The Observation Deck

Brian Pedaci wrote:.....fixing them in 2004 wouldn't necessarily have prevented the rest of the market implosion.

Fixing them in 2004 would have taken away 4 years and hundreds of billions off the bailout scam.

Fannie and Freddie going into receivership did not cause the market hysteria, it was a byproduct. It did not cause banks to fail or the credit markets to freeze up. If anything, it should have had the opposite effect.

No 'webs' here, Joker. Just the iron fist of JUSTICE!

Brian Pedaci wrote:Lest you lay the blame ENTIRELY at the feet of the CRA, Fannie/Freddie, or ACORN,

In other words, ACORN may have tried to coerce banks to change their policies, but nobody really forced them to. There was a potential profit to be made in that market (as long as home values continued to climb irrationally) and they seized it.

Brian – I’m not saying the blame resides solely with the above. I agree with the article that ‘the seeds of today’s financial meltdown lie in the CRA’. Of course you need 30 years and a lot of water and sunshine for the unattended seed to grow into a 700 billion dollar weed.

Water and sunshine are courtesy of our elected officials on both sides (although mostly Dems), Fannie and Freddie crowd, less than ethical lending practices, Las Vegas (ah I mean Wall Street), decline in home values, the less than knowledgeable consumer, etc.

I’m sure part of the CRA’s original intent was to assist the redlined areas and then was grossly abused with little or no oversight or accountability.

ryan costa wrote:

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.

Judging by the number of reports I think we can say that ACORN’s unethical practices weren’t limited to one or two locations and a few highly motivated staffers.

Does anyone know what the responsibility of the ‘election officials’ are with regard to these unverified and problematic registrations? Are the election officials charged with following up on these so there is no cry of foul play (i.e. when someone shows up at the polls and can't vote)? Or are they simply thrown out?

Depending on the answer, inundating election officials with unverified and problematic registrations bogs down the registration process and adds to the cost of conducting an election.

How does ACORN verify the registrations? Is there some government database they are given access to that has our personal information? Are we then subject to identity theft?

Brian Pedaci wrote:Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis

Isnt that the Barney Frank blog

So you had no argument with what was actually said in the article? You can only make a lame non-sequitur joke? Good. Duly noted.

Brian Pedaci wrote:So you had no argument with what was actually said in the article? You can only make a lame non-sequitur joke? Good. Duly noted.

Did you actually read the article that you posted? "Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis."

WASHINGTON — As the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.

Clue number one that this article is a hack job...

Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.

Did they miss the Fannie and Freddie bail out and then the 200 pt loss for the Dow? Yes, the article list 15 subprime servicing companies and their servicing percent change from 2007 Q2 to 2008 Q2. But, where is the data that proves these 15 listed companies losses had a greater impact on the economy than the Government bailout of Freddie and Fannie?

How do we know these ACORN-registered voters are going to vote for McCain?

The Republican tv commercials tell me Barack Obama wants to raise my taxes. and that Obama was for legislation that killed viable babies, or against legislation that was against killing viable babies. and that he tried to stop paying the Troops.

How do we know these ACORN-registered voters are going to vote for McCain?

Because republicans do not go by then name of Bozo, or Moon Beam....

Stephen Eisel wrote:

How do we know these ACORN-registered voters are going to vote for McCain?

Because republicans do not go by then name of Bozo, or Moon Beam....

Sonny Bono. Ted "wango tango" nugent. Jeff "skunk" Baxter. The Pro-Wrestling Republican Coalition.

Brian Pedaci wrote:Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis

from that article:

In a book on the sub-prime lending collapse published in June 2007, the late Federal Reserve Governor Ed Gramlich wrote that only one-third of all CRA loans had interest rates high enough to be considered sub-prime and that to the pleasant surprise of commercial banks there were low default rates. Banks that participated in CRA lending had found, he wrote, "that this new lending is good business."

Commercial banks made a majority of the sub-prime loans that defaulted.

Do we have any Mortgage Brokers here? What percentage of your clients have foreclosed?

Bill:

Barack Obama actually sued Chicago banks to force them to loan money to people without jobs.

Please back up your assertion that people without jobs were a party to the lawsuit.

Case Name
Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank Fair Housing/Lending/Insurance
Docket / Court 94 C 4094 ( N.D. Ill. ) FH-IL-0011
State/Territory Illinois
Case Summary
Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982. Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief, actual damages, and punitive damages.

U.S. District Court Judge Ruben Castillo certified the Plaintiffs’ suit as a class action on June 30, 1995. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 322 (N.D. Ill. 1995). Also on June 30, Judge Castillo granted Plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of a sample of Defendant-bank’s loan application files. Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 162 F.R.D. 338 (N.D. Ill. 1995).


Ryan Salo:

It is just a FACT that more black applicants have worse credit.

Do you have credible data to back this up?

Bill Call:

(Mark) Can someone explain something to me? Somebody registers twice, three times, ten times, 72 times; registers his dog; registers a cartoon character.

Because many times those ballots are cast and counted.

Please supply credible data about actual voter fraud that has occurred in the US in either 2006, 2004, 2002 or 2000 so as to back up your assertion.

Charlie Page:

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.

Please cite laws in such states so as to back up your claim. You may be interested in the holding Federal law, (Help America Vote Act ) found here:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin ... ubl252.107

Charlie, again:

THE seeds of today's financial meltdown lie in the Community Reinvestment Act - a law passed in 1977 and made riskier by unwise amendments and regulatory rulings in later decades.

Could you supply mortgage data for the time periods 1977-2007 that could clarify the actual percentage of bad loans and securitizations that would show that the seeds of the meltdown was due to the legal ramifications of the CRA so as to support and back-up your claim?

Stephen Eisel, up to his old tricks:

But, where is the data that proves these 15 listed companies losses had a greater impact on the economy than the Government bailout of Freddie and Fannie?

This is a good research question, Stephen. Go for it. Bring us some social science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Sta ... ing_bubble

Ryan:

Commercial banks made a majority of the sub-prime loans that defaulted.

After the fetid propaganda has settled here, if one is really interested in the causal factors in a financial situation that has a lot of moving parts and is extremely dynamic, I would expect the development of an informed and robust picture to include mention of such stuff as money supply, low CBR, ABS/MBS, CDS, CDO, market shares of primary loans, securitized bonds, bond hedges, and, for example, the shares of mortgages defined between fixed and sub-prime and ALT-A ARM primaries, ARM secondaries, ARM refinances, and non-ARM of same, etc.. This could be broken down also between commercial and residential borrowing.

Some wags have suggested that there are securitization, collateral ratio, default insurance, and accounting, regulatory, 'greenspanian' aspects to the crisis.

Stephen Eisel, up to his old tricks:

Quote:
But, where is the data that proves these 15 listed companies losses had a greater impact on the economy than the Government bailout of Freddie and Fannie?


This is a good research question, Stephen. Go for it. Bring us some social science.

Why should I research a theory that I did not present? Did you miss the part where I asked for the data?