Arkansas Blog

The second half of your sentence could interchanged with lots of things. E.g., while he was warned about impending terrorist attacks of 9/11.

Voters were "warned" about HIM - actually KNEW in '04. Didn't matter, and in the slave states still doesn't!
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Wait. I thought they had already decided that it was the fault of poor black people and ACORN.

Bush, Pelosi, Reid, Franks and Dodd all need a one way ticket out of DC. Greedy, cowards every damned one of them. Franks is still at the top of my list though...every time I think of that drooling stuttering moron saying how Fannie and Freddie were fine and we were facing no credit crisis I want to push him in front of a moving train!

Getting away with it is always a good roll model. At least our precious little darlings are learning something.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

I can hear the echo of Republican/Conservative Reaganites and Reaganomics echoing on the waning breeze like a bad movie.

"Regulation! We don't need no stinkin' regulation!"

Don't forget McCain, MAK.
Oh, wait, maybe he wasn't greedy. Just dumb.

Boy oh boy, MAK... If you really believe that... then you should also list the name of every single Republican in both the Senate and the House. The core of the problem lies in Friedman-omics and the power of moneyed interests above all else. And the core of Friedmanomics has always been based in the R party... though it definitely bled deep into the D party since Reagan.

We have the government in respect to banking, finance, real estate, and the bailout (in both major parties) that the financial / business sector paid for.

it's odd how, now, if i borrow more money than i can pay back, then i'm not responsible for that. the government is. but, wait, i thought the government represented me. so i guess that in turn makes me responsible. but, wait, i thought the banks were businesses, not government agencies, so the government is gonna bail me and the banks out so i can pay even more back to get myself out of a bad choice on my part to begin with. but i'm not responsible for anything other than wanting more than i could afford. poor me.

Doc,
Please provide specific instances regarding today's current economic situation where Dems were asking FOR regulation and Reps were asking for LESS regulation. It was the Dems yellin' that Fannie and Freddie et.al. were fine. Well the Dems and their BFF George RINO Bush (and yes I have always thought he was a RINO, he has bent over and taken it from Pelosi and Reid more times then I care to remember). Freddie and Fannie were fine, no credit crisis was coming our way and it is the RIGHT of every citizen to own a home.
In his first years of presidency, Bush asked for more oversight of Fannie and Freddie (though he also praised the whole housing efforts for those that we now know were a credit risk). Baker of LA, was predicting the credit crisis and the problems with Fannie and Freddie in 2004. Maxine Waters of CA on the otherhand swore no issues existed for the two organizations, especially thanks to multi-millionare Raines...

little red... it's the whole - *to big to jail* meme. As long as we believe that... we will pay, not the actual criminals robber barons.

yes, i agree at this point it has gotten to big to jail. done deal. i would like to see all these houses i'm going to be paying for though.

Speaking of the Krawford Krumb, he whines in an interview with ABC. Clik my name for details.

"Looking back on his eight years in the White House, President George W. Bush said he was "unprepared" for war and pinpointed incorrect intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as "biggest regret of all the presidency."

Makes me really want to gag. Need some Star Trek Time Warp Shit to get us to Jan 20 ASAP and rid us of this useless dirt bag!

"WASHINGTON - The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying - along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK - regulators delayed action for nearly one year. . . ."

All together now! One more rousing chorus by the die-hard Bush apologists . . . "IT"S NOT OUR FAULT!"

Click for the whole article

P.S. And yes, MAK, the new Democratic Majority was the regulators in January 2006 ? ? ? ? oops! 1) U.S. Regulators are Executive appointees and civil service. 2) The slim Democratic majority in Congress was elected in NOVEMBER 2006.

No matter how many times Rove and the rest of the die-hard Bush Apologists try to tell us is a Tootsie roll floating in the punch bowl; it still the more prolific by product of the Bush Administration and only a Bush Apologist (one of the remaining 26%[?] would take a bite)

MAK

RINO?

Gut the Clean Air Act and rename it the "Clear" Air Act. WTF! That does not sound Democratic, that sounds bought out and letting rich ass mining and drilling friends rape the landscape.

Privatize Social Security. That sounds like rich people don't have to pay any longer and poor are screwed WHEN (not if) the market plunges.

Ban stemcell research because of some religious abortion hangup. Existing frozen abandoned embryos that are never going to be implanted but will some day be discarded should be wasted instead of utilized.

Justice Department so corrupted by political appointments for anyone that went to a third rate law school (Liberty) that it is now simply called the Department. No justice anylonger.

Billions of tax cuts to the super rich so that it can trickle down to everyone else. That does not sound like a plan the Democratic party dreamed up. When have you ever heard a rich guy "hey I've got a tax savings, I think I'll go hire someone"?

As my father pointed out years ago. Republicans want you to keep your hands off their businesses but want to tell you what to do in your own bedroom. (No environmental regulations but tell you who you can or can't marry)

Democtarts want to control businesses but let the people be free.

I was a college republican and registered so I could vote for Reagan. I was so disallusioned that pollution was an acceptible business cost with them that I have been independant since the 80's.

Grow up about what has been going on. Accusing Bush as the substantive cause of this displays a pathetic lack of knowledge of our Constitutional form of government. Please note this article that was also mirrored by the NY Times in a similar article in 1999.

THE REAL SCANDAL
By STAN LIEBOWITZ

February 5, 2008 -- PERHAPS the greatest scandal of the mort gage crisis is that it is a direct result of an intentional loosening of underwriting standards - done in the name of ending discrimination, despite warnings that it could lead to wide-scale defaults.
At the crisis' core are loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards - no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant's ability to make payments; no down payment.

Most people instinctively understand that such loans are likely to be unsound. But how did the heavily-regulated banking industry end up able to engage in such foolishness?

From the current hand-wringing, you'd think that the banks came up with the idea of looser underwriting standards on their own, with regulators just asleep on the job. In fact, it was the regulators who relaxed these standards - at the behest of community groups and "progressive" political forces.

In the 1980s, groups such as the activists at ACORN began pushing charges of "redlining" - claims that banks discriminated against minorities in mortgage lending. In 1989, sympathetic members of Congress got the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act amended to force banks to collect racial data on mortgage applicants; this allowed various studies to be ginned up that seemed to validate the original accusation.

In fact, minority mortgage applications were rejected more frequently than other applications - but the overwhelming reason wasn't racial discrimination, but simply that minorities tend to have weaker finances.

Yet a "landmark" 1992 study from the Boston Fed concluded that mortgage-lending discrimination was systemic.

That study was tremendously flawed - a colleague and I later showed that the data it had used contained thousands of egregious typos, such as loans with negative interest rates. Our study found no evidence of discrimination.

Yet the political agenda triumphed - with the president of the Boston Fed saying no new studies were needed, and the US comptroller of the currency seconding the motion.

No sooner had the ink dried on its discrimination study than the Boston Fed, clearly speaking for the entire Fed, produced a manual for mortgage lenders stating that: "discrimination may be observed when a lender's underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants."

Some of these "outdated" criteria included the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, credit history, savings history and income verification. Instead, the Boston Fed ruled that participation in a credit-counseling program should be taken as evidence of an applicant's ability to manage debt.

Sound crazy? You bet. Those "outdated" standards existed to limit defaults. But bank regulators required the loosened underwriting standards, with approval by politicians and the chattering class. A 1995 strengthening of the Community Reinvestment Act required banks to find ways to provide mortgages to their poorer communities. It also let community activists intervene at yearly bank reviews, shaking the banks down for large pots of money.

Banks that got poor reviews were punished; some saw their merger plans frustrated; others faced direct legal challenges by the Justice Department.

Flexible lending programs expanded even though they had higher default rates than loans with traditional standards. On the Web, you can still find CRA loans available via ACORN with "100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don't report it on your tax returns." Credit counseling is required, of course.

Ironically, an enthusiastic Fannie Mae Foundation report singled out one paragon of nondiscriminatory lending, which worked with community activists and followed "the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted." That lender's $1 billion commitment to low-income loans in 1992 had grown to $80 billion by 1999 and $600 billion by early 2003.

Who was that virtuous lender? Why - Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, recently in the headlines as it hurtled toward bankruptcy.

In an earlier newspaper story extolling the virtues of relaxed underwriting standards, Countrywide's chief executive bragged that, to approve minority applications that would otherwise be rejected "lenders have had to stretch the rules a bit." He's not bragging now.

For years, rising house prices hid the default problems since quick refinances were possible. But now that house prices have stopped rising, we can clearly see the damage caused by relaxed lending standards.

This damage was quite predictable: "After the warm and fuzzy glow of 'flexible underwriting standards' has worn off, we may discover that they are nothing more than standards that lead to bad loans . . . these policies will have done a disservice to their putative beneficiaries if . . . they are dispossessed from their homes." I wrote that, with Ted Day, in a 1998 academic article.

Sadly, we were spitting into the wind.

These days, everyone claims to favor strong lending standards. What about all those self-righteous newspapers, politicians and regulators who were intent on loosening lending standards?

As you might expect, they are now self-righteously blaming those, such as Countrywide, who did what they were told.

Stan Liebowitz is the Ashbel Smith professor of Economics in the Business School at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Again, click on name for facts, not fingerpointing, about mortgage crisis and racial discrimination.

"Bush calls flawed Iraq intelligence biggest regret".

Off topic but can you believe the smirking hero?

His first Treasury Sec said he was a run-away train to get Iraq and now he was so mislead.

A true low point in the history of the US was the election of George W. Bush.

Talk about ignorance. It was democrats pushing "affordable" home loans to people who can't qualify who caused this. Republicans tried to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's irresponsible practices, which caused this problem. This crisis is the fault of democrats and their solutions will make it worse. The government doing something is the problem not the solution.

Anonymous -- the facts already have you beaten. Data doesn't support your claim. Fear mongering is not chic anymore, especially since the American voter has shown how noisome and tiresome such has become in the arena of public opinion.

All claims made that ACORN or anti-discrimination legislation are responsible for said mortgage crisis have been soundly refuted by clear evidence regarding CRA, sub-prime vs prime lending problems, and proof of on-going discrimination in all these areas. Ignorance is better described as not knowing the facts nor having the big picture. Such is the usual nature of fingerpointers on this blog who try to rely more on rhetoric than reality.

I'm sorry. Did I mention ACORN? I don't think so.

I never said that redlining shouldn't be ended, but that's vastly different from what democrats did, supposedly in the name of ending discrimination. They actively pushed lenders to lend to people without regard to ability to repay. History and the facts, I'm afraid, is not on your side. I am most certainly not relying on rhetoric. If you want to see that, look no further than this blog's great leader, Max, whose whole post was based on the unfounded intimation President Bush has done nothing and did nothing to deal with this problem.

I'm out.

Again, here are the facts: (Source YBP - Young Black Professional, 8 Oct 08)

Let's take a closer look, however, specifically, numbers and dates.because that's all I work in.

1.) Ann Coulter is posturing her position based on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 that aimed to eliminate redlining and discrimination in lending practices. The argument is that the CRA, in an attempt to end discrimination, mandated that communities of color were no longer required to provide all of the standard mortgage documents such as verification of income, proof of employment, credit history, or even provide a down payment.

2.) This act was put into law three decades before this debacle.

3.) 50% of subprime loans were made by finance companies that do not have to comply with CRA, while another 30% were made by savings and thrifts who could voluntarily include the CRA rating.

4.) According to data of the Home Disclosure Mortgage Act from 2005 - 2007, 58% of higher-cost loans were made by White borrowers in contrast to 18% of minority borrowers.

Outside of the numbers, however, is the more important fact that we are all in this together. The tactics to divide our country in times of uncertainty is a dying principle that has never served our interests, as Obama alluded to in yesterday's debate regarding the days after 9/11. NYTimes op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman summoned it up best:

You may not own any stocks, but your pension fund owned some Lehman Brothers commercial paper and your regional bank held subprime mortgage bonds, which is why you were able refinance your house two years ago. And your local airport was insured by A.I.G., and your local municipality sold municipal bonds on Wall Street to finance your street's new sewer system, and your local car company depended on the credit markets to finance your auto loan - and now that the credit market has dried up, Wachovia bank went bust and your neighbor lost her secretarial job there.

We're all connected. As others have pointed out, you can't save Main Street and punish Wall Street anymore than you can be in a rowboat with someone you hate and think that the leak in the bottom of the boat at his end is not going to sink you, too. The world really is flat. We're all connected. "Decoupling" is pure fantasy.

I totally understand the resentment against Wall Street titans bringing home $60 million bonuses. But when the credit system is imperiled, as it is now, you have to focus on saving the system, even if it means bailing out people who don't deserve it. Otherwise, you're saying: I'm going to hold my breath until that Wall Street fat cat turns blue. But he's not going to turn blue; you are, or we all are. We have to get this right.