Achtung! The Obama Fascist State Begins...

Discussion in 'Bill Archer's Guestbook' started by Karl K, Nov 7, 2008.

  1. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    The banks are complaining that people didnt pay their bills. Who here, in the last three years, received fewer than 300 unsolicited credit card pre-approvals? I got so many I used to swap the guts into the others return envelopes and send them back blank a dozen at a time, just to cost them handling costs. These are companies who feel free to change interest rated on money loaned a year ago. Remember the exposes in which they said 'its in the agreement!" These people have more lobyists than there are reps. No one is more in control of the credit worthiness of the consumer market than these banks. Now that their business plans have failed they blame others?

    A precondition of any gove money is the firing for cause, without parachute of the entire board and top management. Door hits ass and they go home with nothing.
     
  2. IntheNet

    IntheNet New Member

    Nov 5, 2002
    Northern Virginia
    Club:
    Blackburn Rovers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If you are recommending top management and board dismissal for private company failure why are you not doing so for public failure? Chris Dodd and Barney Frank are certainly as culpable for failure as anyone in the private sphere, for the exact same reasons in many respects.
     
  3. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    There is a mechanism for removal from Congress. Should the felon Stevens win his recount we'll witness it at work. The mechanism for removal from private institutions needs to be established. They are not groveling enough while demanding public investment for their benefit and trying to reject public oversight. Here is the opportunity to send them to figurative Gulag. In China they would be shot. These guys are pirates as sure as any Somali.

    And another thing. Who is burning down the bond rating agencies? Surely there is malpractice there.
     
  4. Eric B

    Eric B Member

    Feb 21, 2000
    the LBC
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    So you want the government to set standards for private termination settlements? That's fine if we're talking about bailout money, but it sounds like you want it in general, kind of like minimum wage.
     
  5. VFish

    VFish Member+

    Jan 7, 2001
    Atlanta, GA
    Club:
    Atlanta
    God I’m such a putz. When Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, Charlie Rangle and Maxine Waters where encouraging Fannie and Freddie to buy up subprime paper I was refinancing to a 15 year fixed and maxing out my 401k, funding college funds and buying cars with cash... basically living modestly and investing heavily. Now I read how I’d have to be an idiot to keep paying my mortgage. Obama says the real victims of this crisis are borrowers living beyond their means, give me a freaking break, people like me are the real victims of this crisis. F.U.B.O.
     
  6. HerthaBerwyn

    HerthaBerwyn Member+

    May 24, 2003
    Chicago
    As a function of any bailout the implementers of the failed business plan suffer the greatest burden of inconvenience. If ANY pensions are lost theirs go too.
     
  7. Eric B

    Eric B Member

    Feb 21, 2000
    the LBC
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    You wont see any disagreement with that around here. Of course since much of the "outlandish" executive compensation we've seen the last decade has come in the form of stocks anyway, so a lot of these guys have already lost millions, even though they still do OK.

    The thing executive pay has been a big bugaboo for the left in this country for a while (even though the differences in exec and employee pay started to become noticeable at the time of the Clinton tax hikes, imagine that!), and one of my fears is that there will be more calls for a maximum wage, a la the Depression.
     
  8. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago
    I don't want to see a maximum wage but I don't know why we don't have more shareholder suits seeking answers from boards that hire incompetent bozos who get huge salaries and ridiculous termination packages -- even when they suck.
     
  9. Microwave

    Microwave New Member

    Sep 22, 1999
    Of course CEo's are overpaid. Of course there are lots of people to blame for the current situation. But the number one reason for the housing crisis is that people did not meet their obligated commitments. People did not pay their bills. Bills they agreed to. If I go to a loanshark and borrow money and don't pay it back why is it not my fault?

    The janitor in my building is a really cool guy but he was mumbling about how evil banks are. It piqued my interrest so I asked him what was up. He was losing his home and he blamed his mortgage company. I asked him what the problem was, he said he was fine until the ARM payments ballooned. I asked him if he read over the terms of the mortgage and he said yes and his only argument was that it was unfair. This is how most people seem to be today. Instead of blaming themselves for their ARM's they blame banks or mortgage companies (banks don't really do arms) or George Bush. Even Bojendyk did it. But the bottom line is that these people signed their mortgages.
     
  10. Eric B

    Eric B Member

    Feb 21, 2000
    the LBC
    Club:
    Los Angeles Galaxy
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I am too because this sounds like the ATLA wet dream. We might have our first trend of the Obamapalooza...
     
  11. bojendyk

    bojendyk New Member

    Jan 4, 2002
    South Loop, Chicago
    To pretend that the mortgage companies were innocent babes in the woods here, like you keep doing, is beyond ignorant. Your janitor met with a mortgage broker who (I would hope) knew what the janitor's income was, and he still allowed the man to borrow money. Why? Because the mortgage broker planned to hold the debt for about thirty seconds after the janitor signed his paperwork, at which point somebody else bought the debt, spun it into a security, and resold it to investors who borrowed their own money to buy this new derivative. The mortgage broker had no incentive to be prudent--he bore no risk--in the transaction and behaved accordingly.

    And Bank of America just last week wrote off $3 billion in losses related to subprime loans. But hey, it couldn't be Bank of America's fault, now, could it? No, according to the president of Bank of America, it's everybody else's fault. The housing market could have just grown and grown infinitely, like it seemed it was going to, if only those pesky borrowers hadn't screwed things up by reaching their limits. And the fact that iBanks leveraged at a ratio of 35:1 to buy these securities, well, no, that obviously didn't matter at all, because there have never, ever, in the entire history of finance been problems related to deleveraging.

    Are the borrowers to blame? Of course. But it's not just the poor ones, like you mentioned. And it's definitely just not the borrowers. Everybody is to blame.
     
  12. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago
    It takes two to tango. I can't tell you how many deals I was involved in where the real estate agents and the lenders were working in concert to get people to go beyond their means. "Oh, you can get more than that!" and these weren't poor people who couldn't afford houses. These were people who could and then bought more than they should have with their ARM and home equity lines in tow allowing them to buy with no equity and pay interest only.

    Many thought that they were smart enough to simply re-finance when things changed. The problem is with no equity and a de-valued asset, you can't get a new loan.

    Anyway, my point is that we really should stop assessing blame. We need to simply fix the problem loans and put in place safeguards to prevent lenders and borrowers from going too far.
     
  13. IntheNet

    IntheNet New Member

    Nov 5, 2002
    Northern Virginia
    Club:
    Blackburn Rovers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Isn't it amazing that every problem that was initiated by Democrats - or at least heavily caused by Democrats - their supporters are never interested in assessing blame! Yeah Chris... let's by all means get this loan program fixed and I admire your steadfastness in focusing on a solution. But that solution does not involve Mssrs. Dodd and Frank who were largely part of the reason why the loan problem exists!
     
  14. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago

    Yes. A republican majority in congress and a republican president were powerless . . . POWERLESS I TELL YOU . . . to do anything to stop the evil Barney Frank from ruining our economy.

    Give it a rest. Any thinking person can see that blame crosses party lines and encompasses much of Washington, wall street, lenders and borrowers.

    Is there any issue that you don't feel the need to make a partisan issue?
     
  15. CUS

    CUS New Member

    Apr 20, 2000
    Both Bush and McCain had written bills to alleviate this mess. I forgot what the vote was in Congress. Perhaps you can refresh my memory?
     
  16. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago
    No problem. ;)

    The bill was called the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.

    Far from writing the bill, McCain jumped on board as simply a co-sponsor and made the speech he would cite to during the election in May of 2006 in the Banking committee that was chaired by Richard Shelby (R). At the time, both houses were controlled by Republicans and in the senate banking committee, the Republicans held a two vote advantage. It appears that the bill never made it out of committee and in fact, I don't believe it was even put to a vote in committee, so it died a natural death.

    For all those who like to blame Barney Frank for the implosion of our economy, I did find this interesting article that quotes retired republican Mike Oxley who moved the house equivalent through the process:

    He fumes about the criticism of his House colleagues. “All the handwringing and bedwetting is going on without remembering how the House stepped up on this,” he says. “What did we get from the White House? We got a one-finger salute.”

    The House bill, the 2005 Federal Housing Finance Reform Act, would have created a stronger regulator with new powers to increase capital at Fannie and Freddie, to limit their portfolios and to deal with the possibility of receivership.

    Mr Oxley reached out to Barney Frank, then the ranking Democrat on the committee and now its chairman, to secure support on the other side of the aisle. But after winning bipartisan support in the House, where the bill passed by 331 to 90 votes, the legislation lacked a champion in the Senate and faced hostility from the Bush administration.

    Adamant that the only solution to the problems posed by Fannie and Freddie was their privatisation, the White House attacked the bill. Mr Greenspan also weighed in, saying that the House legislation was worse than no bill at all.

    “We missed a golden opportunity that would have avoided a lot of the problems we’re facing now, if we hadn’t had such a firm ideological position at the White House and the Treasury and the Fed,” Mr Oxley says.



    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8780c35e-7e91-11dd-b1af-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

    EDIT -- to add that I honestly an not posting this to roast anyone on either side. I do think it is time to move forward, but people like ITN feel the need to drag this discussion back in the mud. My responses have been to that cynicism. Again, I am fully on board with the notion that all parties and our entire government failed us. The talk of a devastating housing bubble began as far back as the late 90s and they --republicans and democrats -- let it grow and burst.
     
  17. VFish

    VFish Member+

    Jan 7, 2001
    Atlanta, GA
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Just to clarify, McCain also co-sponsored “The Federal Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2003”, so to claim he simply jumped on board so he could give a campaign speech is a completely dishonest mischaracterization of the facts. And by the Chris, Barney Frank was denying Fannie and Freddy were in crisis as late as last July.
     
  18. CUS

    CUS New Member

    Apr 20, 2000
    NYT Sept 11, 2003

    ...
     
  19. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago

    Not meant to be dishonest at all. I wasn't aware of a 2003 bill. The only reason I am aware of the 2005 bill is because it became a campaign issue. And for some reason, he failed to put his name to a nearly identical bill in 2007.

    Again, I'm not the one saying we need to parse through and assign blame. I have no great love for Barney Frank, nor do I have any reason to rip on John McCain.

    The cold hard facts are that everyone [biden voice] let me repeat that [/biden voice] everyone knew that there was a major, major problem coming down the pike and at best there were some half-hearted attempts to address it and little cooperation.

    Except, apparently on the house side for the 2005 bill. I thought that Oxley article in Financial Times was interesting. It seems of the three iterations of the bill, that was the year to get something done as it sailed through the house on an actual vote.

    I would be interested to learn more about why it didn't even get to a committee vote in an attempt to get it to the floor in the senate. Oxley blames bush. Just curious if it is accurate. I don't think there are any knights in shining armor on this. That is why I think it is best to leave the blame aside and move forward.
     
  20. CUS

    CUS New Member

    Apr 20, 2000
    I thought Dodd left that stranded in his committee.
     
  21. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago
    What, the 2007 bill? I have no idea. I just noticed on another board that McCain chose not to add his name as a co-sponsor and I am curious as to why. I have no idea about Dodd. I don't know that it is fair to lay it on him when the same committee with different leadership did nothing with it two years earlier even though the house got it out of committee and passed it overwhelmingly.

    Do we have to keep trying to assign blame? It was . . . EVERYONE.
     
  22. VFish

    VFish Member+

    Jan 7, 2001
    Atlanta, GA
    Club:
    Atlanta
    It is not so much assigning blame as it is not allowing those responsible to absolve themselves. Kind of like the Democrats and Iraq, they voted for war when it was politically expedient but when Bush and Rumsfeld mismanaged things and all went to hell they rewrite history and deny any culpability.
     
  23. CUS

    CUS New Member

    Apr 20, 2000
    Who controlled Congress in 2007?
     
  24. Chris M.

    Chris M. Member+

    Jan 18, 2002
    Chicago
    Ummm, the Democrats. Who I have already conceeded desreve to claim as much responsibility as the Republicans.

    Seriously, how many trips around the same circle do we need to take. Our government failed us. Not the red government or the blue government. Our government. Democrats and republicans in congress. The president issuing his one-fingered salute at Mike Oxley and the problem. All of them.

    So for a problem that has been brewing for about 12 years (maybe a bit longer) yes, I will concede that the democrats had majorities in both houses over the past two years. I'm also content to not simply point the finger at the republicans because they had control for a much longer period.

    The democrats could have made regulation of the lending issue more of an issue of vital importance and they didn't. The republicans have been in a better position to act and they didn't. We were royally ********ed by our govenrment. No need to look at the Ds and Rs next to the names.
     
  25. IntheNet

    IntheNet New Member

    Nov 5, 2002
    Northern Virginia
    Club:
    Blackburn Rovers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If your party were serious about such sentiment - if you were serious about such sentiment - you and your party would not be looking to the same banking legislators that failed before for a solution now! The fact that Democrat Chris Dodd and Democrat Barney Frank are allowed to oversee banking committees shows that your party is not interested in a solution but rather more failure.
     

Share This Page