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@Wordsmith:

Thanks Word.

I had missed that article by Mr. Sowell.

He and I are on the same page.

He just does a better job of putting it on the page.

I would love to see McCain do so at a debate. However his failure to do so doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Really, the mental contortions the mentally ill left goes thru to cling to their fantasy is amazing. BTW, for the definition of cowards, look at liberals.

@S_A_M:

The problem is not ACORN or poor home buyers.

So yea, keep blaming the wrong people.

Uh huh…..

Tell us who the “right people” to blame are.

Tell us S_A_M.

Also, out of curiosity, who are you voting for on Election Day?

By the way, why do you keep changing socks?

Rottimer: I don’t see anyone here who suggested that Obama IS a terrorist simply because he has long standing ties to one.

And let’s not forget that aside from what Ayers did 40 years ago, he repeated his desire to do more ON SEPTEMBER 11TH 2001.

Your point about guilt by association would be valid if that’s all that is going on here.

But it’s the wider character issues that are more troubling.

It’s bad enough that Obama has included in his Chicago circle of acquaintance a cadre of America hating leftists.

It’s WORSE that he is LYING about it.

I hope I made that point strong enough in my post here, but apparently you have missed it.

So let me amplify it once again: How can you trust a man to do what is right on issues like taxes, health care and education if he is lying to you about who and what he really is?

I think even cynical New Yorkers would realize after the Clinton years how important character issues are and why we don’t want to gloss over them yet again in making a choice for President.

It isn’t that we are worried Obama might make Ayers Secretary of Homeland Security, it’s that we just don’t know what he really believes in.

Get the point?

Now, let’s try to focus on that and not leap onto some tangent.

Those initially affected by the program were paying their loans.

Um, no they weren’t. That is what got us into this mess. I have two friends, both dirt poor, who make around minimum wage and have homes. They couldn’t and didn’t pay their loans. I think the expectation was that whatever they couldn’t pay, the government was supposed to pick up the rest? I’m not sure, but I can’t afford my own home either and I don’t have one and won’t have one no matter what some home loan place may offer me.

I rent where I live because it is within my means. I practice what my right-wing conservative parents taught me, personal responsibility and doing with what you have. My parents and their parents lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and always got by on their own. No one in my family has ever gotten a handout from the government, and we won’t. It isn’t a matter of pride, it is a matter of accepting responsibility for one’s own actions and bailing one’s self out when one makes mistakes.

The left and Obama want to take all personal responsibility away from the people and let the government control all aspects of the people’s lives. I believe it was Thomas Jefferson who said,

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

If he could only see us now.

S_A_M (behaving well at the moment) said:

The problem is not ACORN or poor home buyers. Those initially affected by the program were paying their loans. Once these mortages could be packaged and sold on the market, a bubble was created– meaning everyone jumped on the bandwagon, and things simply accelerated.

I’m sorry, Sam. But you do not understand the mortgage market. The bundling of loans to sell on the secondary market (or securitization) has been around since the 70s. The bulk of loans made are Fannie/Freddie. Bundling the loans first for sale to the second market… aka MBSs (mortgage backed securities) is not a new creation.

Beginning in 1983, loans from Fannie and Freddie were bundled again as CMOs (collateralized mortgage obligations) and sold out again in a “pass thru” market.

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 created REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit) to facilitate the issuance of CMOs. Today almost all CMOs are issued in the form of REMICs. In addition to maturities variances, the REMICs can be issued with different risk levels.

There is nothing wrong with bundling and pass thru marketing. This keeps areas from becoming capital shy, and depriving the local denizens of the denial of credit. And it keeps the costs down for the consumer.

What is wrong is bundling BAD product. And these high risk loans are bad product. The exotic loans, i.e. low doc/no doc, interest only, and ARMs, were introduced because the change in the proof of compliance first for the CRA banks in 1995 required they show a certain amount of minority lending on their books or be penalized.

These people could qualify with the standard criteria. So they had to create criteria that would move them thru the system… meaning little to no proof of income, relaxing the income to debt numbers, etc.

Thus, the exotic loans and subprime risky loan market was created. … ala, the beginning of the BAD product to be packaged.

Of course the loans were in demand. The free market saw the demand as lending is very competitive. These were not, and should not be loans only offered to a particular class of people. They are a financial tool that can be used… and abused. I know many that took advance of these loan packages. Perhaps they were only going to live in a home for a couple of years, and the ARMs were the ticket as they’d be selling before it reset. Others, like investors/flippers opted for an interest only loan since they were turning the home in 3-6 months. As I said… a tool to be used, or abused.

The upshot of it all is that yes… the market became flooded with risky buyers who took advantage of the loans created by government mandates in 1995. That may have been just fine. But the problem is the flood of buyers pushed the home prices up at an unnatural and unsustainable speed.

See the chart below for the past 33 years. Chart’s too big for the column to see it all. Go to my post, Countering the DNC blame game and scroll down to see it.

Note the sudden rise between late 1996 and 2000. This is the influx of the risky subprime loan buyers.

Now, notice the doubling and tripling of the rise of housing prices between 2000 and 2007 when the bubble started the burst. This is because pre-911, the feds manipulated the rates to control (not very well) the housing prices and inflation. But after 911, the economy was in a world of hurt.

The rates plunged and stayed low. This made money cheap and easy with the exotic loans, no criteria. People who could really only afford to buy a $150K house, now qualified for a $300K house.

Fact is, we could have sustained all the risky loans if the housing prices did not appreciate out of control. You kick out one defaulting buyer in a $300K house, and replace him with another.

But when you have someone with a $300K mortgage on a house that is only worth $210K? That’s where the problems hit.

As I said in my original post, A Perfect Stormof Housing and Lending events, this is not any one event, but a combination of events.

Securitization or bundling, however, is not one of them. They’ve been doing that since the 70s and 80s, sans problem. Again, the problem is bundling BAD product for sale.

@S_A_M:

How can McCain trust Kaeting?

Tell me again what Keating’s role is in this?

Where is he?

I’m up on my current events and don’t see him anywhere.

How can McCain promise civility and scoop this low?

So low as to tell the truth?

Wow!

When did the telling the truth become such a problem in politics?

The verdict of perfection must somehow only fall on Obama, because we know what McCain is really thinking, right?

Who said that McCain is perfect and beyond scrutiny?

It’s very fair to examine the associates and allies of these candidates and thus determine what the candidates themselves are all about.

“Show me your friends, I’ll show you your future.”

Obama’s friends and allies speak loudly and it’s not a good message.

I imagine I will never have a chance at the presidency since I count gays, transsexuals, racists, muslims, jews, and blacks amongst some of my good friends.

Well, there you go.

If you have friends that are racist, and you know that they are racist, yet you continue to have them as friends then, no you would never get my vote for Dog Catcher, much less President.

Got any domestic terrorists in your list of friends?

Chihuahua, you already know i’m voting third party, but since you can’t seem to read, I will repost

I can read and comprehend perfectly.

The information regarding your third party intentions was not in your post.

Perhaps you misunderstood what you wrote.

Did S_A_M experience spontaneous combustion?

In regards to “I am S_A_M”:

Even though he’s behaving himself now, he did a “no, no” before, and is still banned.

>>Ayers, is admittedly, different. He tried to kill people (decades ago). However, the boards that Obama and Ayers consorted together on were funded by the Annenberg Foundation, hardly an organization full of die-hard radicals looking to overthrow the government.>>

Ayers’ goal was to create the revolution. His ideal government is communistic. His fellow bombers killed themselves while creating a bomb, and since they had been largely unsuccessful, maybe he decided to take another route. Maybe he was tired of being in hiding. Maybe he decided that he escaped going to jail once due to improper use of wiretaps by the FBI, and that next time they might succeed which would pretty much end his career. Maybe he just matured and decided that violence wasn’t going to achieve his goals. In any case, he turned to education where he has been busy setting a time bomb – the indoctrination of teachers (and thereby young children) in the basics of good socialistic principles…the supremacy of the State. Actually, as a “respected educator” he’s much more dangerous to US democratic principles than he was as a bomber. If you look at the results of the CAC board, it appears that he and Obama were unsuccessful. If you assume that the goal was to teach greater grasp of math and literary skills, then you’d be right. If, on the other hand, you assume that their goal was to sow the seeds of racial dissension and community activism, you might be wrong. It appears to me that Chicago is the hotbed of radical socialism today – and maybe before that.

I don’t have a problem with Obama being a Socialist. I don’t really even have a problem if the people of the US choose a socialistic form of government (actually, that’s not true. I do have a problem with it, but I also believe in the will of the majority prevailing). I _DO_ however, have a BIG, MAJOR problem with Obama presenting himself as an honest broker of democratic principles when in fact he _is_ a socialist, and his whole campaign is an effort to deceive the voters about what he actually represents. Would the voters of the US actually elect a Socialist if they knew they were doing so? I don’t think so. I might be wrong, but I don’t think so. And I think that Obama thinks that also, and that is why he goes to such lengths to deny any association with the socialists in his background.

Which is why it’s so important to get the information out there. If the Obamabots will listen…!

Here’s another good article on the same topic. If you go to the main page, you might also find some interesting reading…good readable info on the Berg-Obama issue.

http://www.americasright.com/2008/10/on-william-ayers-and-barack-obama.html

If anyone’s still reading…here are two excellent articles, the first on Ayers and education, the second one on why this whole discussion may not matter:

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/the-bill-ayersobama-idea-of-education

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/why_obamas_communist_connectio.html

YES! Thank’s, Suek. You have given me a smile when today I needed a smile badly.

I’ve been saying in the past week, it ain’t about what Ayers did in the 60s. It’s about what Ayers AND Obama are trying to do thru the 90s thru now.. It’s all about their shared concept of educational “reform”.

See Oct 6th post her, and on Oct 8th, here.

Good to see Sweetness & Light is picking up on this as well. I know they have Mark Levin’s ear. (love that guy…) That means it may hit the the mainstream in a week or so.

I’ve been so danged impatient waiting for the masses to connect the dots… like spitting into the wind, or watching grass grow! LOL