Comments on: Stop Raping My Elephant

By: The Rude Dog

The Rude Dog — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:46:27 +0000

It’s more “modern liberalism” than actual people who can be pigeonholed as liberals.

This stuff is not from Jefferson and it isn’t conservatism either.

If Republicans want socialism, let them leave the GOP.

By: DMG

DMG — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:12:50 +0000

Wow rude I’m proud of you…acting like a real debator. I still don’t agree this is the “liberals” doing. But looks like you two have this one covered. You can’t dispute that Johnny Mc is a bigtime deregulator. He can’t B.S. his way out of partial responsibility for this debaucle.

By: The Rude Dog

The Rude Dog — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:21:41 +0000

Keep laughing, all the way to McCain’s victory.

You liberals are the best.

You still avoided the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac problem which is strapped to the CRA.

You then refuse to blame losers who don’t pay their bills; instead you want to blame “evil companies out for profit.”

You then refuse to change threads because you are uncomfortable with the rabbit trail you brought up.

The main subject was Republican infighting. You capitalized on the explanation given to DMG. You then cherry picked that content, completely avoiding the GSEs and adding in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

Your posts are long winded bullsh*t. Like a tornado through a rodeo.

By: catscratch

catscratch — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:49:26 +0000

You are fond of claiming people avoid the things you bring up. The reason why I “avoided” it is because it is not what I was addressing…and I am not going to jump down rabbit trails. But I will indulge you and say this: if the CRA was the cause of all of this, then why were the largest providers of these mortgages companies that weren’t even covered under the Act? Specifically, the independent mortgage companies. Those companies engaged in a classinc “race to the bottom”…and they did it while not being regulated at all under the anti-redlining provisions of the CRA.

Bad mortgages made these companies and the banks that started investing in them shaky. Credit default swap trading dealt the deathblow. Buffett’s quote applies nowhere else…in fact there is no logical way to rearrange his words to make his disdain for a garbage specualtion tool somehow equal “risky mortgages”. It’s just not what he said at all.

And finally, why would I move threads, especially to argue about a cartoon and a loudmouth radio host? This thread has substance…stop trying to retreat to ground you believe you can defend better. You can keep bringing up the CRA if you like though, it makes me laugh and goes down great with my coffee.

By: The Rude Dog

The Rude Dog — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:30:39 +0000

Guilty conscience? No, I was pointing that Gramm was fired.

The Community Reinvestment Act is the problem. You avoided it.

There is a new post up top. It features Red Planet, Open Secrets and Neal Boortz all saying what I said.

You can respond there if you like.

By: catscratch

catscratch — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:13:51 +0000

The liquidity crisis has just as much to do with highly leveraged credit default swaps as it does with the individual homeowners. The one accelerates the other. And I didn’t say anything about Gramm’s comments, by the way…that is a guilty conscience speaking, not my words.

But a 45 trillion dollar market in pretend money which was being used as a basis of “wealth”…honestly that really is a nonpartisan stupidity. But Gramm was an architect of that, and McCain thought Gramm was a genius publicly before his “whiner” comments…and no doubt still does he just can’t be public about it now.

There, I said it.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:52:34 +0000

McCain denounced, and fired Gramm for those comments. Take it up with him.
Clinton signed off on the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The bill did not make people stop paying their mortgages.
The problem you cite was called Community Reinvestment Act. It is the Democrat talking point that allowed the low risk loans. They held the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act up in the Senate until the Republicans WRONGLY caved in. Without this liberal trifling, there would be no high risk mortgages. The Warren Buffet quote applies there.
Bush had something to do with the act; he wanted to tighten up the Community Reinvestment Act’s potential effects. He allowed Democrats to win the day on that one. A huge mistake.
McCain has been less than conservative in recent years, and he still speaks with Phil Gramm. But they are not architects of this debacle.
Americans not paying their house payments are. They got the opportunity to get easy loans, cash in on further equity loans as the market went up, spent their loans at Best Buy and Disney World, etc…
Sometimes they acquired NEW EXTRA loans, like cars and whatnot, then walked away from the debt and let their homes foreclose.
They had this opportunity, because of the Community Reinvestment Act. The Republicans who went along with the Democrats were plain wrong.
Last but not least, the GSEs were supposed to prevent this. They failed because no risk means no responsibility.

By: catscratch

catscratch — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:09:28 +0000

You want something to be mad at? Look up the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Your boy McCain drooled all over that and calls Gramm his economic expert. That pile of tripe is what brought the absurd idea of the default credit swap into our midst, and rattled this market to its core.

Warren Buffett, a TRUE financial genius, not a Wall Street lapdog like Gramm/McCain, said this:

“Unless derivatives contracts are collateralized or guaranteed, their ultimate value also depends on the creditworthiness of the counterparties to them. In the meantime, though, before a contract is settled, the counterparties record profits and losses -often huge in amount- in their current earnings statements without so much as a penny changing hands. The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen).”

Which is to say, we have been playing with Monopoly money. You are right o be mad at the non-conservatives in the Republican party. But a vote for McCain and all the support you give him here just puts the architects of this BS in charge like never before. At least Bush had nothing to do with that act.

By: The Rude Dog

The Rude Dog — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:59:52 +0000

The many bailouts and the “compassionate conservatism” that has poisoned the Republican Party.
The American people should have clear choices, and the Republicans in recent years have increasingly started acting like big spending gov types, taking on the worst aspects of modern liberalism.
This is the #1 gripe about President Bush in right leaning circles, he spends, and has encouraged spending, like a drunken sailor. Right wingers will look past war spending, but this GSE(Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac) garbage is the worst.
It’s been followed by AIG and now they want the Treasury to buy bad mortgage loans?
Even if the idea had merit, it should not be the Republican Party that leads us into socialism.
This character, Henry Paulson, ideological opposite of conservatism. He spent the whole last year defending free markets, while working behind the scenes to undermine them. Now that he has the chance to get his hands on 700+ billion in OUR tax money, he says we need to love the gov?
This is the problem not the solution. Barney Frank, Mel Watt and a host of Democrats blocked the regulatory oversight on Fannie and Freddie. They pulled out copious amount of money in political donations and now that it took a dump, they go around saying the free market did this.
The GSEs were set up supposedly to avoid this in the first place. Now that they failed, the solution is to give the whole thing to the losers who caused the failure? It is BS.
When things were riding high, President Bush and others, warned about the GSEs flimsy rules. They were rebuffed by Democrats like Mel Watt and Barney Frank(and many others, including some loser Republicans) who played this phony race/class card. The idea being poor people can know get loans on homes.
Instead of standing tough, Bush went along and started the whole “ownership society” crap. Remember that? He should have stood his original ground.
My wife and I walked into our house with no money down. We had no business getting the loan we did with no money down. However, we actually pay our mortgage. We didn’t lie on the application about our financial situation, and we wouldn’t consider walking away to let everyone else pay for it. We also negotiated out of an ARM as soon as possible.
That is the real problem here. Stupid get-a-long Republicans caved in to a social engineering project.
Not one person in government can control if people lied to get these easy loans. Many did not make an effort to get out of their ARMs, and then they walked on the mortgage.
Both parties did this, but in the Republican Party, it draws a sharp contrast between “republicans” and conservatives.

By: DMG

DMG — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:21:50 +0000

Not sure what you are getting at Rude. Are you talking about the bailout?
DMG