Uh-oh...partisan shots fired 'cross the bows!
Uh-oh...partisan shots fired 'cross the bows!
"I'm gonna find myself a girl
that can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams..."
Nah, Kap and I are cool! I like you guys too much to get too emotional.
Later,
Al
...and on the 8th day, God created the Super Reverb and there was ROCK, and it was GOOD!
You all are doing great on this thread--thanks so much for keeping it civil--you guys are the best!
THAT'S NOT A TELE!!!Originally Posted by pc
You all are doing great on this thread--thanks so much for keeping it civil--you guys are the best!
"Well, I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
Elvis Costello
I think we have a winner, thanks for playing X1. And now the Final Jeapardy question; Who is John Galt? I have a feeling you may know this one.What about the government regulating to the banks about loosening lending procedures to encourage more home ownership? To the point that fines would be imposed if not enough of those loans were not given to the proper income level?
Well, IMHO there IS something wrong/broken, whatever when in a country that prides itself on being the LEADER of the free world, a significant portion of the population cannot afford basic health care or a modest home to live in (w/o funky artificial lending guidelines at least).
Then the people who put in place the failed programs designed to help the less fortunate out should be voted off the island and the failed programs should undergo a massive overhaul. Industry in this country has trimmed it's fat and now it's time for the banking industry the federal government to do the same.
...and on the 8th day, God created the Super Reverb and there was ROCK, and it was GOOD!
There never has been a program to provide heath insurance. The medical lobby made $ure of that.
That's a fact -- but the Democrats in Congress aren't saying they only voted against the bill because Nancy Pelosi hurt their feelings.Ummmm, yeah but...
1/3 of the democrats in congress voted against the bill too.
That's exactly the reason the House Republicans have given for defeating the bill, straight from the mouth of House minority leader John Boehner. He has actually said that if Pelosi hadn't given a partisan speech right before the vote, the bill would've passed.
Translation: House Republicans thought it was right to vote yes on this bill and rescue the economy -- until that mean lady said things they didn't like. So who's really guilty of partisan politics in yesterday's bailout failure? A Democratic woman who made a speech blaming the administration we've had for the past eight years, or the Republicans who decided at the last minute not to vote their consciences because they didn't like what she said?
There's plenty of blame for both sides in a failure that had nothing to do with shoring up the economy and helping the American people and everything to do with politics and an impending election. That's bad enough. But the House Republicans are the ones who've actually said, virtually in so many words, that they voted against the bill out of spite. I think that's unconscionable.
"I haven't slept for ten days...because that would be too long." -- Mitch Hedberg
Nonsense (I know he SAID that,but don't believe it). The reason most Repubs didn't vote for it is it flies in the face of their 'no regulation is best let the market work it out' philosophy. The reason so many Dems voted against it is either the politics of it (their constituents didn't like it) or they wondered what the big rush was (and remembered the last time this Pres rushed them into a bad decision). Boehner is a joke. Did you see the speech he made in favor of it (he cried during it)...?
Then they should say that, and stand by their principles, instead of engaging in partisan hackery by blaming Pelosi in a way that makes them look petty and spiteful. They didn't do themselves any good with that tactic.
I saw part of the speech, but I honestly wasn't sure if the catch in his voice was because he was choked up or if he just needed to clear his throat.Boehner is a joke. Did you see the speech he made in favor of it (he cried during it)...?
"I haven't slept for ten days...because that would be too long." -- Mitch Hedberg
They's plenty of grand-standing and log-rolling occurring on both sides of the aisle but you gotta remember -- partisan deliberations are like sausage......everybody enjoys it but it's never pretty to watch how it's made.
An' don' fergit this -- it ain' mom-and-pop campaign donors who keep these clowns in office......it's the well-heeled corporate contributors who keep the $$$ flowin' to Washington. Don't think for a minute that these congressional maggots aren't as desperate as Wall Street for a massive infusion of e pluribus unum that any "bailout bill" coerced from the largesse of the American taxpayer will provide.
We've seen these political kabuki dances before. An' Joe Six-Pack always ends up with the short end of the stick.
The biggest "special interest group in DC" is the congress itseff!
♫ "Meet the boss......same as the old boss! ♫
I'm not trying to take sides here...but it is just crazy that Pelosi turned this into a "Bush failed policy" speech before the vote...just crazy.
Within 30 seconds of her intro, check out where she headed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey3ZlsmIkz4
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PRS - 2004 Singlecut
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Why not look over the incomes of the financial (and political)clowns for the past 5 years, then look at look at how much they have now, do some subtraction and let that be the amount they all have to give back to the american people because it wasn't made by hard work but by gamble that went bust. They could give it back through the government and I'll bet it'll equall $700 billion or more.
Let bastards that profited from us pay it back.
If, at first you don't succeed, don't try skydiving.
Two leaps per chasm is fatal!
I agree. It was like she was a judge lecturing a repeat offender petty criminal. But, I also think what she said was true. True, but not very productive, LOL.
I agree too, but there is guilt to be SHARED! Barney Frank has been strong arming these financial institutions for years.
...and on the 8th day, God created the Super Reverb and there was ROCK, and it was GOOD!
Of course, being an old guy I kinda have a thing for Nancy. So seeing her angry like that was a big turn on...
That's just gross! I don't think I could getenough! Just kidding, Gris...She's pretty attractive for her age. Now her daughter...
...and on the 8th day, God created the Super Reverb and there was ROCK, and it was GOOD!
You mean this daughter?That's just gross! I don't think I could get
http://www.tvguide.com/images/pgimg/...dra-pelosi.jpg
Stratocasters (2004 Anniversary, 2001 NOS 2 tone SB)74 LP Deluxe GT (humbucker mod) Gibson
2005 Standard Faded Lemon top Gibson
PRS - 2004 Singlecut
1981 J45 (Kalamazoo)
1959 0018E Martin
72 Deluxe Reverb
66 Super Reverb
Mesa Boogie Mk I R.I.
Marshall Bluesbreaker R.I.
Roland Blues Cube BC 30
One of these, perhaps?
I have a plan.. it does not require 7 billion but it will need your support
send your cash donation to
I'll fix it
c/o Rudutch
po box 2
michinana
do I look like I know what I'm doing?
LOL.
Thank you for the props.
Plenty of blame to pass around, but not many people are looking at some of the real roots of the issue.
NO, NO......ME!
(I take PayPal)
Fatcats'R'Us@passtheloot.com
This handy presentation explains the causes of the crisis. (Some PG-rated language.)
"I haven't slept for ten days...because that would be too long." -- Mitch Hedberg
So true, Eli.
But, I chase the money, and power, and what made this all possible in the beginning. History is dull, but it is worth paying attention to.
It dances across the aisle, and that is what is the most painful part of all of this.
I stated before, I remember the malaise of the seventies.
And that was one of the sources of this mess, a very long time ago.
living proof... reverse psychology works!
.
.
Well, we need to shore up the banks, but I (and many leading economists in this country) don't believe a handout at taxpayer expense is the solution - in fact it could make things worse in the long run.
Gee, how about a government bond issue? How about loans to the banks with interest? What about a freeze on dividends to shareholders of the banks? What about a freeze on high-level management bonuses? Geepers, at least when Hugo Chavez takes over a company he returns the profits to the government!
Look, one of the most basic root causes for the probelm was GWB mandating to the lenders to relax lending to make home ownership too easy in order to keep the housing boom going.
As much as I dislike handouts, if there is one, let's do it from the bottom up and attack the problem of people who are defaulting. The high number of defaults is a real cause of declining home values. That affects all of us. We need to inject money into the system, let's do it in a way that benefits everyone, not just a few fat cats.
BTW - kudos to all for a great discussion on an emotional topic without it turning ugly. A real testament to the makeup of this place.
"No harmonic knowledge, no sense of time, a ghastly tone, unskilled vibrato, and so on. Chuck is one of the worst guitar players I know" -Gravity Jim
It's too late now to prevent the mortgage defaults that brought this crisis about. And again, saving these banks isn't about benefiting a few fat cats -- it's about preventing wholesale bank failures that would hurt every one of us.
You can't really evaluate any form of bailout plan until you look at the big picture. Small businesses with top-notch credit ratings are already being denied loans because of this crisis. No access to capital means no new jobs, increased unemployment, no growth for businesses, reduction of tax revenues.... This isn't stuff that *might* happen if something isn't done soon; this is stuff that *is* happening right now. And it'll only get worse.
"I haven't slept for ten days...because that would be too long." -- Mitch Hedberg
I have yet to receive any donations...
do I look like I know what I'm doing?
I recently ran into a loony, conspiracy-theory sort of line of thought that intrigued me a bit once I stripped away the loony, conspiracy-theory part.
It went something like this: "American workers used to be paid a living wage and lived thrifty lives sans credit. 'Middle-class' people could afford a middle-class home in a middle-class neighborhood that was safe, friendly, had decent schools, and their wages and standard of living rose steadily but surely over time. But for twenty years or more Wall Street and Corporate America has said 'Screw that, we're not going to actually pay you enough for that roof over your head, or all these pretty gee-gaws we're making. We'll just lend it to you if you buy our stuff' -- with interest. With stagnant wages and rising costs, personal debt became the only way to grasp the golden ring and provide for your family."
Like I said, kind of loony...
I say we take the money that we are paying these ya-hoos and infuse that into the banking system and start a-new. I don't do my job I don't get paid why are we still paying these dick cheeses?
One thing that has been a bit disturbing to me is the current 'talking point' that somehow all of these 'poor people' who knew they couldn't afford homes went and bought one anyway and later de-faulted which is the root cause of this 'crisis'.
It's a convenient way to shift the blame from the greedy fat cats to the middle class and the poor.
I get that there were a percentage of folks who reached beyond their means (when I lived in Southern California, working class people who wanted a first home had little options but to reach beyond what was 'reasonably affordable', since the cost of a 'starter home' would set them back a quarter to a half million at the least). But, there were a lot of wealthier folks 'investing' in second or third homes in order to 'flip' them for profit.
There were many people encouraged by pre-qualification of enormous sums and duped by adjustable rate loans that banks knew were high risk.
There were also many working class people who lost their jobs and regular folks who live check to check who got stung when the cost of living rose dis-proportionately to their wages.
Nobody was there to offer a 'bail out' to regular folks, in fact, legislation was made making it harder for people to file for bankruptcy (remember the mass filing prior to new legislation taking effect in '05?).
I am currently making monthy payments to a ch. 13 bankruptcy trustee (I filed after the new laws passed. I was ashamed, and embarassed and felt as though I 'failed' my family) I can tell you that they certainly aren't offering to lower my payments based on cost of living increases, in fact I've had to fight them every year to keep them from raising my payments.
Thankfully, I have been able to keep my home and remain current on my mortgage.
"If you're cool, you don't know nothin' about it. It just is...or you ain't." - Keith Richards
I totally forgot all that hoopla.
Bush fought hard to make it more difficult for regular folk to file bankruptcy.
The bastid!
Ooops... sorry mods.
Well, Bush's frantic push for the quick no questions asked Wall Street only bailout makes sense when you consider that something like 2% of the population owns 98% of the wealth in this country. They've gotta prop the market up to protect those investments!
If anybody is interested:
Financial Tsunami: The End of the World as We Knew It by F. William Engdahl. Global Research, September 30, 2008
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=10392
The sections:
"A brief look at history" "The decline of the American Century" I found particularly interesting and puts a different picture on the cause than that promulgated by mainstream world media.
Well, it seems we have fallen to naming names.
Bush was not the first.
Carter had a large part...it floated through the Reagan era when
actual prosperity allowed some lower and middle class ownership, albeit under the old stricter lending practices, then it was revived again during the Clinton administration. Under the radar the whole time was the policies of the Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, to push forward home ownership for the sake of it. 1998 had the largest push. But so many factors contributed all at once. It wasn't just administrative policy, it was also so much described above in other posts. Perfect storm...the value of the dollar itself, the hiding of inflationary pressure, the subsequent slowdown of the economy due to shear fear. I'm starting to sound like Greenspan. So much, and so wide is the blame.
To blame Bush's policies is to see only a tenth of the whole picture.
I say, let's keep the blame game without these names.
Let's talk solutions.
Actually, Carter's efforts at major industry deregulation were essentially a continuation of something that began in 1971 with Nixon and continued with Ford after Nixon's resignation. And Carter's big contribution to deregulation was in the transportation industry, not the financial industry.Bush was not the first.
Carter had a large part...
"I haven't slept for ten days...because that would be too long." -- Mitch Hedberg
Carter was kiled by his own speech where he called on Americans to be responsible and not spend what we ddn't have.
Of course we didn't want to hear that and voted in Reagan who said spend spend and live like you want to, even if it means debt to the hilt (including how he ran the government budgets into record red--until Bush W.)
(This is a long post, but I’m trying to be thoughtful here. Or
maybe I’m just a windbag!)
There are lots of culprits in this mess: mortgage companies writing bad loans without enough collateral, people taking out mortgages that were above their heads, banks buying up questionable mortgages, Wall Street repackaging the mortgages into overly-optimistic investments, poor regulation of some things, no regulation of other things, politicians paying too much attention to elections, and not enough to the good of the country.
There's a million reasons the economy is in the ditch. But, figuring out what went wrong is only useful for figuring out what needs to be changed, and what needs to be done, going forward.
It's like hitting a wrong note: you can't ever get it back. But it would be good if you learned not to hit the wrong one next time!
There's a lot of people in trouble. A lot of people have lost their homes. The financial industry represents a lot of jobs. And not all the jobs are fat-cat Bank CEO jobs! Banks employ computer people, and security guards, and clerks, and even truck drivers and heating-and-cooling people. If the financial system tanks, a lot of people who were nowhere near the decision-making level are going to lose out too. And they have less to lose!
Other than the $700 billion I keep hearing about, I hear very few real figures. How many people have been foreclosed on? What's the value of all this unused real estate? If the government bought this real estate, maybe even at a discount, would that eliminate the bank problem? Could the government then rent the property, or sell it, or rent it and sell it later? Lets look at some of these sorts of things, and see how much "bailout" is really needed. Because we don’t want to bailout more than we have to, and we probably don’t
want to bailout people who have just been reckless.
For instance, about two years ago, whenever I was driving I used to hear these radio commercials for all kinds of crazy mortgages. They advertised all these Adjustable Rate Mortgages, that would start out with 0% interest, and then would kick up to 11% or 12% after a couple of years. Or they had "interest only" or "no equity" mortgages. You know, you'd make payments of the interest and taxes, but you'd get no equity in the place. All kinds of crazy things. And people must have taken out some of these loans, or they wouldn't have advertised them for months and months.
Now, I'd hear these ads, and I'd look over at my wife, and we'd both say, "Wow. You'd have to be crazy to do that. Get a mortgage that gets you NO EQUITY? Get a mortgage that could DOUBLE on you?"
Yeah, you’d have to be crazy to take out a mortgage that gets no equity. But a bank would also be crazy to make such a loan!! Think of it: the principle will never be paid off. The bank will always own that collateral; and the collateral may drop in value, since the “owner” won’t take care of it, since he’s not getting any equity.
So, yeah, I’m not really eager to help out these people who took these crazy loans. And I’m not eager to help out the people who made the crazy loans.
But, it really seems like something has to be done. We have a modest home, in a nice area, in a good stable town (not part of any crazy real estate heat). We’ve made our monthly
payment every month for 5 years, and we keep making our payments. But, our place has lost about 25% of its value. Our taxes are based on home value, so our taxes are going down. Those savings will help me some, but that’s going to squeeze the city, and the school district, and the county and state too. The tax base all around is going down, and that’s going to create some problems of its own.
You can’t just take away 25% of everyone’s nest egg (their home value), or 25% of income (the organizations that get the tax money), and not have trouble somewhere!
How do you deal with this problem, so the people who took out crazy-beyond-their-dreams mortgages, and the people who wrote those I-wouldn’t-be-writing-this-loan-if-I-knew-I-had-to-hold-it mortgages aren’t rewarded for their
overly-risky behavior? And how do you gather money to do this, without completely gouging people (like me and my family), who’ve been modestly responsible, and lived within their means?
How do you regulate things so that crazy, insane credit schemes don’t pull the whole economy down, while at the same time you don’t choke things off, and prevent growth
and initiative?
How do you regulate so you eliminate the excesses, but still allow people to profit by entering into (some) risk?
I think what we need to do is follow the advice Dale Carnegie
gave in his book “How to Stop Worrying, and Start Living.” Which was, basically, stop thinking about how unfair it is that
you are in a mess, and how stupid it was that you got in the mess, and figuring out who to blame for the mess.
Just sit down and figure out how big the mess is. Then figure out what you need to do to get out of it. Then start moving!
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