Nice find, Reinheit.

The bubble has popped. Everyone is to blame, and nobody is.

Liebowitz concludes correctly.

"Rather, stronger underwriting standards are needed -- especially a requirement for relatively high down payments."

Don't forget it was the very pressure put on banks by CRA that let people who should have never got a home loan in the first place get one.

The Democrats forced banks to make loans, and then created sallie mae and freddie mac as the land fill for those bad risks.

As a taxpayer I helped sell homes to people who couldn't begin to have gotten the mortgage without the pressure put on banks by congress.

This resulted in a housing bubble and me having to send more money to pay for this social justice induced mess that Barney 'the banking queen' frank and Chris 'countrywide loan' Dodd said was never going to happen when they blocked reform of freddie mac and fannie mae.

51% of all foreclosed homes had prime loans, not subprime, and that the foreclosure rate for prime loans grew by 488% compared to a growth rate of 200% for subprime foreclosures

This article is from a defender of the policies that created the mess.

Measuring the growth rates of loan types that go into foreclosures mean very little. Subprimes already had a high rate of foreclosures, so naturally the growth rate for primes is going to be higher. Most of the primes were in second homes or primary homes that were refinanced when real estate prices were at their peak, all of the equity was pulled out by the owners, and now the real estate prices are way off of the highs of the peak times.

The root problem is lenders making loans to people requiring very little skin in the game. And the govm't writing the guarantee on the loan. Doesn't matter if it is prime or subprime, the government has no business in the loan market.

Any time the government enters a market, the market factors change and it is no longer driven simply by supply and demand. The government creates artificial demand which disrupts the ability for the market to correct itself. So what happened? The government backing these 'no skin' loans created an artificial demand in these "growth" markets(e.g. Las Vegas, South Florida, Calf.) that could not be supported or sustained. If load applicants were required to qualify and put 5-10% down, there would not have been nearly as many buyers, so the prices would not have skyrocketed....

Anything coming from WSJ Opinion Journal is suspect. Requires independent verification.

For instance, why is the author only looking at a 6 month period in a multi-year problem? Was subprime the trigger? Did the economic melt then pull in the prime borrowers? Quite possibly, but this article doesn't address it.

"Anything coming from WSJ Opinion Journal is suspect. Requires independent verification."

You mean tax cuts don't increase revenues?

You mean tax cuts don't increase revenues?

It all depends. If people don't see any reason to make more money because the government is going to take it and give it to the lazy than a tax cut is a great idea.

Or if people see the government taking money and funding bloated inefficient social experimentation programs than a tax cut is a great idea.

But if you want to drive people away in droves by raising taxes just ask the good people of New York, Detroit etc. who left what they think.

If you somehow think raising taxes results in motivated entrepreneurs taking risks and hiring workers than you are sadly uninformed.

Bottom line is government revenue is not the reason the United States of America exists, and if the workers of this nation send so much as one thin dime to the IRS than the IRS should kneel before them and be thankful.

It isn't the government's money. The U.S. government is supposed to build roads and arm the military. People who somehow think the workers should give a rats ass if the revenue increases or decreases don't understand who works for who.

The Department of Education, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture and hundreds of other useless organizations could simply vanish tomorrow and nobody would notice they are gone.

Believe it or not those of us who actually work for a living would not care.

"If you somehow think raising taxes results in motivated entrepreneurs taking risks and hiring workers than you are sadly uninformed."

Nice strawman you constructed, and then knocked down. No one suggested raising taxes results in increased motivation for entrepreneurs.

"The U.S. government is supposed to build roads and arm the military. "

And "provide for the general welfare". As stated in the Preamble.

"The Department of Education, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture and hundreds of other useless organizations could simply vanish tomorrow and nobody would notice they are gone."

I'll bet the first dozen or so who died from food poisoning might disagree. As might families downriver from newly freed manufacturing plants.

"Bottom line is government revenue is not the reason the United States of America exists, and if the workers of this nation send so much as one thin dime to the IRS than the IRS should kneel before them and be thankful."

Agreed, 100%. Good luck in getting the IRS to kneel, though....

"The root problem is lenders making loans to people requiring very little skin in the game. And the govm't writing the guarantee on the loan. Doesn't matter if it is prime or subprime, the government has no business in the loan market. Any time the government enters a market, the market factors change and it is no longer driven simply by supply and demand. The government creates artificial demand which disrupts the ability for the market to correct itself."

Dead-on. Newsworthy.

Zulu,
Give me your address, i am going to mail you a quarter so you can buy a clue.

Have you ever bought a Mortgage on the wholesale market for a mortgage bank? No? I have
Have you ever sold a Mortgage to a borrower?
No?
I have.

Have you ever worked in a warehouse bank ( do you even know what a warehouse bank is?)
I have!

So.

What do i know about the secondary mortgage market?

That banks, were making money HAND OVER FIST
and that was due to INCREDIBLE volume of mortgages. .0125% off of tens of thousands of loans made the banks in the secondary market Fantasticly Humungous piles of cash.

To maintain the volume which is nececarry they took the underwriting guidelines book (yes it is a 3 ring binder in most places but they still call it a book) and gutted it, or in some cases just tossed it out the window.

This is the first step in the downfall.

Then they sold the bundles of these mortgages with flagrantly Lax or completely missing risk analyisis (which is what an underwriter does) and bundled them together into securities.
Which they then browbeat the ratings agencies (standards and poors and guys like that) into rating the securities AAA so they could get top dollar on the market for them. Once they were sold. Who gives a fuck if it defaults its someone elses problem we got paid.

So.
I ask you
If you are capable of reading and comprehending the system as it existed in FACT.

How did the democrats MAKE the banks Pile up Vast mountains of cash again?

Seriously. Take a break from talk radio and learn about an industry before you speak about it.

For example, i would never presume to instruct you on the proper procedure for flipping a burger on a griddle.
Or the proper handling and salting techniques for fries.

"they then browbeat the ratings agencies (standards and poors and guys like that) into rating the securities AAA so they could get top dollar on the market for them."

Why isn't someone going to jail from this juncture in the financial chain? Isn't this fraud on some level?

Zulu,
Give me your address, i am going to mail you a quarter so you can buy a clue.

Just give it to your mom, god knows you probably owe her more than that for rent but it's a start.

Anyone got any Dramamine handy? I've got vertigo from all the spinning.

At this point, does it really matter what pebble caused the avalanche? I'm sure some bar stool economist will come along and explain it to everyone.

Ray?
Righty Right?
Kuma?

Zulu is going to hold his breath and stamp his feet and get really mad if he can't blame the whole thing on poor black people like Flush and Glenda told him to.

Now be nice to the little troll turd and tell him Liebowitz was just foolin'.

i would never presume to instruct you on the proper procedure for flipping a burger on a griddle.
Or the proper handling and salting techniques for fries.

#10 | Posted by Valisk at 2009-07-04 01:21 AM | Reply | Flag:

And you are obviously such a good candidate for the exciting world of 'quick service' food

i would never presume to instruct you on the proper procedure for flipping a burger on a griddle.
Or the proper handling and salting techniques for fries.

#10 | Posted by Valisk at 2009-07-04 01:21 AM | Reply | Flag:

And you are obviously such a good candidate for the exciting world of 'quick service' food

#4 | Posted by slicksterWilly
Any time the government enters a market, the market factors change and it is no longer driven simply by supply and demand. The government creates artificial demand which disrupts the ability for the market to correct itself. So what happened? The government backing these 'no skin' loans created an artificial demand in these "growth" markets(e.g. Las Vegas, South Florida, Calf.) that could not be supported or sustained. If load applicants were required to qualify and put 5-10% down, there would not have been nearly as many buyers, so the prices would not have skyrocketed....
---------------------

Also Republicans and Democrats were both on board with this philosophy.

People lost their jobs or had to take wage cuts making the morgage payment more and more difficult.

To keep the fall from happening in 2003 or 2004 subprimes were made to pay off the holders of the loans and it continued until the people had no more borrowing power and even lower wages.

The investors called for their money and there were no more people available to buy into the over priced market.

It will get worse as we continue to down our wages and no one can buy homes.

Walmart pays so well

Look, the white trash of america can't blame the blacks for subprimes destroying the economy anymore. it's their own fault. People like StillBorne101 and Johnson need to start looking in the mirror for their failures rather than on BET.

How did this come down to a race issue?

NO WHERE have I seen or read that the defaults where over the top one race over the other.

I have read that there are less foreclosiers in the poor neighborhoods and those with less economic power but that would mean the poor are paying for the abuse of those with the means and supposed education.......imagine that!

There is a big difference to created and contributed to.

When the democrats almost doubled (and the republicans complied ,early 90's) the time to depreciate commercial property from 20 years to 39 years the hand writing was on the wall.

Then they sold the bundles of these mortgages with flagrantly Lax or completely missing risk analyisis (which is what an underwriter does) and bundled them together into securities.

So you are saying the Buyers of these loan pools never did their "Do Diligence" prior to purchasing them? Did these Buyers not have a spread sheet detailing every loan? Including the rate, term, LTV, pre-pay etc.? These bundles were priced according to the overall risk and the Buyers had all the pertinent information available.

People taking out loans they couldn't afford did. Most was fueled by speculation on how much money they could make flipping the house. This ain't complicated.

"People taking out loans they couldn't afford did."

Two questions:

1) Wasn't there another set of signatures on every loan?

2) Didn't lenders always have the ability to lend to folks who couldn't afford it?

Brilliant reporting. The subprime foreclosures led to devaluation of other properties so that they were under water, and also contributed to the economic malaise. This again is misleading as the subprimes were the catalyst. The loans that were realistically unrepayable were bundled and the bundles sold, and then insured by other finanical institutions. It was a bonanza, the trading which added nothing and extracted value from the packages, but nevertheless provided money for additional improvident unsustainable loans.

But "You ain't seen nuthin' yet." Wait until the cap and trade carbon certificates are traded and value deducted from American enterprise, while bigger polluters such as China (and also India, Russia, and others), continue to "poluute" (if that is indeed occurring), unabated.

This is as stupid as taking a balloon with a two big holes in it, say "polluters" China and the U.S.A., that is losing air rapidly, and trying to stop the air loss by patching only one hole.

It's an exercise in futility and will result in massive job loss as our now less than competitive industries will be further handicapped by additional costs incurred "buying polluting permits" from sources that are putatively non-polluting anyway. It's a wealth transfer scheme, transferring "wealth" from the supposedly "poor" to those supposedly "with means," while the financial elites scam everyone by taking their portion while contributing nothing. This is Obama's America, Chicago machine style corruption and Marxist redistribution working in tandem, a malformed monstrosity that cannot survive.

Don't forget it was the very pressure put on banks by CRA that let people who should have never got a home loan in the first place get one. The Democrats forced banks to make loans, and then created sallie mae and freddie mac as the land fill for those bad risks. -- #3 | Posted by zulu

Dead wrong.

#25 | Posted by Danforth at 2009-07-04 11:51 AM

2) Didn't lenders always have the ability to lend to folks who couldn't afford it?

These people were lending OPM (Other Peoples Money) and making a profit on each loan. The money remained available as it was replenished through a system where everyone feeding at the trough benefited from maintaining it. There was euphoria, and the number of insightful people, who maintained perspective and were aware that the system would inevitably crash, was low and it was contrary to their personal interests to raise an alarm.

For the most part, it's a commission business and where it isn't, there is an unstated quota. So each loan agent is seeking to make loans, which means qualifying the applicants. The Supervisor and Managers also reap benefits up the line and on an immediate basis.

The executives know that their companies don't hold the loans, but that the government (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), and the financial sector, have an apparatus in place for selling these loans to unwary purchasers, who caught up in the euphoria think that the market will rise forever.

What's your point, Danforth? The regulators permitted a system to exist that encouraged the packaging of unsound loans and also permitted unsound practices to prevail. Of course the debacle traces back to the fact that the absence of adequate regulation and oversight was a matter of political not regulatory policy. The loss was so large that the government sought to intervene to provide insurers such as AIG with capital to pay off the loans that they had insured, and sustain the banks that had been lax as they indulged in profiteering. These banks should have failed, and regional banks not adversely affected, would have been available to step into the breach. Instead, the "profiteeers" had their positions redeemed at the cost of the American taxpayer. Quite a scam.

"the absence of adequate regulation and oversight was a matter of political not regulatory policy."

Then string those bastards up, too.

"What's your point, Danforth? "

That lenders could always lend to those unworthy. Blaming the borrowers on the lenders' sudden change of policy is stupid.

"And "the government" pressured the lenders"

The fact not all banks got mixed up in the sub-prime mess tells me greed was the driving factor, not any governmental pressures.

What is really at the heart of the meltdown ?

Wall Street Fraud. Making the quick bucks by steamrolling capital markets with SWAP-short selling manipulations and worthless securities attached to worthless rating. The fraud is organized, involving many cooperative companies and Government reglators, all who are, so far, leaving unscathed. Those left holding the bag were really pissed and would have sued Goldman-Sachs et al, so Paulson said, wait until the end of our term, then we'll stick it to the taxpayer instead.

As the spread between housing costs and wages continued to widen foreclosures became inevitable and exponential since as consumer spending wains layoffs follow. But the calamity did not begin here, it began in secret manipulated financial markets, in the offices of CEOs and the hairbrained schemes of the Federal Reserve and Treasury. Everything the last two agents have done has made things worse. As O'Neil pointed out, loyalty is everything, and that loyalty is completely disconnected from the best interests of the nation as a whole.

Obama is either clueless or in on the deal. I haven't decided which yet.

#27 | Posted by Phoenix at 2009-07-04 12:03 PM

I've probably posted this article 3-4 times now. Guess it's hard to compete with the talk radio loonies.

Here is an excerpt from "Comments" to your linked article, Phoenix.

In early 1993 President Bill Clinton ordered new regulations for the CRA which would increase access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities. The new rules went into effect on January 31, 1995 and featured: requiring strictly numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating; using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks.

The new rules, during a time when many banks were merging and needed to pass the CRA review process to do so, substantially increased the number and aggregate amount of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers for home loans, some of which were "risky mortgages. Banks set up CRA departments, a CRA consultant industry was created and new financial-services firms helped banks invest in packaged portfolios of CRA loans to ensure compliance. Established and new community groups began marketing such mortgages. The Senate Banking Committee estimated that as of 2000, as a result of CRA, such groups had received $9.5 billion in services and salaries. As of that time such groups also had received tens of billions of dollars in multi-year commitments from banks, including ACORN Housing $760 million; Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America $3 billion; a New Jersey Citizen Action-led coalition $13 billion; the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance $220 million. The number of CRA mortgage loans increased by 39 percent between 1993 and 1998, while other loans increased by only 17 percent.

The CRA was public policy that DROVE the market. To cast a blind eye that obvious econic fact and simply blame "the profit motive" is ludicrous.

There were "penalites" for not meeting government guidelines.

This is not to exempt the banks for being complicit. Bad policy inured to the interest of people in power, and the inflated profits helped provide $200 million parachutes for alert opportunistic people in the industry.

The politicians were doing their "for the minorities and the poor" song and dance as part of their agendas, and well-to-do and complacent Middle America seldom if ever anticipates the consequences of their "generosity" as they think distribution of the goodies is "for free," when there is a piper to pay. But that's down the line. The sooner we make sober assessments of programs without being propelled into actions with overall negative consequences by such catch-phrases as "for the children," or "to redress harm done to minorities," or "to help the poor," the sooner this nnation will function more effectively.

Of course, there is a cycle. We are alerted to consequences, and then the klaxons fade in the distance, and we repeat the cycle. The problem is that inept government prolongs the economic malaise, and may kill the most productive system ever extant, the one which created a well-to-do middle class. The "levelers" in an effort to distribute resources in other ways, eventually reduce the resources available to everyone and drastically reduce the standard of living for all.

The Marxists such as Chavez and Obama in their own bailiwicks proceed on the premise that wealth is available, and that it only needs to be transferred. Wealth needs to be produced first. This production is the enabler of middle class prosperity. A subtext is the tension for distribution of wealth that is produced by the system. Unfortunately, politicians and ideologues such as Obama with his street agitator background neglect the arithemetic formula that demonstrates that "Half of nothing is nothing." If productivity is reduced ... Oh, what the heck.

The Marxists such as Chavez and Obama... -- #33 | Posted by Johnson

LOL. Marxists don't bail out bankers and turn their backs on auto workers.

The CRA was public policy that DROVE the market. ... There were "penalites" for not meeting government guidelines. -- #32 | Posted by Johnson

Quite logical, but not supported by the evidence. AGAIN,

#31 | Posted by nutcase at 2009-07-04 12:29 PM

Obama is either clueless or in on the deal. I haven't decided which yet.

Think of a vector. There are pulls of varying strengths in different directions, and there is a resultant.

Obama is complicated and he is being molded by events. He is a preening posturing narcissist, who loves the spotlight, and the adulation that has been forthcoming. He delights in the perquisites that accompanied and attach to his rise to office. He is beholden to the men who engineered this rapid ascent from obscurity despite his being a mediocrity.

The financial establishment supported him. He is paying the quid pro quo that politicians do, taxpayers money directed through a cornucopia to favored groups for as a reward and for continued support.

Obama also has a personal commitment to the poor and minorities, and shares the grievances of his mentor Rev. Wright and his wife Michelle, against America and Americans of various stripes, whites, Jews, whatever. Obama's programs even though they direct graft to favored industries under various pretexts, such as GE with the green and "cap and trade" agendas, still are replete with magnanimous setasides for Obama's minority and poor constituency at the expense of other Americans.

And the end product with the de facto nationalization and extension of federal control over a myriad of activities such as how much and what you can eat, how obese you can be and still qualify for procedures such as a hip transplant. Micromanagement of the economy and personal activities that result will provide the end product that Obama seeks, a de facto socialist nation with minorities special beneficiaries of benefits they would not otherwise receive. The problem is that this distortion will compromise the ability of the system to produce sufficient goods and services, so that it will cannibalize itself and eventually produce less and less. But that'll be okay for a while. Eventually, the Hegelian/Marxian dialectic will evidence itself, and the system will change to accommodate the reality.

Round and round and round she goes, Nut, and the end is undetermined. There is a chaotic element in the mix. Obama is directed to a goal, but his narcissism, his sociopathy, his neurological problems, and his being an ambulatory psychotic make the mix unpredictable.

Event #1--The CRA passed in 1977 in Congress.
In 1989 congress amended the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act requiring banks to collect racial data on applications.

Then the study by Boston Federal Reserve Bank alleged there was discrimination.

In 1995 Clinton Treasury issued regulations tracking loans by neighborhoods, income and race. This was used to rate banks and their mergers if they didn't met certain ratings of lending.

This brought in the ACORN forces with subprime loans.

Event #2---Fannie and Freddie

Event #3--A by-product of gov't intervention was the derivative.

Event #4--Federal Reserve creating the housing boom with artificial low interest rates. This interfered with the market.

Then we have TARP and money laundering thru AIG.

When the stimulus and bailout spending is combined the federal spending share of GDP will climb to 27.5%.

Meaning more than $1 out of every $4 is controlled by the gov't.

The whole thing was created by the gov't intervening in the market and then they of course blame everyone else.

Mark Levin

#34 | Posted by Phoenix at 2009-07-04 12:47 PM

LOL. Marxists don't bail out bankers and turn their backs on auto workers.

Remember that some industrialists financed Hitler, a National Socialist, who then acted contrary to many of their self-perceived interests.

And then what happened? Once power is secured, Phoenix, alliances and actions change. Keep on LOL. What did the Bolsheviks do to the Mensheviks?

Didn't some communist coin the term, "useful idiots" to describe those who cooperate with them, while they proceed towards a goal that ultimately eliminates those supporters? There are various definitions extant and disparate source attributions. Watch while power is consolidated, Phoenix. Then ...

Blame the Lender not the Loan?

Sounds ALOT like Blame the Criminal/Idiot not the gun.

Eventually, the Hegelian/Marxian dialectic will evidence itself, and the system will change to accommodate the reality.

Do you think that posting this tripe makes you look intelligent?

My guess is that you know that you can't back up any of your inane rants with facts. You post some meandering 1000-word tirade and hope that people will be intimidated by long words or lose interest before encountering any of the numerous flaws in your arguments.

What's worse is that the manifesto you've been working on isn't even well-written. If you want to use flowery language and long words, you should know how to use them properly. Everything you write looks like you're trying too hard... you're always straining to find the most cumbersome way to present your thoughts.

Johnson,

You fail to ackonowledge the most obvious of truths. Obama got 60% of his campaign money from Wall Street just as surely as Goldman-Sachs controls the public Treasury AND the private/public Federal reserve. The bailout money is Socialism, but only for the superrich. I personally don't get hung up on words like socialism or marxism. For one thing I like planning that gives us good roads and schools. The words are so misused and such emotional hot potatoes as to be useless in mainstream America. That's exactly the way our Predator State likes it and you fall for it.

Obama does talk more about the plight of the common man more than Bush would ever dream of doing. But it hasn't translated into any real policy changes. The same crooks are running the Federal Reserve and Treasury, regardless which party is in charge. Those crooks are destroying this country for the sake of selfish short term profits.

Zombie...too much Ezra Pound, I expect. He's our Henry Fool.

Zombie...too much Ezra Pound, I expect. He's our Henry Fool.

He just keeps going on and on and on and on and...

CRISPEE_OC is exactly right. No one needs an economist to tell us what went wrong.

Unless you lived in a cocoon during the real estate "buying frenzy", you have enough case history to write a book just based on the stories of your friends and neighbors, co-workers and Moe down at the local bar.

The market can only sustain a run-up in prices that don't make sense up to a point. Then it says "Whoa, girl!" -- the gravy train comes to a stop, loses momentum and starts rolling back downhill.

Greed is always the culprit, but everyone looks to place blame elsewhere.

It's happened throughout history with everything from real estate to gold and silver (remember that one?), stocks (remember the dot-com boom when your copier-repair guy was bragging about making $70K profit in one week?), to currency speculation and pyramid schemes run out of house parties in suburban neighborhoods during the 1980s.

Money for nothing, but without the free sex.

Any way you look at it America is FUCKED and the GUILTY parties are Wall St. and the White House!!!

The Starbucks lifesyle is over for America. You can only be jerked off for so long before it starts to hurt. In the end, the greedy CEO's and politicians will be able to afford a new life somewhere of their choosing, and never have to answer for their actions. The average American is expendable.

The fact not all banks got mixed up in the sub-prime mess tells me greed was the driving factor, not any governmental pressures.

#30 | Posted by Danforth

How can you call making a bunch ov very bad loans "greed"? The only way it makes any sense at all is if you know you will get your money back some day.

" The only way it makes any sense at all is if you know you will get your money back some day."

Or if you know how it works. Lenders get their money up front, and then repackage the loans and re-sell them. By the time the borrowers default, the original bank has cashed the check and spent the money long ago.

snipe,

They did.

They used fraud to rate and pawn those mortgages off on unsuspescting investors after pocketing profits up front. Bernanke and Geithner are determined to keep the organizations and securitization that profited in place. The whole damn bunch belong in jail for committing fraud, both private and regulatory sectors. It took a grand conspiracy, ratings agencies like Moodys, accounting firms liek the former Arthur-Anderson, securities marketers like Goldman-Sachs, Morgan-Stanley, Merrill-Lynch, Smith-Barney. Togehter they are as guilty as Bernie Madoff. Except the whole thing is being covered up, with plenty of cooperation from the media.

Knowing full well that they had marketed trash, they then loaded themselves up with SWAPS from AIG. The moral equivalent of taking out a life insurance policy on someone you murder. But all made completely legal through suspension of New Deal Laws implimented through political bribery. The best Democracy money can buy.

Or if you know how it works. Lenders get their money up front, and then repackage the loans and re-sell them. By the time the borrowers default, the original bank has cashed the check and spent the money long ago.

#49 | Posted by Danforth

That is one little piece. What about the people that bought the repackaged loans?

Like I keep saying, if you know you are about to make a loan you can't get your money back on, Why would you do it?? What is so f*****g complicated about that question that you all ignore?

"What about the people that bought the repackaged loans? "

Bundles of high-risk, sub-prime loans got high ratings by Moody's & S&P when repackaged. My bet is fraud, somewhere at that link in the chain.

"Like I keep saying, if you know you are about to make a loan you can't get your money back on, Why would you do it?"

Because as long as YOU aren't holding the hot potato when the music stops, you win. Or, if you own the government, you stick the taxpayers with the potato. After they've bent over.

Or, if you own the government, you stick the taxpayers with the potato.

#53 | Posted by Danforth

Why did it take you so long to say that little bit of truth.

Because as long as YOU aren't holding the hot potato when the music stops, you win. Or, if you own the government, you stick the taxpayers with the potato. After they've bent over.
Aren't these "loan bundles" the ones being referred to as toxic loans? I remember 3-4 months ago, BO asked for and received taxpayer money to purchase, assign a risk to, repackage, and sell these toxic loans....queue the crickets.

These "derivatives" were the brain child of Greenspan, Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner.

Just remember your "right to bear arms", it might come in handy.

"Why did it take you so long to say that little bit of truth."

It's all been truth, all along.

"Aren't these "loan bundles" the ones being referred to as toxic loans?"

Yup. Wanna buy?

It's all been truth, all along.

#56 | Posted by Danforth

Just pieces of it. You danced around it well.

"Just pieces of it. You danced around it well."

WTF are you babbling about?

If you have a point, make it. So far all you've proven is you haven't a clue as to how the lending business works.

You are correct dan. I know that someone does not make a loan they have no chance of collecting on. I guess you think they do.

I know that the only way they would do such a thing is if they were pressured into it. You think they do it out of the kindness of their heart.

I know that somewhere someone was promised to be made whole again with my hard earned tax dollars. You think the dollar fairry shits $1,000 dollar bills and giggles all the time.

You are right dan, I don't know jack shit and you are one smart SOB. Why don't you tell me how the bear shits in the woods. Tell me what I have f****d up in you humble opinion.

Tell me how what has happened is capatilism at its worst. Tell me how an honost, hard working, fair minded person would do such a thing and get away with it without being a "looter".

"I know that someone does not make a loan they have no chance of collecting on. I guess you think they do. "

Did you even read posts #49 to #51? Do you have the vaguest idea of how money is made, repeatedly, on the same loan? Do you realize the Main Street Bank in Yourtown, USA, usually won't be holding the note on your home when you default?

"You are right dan, I don't know jack shit and you are one smart SOB."

Don't be so hard on yourself. You'll learn a lot in high school, and even more in college.

"Tell me what I have f****d up in you humble opinion."

Nothing worse than ignorance combined with hubris. A little humble learning will fix that.

"Tell me how an honost, hard working, fair minded person would do such a thing and get away with it without being a "looter"."

They wouldn't. The system is gamed by folks who own the lawmakers.