Hat tip: Skye Puppy
Occupy L.A. is finally over:
“They were like storm troopers. They encircled us,” said protester Cheryl Aichele, who was sitting in the middle of the south lawn in a circle with other protesters when police first entered the camp.
The protesters I saw being interviewed on KTLA’s 10 O’clock news last night and 6am this morning were pathetic. Really dumb, stupid@$$ comments. Especially from one of the stoners in the treehouse. I don’t know how the news reporter could keep a straight face sometimes when thanking the protesters for weighing in.
Toward the end of the operation, a large group of protesters that had locked arms in the middle of the south lawn chanted to police making arrests: “You’re sexy. You’re cute. Take off your riot suit.”
Thankfully, most of this was peaceful (love the free hugs offers from smelly 21st century hippies) and I think the LA police did a great job of controlling the temperament of the occupying squatters.
And this morning, in their wake, lots of trash and debris left behind for the city sanitation crews to clean up….at taxpayer expense, of course.
The conclusion of the raid marked the end of a two-month tent city that the City Council initially welcomed, with then-Council President Eric Garcetti telling protesters they could “stay as long as you need.”
But city leaders began withdrawing their support as the demonstrators seemed determined to stay indefinitely.
By 5 a.m., the protest site was in shambles, and what was left of the tents was strewn across the ground.
Gotta include this video clip of Treehouse Guy (Emmanuel Freeman):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJVk_pfnCVI[/youtube]
And another brilliant, Well-Reasoned Occupy Guy:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw-Mkah6NYU[/youtube]
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
We had live local coverage on almost every channel last night until 2AM.
The police had to shoot their bean bag gun three times to get the guys out of this huge tree in that park.
I watched as the guys said they didn’t need to be shot at, they were coming down.
Ten minutes later none of them had moved down even one inch.
So they got another warning then were hit.
That must have hurt, but it did not disable: each one was able to get down on his own.
The term ”violence,” with regard police activity sure has been undergoing a slide in its definition lately.
Last night no violence took place.
But police were called “violent,” simply for wearing helmets and carrying riot gear.
The term, “Violence,” was also used when the occupier speaking simply meant their side was out-numbered.
We’re going to need a new dictionary.
@Nan G: Yeah, I watched one of the treehouse builders interviewed live last night when the reporter noted that they were building the treehouse even higher and asked “why?”. The one guy said something like, “Because building a treehouse has been a childhood dream.”
Occupy L.A. build treehouse to keep police at bay:
I am really glad they finally stepped in. News feedback is that this is a filthy, stinky, and unsanitary mess. Now let’s see, did the Tea Party Patriots create such a mess?? It’s time for America to wake up and realize that this so called movement is just a bunch of unhappy losers who want taxpayers to pay their way. Kind of sounds like 0-bama’s campaign promises last time round. Hopefully America has learned their lesson that it pays to have a competent leader vs a baby who is incompetent and unqualified.
Treehouse guy:
@Common Sense:
Watching KTLA this morning, the reporter was interviewing one sanitation worker and asked him to describe some of the types of trash he was picking up. The worker mentioned, “….mysterious liquids in jars…” and the reporter said he wasn’t going to ask any further about the contents of the jars.
@Nan G: Wow, didn’t expect to find a clip, but here’s what I was describing:
@Nan G:
RE: “We’re going to need a new dictionary”. NanG I like the way you think. Possibly the authorities could sentence these reprobates to remedial education….. make them learn English all over again (real words), make them sit thru hours of training, until they are able to observe, process and comprehend events within a framework that is more realistic. Personally I’d like to jerk them all by the nose, thru a mail-slot in the doorway to my universe of cold cruel reality, but I’m sure their half-life in my world would be counted in days, not years, before they ran back to their parent’s basements. The real world would eat these children (even the old ones) like they were taffy. They have been coddled and pampered and spoon-fed in their academic environment too long, where they think being pushed out of a city park is “Violence”. Send a few to Iran, or Yemen, or Egypt, or one of the “stans” and see how long they would be tolerated. I’m disgusted with these children. The real joke is on THEM, when the progressives no longer need them, and the real riots start, due to the collapse of our economy, they will be the first to be consumed, good riddance. They are victims alright, but not of the Police. BAH
Here’s another one you guys have to hear:
the mayor of LA must feel really stupid. The taxpayers should occupy the voting booths. To think thar millions of dollars and resources were spent so thatbthese looney tunes could reach a childhood dream is astounding!
Breaking News:
These occupiers have not quit.
They have taken over the ”Our Lady of the Queen of Angels,” Catholic Church in downtown Los Angeles today.
They are taking up about 1/2 of the width of the sidewalk for at least a block all around that church, too.
I hope they treat that old building with more respect than their British counterparts treated the Saint Paul’s Cathedral …. they used the whole place as a privy!
Too bad no one taught you to seek the truth:
From an article ( how can you not agree with this?):
“The mainstream media was declaring continually “OWS has no message”. Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online “What is it you want?” answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.
No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.
When I saw this list – and especially the last agenda item – the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.
Scott Olsen appeared on MSNBC’s The Ed Show this evening. He served two tours in Iraq and came back unscathed. Now he has speech problems as a result of the head injury he received during a OWS demonstration. His thoughts concerning why he was out on the street seem clear enough, however.
People who assert that the Occupy protesters have no meaningful message are trying their best not to hear it.
Is it any surprise that Greggie and libtardman get all googly-eyed about the OWS’ers?
@liberalmann:
It was odd how the local news kept asking occupy la’ers why they were there and NEVER got one of those answers, liberalman.
The closest one lady came was to say that corporations should not be people.
Most of the occupiers could not articulate any cogent reason for being there at all.
Many seemed to be there because it was happening.
(Like a rave or parade or something.)
Our local occupy movement takes a few of the corners of a park near me.
In Lincoln Park they have been here for almost 2 months.
Their presence has led the homeless to start spending the nights in the park (which is illegal) because the homeless see the occupiers getting away with it.
The occupiers get plenty of print inches in our free newspapers.
Only the school teacher/professors and grad students have expressed a reason for staying.
They all want the same thing: high union-protected tenured jobs with excellent pensions AND low tuition for students.
Oxymoronic, if you ask me.
Almost every local occupier who admits having a job or line of work is involved in drama and/or the performing arts in one way or another.
This jives with their original parade to the park originating from a local play house.
Is it really just street theater?
Are really just they clever buskers?
Ref violence. They know what it is. But they also know the unwary can be fooled by sufficient repetition. It is violent when the cops wear helmets but it is not violent when they throw bricks at cops. Any attempt to discuss actual meanings is fruitless because they already know and will mess up your time with obfuscation.
U.S. Congress enacts laws to hold civilians
under indefinite military detention without trial
Asian Tribune ^
| December 1st 2011
Under Sections 1031and 1032 of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2012, the United States Congress has proposed to give the Department of Defense the explicit power to take civilians into military custody, detain them indefinitely with no charges or trial. Well hidden in the 682-page long National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Bill under the title ‘Detainee Matters’ has received tragically sparse coverage in the American national media, widely-read national newspapers and broadly-watched national television channels blocking the existence of this impending legislation described by rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as…..
LINK:
http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2011/11/30/us-congress-enacts-laws-hold-civilians-under-indefinite-military-detention-without-t
@liberalmann:
You’re not going to respond to this anyway, because you just do drive-bys.
I don’t agree with #1, at least not the way it is phrased. Funny that the left always brings corporations throwing money at politicians, but has nothing to say about unions doing it. From a 2010 Atlantic article:
~snip
Full article: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/07/despite-citizens-united-unions-outspend-corporations-on-politics/59281/
Those mean corporations, influencing congress. Whatever. Where the left and OWS need to focus their anger is at congress, not the unions or corporations. Congress facilitates all of the money in politics.
#2 – I agree
#3 – Never heard of it. A Google search brought up only the article you cited. I would like to know more. But it goes much deeper than just the law cited in $3. Congress must be made to abide by the same laws it passes, period. Insider trading included.
The whole ”occupy” thang is a flop!
Look at all that they have planned to do VS what happened in reality….
1. Occupy Black Friday planned to dampen sales at publicly traded retailers on the biggest shopping day of the year to “hit corporations that corrupt and control American politics where it hurts.”
It was a bust.
Just four showed up that morning at a New York City Macy’s.
Only 24 protested at downtown San Francisco stores.
BUT Black Friday sales climbed 7% to a record high
2. Occupiers promised a general strike at the University of California-Davis Monday to protest tuition hikes, with the goal of shutting down the campus.
The strike never happened.
Classes went on as scheduled.
3. Nov. 17 was the day OWSers promised at least 10,000 would attend and “shut down Wall Street.”
OOPS! Only about 1,000 showed up and Wall Street business went on as usual.
Other “day of action” events around the country attracted only a small number of protesters.
4. The Occupy Student Debt campaign is trying to enlist one million people to default on their student loans to protest the rising cost of colleges.
So far, just over 1,700 have signed the online pledge, according to its website.
5. The OWSers planned on a massive group confronting Obama in NY for having three fundraisers with the 1% last night. Only 100 showed up.
6. Where are the minorities?
Blacks make up only 1.6% of the movement, according to a Fast Company survey.
7. Are Americans still pro the US Constitution’s guarantee of equality of OPPORTUNITY, or, have we adopted the OWSer ideal of guaranteeing equality of OUTCOME?
A survey by the Economic Mobility Project found that 71% say the country should focus on making sure everyone has a fair chance to succeed.
Just 21% think the focus should be on reducing income inequality.
@anticsrocks, #15:
Apparently “googly-eyed” means not to have instantly adopted a reactionary attitude of total hostility.
I hardly consider over two months of illegal infestation and disrespect for the rights of others to be “instantaneous”, Greg. I also consider it futile to elicit any sympathy from me when they simply move their infestation elsewhere.
And too bad no one taught you how to provide links to source data, or how to separate your tripe from those you quote. In this case, Naomi Wolf’s cry me a river op-ed in the Guardian.
It’s not like we see the problem from the onset… with lead in observations like “The violent police assaults across the US are no coincidence. “ I also find it odd that she provides no direct quotes from those “100 comments” she says she solicited. Truly, there hasn’t been one YouTube video or interview with anyone possessing the brights in the infestant movement who could articulate what the “Citizens United ruling” or Glass-Steagall is about.. and most are clueless to it’s actual existence.
Do, please, Naomi or libman…. provide us with a video or interview quotes with anyone in that professional camper group that can put together a sentence consisting of more than nouns and verbs.
Ms. Wolf, as she is wont to do, filled in the blanks as to what she wants to hear, and wants the movement to be about. Otherwise she would have substantiated her little tale of woe with words from the protesters themselves, and not paraphrasing for them.
As for her perspectives… well, it’s a little late for Ms. Wolf – self described “social critic and political activist – to play Pollyanna to the OWS movement, pretending it’s only these enlightening comments with the unemployed brain trusts, camping out in illegal locations, that have been “eye opening”. After all, Ms. Wolf was arrested just a month before when the infestants decided to move their protests to the vicinity of Hudson St, and a Huffpo Event where Andrew Cuomo was going to appear.
They wanted to protest his opposition to the Millionaire’s tax. Ms. Wolf, a regular contributor to HuffPo (surprise, surprise) decided she wanted to help with their “rights” (probably promoting her book, Give me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries), and found herself arrested for refusing to clear the sidewalk as ordered by the police.
But then again, Ms. Wolf is not new to the doom and gloom of the “end of America” as she wants it to be. Oddly enough, we conservatives see the same “end of America” as Ms. Wolf and ilk, but for different reasons. Naomi hypes up police enforcement as violence and a spiral into a police state while ignoring the rule of law that infestants tend to find auxiliary to their “cause” of entitlement.
I tend to see the police *not* protecting the rights of those being pushed around by mob rule, who have no respect for laws, permits nor respect for law enforcement, as a spiral into social chaos instigated by those with a penchant for parasitic lifestyles.
Take, for example, Ms. Wolf’s final paragraph from lazy libman’s unsourced dribblings above:
Yes, sadly pampered, entitled Americans have learned from ME mobs that a small percentage of disgruntled, willing to incite so called “violent” interactions with law enforcement, can render elections and elected officials unneeded and tear down what government they had.
In case Ms. Wolf hasn’t noticed, Tahir Square is still busy with the perpetually disgruntled, even while elections were going on… now protesting the elections themselves Despite that, their beloved MB and Salafists garnered 65% of the Parliament majority.. and this with only the most liberal precincts voting. Future elections promise even more Islamic control.
But violent protest and the incitement for “violent” response is the core of mob rule. Elections and patience be damned… nothing gets the int’l press and sympathy vote for thugs than to push the envelope until they get a reaction, so they may cast themselves as ultimate “victims”.
Horse pucky…
Ms. Wolf insults this nation to it’s very founding, daring to compare these spoiled Caucasian brats – those who don’t want to pay their student loans, demanding government intervention for economic equality – to those who have been living under despots and tyrants. It’s even more offensive to see arrests, rubber batons, bean bags and pepper spray being compared with Egyptian military or Syrian military response. Skewed perspective and liberal embellishment much?
Our system has a way to effect change… it’s called elections, redress of grievances that do not trample the rights of others. But Ms. Wolf and mob/thug rule don’t find this an inviting option.
BTW, Wordsmith… LOVE the 1st photo… OCCUPY BAGRAM! The contrast is priceless.
@Nan G, the UC Davis bunch opted to “occupy Dutton Hall” instead.
Ironically, the building is now shut down to the public… save for the “student aid” offices. You know, the money they want, that they spend on stuff other than tuition, then don’t want to pay back? LOL
Campus officials are, of course, afraid to do anything. We’ll see how long it will take for the infestants to again push their buttons and find their threshold of tolerance. That is, after all, their quest.
Here’s a shock. Liberal idiot mann attacks other Conservative/leaning sites with his bottomless hate and stupidity. He may also go by the name Xavier Von Liberalmann.
How pathetic, but typically liberal.
Whenever an idea is built upon sand it is bound to fail.
Like, for instance, the OWSers demand an end to income inequality.
But quite the opposite are the demands within the OWS movement:
1. Taxing the rich much more is not only not enough to make everybody’s income equal, it would also ruin business in this country making even the means to gain any income impossible.
2. Open borders leads directly to an influx of unskilled labor that the OWSers want to give welfare to.
But working people all see their wages depressed when too many unskilled workers compete for too few jobs.
3. OWSers are more for unconventional family life than most Americans. (To be fair, some of those weird families might include two parents.) But the rise of single parent households and the subsequent loss of two income households has done more to create the income disparity in America than any other one thing. And when a “family” is unstable, the children from that ”family” will be less well equipped to deal with economic reality.
The “occupy” movement demands some things that its own fundamental beliefs make impossible.
How is that for doomed to fail?
They are doomed to fail.
They want to be released from suffering the consequences of their own actions.
I suggest they first try that with physics experiments, notably where gravity is involved.
@Nan G, #27:
How should people feel about the increasing inequality of opportunity? Does anyone deny that great wealth tilts the table in one’s favor? Or that wealthy special interests are collectively injecting a hell of a lot of money into the political system to tilt it even further?
You, too, can become enormously rich bears about as much relationship to the average American’s reality as You, too, can be a Powerball jackpot winner.
The system should strive to protect and encourage regular, hard working people with more modest dreams of wealth and success. The enormously rich don’t need any special encouragement or considerations.
Wordsmith
yes I too, like the picture OCCUPY BAGRAM, BY THE BRAVEST,
THANK YOU FOR FINDING IT FOR US,
It is so telling of what should be the behavior of the owls here, if they had a minimum of training,
the one like DQcowboy MENTIONED, TAKING THEM BY THE NOSE THRU A MAIL SLOT of a doorway into his universe
cold cruel world realty
THAT ALONE WOULD DO IT, I THINK.
BYE
Greg, at first I figured it was just a bunch of people participating in astro-turfing. Mostly right, I didn’t care about them really. If anything is seemed pretty sad that they thought they could create a movement out of a lie. Then it became clear that there was much crime being committed and that it was run by those wanting to destroy capitalism (just like you).
As a leftist propagandist we expect you to claim how wonderful they are while insisting we are the hateful ones. You have made it clear you are ok with lying for the cause.
If equalizing wealth is all the “occupiers” are after, we are just about there.
This graph shows that in 1965, when the median household INCOME was $39,732, the total government spending (per household) was ONLY $21,893.
BUT as of 2009 our median household income is now $50,255 while our government is spending (per household) was almost the same amount, $47,824.
That is NOT sustainable.
BTW, if you look closely at the graph you also learn that we have not yet, in modern times, even tried to SHRINK the government.
It has been flat in spending, during Reagan and Newt/Clinton.
But it has not shrunk…..yet.
That experiment has not been tried in our lives.
@Hard Right, #30:
It’s not about capitalism. It’s about plutocracy.
It’s amazing that some people seem to be convinced that they’re being oppressed by the poor.
GREG
now don’t you pick on PLUTO,
I always like PLUTO,
did you mean PLATO AND CRACY? OPRESS THE POORS
BYE
Nicholas D. Kristof, in A Banker Speaks, With Regret; from the New York Times, November 30, 2011.
Yo, Greg… don’t be an amoeba here. No one said that no doc, low doc, stated income loans were not a contributing factor.
The point is, how and why did those loan guidelines become not only created, but accepted by Fannie and Freddie?
uh… CRA regulation changes in the back room at midnight under Treas Secy Rubin and Clinton, followed by Barney Frank pressure to lower GSE guidelines and pack their books with assets using these mortgages. You remember Rubin, right? Went on to tank Citibank after his stint tanking the US housing market?
Two plus two, Greg. Learn how to add the facts up. No bank would have had no doc, low doc and stated income loans without Fannie and Freddie willing and able to purchase/insure them on the secondary market.
And who wanted that again? And who fought changing it in 2004-05?
MATA
hiI was wondering where the connection with the OWLS occupyers,
in GREG LINK, NEW YORK PAPER THE BANKER
BYE
GREG
ON YOUR 28, YES all this it’s OBAMA’S FAULT,
the owls should have been in the WH GARDEN, to protest the influx of money spending for those who give back to him in return.
It’s been said many times, that nothing is done unless OBAMA know of it, he is very strick on that fact they say in the W.H.
@GREG#23 /32
If capitalism makes some people rich >without making others poor<, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?
An article dated October 12, 2008: Private sector loans, not Fannie or Freddie, triggered crisis
The private sector, not the government, was responsible for the financial crisis. Bad loans were deliberately made to make money, and deliberately concealed to dodge responsibility for the consequences. No one in the government forced the private sector to do it.
There was not one single entity or event that “triggered the crisis”, Greg. Nor did anyone say it was. It was a perfect storm of events that did so.
Don’t tell me you’d be fool enough to wage a feeble defense of Fannie and Freddie’s innocence in the housing crisis… desperate. Talk about being a willing duck at a shooting gallery….
GREG
with all the entitlement program it has to influence negatively the private sector,
one way or another, and when you’re in busyness and have someone breeding hard in your neck, that influence you’re decisions like it or not. those who deny it find it
easy for them to talk of no fault of their own,
always someone else fault
oh no, Ms. Bees. I will not stand for letting Greg get away with such a blatantly stupid statement. Greg, if you had a clue as to how loans get to Fannie and Freddie… and they buy NONE that do not meet their guidelines… then you wouldn’t even broach such an idea.
And using McClatchy’s jack of all trade / expert at nothing types as your foundation is beyond foolhardy.
Suggest you do more reading before opening mouth, and inserting the other foot. Paul Kedrosky’s Oct 2008 article, followed by Peter Wallison’s article just a few days ago, as a matter of fact. Those ought to make a dent in boning you up on some historic facts and stats.
This is just the final paragraph conclusions from Wallison’s most recent comments INRE the GSEs and the housing crisis. But I trust you can focus long enough to muddle thru the facts in the preceding six paragraphs, leading to this final lesson.
Opinions would appear to vary: Revisionists point fingers at Fannie, Freddie
The point that punches the biggest hole in Wallison’s hot-air filled balloon seems to me to be this:
Fannie and Freddie didn’t originate loans. They dealt mainly with the secondary loan market, correct? Fannie and Freddie weren’t taking in individual borrower’s applications or checking individual borrower’s qualifications. Someone else was doing that. Someone else was raking in enormous profits by routinely misrepresenting the risk to loan applicants, by routinely falsifying information on their applications, and by routinely passing the hidden risks on. It wasn’t Fannie and Freddie that routinely bundled bad loans into toxic packages, deliberately falsified the ratings of the resultant financial investment packages, and cheerfully dumped them onto unsuspecting investors. Nor did they create and flood the global financial system with derivative instruments based on lies.
There are people who got filthy rich running this scam on private investors and taxpayers. Apparently it wasn’t enough that they got away scot-free after the robbery. Now they want to pin the crime on somebody else and be declared model citizens.
It’s not happening. The manure isn’t selling, and people are getting angry.
@Greg: Greg, what James Theckston and his cronies did was both fraud and ILLEGAL even at the time they did it!
He admitted this in various articles about him.
I knew lots of people who also bought homes during this time.
But they went over their mortgage agreement with a fine tooth comb, not signing anything they didn’t understand AND agree with.
Bankers who engaged in fraud deserve to be prosecuted.
Oddly Obama is dragging his feet so slowly that, like border states and immigration, some states are trying to take this matter into their own hands and go against banks themselves.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is mentioned in my article as one of these.
_____________________
EDITED TO ADD:
So, I got to thinking WHY would Obama drag his feet so long instead of encouraging banks to clean up their foreclosure mess.
And I see why.
We now have an ”off-the-books” economy, whereby people who simply quit paying their mortgages are shopping, spending and propping up other facets of the economy that would fail without them!
Obama doesn’t want his constituents to pay ALL of their bills!
He NEEDS them to be squatters and/or on Food Stamps and/or on extended unemployment and/or so on.
And after I thought of this I searched around to see if it had occurred to others.
Jim Cramer of CNBC is one.
He was responding to a report that people haven’t paid their mortgages in over 600 days!
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45507581
Just think how bad Obama would look IF his constituents paid all their bills before buying toys.
@Greg:
It continues to amuse me to see nitwits like you analyze and pontificate regarding Fannie and Freddie and the mortgage markets.
When you selectively copy/paste a quote that you think supports your position and then highlight in bold that Fannie and Freddie didn’t originate loans you demonstrate your complete complete lack of knowledge, not only the role of F/F specifically, but also of the mortgage business in general.
Reams of information detailing the events and factors leading up to 2008 has been posted here yet you continue to argue the same old worn out talking points.
Is that the result of ignorance or stupidity?
It’s not relevant who it was that actively solicited loan applicants, reviewed their applications for accuracy, “verified” the information, and made the critical determinations concerning the applicants’ credit worthiness?
I’m no big fan of Freddie and Fannie. It wouldn’t bother me in the least if they disappeared entirely. What I take issue with are efforts by a guilty private sector to pin all of the blame on them, and efforts by the GOP to convince the public that their own policies had absolutely nothing to do with the 2008 economic meltdown.
Greg, I’m not sure what you don’t understand. The GSE’s deal directly with the primary lenders (loan originators), who will generally only sell what the GSEs will purchase on the secondary market. As the Wallison article points out, the GSEs had a HUGE head start on accepting subprime and exotic loans in their portfolio. Their standards/criteria, all pushed by Congress and various POTUS (Clinton, Bush and Obama), has made them the largest recipients of these risky loans. Had they not had these relaxed guidelines for these loans, these types of loans would not have been offered to borrowers because the banks would not have had a place to sell them on the secondary market.
ala, would you create a line of products if you didn’t have a retail outlet to purchase them? How dumb would that be?
Since the GSEs had a huge volume head start on these in their assets, and low capital leverage to offset that risk, they were in trouble early at the turn of the century. All attempts to fix this were blocked by Barnie Frank, Maxine Waters and Dems at every turn.
The private financial institutions did not climb on board until later… 2002. They then started acquiring them because, just like Fannie/Freddie knew, they were perceived as profit machines. However their late entry into acquiring these still left them far behind the GSEs in their holdings.
It’s this late start, and their stepped up acquisition of these, that McClatchey’s brain dead reporters try to erroneously exploit. They say that because Fannie and Freddie started losing these subprime loans to the private institutions after 2003, the GSEs are innocent. However at the end of the day, the GSEs possess $27 tril, and the private institutions $7.5 tril. As Wallison correctly points out, this hardly makes the banks the prime culprit. Nor does it absolve them of their own participation. But to lay all the blame on the private sector, and ignore not only the GSEs, but the government policies that enabled the GSEs to do this, is beyond naive.
Your problem is you want to find a single scapegoat for your finger wagging. You cannot absolve the GSEs no matter how desperate you are to do so. The original fault of of this perfect storm of events begins with both Congress, and three admins of POTUS, who pushed for lowered criteria. Without creating this secondary market, enabled by government mandates and dictates, these loans would not exist. Period.
@Aye:
Dishonesty.
Comrade Greg
Yes, the BS you and your kind are pushing isn’t fooling anyone. They are tired of your lies and inaction and are getting angry.