The Observation Deck

Brian Pedaci wrote:Once again, fraudulent registration does not equal fraudulent voting. That girl is never going to cast a ballot. More fodder for hand-waving freak-out that the right's going through now, trying to justify why their candidate is going to lose in a landslide.

Charlie Page wrote:

Brian Pedaci wrote:Once again, fraudulent registration does not equal fraudulent voting. That girl is never going to cast a ballot. More fodder for hand-waving freak-out that the right's going through now, trying to justify why their candidate is going to lose in a landslide.

Fraudulent registration equals fraudulent voting in quite a few states that don’t require some form of identification to verify yourself prior to casting a ballot. Go figure that voter fraud is rampant on the Dem side as they are the ones who oppose voter ID laws. Can someone enlighten me as to why having to prove who you are prior to voting is disenfranchising?

• Did the 1977 legislation, or any other legislation since, require banks to not verify income or payment history of mortgage applicants?

• 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision; another 30% were made by banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations. How was this caused by either CRA or GSEs ?

• What about "No Money Down" Mortgages (0% down payments) ? Were they required by the CRA? Fannie? Freddie?

• Explain the shift in Loan to value from 80% to 120%: What was it in the Act that changed this traditional lending requirement?

• Did any Federal legislation require real estate agents and mortgage writers to use the same corrupt appraisers again and again? How did they manage to always come in at exactly the purchase price, no matter what?

• Did the CRA require banks to develop automated underwriting (AU) systems that emphasized speed rather than accuracy in order to process the greatest number of mortgage apps as quickly as possible?

• How exactly did legislation force Moody's, S&Ps and Fitch to rate junk paper as Triple AAA?

• What about piggy back loans? Were banks required by Congress to lend the first mortgage and do a HELOC for the down payment -- at the same time?

• Internal bank memos showed employees how to cheat the system to get poor mortgages prospects approved that shouldn't have been: Titled How to Get an "Iffy" loan approved at JPM Chase. (Was circulating that memo also a FNM/FRE/CRA requirement?)

Caseshillerpricedeclines_2

• The four biggest problem areas for housing (by price decreases) are: Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Miami, Florida, and San Diego, California. Explain exactly how these affluent, non-minority regions were impacted by the Community Reinvesment Act ?

• Did the GSEs require banks to not check credit scores? Assets? Income?

• What was it about the CRA or GSEs that mandated fund managers load up on an investment product that was hard to value, thinly traded, and poorly understood

• What was it in the Act that forced banks to make "interest only" loans? Were "Neg Am loans" also part of the legislative requirements also?

• Consider this February 2003 speech by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozlilo at the American Bankers National Real Estate Conference. He advocated zero down payment mortgages -- was that a CRA requirement too, or just a grab for more market share, and bad banking?

ACORN turns applications in to election officials in three stacks: those we have verified, those we were unable to independently verify, and those we know are problematic. In most states we are required to turn in every signed application, including the ones we know have problems. In a few cases these applications have turned out to be phony, the result of part-time employees trying to get paid for doing work they didn’t do. (Contrary to rumor, ACORN canvassers are paid by the hour, not by the application, and there are no quotas.) In these cases ACORN has been credited with catching the bad applications, firing the workers involved, and alerting election officials to the problem. The system works, and, as most election officials have recognized, ACORN is part of the solution, not part of the problem.

ryan costa wrote:I can only follow print journalism.

the article I posted previously indicates the feds did a lot of acrobatics to avoid using existing rules to prevent giant banks and lenders from acting irresponsibly. Wachovia wasn't fannie mae or freddie mac. national city wasn't fannie mae or freddie mac.

Brian Pedaci wrote:Steven, that horse is good and dead. You can stop whipping it now. Fannie and Freddie alone weren't the be-all and end-all of the crisis. Their failures didn't happen in a vacuum, and fixing them in 2004 wouldn't necessarily have prevented the rest of the market implosion.

The total worldwide mortgage debt that is held by, or guaranteed by, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is about one-half of the total U.S. mortgage debt of $12 trillion. That means the total debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was slightly more than one-half the debt of the United States when the institutions were placed in conservatorship (similar to a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy) by the government. Assuming responsibility for Fannie and Freddie has caused the country to increase its total debt by more than 50 percent