Obama half-assing it once again

[DwightShrute]

SO u understand then that bush got in not throught the voice of the majority of US citizens then?? Blaming bush is responsible as it was him that ultimately signed into law those ponzy investment schemes/vehicles that turned out to be ultimately the undoing of the US financial landscape....
If not for him then almost guaranteed that country would not be in the mess its in atm....Obama was left in a damned if you do, damned if you dont position that absolutely NOBODY couldve gotten out of, as the damage had already been done by the time he took office..... Think back to october last year when the wider extent of bushes legacy slowly became apparent within financial markets and the impact that had on the entire world and then tell me it was obamas fault

Ya Blame Bush for everything. Disregard Freddie and Fannie and all those who were greedy and just blame Bush.

Incredible how one can type rubbish and expect to be taken seriously.

Hopeless.

[Chuck Sims]

I tried to watch the whole speech but when the cameras spanned out into the west point cadet audience and showed some of them asleep, I decided it was time to turn the channel.

[daggerkobe]

Ya Blame Bush for everything. Disregard Freddie and Fannie and all those who were greedy and just blame Bush.

Incredible how one can type rubbish and expect to be taken seriously.

Hopeless.

Looks like you need another refresher course in history.


President Bush advocated the "Ownership society." According to the New York Times, "he pushed hard to expand home ownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent — and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards." He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSE) meet low-income housing goals and advocated government loans to help low-income homeowners make down-payments. The Bush administration also replaced Fannie and Freddie's chief regulator in 2003 immediately after the regulator published a report warning of the risks posed by the GSE.[68]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_policies_and_the_subprime_mortgage_crisis#Policies_of_the_Bush_Administration

Hopeless, indeed.

[DwightShrute]

Looks like you need another refresher course in history.


President Bush advocated the "Ownership society." According to the New York Times, "he pushed hard to expand home ownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent — and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards." He insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSE) meet low-income housing goals and advocated government loans to help low-income homeowners make down-payments. The Bush administration also replaced Fannie and Freddie's chief regulator in 2003 immediately after the regulator published a report warning of the risks posed by the GSE.[68]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_policies_and_the_subprime_mortgage_crisis#Policies_of_the_Bush_Administration

Hopeless, indeed.

Great post from a far left wing publication that despised Bush and prints anything that will get you guys coming of from your dark basement.

The NY Times was a well respected paper once. Now they are on the verge of bankruptcy and are as respected as the National Enquirer.

Bush is also an Alien was in last weeks edition

Read the Rag if you want or read fact and watch facts.



How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis: Kevin Hassett

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0

[daggerkobe]

Yeah, NY Times = National Enquirer.

[daggerkobe]

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Yeah, real unbiased there.

[losturmarbles]

I joined the AF last week. I'm more than willing to fight and die for this President and his decisions. Afghanistan is where we should have been the whole time.

thank you for your service. we really take our service men for granted. (we, including the government elites who live in an imperial palace in a far away land called Washington, DC)

however, don't buy into the myth of two wars, one being a "good war" and one being a "bad war". how is nation building in afghanistan somehow better than nation building in iraq?
also you can't fight an enemy you refuse to identify.

[losturmarbles]

nvm

[Leverage]

Because nation building in Iraq was started under a false premise and not necessary. The enemy is the Taliban and Al Qaida in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[DwightShrute]

(Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is an adviser to Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona in the 2008 presidential election. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Yeah, real unbiased there.

There are several articles that prove that. As well as the video above that shows dems admitting it.

Democratic Coverup for Fannie and Freddie Led to 2008 Meltdown
by Ross Kaminsky

09/30/2008

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28806

If anyone wants to find the people responsible for the current financial meltdown, they need to look no farther than the Democrats -- Maxine Waters, Barney Frank and their Fannie Mae pal Franklin Raines -- to indentify the culprits.

Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and in particular at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines. Everything in the 1992 act has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator, and this must be done in a manner so as not to impede their affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation flourish from desktop underwriting to 100 percent loans. -- Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) in a September, 2003, hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services.

The above quote from Waters was in a hearing convened by then-committee Chairman Michael Oxley (R-OH) to discuss “the oversight of the housing government-sponsored enterprises.”


The hearing came about because two Bush Administration cabinet secretaries had presented the committee with a “proposal to improve regulatory oversight for the GSEs” with an opening statement, including: “There is a broad agreement that the current regulatory structure for the GSEs is not operating as effectively as it should. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight is underfunded, understaffed and unable to fully oversee the operations of these sophisticated enterprises.

“This was reflected in the surprise management reorganization by Freddie Mac and by Wall Street reports stating that GSE oversight is viewed with skepticism because OFHEO is largely seen as a weak regulator. A strengthened regulator will send a signal to the markets that these entities have solid management and are engaging in safe and sound activities.”

Yet the response by the Democrats on the committee, who had turned what should have been an issue of protecting public trust and money into a partisan divide so that they could buy votes with their “affordable housing” social engineering scheme, was uniformly against improving oversight of GSEs.

Democrat Barney Frank (D-MA), who was the ranking Democratic committee member at the time (and is its chairman today), said, “I think it is clear that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are sufficiently secure so they are in no great danger… Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac do very good work, and they are not endangering the fiscal health of this country.”

Representative Waters continued her contribution to the discussion by making clear the Democrats’ true mission for Fannie and Freddie, namely to find a way to get minorities into houses even if they would not meet the qualifications for standard loans, such as in having the ability to bring a down payment to the transaction.

Waters seemed particularly proud to say “since the inception of goals from 1993 to 2002, loans to African-Americans increased 219 percent and loans to Hispanics increased 244 percent, while loans to non-minorities increased 62 percent. Additionally, in 2001, 43.1 percent of Fannie Mae's single-family business served low-and moderate-income borrowers…” She then said “the GSEs are working” and reiterated her opposition to more oversight.

The next panel at that hearing included George Gould, a long-time Freddie Mac board member and former Under Secretary for Finance at the Department of the Treasury, who discussed Freddie’s view of the situation. He testified that:

• “Freddie Mac's franchise is rock solid. Our exposure to both credit risk and interest rate risk remains extremely low.”
• “These are strong incentives for the GSEs to meet the goals year after year, to say nothing of the reputational penalties of failing to meet a goal.” (This is important when we turn to Franklin Raines in a moment.)
• “Considering that we have consistently met the permanent affordable housing goals, additional enforcement authority seems unnecessary. Therefore, we would respectfully suggest that no additional authority is needed.”

This last statement reinforces the position taken by Maxine Waters that the mission of the GSEs is primarily to increase “affordable housing” regardless of how that gets done.

Next up was Franklin Raines, CEO of Fannie Mae. Raines made millions in bonuses when Fannie Mae manipulated earnings to meet the highest profit and “affordable housing” targets. He settled with the SEC in a sweetheart deal that cost him little or nothing out of his own pocket, even though Fannie Mae was slapped with the biggest fine in SEC history for overstating Fannie Mae’s profits by $6.3 billion over several years.

Raines went through the standard litany such as “provid(ing) $2 trillion for 18 million underserved families” but did not oppose modernizing GSE oversight. Indeed, Raines admitted that “you can imagine our trying to get into some area that could cause a safety and soundness issue.”

During the hearing Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) said “I am just pissed off at OFHEO because if it wasn’t for you I don’t think we’d have to be here in the first place.”

The head of OFHEO, the under-funded regulator of Fannie and Freddie, did not take that lying down: “Congressman, OFHEO did not improperly apply accounting rules; Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not try to manage earnings improperly; Freddie Mac did. So this isn't about the agency's engagement in improper conduct, it is about Freddie Mac.”

Though this 2003 hearing (which is widely being reported on the Internet has having happened in 2004, in part because of this otherwise-excellent video showing some of the highlights), it is only a small part of the consistent support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by Democrats regardless of the risk caused by or fraud perpetrated by those organizations.

Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT), the largest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie in the past decade, also turned a blind eye to the risks posed by the GSE’s.

In an article earlier this month, the Washington Post (no friend to the Bush administration), offered this: “Sen. Christopher Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has the gall to ask in a Bloomberg Television interview: I have a lot of questions about where was the administration over the last eight years’” before explaining that “Dodd -- who along with Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the top four recipients of Fannie and Freddie campaign contributions from 1988 to 2008 -- actively opposed such measures and further weakened existing regulation.”

The corruption of Fannie Mae was not simply partisan, but it was also racist in its own way. Just as Fannie and Freddie threatened to harm “racist” banks which didn’t loan money to (unqualified) minorities, the leadership of the GSEs was clearly just as afraid of being called racist by minority (by race, not political party) members of Congress. In this remarkable 2005 video of the swearing-in ceremony of the Congressional Black Caucus (with an applauding Michelle Obama prominently featured), Fannie Mae interim CEO Daniel Mudd, cozies up to the CBC: “I humbly ask you to help us and help me… If there areas where we could do better, we’d like to hear it from our friends, and I’d be so bold as to say our family, first.” Mudd was afraid of the CBC. And who wouldn’t be, in a society where an unfounded charge of racism can destroy fortunes and careers?

What lessons can we learn about confusing social programs with the proper functions of government, about the inherent conflict between believing that a cause is worth any price and protecting citizens’ money from waste and corruption? (Indeed can we not ask the same question about the conflict inherent in Paulson’s bailout proposal?)

Democrats have taken the wrong side in this conflict for years, right up until the bitter and expensive end of Fannie and Freddie as independent institutions, including their multi-billion dollar tax-payer bailout .

In fact, over the years, their actions to protect Fannie and Freddie from Congressional prying are nothing short of a coverup.

Sens. Dodd and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wanted to expand Fannie and Freddie as recently as a year ago, while John McCain was one of just 4 sponsors of a 2005 measure to rein in these financial Frankensteins. McCain offered support of the bill with this statement: “If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”

But when even Bill Clinton has to admit the truth, you know it’s not just a matter of parsing words: “The responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more with resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was president to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Part of the reason the Democrats are so angry about the Paulson bailout proposal failing is that it allows the public that much longer to figure out who is primarily responsible for the current debt market turmoil.

The villains in this story are primarily Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, with conspirators throughout the Democratic Party, the Congressional Black Caucus, and corrupt leftist organizations like ACORN, which not only received Fannie Mae money despite repeated convictions for voter fraud, but which was slated by the Democrats to share in any future potential profits from the bailout.

To use the words of House Republican Leader John Boehner, the bailout bill was a “crap sandwich”. But what beside such a meal should we have expected given the disgusting history of fraud by GSEs and neglect and stonewalling by their Democratic defenders in Congress?

[Leverage]

You can post articles till your a$$ bleeds... Doesn't make it true.

[DwightShrute]

You can post articles till your a$$ bleeds... Doesn't make it true.

True, but it is.

Truth hurts sometimes I know. It must be tough to hear all the propaganda from the far left media about all the lies as to why we are in this mess and only to get proof that most of it was all lies and deception. Some cannot admit they were deceived and wrong.

To much pride or stupidity I suspect.

[blueghost]

whats happening to OBAMA in sending more troops in is the same thing that happened to LBJ during the VIETNAM war ..how many to send? then for how long? LBJ had experts too... i think you know what happened there...every decision will have its price...i feel bad for all the troops and there families and hope it dont end up like before..

[Leverage]

....

[daggerkobe]

Limbaugh falsely asserted "Banking Queen" Barney Frank "created" subprime mortgage crisis

January 08, 2009 3:24 pm ET

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SUMMARY: Rush Limbaugh falsely asserted that Rep. Barney Frank "created the problem" of the subprime mortgage crisis, claiming that Frank's "definition of affordable housing was to make sure that people who couldn't pay the loans back got the loans, the mortgages. He forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do this." In fact, Frank has advocated for policies that emphasize low-income home rentals as opposed to homeownership and supported legislation to strengthen oversight over Fannie and Freddie.

69 Comments


During the January 7 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh falsely asserted that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) "created the problem" of the subprime mortgage crisis. Limbaugh claimed that Frank's "definition of affordable housing was to make sure that people who couldn't pay the loans back got the loans, the mortgages. He forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do this." In fact, Frank has advocated for policies that emphasize low-income home rentals as opposed to homeownership and supported legislation to strengthen oversight over Fannie and Freddie. Indeed, in a profile of Frank for the January 12 edition of The New Yorker, staff writer Jeffrey Toobin wrote: "According to Frank, at the root of the real-estate crisis was a misguided notion that homeownership should be available to all people -- what President Bush has called 'the ownership society.' "
In his profile of Frank, Toobin wrote:

According to Frank, at the root of the real-estate crisis was a misguided notion that homeownership should be available to all people -- what President Bush has called "the ownership society." "The 'I told you so' here is that homeownership is a nice thing but it is not suitable for everybody," Frank said at Boston College. "There are people in this society who don't have enough money to be homeowners, and there are people whose lives are not sufficiently integrated for them to take on the responsibility to be a homeowner. And we did too much pushing of people into inappropriate mortgages and into homeownership." He said that many people would always be renters, and that there was nothing wrong with this. "We need to get back in the business of building rental housing and preserving the housing we have," he said.

Additionally, as Media Matters for America has documented, Frank has supported efforts to strengthen oversight of Fannie and Freddie, including:

• In 2005, Frank, then the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, worked with committee chairman Rep. Michael Oxley (R-OH) on the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005, which would have established the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to replace the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) as overseer of the activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After voting for the bill in committee, Frank voted against final passage of the bill on the House floor, stating that he was doing so because an amendment to the bill on the House floor imposed restrictions on the kinds of nonprofit organizations that could receive funding under the bill.

• In early 2007, as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Frank sponsored H.R. 1427, a bill to create the FHFA, granting that agency "general supervisory and regulatory authority over" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and directing it to reform the companies' business practices and regulate their exposure to credit and market risk. Among other things, Frank's legislation, titled the "Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2007," directed the FHFA director to "ensure" that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "operate[] in a safe and sound manner, including maintenance of adequate capital and internal controls" and to establish standards for "management of credit and counterparty risk" and "management of market risk." The FHFA was eventually created after Congress incorporated provisions that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said were "similar" to those of H.R. 1427 into the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which the president signed into law on July 30, 2008.

Indeed, in his profile, Toobin wrote:

In 2005, while the Democrats were still in the minority, Frank contributed to a bipartisan effort to put his objectives -- tighter regulation of Fannie and Freddie and new funds for rental housing -- into law. At the time, Fannie and Freddie were regulated by a small agency within the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the bill proposed to create an independent agency to monitor their operations. Frank and Michael Oxley, who was then chairman of the Financial Services Committee, achieved broad bipartisan support for the bill in the committee, and it passed the House. But the Senate never voted on the measure, in part because President Bush was likely to veto it. "If it had passed, that would have been one of the ways we could have reined in the bowling ball going downhill called housing," Oxley told me. "Barney, to some extent, is misunderstood -- with this image of him as a fierce partisan. He is an institutionalist. He believes in the House and in the process. He eschews the grandstanding style that so many members use and prefers to work behind the scenes and get something done."

Limbaugh's attack on Frank echoes false accusations by media conservatives that proponents of the expansion of affordable housing are responsible for the financial crisis. Moreover, his attacks on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac promote a myth that their activities caused the subprime crisis. In fact, as economist Dean Baker noted: "Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble, but they were trailing the irrational exuberance of the private sector. They lost market share in the years 2002-2007, as the volume of private issue mortgage backed securities exploded."
Later in the broadcast, Limbaugh played a parody song, titled "Banking Queen," featuring an impersonation of Frank by comedian and frequent Limbaugh contributor Paul Shanklin. In the parody, Frank, who refers to himself as "the banking queen," threatens banks to make loans or they'll "be fined," adding: "My friends at Fannie sure need it, do it my way or beat it."
From the January 7 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: Barney Frank -- I want to go to yesterday's audio sound bite roster. Barney Frank -- actually, we have some stuff from today and yesterday. Yesterday, he was on with Chris Cuomo, Good Morning America. And I'll tell you, Barney is getting more and more contentious with his buddies. I mean, the people in the drive-by are Barney's buddies. And he's getting contentious with them, often for no reason, which means he's defensive.
But first, from MSNBC today, Joe Scarborough's morning show. Scarborough said, how do we stop the next big bust on Wall Street? We had the '87 crash, we had the Asian crash, we had the dot-com crash, and the telecom crash, and now we've got the housing bubble crash. And I'll tell you, the next crash, as I just -- I just said, folks, we are insane. It was just two months ago that we learned that massive debt that can't be repaid causes bubbles to burst big time, and now we've got trillion-plus, billion, or trillion-dollar deficits promised by Obama for years. So that's the next one to bust. And -- and Scarborough is asking Barney Frank, how do we figure out what the hell we're doing on Wall Street?
FRANK [audio clip]: Not deregulation that was the problem. It was a failure to adopt new regulations for a new phenomenon, the securitization. The biggest part of this problem was subprime loans -- money lent to people to make them homeowners who couldn't afford the loans, who should not have been considered to be, in many cases, capable financially of homeowning. You've got to recognize reality. We have begun to adopt legislation to prevent that. We can stop the last problem from recurring; nobody can know what the next problem will be.
LIMBAUGH: This is -- I mean -- he created the problem. This -- folks, this is more than chutzpah. He created the problem. This is a sound bite that gets you out of your chair. I don't believe I just heard this. He created it. His definition of affordable housing was to make sure that people who couldn't pay the loans back got the loans, the mortgages. He forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do this. ACORN was involved -- Obama's group. This was a Democrat [sic] Party operation through and through. And instead of answering questions from Joe Scarborough, Barney Frank ought to be answering them as a witness before some other congressional committee.
So, now we have begun to adopt legislation to prevent this? I mean, all you can do is laugh. I know some of you people are put out with me because I'm laughing at this. Well, what are we going to do? I mean, you can't go through your life angry all the time like the liberals do, but this -- OK, let's move on to Good Morning America with Chris Cuomo and Barney Frank.
[...]
LIMBAUGH: Well, it certainly was the way the subprime mortgage thing went down. It certainly was the way Congress was in charge of telling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac what to do. Barney Frank leading the way, folks -- he was, and is, the "Banking Queen."
[begin audio clip]

You can build
You can buy
Any house your heart desires
Zero down
Financing
I am the banking queen
Friday night and your cash is low
I know a place that you can go
Get your house and use it
Go ahead abuse it
You can do anything
Go out and have a fling
I am the banking queen
Old and sweet
Go ahead and do our thing
Banking queen
Don't complain
Or you'll hear me scream, oh yeah
You can build
You can buy
Any house your heart desires
Zero down
Financing
I am the banking queen
Told the bankers: Hey, you guys
Make the loans or you'll be fined
My friends at Fannie sure need it
Do it my way or beat it
While the stock's crashing
That doesn't mean a thing
I'm still the banking queen
Never spanked for a single thing
Banking queen
Don't complain
Or you'll hear me scream, oh yeah
You can build
You can buy
Any house your heart desires
Zero down
Financing
I am the banking queen

http://mediamatters.org/research/200901080014

[Leverage]

....

[daggerkobe]

You can post articles till your a$$ bleeds... Doesn't make it true.

Typical neonitwit.

Equates NY Times to the National Enquirer, because he can't dispute any of their facts...... while posting biased opinions from neocon websites such as "Humanevents.com" which employs Ann Coulter & Pat Buchanan. And also from Kevin Hassett who is an advisor to John McCain.

You really can't make this shit up.

[DwightShrute]

Bush Called For Reform of Fannie/Freddie 34 Times Since 2001

http://www.sodahead.com/business/bush-called-for-reform-of-fanniefreddie-34-times-since-2001/blog-16522/

[Leverage]

Humanevents.com and sodahead.com might as well be written in crayon.

[daggerkobe]

Does this sound like someone that wished reforms?

2003: Bush replaces Fannie and Freddie's chief regulator in 2003 immediately after the regulator publishes a report warning of the risks posed by the GSE.

2003: Bush signs into law the "American Dream Downpayment Initiative" which aims to increase the homeownership rate, especially among lower income and minority households.

2004: The SEC relaxes rules that enabled investment banks to substantially increase the level of debt they were taking on, fueling the growth in mortgage-backed securities supporting subprime mortgages.

2004: HUD ignores warnings from HUD researchers about foreclosures, and increases the affordable housing goal from 50% to 56%.

Where was this crackhead when all these deregulations and firings were going on????

[DwightShrute]

you guys are great and remind me of those lawyers that take on the case of an admitted killer and try and create reasonable doubt. You know that you are wrong, the jury does also, your argument is laughable but you continue to stick to your guns even though no one believes anything you say.

Like a ping pong game or a title fight but in the end, and in a unanimous decision ... I win.

but good game regardless

[daggerkobe]

Typical neocon response when confronted with overwhelming FACTS.

[DwightShrute]

Typical neocon response when confronted with overwhelming FACTS.

wow , kinda like ...

I win

again

[jon101]

I agree America should stop all the worldwide welfare, and take care of our own people.

[DwightShrute]

I agree America should stop all the worldwide welfare, and take care of our own people.

If only it were that simple

[losturmarbles]

Because nation building in Iraq was started under a false premise and not necessary. The enemy is the Taliban and Al Qaida in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

dont be vague. what false premise? not the same one being used in afghanistan?

Taliban and Al Qaida? what about Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, Islamic Emirate of Waziristan, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, Jemaah Islamiyah? they're in afghanistan and pakistan too. or are they not big enough yet?

what about the hundreds, if not thousands more muslim terrorist groups out there, are we going to go around the world fighting them too?

[losturmarbles]

this shows you what kind of ignorant tool you are. obama's deficit for this year is 4X bush's 482 billion. almost 2 trillion. (but i know, it's bush's fault )



funny how you fail to mention what parties control congress over these years. you do realize that the president is only one branch of the government, don't you?
so republicans gain control of congress in 94, these "fiscal conservatives" start enacting laws and policy that actually encourages business, encourages growth, they lower taxes and shrink government, and what happened? oh yeah, tax revenue increased. damnedest thing. lower tax rates actually increased total tax revenue. ignorant twats like yourself don't understand the power of free market policies. the increase in tax revenue each year outpaced the increase in entitlements, lowering the deficit until it eclipsed spending and had a surplus in 98, 99, 00, and 01. Repubicans lose control of senate in 00 election. notice the only years where the GOP has a majority in congress (95-00). every year an improvement over the last.
then 9/11 happened. and government used the attack as a vehicle to increase the size of government to massive proportions. something we are payin the price for now. and if you think that means bush is to blame for obama's deficit. uh, no. you don't spend your way out of debt. you don't come up with some faux stimulus plan that does horse shit in the area of stimulating by increasing government spending. you do what they did in 94 and get government out of the fukin way of the private sector.

[losturmarbles]

Limbaugh falsely asserted "Banking Queen" Barney Frank "created" subprime mortgage crisis

why did we have a "crisis"?

simple: Community Reinvestment Act. period.

[DwightShrute]

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures

• Posted March 24th, 2009 at 10.20am in Ongoing Priorities.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.
What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

• President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
• President Bush began a string of expensive finan*cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
• President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle*ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern*ment health care fund.
• President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi*dent Obama would double it.
• President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in*creased this spending by 20 percent.
• President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
• President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has been now been added.
CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.

[daggerkobe]

why did we have a "crisis"?

simple: Community Reinvestment Act. period.

Oh, really?

Then you may want to cover your eyes:


Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis

Posted by: Aaron Pressman on September 29

Fresh off the false and politicized attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, today we’re hearing the know-nothings blame the subprime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act — a 30-year-old law that was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began. This is even more ridiculous than blaming Freddie and Fannie.

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977, requires banks to lend in the low-income neighborhoods where they take deposits. Just the idea that a lending crisis created from 2004 to 2007 was caused by a 1977 law is silly. But it’s even more ridiculous when you consider that most subprime loans were made by firms that aren’t subject to the CRA. University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr testified back in February before the House Committee on Financial Services that 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision and another 30% were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations. As former Fed Governor Ned Gramlich said in an August, 2007, speech shortly before he passed away: “In the subprime market where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision. It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat.”

Not surprisingly given the higher degree of supervision, loans made under the CRA program were made in a more responsible way than other subprime loans. CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley (PDF file here).
Finally, keep in mind that the Bush administration has been weakening CRA enforcement and the law’s reach since the day it took office. The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, a period when subprime loans performed quite well. It was only after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose, a timing issue which should stop those blaming the law dead in their tracks. The Federal Reserve, too, did nothing but encourage the wild west of lending in recent years. It wasn’t until the middle of 2007 that the Fed decided it was time to crack down on abusive pratices in the subprime lending market. Oops.

Better targets for blame in government circles might be the 2000 law which ensured that credit default swaps would remain unregulated, the SEC’s puzzling 2004 decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital and that same agency’s failure to oversee those brokerage firms in subsequent years as many gorged on subprime debt. (Barry Ritholtz had an excellent and more comprehensive survey of how Washington contributed to the crisis in this week’s Barron’s.)

There’s plenty more good reading on the CRA and the subprime crisis out in the blogosphere. Ellen Seidman, who headed the Office of Thrift Supervision in the late 90s, has written several fact-filled posts about the CRA controversey, including one just last week. University of Oregon professor and economist Mark Thoma has also defended the CRA on his blog. I also learned something from a post back in April by Robert Gordon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which ends with this ditty:

It’s telling that, amid all the recent recriminations, even lenders have not fingered CRA. That’s because CRA didn’t bring about the reckless lending at the heart of the crisis. Just as sub-prime lending was exploding, CRA was losing force a & earsnd relevance. And the worst offenders, the independent mortgage companies, were never subject to CRA — or any federal regulator. Law didn’t make them lend. The profit motive did. And that is not political correctness. It is correctness.

http://www.businessweek.com/investin...ity_reinv.html

[Leverage]

When the republicans took over congress in 94 the rapid deregulation of banking and finance that followed set up the economic crisis were in now. I'm more of a champion of laissez-faire economics and states rights then you ever will be.

[daggerkobe]

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/...t-in-pictures/

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures

• Posted March 24th, 2009 at 10.20am in Ongoing Priorities.

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.
What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

• President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
• President Bush began a string of expensive finan*cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
• President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle*ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern*ment health care fund.
• President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi*dent Obama would double it.
• President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in*creased this spending by 20 percent.
• President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
• President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has been now been added.
CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.

Don't worry. You will be long dead before you have to pay a red cent for Obama's spending..... Dumbya made sure of that.

[Leverage]

why did we have a "crisis"?

simple: Community Reinvestment Act. period.

No we had a "crisis" because of greed. Greed plus shady investment vehicles. Period.

[losturmarbles]

Oh, really?

Then you may want to cover your eyes:


Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis

Posted by: Aaron Pressman on September 29

Fresh off the false and politicized attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, today we’re hearing the know-nothings blame the subprime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act — a 30-year-old law that was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began. This is even more ridiculous than blaming Freddie and Fannie.

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977, requires banks to lend in the low-income neighborhoods where they take deposits. Just the idea that a lending crisis created from 2004 to 2007 was caused by a 1977 law is silly. But it’s even more ridiculous when you consider that most subprime loans were made by firms that aren’t subject to the CRA. University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr testified back in February before the House Committee on Financial Services that 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision and another 30% were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations. As former Fed Governor Ned Gramlich said in an August, 2007, speech shortly before he passed away: “In the subprime market where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision. It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat.”

Not surprisingly given the higher degree of supervision, loans made under the CRA program were made in a more responsible way than other subprime loans. CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley (PDF file here).
Finally, keep in mind that the Bush administration has been weakening CRA enforcement and the law’s reach since the day it took office. The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, a period when subprime loans performed quite well. It was only after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose, a timing issue which should stop those blaming the law dead in their tracks. The Federal Reserve, too, did nothing but encourage the wild west of lending in recent years. It wasn’t until the middle of 2007 that the Fed decided it was time to crack down on abusive pratices in the subprime lending market. Oops.

Better targets for blame in government circles might be the 2000 law which ensured that credit default swaps would remain unregulated, the SEC’s puzzling 2004 decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital and that same agency’s failure to oversee those brokerage firms in subsequent years as many gorged on subprime debt. (Barry Ritholtz had an excellent and more comprehensive survey of how Washington contributed to the crisis in this week’s Barron’s.)

There’s plenty more good reading on the CRA and the subprime crisis out in the blogosphere. Ellen Seidman, who headed the Office of Thrift Supervision in the late 90s, has written several fact-filled posts about the CRA controversey, including one just last week. University of Oregon professor and economist Mark Thoma has also defended the CRA on his blog. I also learned something from a post back in April by Robert Gordon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which ends with this ditty:

It’s telling that, amid all the recent recriminations, even lenders have not fingered CRA. That’s because CRA didn’t bring about the reckless lending at the heart of the crisis. Just as sub-prime lending was exploding, CRA was losing force a & earsnd relevance. And the worst offenders, the independent mortgage companies, were never subject to CRA — or any federal regulator. Law didn’t make them lend. The profit motive did. And that is not political correctness. It is correctness.

http://www.businessweek.com/investin...ity_reinv.html

i know critical thinking isn't your strong suit while cut-pasting is, but you might consider next time linking an article that doesn't contradict it's own title. and you also might consider not highlighting the said part.

look i don't have time to argue. "bush cut back on CRA enforcement" so what is "enforcement"??? oh yeah, that's because in order for a bank to grow and expand into other areas of finance, it had to meet government mandates IE CRA. the damage was already done by the time bush "cut back on CRA enforcement". and there is plenty of blame to go around about CRA, but a hell of a lot of it falls directly on slobbering barney frank's shoulders.

[losturmarbles]

No we had a "crisis" because of greed. Greed plus shady investment vehicles. Period.

wtf does greed have to do with anything?

shady investment vehicles that were getting guaranteed by the government. ie fannie/freddie, ie american tax payers, ie my money.

is it greedy that i don't want government imperialists to steal from me to give to someone else?