Rightwing radio is pushing a meme: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, precipitating the finance crisis, because of the federal law mandating loans to minority home buyers. It’s a crock, people, and McClatchy has the proof!
Commentators say that’s what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They’ve specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial problems.
Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren’t true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.
But the truth has never played well over the likes of Limbaugh’s radio shows, has it? Read more
Early last week, Citigroup Inc. agreed to buy Wachovia’s banking assets for $2.1 billion in a deal brokered by the FDIC. In a surprising twist of events, Wells Fargo announced Friday that it agreed to acquire Wachovia in a deal worth $15.1 billion at the time, or $14.8 billion based on Wells Fargo’s closing price Friday of $34.56. Wells Fargo’s deal did not require any government support.
It’s getting to the point where you can’t trust your own fix anymore, and if you can’t your own fix, what have you got? Anarchy!
Economic apocalypse my grandmother’s wall-eyed three-legged cat’s left hind foot. This is a money grab, and the orchestration is positively Rovian. Do any of y’all remember the S&L crisis of the early 1980s (Reagan pres, Bush VP, Neil Bush architect of a credit crisis that cost the American Taxpayers something like $10 billion before it was over)? Are we just gonna stand around and watch ’em do it to us AGAIN???
The Wall Street giants get foreign employees to whom they can pay a fraction of American salaries. But what does our society get? The products and services are not improved, nor are they cheaper – the labor savings are not passed on to customers, but pocketed by those at the top. It further widens the disparity between the very wealthy and the rest of us, weakening America’s economy and undermining our democratic ideals.
If Wall Street doesn’t give a damn about Americans, why should America be underwriting Wall Street?
they knew, and as early as early 2007 or 2006. As laid out in this piece (entitled “Perfect Storm in Default”) by a mortgage default professional in response to a Wall St. Journal article:
Some “money” quotes, and a trend:
“In the movie the “The Perfect Storm” three storm systems converged to create the storm of the century which had a horrendous impact on the east coast of the United States and Canada. What does it mean when we have 16 major economic indicators pointing to problems with the housing industry and the national economy. It means “The Perfect Storm in Mortgage Default” is not only possible but extremely likely.” Read more
Chris Bowers at Open Left has the link to the PDF forty page document, plus some analysis that suggests Dodd’s version carries some poison pills of it’s own that Bush and Paulson will have a hard to impossible time swallowing. To which I say, great, no bailout, then.
A friend tells me that Barney Frank’s House version is the better of the two, but I don’t have any links on what it contains. Read more
This post is largely an attempted response in the form of a summation to the long comment thread Lambert”s “Roubini” post of yesterday continues to produce. I have used so many tags because this crisis is the sum total of all the Bush/Republican/Rightwing shit we’ve lived through for the past eight years, and the similar shit stretching back to Nixon and Reagan.
Across the liberal blogisphere a consensus has been building that what Paulson is asking for is unacceptable. How to frame why it is unacceptable has been the on-going question, and how to best bring some kind of pressure on the congressional Democrats, but also on Obama to show leadership, presidential leadership, right now, when it’sneeded, to keep both the tax payers and liberal progressive ideas from becoming implicated in yet another disaster not of their making.
“Peter” seemed to feel, in that comment thread, that Lambert and others were failing to understand that there is a real problem in the economy.
No one doubts that. In fact, all kinds of progressives have been insisting that no one was paying attention to the fundamental instability which the housing bubble was creating, appeals to sanity which were ignored. In fact, even after the initial bailouts, this administration and Paulson had done nothing to stave off the freezing up of liquidity which happened last week. I believe it took them by surprise. But I also agree with Lambert that their instinctive reaction is precisely the one that Naomi Klein has been pointing out - to use the crisis to continue to advance the same policies that created the crisis. Read more
If a picture is worth a thousand words, McClatchy’s front page today lays the blame for the current financial crisis at Bill Clinton’s feet. Over the headline “Wall Street crisis is culmination of 28 years of deregulation” we see a photo of Bill grinning and giving the thumbs up, captioned “Bill Clinton in 1999 signed legislation that overturned nearly 70 years of regulation of the financial industry.”
The commenters strike back with the facts, supported by linky goodness: it was a Republican bill, passed in the Senate on a straight party-line vote with exception of the DINO Hollings. Read more
From Jim Tankersley comes a link to an AP story. It’s a fact that while Palin was mayor, Wasilla, AK charged victims or the hospital exams and associated services rendered after a rape. In fact, in 2000, after Palin had been in office for four years, then-Alaska governor Tony Knowles signed a bill outlawing the practice statewide, aimed specifically at Wasilla. Why would a woman who cared about the rights of other women, and had the power as mayor to stop such a policy, countenance such municipal behavior?
I had been planning on writing a similar post when I read and commented on Gob’s post yesterday about alternative energy. Paul had a comment that I wanted to talk about because I think it frames the issue in a way that isn’t helpful to understanding what is happening or what is going to happen. Namely, looking in political terms at energy and the new push by energy companies and their surrogates into alt.energy is just buying into their ’$hell’ game (so to speak). Read more
You got shareholders? Too bad for you ’cause now you gotta buy your own plane tickets, pay the government fees and the fuel surcharges yourself — and, oh, yeah: if your job reimburses you, uh, there’s nobody to double-dip for tax relief from. So you only get to not-quite-break even, instead of piling on additional monetary benefits. Read more
I heard it AGAIN at work today, the endless whine that “raising taxes will wreck the economy.” The whiner referred to the Laffer Curve and claimed Ronald Reagan had proven the truth of this theory beyond question for ever and ever amen: “When you raise taxes you reach a point where people just refuse to participate. They disengage.” Read more
Doesn’t it seem pretty obvious the McCain folks have been caught cheating?
Of course, you know they didn’t just listen on the way to the Saddleback Forum.
It seems to me that someone (probably Warren himself) gave them the questions a few days early. That would explain why he kept talking about the “cone of silence” because all of that was a fraud — and he knew it.
That’s the only thing that explains how they got the rehearsed answers out of Mathusaleh the other night.
They weren’t that good anyway, just talking points — but they were far better than they would’ve been otherwise.
“Obama also allowed Hillary supporters to insert an absurd statement into the platform suggesting that media sexism spurred her loss and that “demeaning portrayals of women … dampen the dreams of our daughters.” This, even though postmortems, including the new raft of campaign memos leaked by Clintonistas to The Atlantic — another move that undercuts Obama — finger Hillary’s horrendous management skills.”. Read more
But those aren’t the lyrics that have displeased the Obama team. On the song, ’Cris expresses other thoughts on the political climate, calling Hillary Clinton “irrelevant” and insinuating that Jesse Jackson’s apology to Obama for some recent crude statements wasn’t genuine. Like many of his peers, he also complains about President George W. Bush’s “poor” job while in office. “McCain don’t belong in any chair unless he’s paralyzed/ Yeah I said it, ’cause Bush is mentally handicapped,” Luda raps. Read more
Jeebus, Jesse Jackson’s name was placed in nomination when the Dems nominated Dukasis, and he didn’t have near as many delegates as Hillary does, let alone a majority of the popular vote. So what if it’s symbolic? What could be wrong with the symbolism?
Aside from the standard arguments and moans —and he deploys plenty— Kinsley offers up a few “gems” that are worthy of both excerpt and comment. In the midst of a muddled plea that defies my best attempts at summarization, he informs democrats, particularly Hillary Democrats, of the steps that must be taken in order to guarantee a better America: Read more
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska will join Barack Obama on his upcoming trip to Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Hagel voted for the war crimes commission act in addition to all of his pro-war votes. The moral distinction between Hagel and Lyndie England is that she had her picture taken.
In the spirit of wishing openness and transparency for all our presidential candidates’ affairs:
Mc Cain has a bit of a gambling problem — he doesn’t acknowledge that he does gamble, at least to the one group that matters, the IRS. From the Time article: Read more
Just got off the phone with ANOTHER Democratic fundraiser and volunteer co-ordinator. Those people do keep callin’—and they seem terribly SHOCKED when I tell them, politely (can’t do it real calmly yet), that I am not going to be working or helping out or contributing to the Democratic Party this year because of the vote stealing. Read more
Now Mr. Obama and his campaign advisors are floating the idea of keeping Sec’y of Defense GATES on as Sec’y in the “anti-war,” Democratic Obama Administration?
Admittedly Mr. Gates’s no Rumsfeld.
But gee, this makes Obama’s idea of nominating Sen. Lugar for Sec’y of State (R., Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, one of 8 congressional members briefed by Bush during this war, and famed Obama mentor) look merely conservative.
Our new war policies: same as our old war policies?
Former Governor Mark White spoke about the loss.
Texas authorities are looking for the perpetrator, and offering a $50K reward. (I know this is a FoxNews video; their Austin station just happened to do the best story on this, or at least so far.)
Read more
Now it all makes sense…. as long as the American consumer doesn’t get a bit of direct relief first:
“I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills,” the Illinois senator said.
It’s a full-Democratic congressional push, so it just might have a chance…
“Senators were to vote Tuesday on whether to consider a windfall profits tax against the five largest U.S. oil companies and rescind $17 billion in tax breaks the companies expect to enjoy over the next decade.” Read more
Wow. Graves goes even lower. If you listen closely, the ad does refer to her as “Gay Barnes.” I bet they thought that was funny — and you know the folks in Graves’s office say that to each other several times per day.
Wow.
Of course, the mastermind behind all this is “media consultant” Jeff Roe, who is about as reprehensible a campaigner as I’m aware of at any level of politics — and I’m including Karl Rove. He’s one of the major reasons that Missouri politics is rapidly becoming a cesspool. Read more
