Must really disappoint the conservatives that we didn’t fall off that cliff. Oh well. The cons can just go back to hoping for another terror attack.

What Geithner Got Right

The criticism of his plan to stabilize the financial system came from all directions. House Republicans called it radical. Many liberal economists thought the plan was the product of hapless, zombie thinking and argued that only full bank nationalization would end the crisis. The Wall Street Journal asked 49 economists to grade Geithner. They gave him an F.

Well, the evidence of the past eight months suggests that Geithner was mostly right and his critics were mostly wrong. The financial sector is in much better shape than it was then. TARP money is being repaid, and the debate now is what to do with the billions that were never needed. It now seems clear that nationalization would have been an unnecessary mistake — potentially expensive and dangerously disruptive.

An earlier article on the same thing:

Back From the Brink
Geithner may have it right after all.

The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama’s promise to “save or create” about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers.

“It was worth doing — it’s made a difference,” said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial forecasting and analysis group based in Lexington, Mass.

Mr. Gault added: “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.”

Another thing we’ll use against republicans next fall. Their bitter opposition to stopping the free fall of the economy.

Another source for you NYTimes haters:

Despite accounting errors, stimulus is working

Unbelievable that the filthy, ignorant republicans didn’t even want to allow DEBATE on the Senate health care bill.

This vote will FORCE those walking A-HOLES to debate. Then we’ll pass it and shove that thing so far down their throats all they’ll be able to do is SWALLOW.

To add insult to injury, we’ll use their obstruction against them in November 2010.

Republicans are TOAST. Conservatism is DEAD.

While poverty rates are highest in inner cities, only 23 percent of those in poverty live there. Overall, poverty rates in rural areas have been and continue to be consistently higher than those found in urban areas, which includes inner cities. In this case, rural areas have the second highest poverty rates of 16.3 percent when compared to urban areas (RSS Task Force 1993:32). In 1990, there were 9 million people in rural areas living in poverty; nearly one in five rural residents. In 1993, in the North Central region, the rural poverty rate stood at 13.6 percent, whereas the poverty rate for urban areas was only 11.4 percent.

OUCH!

Not only do rural areas have consistently higher rates of poverty than urban places, but those living in poverty in rural areas are more likely to be white and living in two-adult households. Rural areas also have higher rates of persistent poverty and they are dispersed over a larger geographic area. Still, compared to their urban counterparts, those living in poverty in rural areas are more likely to be working.

I guess working at WalMart dosesn’t pay the bills so well! LOL!

Oh, there’s more at the link. But you people knew that rural poverty was worse than urban. I’ve been telling you that since I arrived to destroy your deeply held ignorance! But here’s some more, just for you, PP!

Rural Poverty Has Become Worse than Urban Poverty

Tsk, tsk. I guess all those conservative rural leaders are failures, huh? LOL

What’s this? More social pathology among the God-fearing rural cons??

Meth a Growing Menace in Rural America
Production and Use of Highly Addictive Drug Has Exploded

Tell us it can’t get any worse, DINO!

Well, it can and has!

Rural Unemployment SOARS during the Recession

OH NO!

So you see, simpletons, the problems of the cities are no different than that of the rural areas that are heavily conservative and run by conservatives. See, no place escaped the detrimental effects of the last 30 years of conservative dominance. NO PLACE. You ideology’s FAILURES are going to be felt for DECADES. I only hope that conservatives are the hardest hit by the damage. Reading the above makes that likely.

The grass-roots activists powering the movement have become increasingly divided on core questions such as whether to focus their efforts on shaping policy debates or elections, work on a local, regional, state or national level or closely align itself with the Republican Party, POLITICO found in interviews with tea party organizers in Washington and across the country.

The philosophical and strategic disagreements have been present within the tea party movement almost from the beginning. But they were hidden — or at least overshadowed — by the initial explosion of activist enthusiasm, which has dissipated somewhat, exposing and widening the rifts.

In Granbury, Texas, local tea party organizer Josh Sullivan says he believes the movement’s effectiveness is being compromised by extremism.“You have some interesting folks in the Tea Party movement — some of them I can support, but some of them are kind of out there and radical, and I don’t want to associate myself with them,” he said.

Ain’t that a bitch.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Republican Party’s favorable rating among Americans is at lowest level in at least a decade, according to a new national poll.

Thirty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, with 54 percent viewing the GOP negatively.

Former President Bush hired James K. Glassman, a longtime journalist and former administration official, to be executive director of his new “action-oriented think tank,” the New York Times reports.

“The George W. Bush Institute will be housed along with the library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. While presidential libraries are eventually turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration to be run as educational centers and storehouses of documents and artifacts, the institute Mr. Bush envisions will become his main organizational vehicle for continuing to participate in public life and trying to shape his legacy.”

Glassman is perhaps best known as the co-author of Dow 36,000 in which he urged people to buy stocks because they were dramatically undervalued. The book came out in October, 1999 just months before the Internet bubble crashed.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Maybe Palin can make him her “economic advisor” when she becomes Madam President in your conservative wet dreams!

Why do conservatives worship idiots? Kind of explains why your policies are such an economic disaster!

The Community Reinvestment Act and the Recent Mortgage Crisis

Over the years, the Federal Reserve has prepared two reports for the Congress that provide information on the performance of lending to lower-income borrowers or neighborhoods—populations that are the focus of the CRA.3 These studies found that lending to lower-income individuals and communities has been nearly as profitable and performed similarly to other types of lending done by CRA-covered institutions. Thus, the long-term evidence shows that the CRA has not pushed banks into extending loans that perform out of line with their traditional businesses. Rather, the law has encouraged banks to be aware of lending opportunities in all segments of their local communities as well as to learn how to undertake such lending in a safe and sound manner.

Recently, Federal Reserve staff has undertaken more specific analysis focusing on the potential relationship between the CRA and the current subprime crisis. This analysis was performed for the purpose of assessing claims that the CRA was a principal cause of the current mortgage market difficulties. For this analysis, the staff examined lending activity covering the period that corresponds to the height of the subprime boom.4

The research focused on two basic questions. First, we asked what share of originations for subprime loans is related to the CRA. The potential role of the CRA in the subprime crisis could either be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that the loans that are the focus of the CRA represent a very small portion of the subprime lending market, casting considerable doubt on the potential contribution that the law could have made to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Second, we asked how CRA-related subprime loans performed relative to other loans. Once again, the potential role of the CRA could be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that delinquency rates were high in all neighborhood income groups, and that CRA-related subprime loans performed in a comparable manner to other subprime loans; as such, differences in performance between CRA-related subprime lending and other subprime lending cannot lie at the root of recent market turmoil.

In analyzing the available data, we focused on two distinct metrics: loan origination activity and loan performance. With respect to the first question concerning loan originations, we wanted to know which types of lending institutions made higher-priced loans, to whom those loans were made, and in what types of neighborhoods the loans were extended.5 This analysis allowed us to determine what fraction of subprime lending could be related to the CRA.

Our analysis of the loan data found that about 60 percent of higher-priced loan originations went to middle- or higher-income borrowers or neighborhoods. Such borrowers are not the populations targeted by the CRA. In addition, more than 20 percent of the higher-priced loans were extended to lower-income borrowers or borrowers in lower-income areas by independent nonbank institutions—that is, institutions not covered by the CRA.6

Putting together these facts provides a striking result: Only 6 percent of all the higher-priced loans were extended by CRA-covered lenders to lower-income borrowers or neighborhoods in their CRA assessment areas, the local geographies that are the primary focus for CRA evaluation purposes. This result undermines the assertion by critics of the potential for a substantial role for the CRA in the subprime crisis. In other words, the very small share of all higher-priced loan originations that can reasonably be attributed to the CRA makes it hard to imagine how this law could have contributed in any meaningful way to the current subprime crisis.

Of course, loan originations are only one path that banking institutions can follow to meet their CRA obligations. They can also purchase loans from lenders not covered by the CRA, and in this way encourage more of this type of lending. The data also suggest that these types of transactions have not been a significant factor in the current crisis. Specifically, less than 2 percent of the higher-priced and CRA-credit-eligible mortgage originations sold by independent mortgage companies were purchased by CRA-covered institutions.

I suspect most of you stopped reading after the first line. Clinging to ignorance is a mainstay of the conservative personality disorder.

(From Paul Krugman’s blog)

Commercial real estate facing worse days

Well now here’s a story about the ugly future of commercial real estate loans and I can’t for the life of me find any reference to the CRA, poor people, Freddie, Fannie or any of the bogeymen you conservatives believe are hiding under the bed! Can you help me to understand?

The Commercial Loan Nightmare Facing U.S. Banks

Banks are in for another ugly year in 2010. But this time the problem will be the big batch of deteriorating commercial real estate loans on their books. That’s because the big banks were operating with the same loose standards—and aggressive behavior—as the investment banks in order to compete in the real estate market during the boom years.

But, but I thought the banks were FORCED to make loans to poor minorities? That’s what the great conservative minds here said!

Carrick, Kenny, Jvette? Can you help?

The republicans will look like the shits that they are and will regret the amount of effort they put into opposing it.

Your kids will look back and wonder what the f*ck was wrong with you and how you could be so short-sighted and ignorant.