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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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 Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 8:51 am Post subject: |
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Leave Obama Alone!!!
Good idea.
Elba or Saint Helena? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 8:58 am Post subject: |
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The Ponzi President:
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/fha-has-become-the-new-toxic-lender-of-first-resort-backing-million-dollar-real-estate-in-manhattan-and-socal-real-estate
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| In Southern California, where the median home price is $300,000, 4 out of 10 loans made since May of 2009 have been backed by FHA loans. This is happening in a market that is 65 percent more expensive than the nationwide median home price. Think this is bad enough? Now the FHA will be funding loans for apartments out in Manhattan that have market rates of $820,000 to $3 million. |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/how-to-thwart-the-assassi_b_682538.html
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The over-hyped American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 earmarked only $72 billion of the $787 billion appropriation of taxpayer dollars to projects to improve the country's infrastructure.
Meanwhile, multi-national corporations avoid taxes, sheltering $700 billion in foreign earnings to end up with a measly $16 billion (2.3%) tax bill. GM is among those companies, yet it took almost a half billion dollars in bailout loans. Boeing and KBR Halliburton are among the defense contractors that avoid taxes, while enjoying government contracts worth tens of billions.
Banks (not Fannie and Freddie) Crippled the Housing Market
Fannie and Freddie do not make loans. They purchase mortgage loans and earn fees for guaranteeing payments on the loans. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, in 2006, Fannie and Freddie accounted for 33% of total mortgage backed securities issuance. In the first half of 2010, they accounted for around 64% of new issuance. They were forced to pick up the slack and buy more when Wall Street's private label securitization Ponzi scheme blew up.
Fannie and Freddie are Wall Street's dumping ground. They would have had problems on their own, but their problems would not have been close to their current scale, and they did not create the housing bubble.
Congress twisted arms to make Fannie and Freddie buy more than $300 billion of phony "AAA" rated mortgage-backed securities from banks, not counting loans that didn't meet their stated requirements. Today Fannie and Freddie want banks to repurchase tens of billions of these loans, since they fail to meet representations and warranties, and the banks are fighting this obligation.
Top subprime lenders included Wells Fargo; Countrywide, purchased by Bank of America); Washington Mutual, now part of JPMorgan Chase; CitiMortgage, part of Citigroup; First Franklin (now closed), purchased by Merrill Lynch, which was purchased by Bank of America; ChaseHome Finance, JPMorgan Chase; Ownit, partly owned by Merrill Lynch, which was later purchased by Bank of America; and EMC, part of Bear Stearns, which was purchased by JPMorgan Chase. Most of the rest depended on massive loans from Wall Street. Many of these lenders were sued by states for fraud and paid billions in settlements.
According to Inside Mortgage Finance, the top mortgage backed securities underwriters during 2005-2006, only two of the subprime abuse years, included now defunct Lehman Brothers ($106 billion); RBS Greenwich Capital ($99 billion); Countrywide Securities, which is now part of Bank of America ($74 billion), Morgan Stanley ($74 billion), Credit Suisse First Boston ($73 billion); Merrill Lynch ($67 billion), Bear Stearns, which is now part of JPMorgan Chase ($61 billion), and Goldman Sachs ($53 billion).
The above doesn't even include the credit derivatives, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and structured investment vehicles (SIVs) that amplified losses. Yet, Arianna notes how America imploded while bankers soared:
"Someone like [Robert] Rubin is able to wreak destruction, collect an ungodly profit, then go along his merry way, pontificating about how 'markets have an inherent and inevitable tendency -- probably rooted in human nature -- to go to excess, both on the upside and the downside.' This from the man who, as Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary, was vociferous in opposing the regulation of derivatives -- a key factor in the current economic crisis -- and who lobbied the Treasury during the Bush years to prevent the downgrading of the credit rating of Enron -- a debtor of Citigroup." (P. 150)
Robert Rubin operated an economic wrecking-ball from prestigious positions of influence including: former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, director of the National Economic Council, former Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, board member and senior "risk wizard" counselor at Citigroup, member of the President's Advisory Committee for Trade Negotiations, and member of the SEC's Oversight and Financial Services Advisory Committee, unofficial econmic adviser to President Obama, and co-chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Rubin is just one example of the many bankers, who helped destroy the economy while creating a connected financial oligarchy.
Hide Billions of Losses, Take Bailouts, Collect Billions, Skip Jail
Instead of apologizing for screwing up, the banks demanded the Great Bailout. At the start of the meltdown, the IMF and the U.S. administration estimated losses of $2 to $2.5 trillion. Unemployment and the losses are now shockingly worse. What was merely a recession escalated into the Great Recession.
How big are the actual losses? No one knows.
After destroying the value of major banks, culprits used their enormous political influence -- funded with taxpayer dollars -- to get Congress to force the accounting board to change accounting rules (as of April 2009) so banks don't have to recognize losses until they sell the assets.
According to William K. Black, after the much tinier S&L crisis, there were over 1,000 successful felony prosecutions, several thousand successful enforcement actions, and roughly 1,000 successful civil actions.
This time Congress gave us the Great Cover-up. Bank officers dodged jail time and collected billions in bonuses. As one of my South American friends observes, he's witnessed this third-world corruption before, and this time it's in English.
Banks Stall the Recovery and Prolong the Great Recession
Unemployment marched upward, delinquencies soared, and banks stalled foreclosures. The longer banks delay foreclosures and sales, the longer they can avoid acknowledging losses. Phony accounting and zero cost funding from taxpayers created an illusion of recovery.
Stalling helps banks while they pressure Congress to bail out failed mortgages with taxpayer dollars. Instead of working out mortgages with homeowners, they can wait for a government program to buyout or subsidize their failing loans. The markets aren't recovering, because banks own colossal chunks of mystery-meat assets.
It's a black hole of debt. If banks were forced to price these assets at market values and sell them, the market would clear, and the market would make a faster recovery. When Japan did this, it stalled its economy for twenty years, and it still hasn't recovered. |
Obama is a public relations hologram. He is a spokesman for the various oligopolies. He is not "the smartest liberal in the room" or even a liberal. He is a PR rep. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 9:06 am Post subject: |
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| Say what you will about Obama, but when you look at the alternative, I'd say we're luck he got elected. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 9:13 am Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| Say what you will about Obama, but when you look at the alternative, I'd say we're luck he got elected. |
But of course, the "evil of two lessers" argument.
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 9:41 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Say what you will about Obama, but when you look at the alternative, I'd say we're luck he got elected. |
But of course, the "evil of two lessers" argument.
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Indeed, there were several better alternatives than Bush/Obama. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 10:19 am Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Say what you will about Obama, but when you look at the alternative, I'd say we're luck he got elected. |
But of course, the "evil of two lessers" argument.
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Indeed, there were several better alternatives than Bush/Obama. |
What, McCain? After the primaries there were only two options, and one was clearly better than the other. Any candidate who thinks like you will not ever be elected to president. Bush and Obama are clearly different in very meaningful and clear ways. Every one is the same if you paint with a broad enough brush. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 10:22 am Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Say what you will about Obama, but when you look at the alternative, I'd say we're luck he got elected. |
But of course, the "evil of two lessers" argument.
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Indeed, there were several better alternatives than Bush/Obama. |
What, McCain? After the primaries there were only two options, and one was clearly better than the other. Any candidate who thinks like you will not ever be elected to president. Bush and Obama are clearly different in very meaningful and clear ways. Every one is the same if you paint with a broad enough brush. |
You got that backwards: No alternative candidate will ever be elected as long as people think like you. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 10:29 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Leon wrote: |
| Say what you will about Obama, but when you look at the alternative, I'd say we're luck he got elected. |
But of course, the "evil of two lessers" argument.
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Indeed, there were several better alternatives than Bush/Obama. |
What, McCain? After the primaries there were only two options, and one was clearly better than the other. Any candidate who thinks like you will not ever be elected to president. Bush and Obama are clearly different in very meaningful and clear ways. Every one is the same if you paint with a broad enough brush. |
You got that backwards: No alternative candidate will ever be elected as long as people think like you. |
Not the complete picture. Our electoral system is set up to be a two party system, and unless electoral laws are changed it will be. That's the way things work for single member district winner takes all systems like we have. In order to get a majority of votes two parties coalesce around vaguely different ideals. Smaller parties can not win enough votes to be a contender in nearly all elections. The reason that Europe has so many parties is due to it's parliamentary system where parties place candidates based on a percentage of total votes. The two party system is entrenched, the parties themselves might change, but there will always be one large party on the center right and one large party on the center left. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Sun Aug 15, 2010 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| Leon wrote: |
The two party system is entrenched ...
the parties themselves might change ... |
Good. You admit it.
So, you just have to vote for one of the better alternatives.
I ignored McCain because he was unelectable from the outset and not an alternative to Bush/Obama. |
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daskalos
Joined: 19 May 2006
Location: The Road to Ithaca
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| Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 9:13 am Post subject: |
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| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| I love it. We believe Obama is inadequate, so we're teenagers. |
Teenagers, racists, idiots or so far left that you make Marx blush. Or some funky combination of any of those things. Yes.
He caved on the Public Option because he, no doubt, in conversations we are not privy to, realized there was no chance for it, and that if he insisted on it, HCR was dead. He compromised. I hate the necessity of it, but I accept it, because I'm an adult. I reserve my anger for those f-ing blue dog dems who blocked the P.O.
It's not blind Obamaphilia. It's wisely pragmatic Obamaphilia. I rejoice that the man I voted and campaigned for is not half so doctrinaire as his detractors on the left or right. History will bear me out on this. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 9:27 am Post subject: |
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| daskalos wrote: |
| The Happy Warrior wrote: |
| I love it. We believe Obama is inadequate, so we're teenagers. |
Teenagers, racists, idiots or so far left that you make Marx blush. Or some funky combination of any of those things. Yes. |
I see, so when adults discuss current events, they bolster their lackluster opinions with insults. Its apparent you don't know anything about me, but lucky for you, who am I is entirely irrelevant to Obama's (inadequate) performance.
| daskalos wrote: |
He caved on the Public Option because he, no doubt, in conversations we are not privy to, realized there was no chance for it, and that if he insisted on it, HCR was dead. He compromised. |
I bet you think you're an adult for realizing this. My criticism is that he should've started farther Left and compromised Single-Payer to get to the Public Health Option. Obama's whole shtick was we needed to come together as a nation and transcend bi-partisanship. Well, the GOP has frustrated him and the blue-dogs have obstructed him. Our current political period is described as the most partisan. Smartest liberal in the room?
Here's the reason for urgency: Progressive movements get about 6-10 years in a generation to achieve their agendas. For each issue, they get one shot.
Your assumption is that Obama's failure proves the impossibility of the endeavor. For this I labeled your view as blind Obamaphilia. I think your position may even make Obama cheerleader Andrew Sullivan blush.
Also, and stay with me here, health care costs are central to the economic depression and erosion of America's middle-class.
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Between 1999 and 2008, employer-sponsored health insurance premiums increased six times faster than wages, Tim Noah wrote. As the graph below shows, health care premiums are stealing your raise, and they will continue to steal your raise as long as (1) employers are responsible for paying your insurance premiums, and, more importantly (2) medical inflation gallops along, uninterrupted. |
If Obama's HCR slows the medical inflation, I'll back down and admit you're right. But if it doesn't, then its inadequate. Its likely to have some effect, (that's why I supported the bill) but less of an effect if companies could have just requested employees take the public option and provided them with a rebate. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:00 am Post subject: |
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I didn't think holograms could swim.
Obama`s Gulf Swim Was Fake
Posted: 2010/08/16
From: Mathaba
by Stephen Lendman
On August 15, AP reported that Obama gave his "personal assurances of (the) Gulf's safety," saying:
"Beaches all along the Gulf Coast are clean, they are safe, and they are open for business."
He lied.
The same day, Britain's government owned BBC reported:
"Barack Obama has taken a swim in the Gulf of Mexico (to) reassure Americans that the waters are safe despite the recent oil spill."
US corporate media reporters repeated the message, CNN's senior White House correspondent Ed Henry among them, saying "Obama takes (the) plunge, swims in the Gulf (to show it's safe and) open for business."
In fact, area businesses continue to be severely impacted, and the entire region is dangerously unsafe.
As for Obama's swim, on August 16, the London Independent reported that Obama and his daughter, Sasha, swam in a private Panama City Beach, FL beach off Alligator Point in St. Andrew Bay, not part of the Gulf.
Reporters were banned, no TV video permitted. "So....only the White House photographer was allowed to capture proceedings. The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal."
False. A dangerously toxic oil/dispersant brew contaminates much, perhaps the entire Gulf. It's poisoned and potentially lethal for decades, maybe generations. Nothing in it should be ingested. Millions in the region are at risk. No one should swim in coastal waters or eat any Gulf seafood. Responsible officials should ban it. Instead the all-clear's been given.
Obama, his officials, and BP executives are criminally liable. So are state governors, coastal mayors, and regional health authorities.
Area residents with children should leave. Tourists should avoid the region. A growing catastrophe will continue for decades, including a silent epidemic of cancers and other diseases, as well as lives and livelihoods lost. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:14 am Post subject: |
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| Bacasper, why did you post that article twice? |
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