side/East Side co-ops; White Liberals with lots of money and snobbery to go with their wealth.

Dino, why do you defend these evil creeps?
Dino

I destroyed your arguments last night witht original content like you asked for.

But to continue,

That 20% of lending institutions were subject to the CRA does not mean the loans were CRA-compliant loans. It was even less than that.

The CRA is not a loan program but a regulatory one. Banks have to show that they loan money in the areas where they are located. The loans are not restricted to home loans. In my business, the redevelopment of contaminated property, a bank can finance the redevelopment and get CRA credit.

See, that’s all CRA is, a checkbox for banks to comply with fair-lending practices. Not a home loan program as so many of you brainstems believe. But that fits nicely into your paradigm that the poor are the enemy. Ironic that some of you and your loved ones will be joining the poor as the republican-created Depression heats up and destroys you.

So once again I have proven to you that the CRA and F&F were small potatoes in the meltdown.

I think the bigger question is why conservatives always want to blame the least powerful segments of society, why you people worship wealth and give wealth and power a pass so readily. I mean, what does it say about people who take the easy route and blame the powerless? In fact, in every conflict conservatives take the side of the more powerful.

It’s because you hate to lose and will take the side of the anticipated winner. it’s not only a repugnant trait, it’s intellectual lazy and inherently cowardly.
Dino

Your chew toy wiped the floor with you on this topic. That makes you a vegetable life form. Or worse.
robert108

I guess I won that little debate.

Our favorite little chew toy is still deluded enough to think it has any authority here. Too funny!
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

BTW-Barney Frank ought to be in a federal prison cell, not overseeing more trillion dollar embezzlement of American taxpayer money.
Wing Chun Geologist

Some links to show you how you aare chasing your tail in trying to blame the poor and the liberal for what was the fault of the greedy, rich, white and republican.

Hey Dino:

Why don’t you summarize them for me.

The fact is that the government pressured banks to lower their lending criteria, and that set rules for the entire industry.

Don’t forget the fact that suddenly providing a financial vehicle for low income home buyers helped increase demand, which sent prices up artificially. It’s called supply and demand (get a Republican to explain it to you).

If it hadn’t been for government policy and Fannie/Freddie, a lot of the lower income home buyers defaulting on their loans would not have been able to buy. So the prices would have not gone up so dramatically. Those who could have qualified for loans under traditional guidelines wouldn’t have been forced to pay $500,000 for a $200,000 house.

The fact is that government policy aimed at helping low income buyers didn’t just hurt the middle class buyers who are now sitting on overpriced upside down homes, it totoally f***ed over our entire financial sector.

I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of scumbags made a lot of giving loans to people who would never pay it back, and then selling those loans to someone else. It was liberal policy that set the whole thing in motion.

Pointing that out isn’t blaming the poor. I used to be poor, and if someone had offered to loan me money so I could buy a three bedroom house when I was making $6.00 an hour, I might have taken it myself. It’s not the poors fault. It’s mostly the fault of rich, white liberals.

P.S. Just because someone is rich and white doesn’t make them Republican. Ever heard of Michael Miklen? Rich. White. Crook. Hardcore liberal.
Dino

Gotta run but tomorrow I’ll destroy your arguments again.

You people are amazingly ignorant. Be glad blogs are anonymous. You’d hate for normal people to know you believed the stuff you write.
ObamaisGOd

If the Fannie/Freddie mess could be laid at the foot of any Republican, the Democratic controlled Congress would of frog-marched him/her in front of cameras. Since it however was the fault of Dems including Carter, Clinton, Frank and Dodd we are “blessed” with a liberal media to protect the guilty and the fox not only put in charge of the henhouse, but also the feed.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

Bullshit. It doesn’t demonstrate the failure of capitalism and free markets. It demonstrates the failure of congress under the liberals [marxists]

It demonstrates the failure of two government companies-Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. It demonstrates the failure of the Community Reinvestment Act which was passed by the weak-kneed socialist Carter and pushed by the psychotic-sex addict Clinton.

It demonstrates the failure of the federal reserve board.It demonstrates the failure of the department of the treasury-it demonstrates the abject failure of FDR’s communist New Deal. It demonstrates the deplorable failure of LBJ’s marxist Great Society utopia.

It demonstartes, yet again, the hopeless and comtemptible failure of liberalism.
robert108

That you are now trying to blame things on minorities is repugnant.

You lie again, idiot. It is the Dem social engineers, trying to buy minority votes by promising them something they didn’t earn. It’s the preferred Dem strategy. Buy votes with promises that eventually destroy the economy and the structure of society, just like homo “marriage” is intended to destroy the real family. Totalitarians can’t stand anything that detracts from allegiance to the State.
When achievers can prosper from a properly-operating market, you totalitarians try to destroy it by mandating outcomes the market doesn’t produce without interference.
Look at the massive increase in govt dependence created by your affirmative action loans. It’s obvious to any intelligent person.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

The current economic situation — do you know what this financial crisis demonstrates? It doesn’t demonstrate the failure of the markets-it demonstrates the failure of congress under the liberals-it demonstrates the failure of two government companies-Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae-it demonstrates the failure of the community reinvestment act-passed by carter and pushed by Clinton- it demonstrates the failure of the federal reserve board-it demonstrates the failure of the department of the treasury-it demonstrates the failure of the new deal-the failure of the great society-the failure of liberalism-ground zero for this financial mess was to take traditional standards for mortgage applicants and to turn into a free-for-all for low income individuals –to turn that into law-to spend the next 25 years forcing banks to meet certain quotas on the issuance of mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them creating an entire financial instrument called sub primes which means nothing more than these truly shaky loans where people have bad credit where they don’t earn enough income or they didn’t even look at their income record or zero down 100% financed loans-but that wasn’t good enough –social engineering of that sort wasn’t good enough-they took it to the next level –what they call the secondary mortgage market. How did they do that?
Dino

Yeah, what’s your point?

Communism is a viable form of government. Now that capitalism has failed worldwide and we’ve nationalized the financial system due to that failure, you can’t say that “communism failed so capitalism is superior”.

See how much you people lost by letting republicans control the country for so long?
Dino

Once again robbie shows that he cannot comprehend much less read.

If ignorance is bliss, you’re one happy guy.
Dino

Unbelievable. All you can come back with is that tired old video of a democrat saying F&F were fine? I didn’t even have to watch it to know what it was. Reminds me of McCain saying the economy was fine in August. LOL

For that little move you have now been given the title King of the Brainstems!

Hey Rob, where’s his reprimand for not banging out his own response?
Dino

Once again robbie, try doing some research. Read. Explore. You might learn something.

You will lose this debate except in your own mind.

That you are now trying to blame things on minorities is repugnant. But, par for the course with conservatives.
Dino

Really man, that was pathetic and something I’d expect from Robbie, Rodney or Gman.
Wing Chun Geologist

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bNmcf4Y3lGM&e
robert108

No one forced anyone to loan anything.

You lie again; there were mandates to loan money to people who would not otherwise qualify, and it was done in the name of combating “racism”. If you don’t know this, you know nothing.
Again, idiot: Mandating bad business practices is bad for the market. This “meltdown” is simply the bill for decades of Dem social engineering. Social engineering always costs; it never pays for itself.
NoJelly

The United States Congress (and bureaucracies thereof) created this financial situation. Granted, a by-product may be the weeding out of a crimino-ethic element on Wall Street, but that weeding will be very very selective–If you look at NObama’s “economic Keystone Kops”, you’ll see that some of those criminals are rewarded with gub’mint jobs…

I have no problem seeing this all as an intentional 25-30 year plan to sabotage our economic system. Even shorter term than that, Leftist opportunists taking advantage of the ineptitude and naivete’ of megalomaniacal do-gooding Administrations. What does a Leftist thrive on? Victims. What have the last two Dem Presidencies and their intense meddling created?
Dino

I’ve put it in my own words many, many time here. But here it is, smartass, off the top of my head. No spellcheck, no review, I’m in a hurry.

The CRA was passed in the 1970s to combat red-lining, the practice of taking deposits from a working poor neighborhood and then not loaning them money for homes, businesses, education, etc. The idea was that the people who’s deposits the bank was taking should be able to borrow it. It worked fine for decades. Nowhere in the Act does it force banks to make loans to the non-creditworthy.

The housing bubble formed for a couple of reasons. The republicans repealed the over-55 rule which made flipping houses more lucrative with the removal of cap gains reinvestment requirement. The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, another republican policy imperative, took down the decades old firewall between Wall Streeet and the banks. GS was passed after the Depression (another republican creation but a topic for another time) when banks took deposits and invested them in risky Wall Street which, when it crashed, lost all the depositors money. So banks were highly regulated and forbidden from playing with Wall Street. Republicans and “new” democrats favored deregualtion and helped repeal Glass-Steagall.

Wall Street republicans needed new instruments to trade and a new market to play with. Plus, with interest rates near zero, foreign money to the tune of $70 trillion was needing a place to invest and American Treasuries weren’t paying shit what with the low interest rates. You can thank another republican, Alan Greenspan for that.

With GS out of the way, the Wall Street republicans got together with the banks, most of which WERE NOT SUBJECT TO THE COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT (think Countrywide, Indymac, etc) and encouraged them to write loans that the Wall Street republicans could bundle into collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and sell to investors world-wide. They soldlike hotcakes. Meanwhile, the republicans who ran the credit rating agencies were giving the CDOs and MBSs much higher ratings than they warranted, the risk models having been created by another group of greedy republicans with MBAs from great schools like Harvard and the University of Chicago.

The thirst for more mortgages to bundle and package grew enormously. That encouraged more speculation, more risky loan-making and more packaging and selling of shit mortgages to unsuspecting investors like AIG and Iceland. After all, a few people were making huge sums of money on the deal, from the investment houses down to the real estate agent selling a $500,000 house to a couple making $70,000 a year. They needed more to feed the greed beast created by Wall Street republicans.

The banks didn’t care since, with the Glass-Steagal Act repealed by the REPUBLICAN Congress, they could pass on the risk to their new playmates on Wall Street. The hysteria for housing grew, promoted by GWB and his “ownership society” theme. Prices went up, bad loans were made and the republicans, WHO CONTROLLED THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH, THE CONGRESS AND THE FED sat on their hands and didn’t say a word.

Meanwhile, Fannie & Freddie were feeling left out since they were losing business to Wall Street who was buying up the loans that F&F needed to survive. So F&F got into the act, buying shit mortgages and resisting attempts to rein in their activities. Some republicans like Hagel wanted to rein in F&F and people like Barney Frank thought this would impede the lower end’s chances of getting to party too. Eventually Frank and the dems agreed to stronger regulation of F&F but the White House and Greenspan, both loathe to see more regulation, opposed it. A republican lobbying firm targeted 17 REPUBLICAN senators and had them kill the legislation in the Senate.

The bubble popped, the CDOs and MBs could not be sold to investors, the banks couldn’t unload their shit mortgages onto Wall Street and greedy banks like WaMu went under. Investment houses, stuck with crummy instruments, went under. The shell game was over. The true deception behind the scam is still being investigated.

Then the republicans looked around and said, “oh shit, who can we blame? Let’s see, the queers? No, I’ve got it! THE POOR! Isn’t there some 40 year old democratic policy we can hang this on? People generally dislike poor people, they’ll believe that poor people did this to us, despite the fact that most of the housing hysteria was confined to white, middle class social-class climbers who thought that granite counter tops and Hummers bought with fake equity was the key to a happy life.”

The mess was due to REPUBLICAN ECONOMIC POLICIES and REPUBLICAN INATTENTION and REPUBLICAN NEGLECT.
http://www.kenmccracken.blogspot.com/ Ken McCracken

Communism is a viable form of government. Now that capitalism has failed worldwide and we’ve nationalized the financial system due to that failure, you can’t say that “communism failed so capitalism is superior”.

Bwahahahahahah!

Communism is ‘viable’ where, exactly?

In North Korea? In Fidel Castro’s carribean gulag? In China perhaps – where the only reason people are now achieving a decent standard of living because the government has rejected communism in favor of free market reforms?

The feds have not ‘nationalized’ the global financial system, nor is capitalism the cause of its problems. In fact it is quite the reverse: incompetent federal oversight (or lack thereof) and an inabilitiy to let the mediocre fail.
robert108

Communism is a viable form of government.

It has failed everywhere it has been tried, which is the opposite of “viable”.

The only thing that has failed here is Dem social engineering. No one can afford it. Like communism, Dem social engineering has failed every time it has been tried.
syn

Wow, so after spending a couple of decades ripping off America’s poor to the tune of tillions by Community Organizing them into homes they could not afford, the evil creeps are back at it again ripping off what remains.

Dino, you stupid idiot…first of all, since 2006 Democrats have been majority in Congress and second of all, in this last election Wallstreet gave almost twice the amount in campaing donations to the DEMOCRAT candidate than the REPUBLICAN candidate. By the way, trial laywers gave almost three times the amount to the DEMOCRAT candidate than the REPUBLICAN candidate

You must one of the 3 million Obama supporters Pouffe emailed dictating the activists to advocate Obama’s agenda; it won’t work stupid twit, most of us love Liberty and Freedom too much to believe your drone-like idiocy.
robert108

Your lies will never change the truth. Mandating bad business practices caused this problem. Forcing loans to be made on any other basis than fiscal responsibility is insane.
Having a good credit score, having a sufficient down payment and sufficient disposable income is the only valid basis for a loan. Mandating otherwise invites disaster, as we are now experiencing.
Dino

PS. The Orange County Register research shows that 4 of every 5 dollars loaned during the bubble WAS NOT SUBJECT TO THE COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT.
http://www.valleydeals.com/cgi-bin/board2/YaBB.pl Kevin

If only everyone could be a “VIP friend of Angelo” like Gaylord Conrad is.
Wing Chun Geologist

This is no surprise at all. As a lawyer, Obama sued to force banks to issue more subprime loans.

The Democratic Party created this subprime mess with the Community Redevelopment Act and by their appointments to Fannie Mae.
NoJelly

No one ever seems to take the vast chasm of disconnect between Congress and this country’s citizenry into consideration. This is why people don’t feel “represented”. Congress and the Admin can auger the Union into the ground financially, because once they’ve been elected they will NEVER have to worry about healthcare, making ends meet, etc.

Soon shanty town squatters will rise on the great golf courses.

…And none in government will ever miss a meal…This is a believeable prophesy.

Americans are not supposed to be subjects, we are the government’s employers. When did we allow our government to lose sight of this fact?
Dino

Blaming the advocates of subprime loans for the mortgage meltdown is like blaming the manufacturer of the matches for what the arsonist does.

Another red herring for the right.
Dino

Don’t be naive. The frog marches will come when the Democratically-controlled Congress convenes with a President Obama to lead the purges of the enemies of the State.

In case you’re not following along, that would be republicans.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

Well, congress and the Clinton administration insisted that these two government chartered companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae buy up all these loans from the banks-so the banks would have even more money that they would be forced to loan to people who couldn’t pay them off. And them Freddie Mac packaged them up and sold them to other institutions in the private sector and then they went out and got what in essence is insurance-on those loans –they call them derivatives-so the poison of this policy seeped throughout our financial system . Janet Reno at justice pushing hard demanding that banks give these loans-Andrew Cuomo the secretary of HUD keeping track almost like quotas to make sure these banks were giving loans to these people who couldn’t afford them. No excuses- in essence, they were quotas-the treasury department refused to allow banks to expand and diversify and open new branches unless they met these strict quota requirements –and so they did. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were pressured-pressured by the Clinton administration, by Barney Frank by Chris Dodd the congressional black caucus by acorn-pressured-to make even more money available for these loans. so they not only bought them from the banks, they made loans themselves and Andrew Cuomo over at HUD was insisting that over 40% of the loans from these government chartered companies go to low and moderate income people-
Dino

Now you can’t say that I don’t put things into my own words. There’s the story so simple even a republican can understand it. And it only took me a few minutes.

There you go Wing. I hope your head doesn’t explode trying to understand it.

Remember, you won’t win this one. You’re wrong and will remain wrong even as we descend into the REPUBLICAN CREATED NEW DEPRESSION.
Dino

Ok Wing, here ya go:

Some links to show you how you aare chasing your tail in trying to blame the poor and the liberal for what was the fault of the greedy, rich, white and republican.

The definitive article on the CRA and why conservatives are deluded:

Subprime Suspects

More for your enjoyment:

Edward Lotterman: Don’t believe the myth about the fiscal mess

See if you can comprehend this one:
Most subprime lenders weren’t subject to federal lending law

This one might make your head explode:

Misunderstanding Credit and Housing Crises: Blaming the CRA, GSEs

This one requires a higher level of understanding. Kind of academic. Get a kind liberal to explain it to you:
Fannie Freddie data

And last but not least, the reason why reining in F&F didn’t happen:

AP IMPACT: Mortgage firm arranged stealth campaign
robert108

But that fits nicely into your paradigm that the poor are the enemy.

You continue to spew this lie. It is the Dem social engineering that is the cause of this. When you mandate bad business practices, the market suffers. No matter how many lies you tell, this truth continues.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

Hints for the dim witted obamunists

A “heavy progressive or graduated income tax” is one of the ten planks in the Communist Manifesto.

So is “centralization of credit in the hands of the State.”

So is “centralization of the means of communication” and “establishment of industrial armies.”

A reasonable person could infer that the present aim of the Democratic Party is full implementation of the planks of the Communist Manifesto.

Just look at the ten planks and look at the Democratic Party’s platform or its legislation waiting in the wings. You don’t need rose-colored glasses to see the red in either.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/some_hints/ AKAJOEL

So much for the wisdom of The People.

A new report from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) on the nation’s civic literacy finds that most Americans are too ignorant [i.e. too fucking stupid] to vote.

Out of 2,500 American quiz-takers, including college students, elected officials and other randomly selected citizens, nearly 1,800 flunked a 33-question test on basic civics. In fact, elected officials scored slightly lower than the general public with an average score of 44 percent compared to 49 percent.

The Founding Fathers weren’t so enamored of The People, whom they distrusted. Hence a Republic, not a Democracy.

They understood that an ignorant electorate was susceptible to emotional manipulation and feared the tyranny of the masses.
Dino

Can you people do anything except blame the poor?
Dino

Proving you don’t read anything that refutes your ignorance. No one forced anyone to loan anything.

Time to stop wallowing in your ignorance.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

Some of us have been saying these things about Republicans for years now, Poodle.
WOOFX

Amazing the number of knives in the back
of the body of the Republican party.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

What I find fascinating is that liberals seem to think the CRA was the sum total of the government’s meddling in the mortgage markets.

The CRA was a significant contributing factor to the collapse (by your own numbers 20% of bad loans were CRA), but it wasn’t the only factor.

Lawsuits against lenders initimidating them into giving out bad loans, not to mention encouragement from the government to give out bad loans (such as HUD requiring lenders to give out loans worth up to 95% of manufactured homes) and the government basically guaranteeing a bailout if everything failed (thus Fannie/Freddie owning or securing 51% of the $12 trillion mortgage market at the time of the collapse) all contributed as well.

The problem in all of this was too much government, not too little as you suggest.

But I suspect you’ll believe what you want. Because you’re not applying logic. You’re starting with the assumption that Democrats are right, and then just including whatever data supports your preconceived notions.

It’s a stupid way to debate, but then you’re a very stupid person.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

Dino, linking to other people’s thoughts and ideas is a lazy man’s way to debate.

Why don’t you deploy some of your own intelligence and tell us in your own words why giving loans to people who couldn’t afford them, and the concentrating all those bad loans with two government-sponsored companies, wasn’t at the heart of the financial collapse.

It seems like you liberals seem to think that if you repeat this lie long enough it’ll just magically become true.
WOOFX

A conspiracy. Liberals turned bankers and brokers into economic suicide bombers. Soon shanty town squatters will rise on the great golf courses.

an intentional 25-30 year plan to sabotage our economic system

It was obvious who would win. That’s how you bet.

Wallstreet gave almost twice the amount in campaing donations to the DEMOCRAT candidate than the REPUBLICAN candidate. By the way, trial laywers gave almost three times the amount to the DEMOCRAT candidate than the REPUBLICAN candidate

Cowboy up.
Austan Goolsbee’s from the Chicago School of Economics.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

So once again I have proven to you that the CRA and F&F were small potatoes in the meltdown.

The CRA was a part of the meltdown, as I’ve already pointed out, and for you to say that Fannie/Freddie’s 51% ownership of the $12 trillion national mortgage market was “small potatoes” illustrates exactly why nothing you say should be taken seriously on this subject.

I think the bigger question is why conservatives always want to blame the least powerful segments of society, why you people worship wealth and give wealth and power a pass so readily. I mean, what does it say about people who take the easy route and blame the powerless? In fact, in every conflict conservatives take the side of the more powerful.

This conservative blames the submprime loan crisis on both the people who took the loans and the people who made them.

I say we let them all lay in the beds the made. No bailouts for anyone.

How exactly does that jibe with your “conservatives always take the side of power” nonsense?

It doesn’t. Because your assumptions are just convenient strawmen trumped up because attacking them is easier than attacking realities you find inconvenient.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

The frog marches will come when the Democratically-controlled Congress convenes with a President Obama to lead the purges of the enemies of the State.

Someone’s delusional.

If there are any purges in DC, they will only take place so that Obama and his Democrats can fill the government’s ranks with their own brand of thugs.

Nothing ever changes. Which makes me wonder why you liberals want to give the government so much power.

By the way, Dino, I thought you were going to return to this thread and destroy my arguments.

Guess you’re a twit who can’t win an argument if your half-truths and deceptions are exposed to the light.
WOOFX

The mortgage lenders put roman candles in the
match boxes they manufactured.
The fault lies with the administration that
deregulated the mortgage rules and the financial institutions that wrote and profited from the new rules.
Those are the “advocates”.
Instead of the slow burn of a mortgage they reaped a
continuing series of explosions.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

I destroyed your arguments last night witht original content like you asked for.

And I responded, genius, and then you said you’d be back tomorrow to destroy them again.

Which you haven’t.

But I see you aren’t interested in debating ideas. You start with the assumption that whatever Democrats are doing is right, and then you work from there.

*yawn*

You’re not even a particularly good troll. In the history of SAB, we’ve had better.

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Obama’s Economic Adviser Was Proponent Of Subprime Loans

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