Cinci Tea Party!

Post by **charlie** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:08 pm

pigsteak wrote:"costs of not acting are greater than the costs of acting"...

I'll call BS on that one. That is just the current lie that Obama is feeding us to get his oversized plans passed. Fear works wonders on the psyche.........

Now come on Piggie, you know me better than that. I am not forming my opinion on hand feeding from anyone. I'm not saying there isn't pork, or unproven techniques, or fear mongering in the first round of the Stimulus. I'm saying in this example (AIG) the government absolutely needed to step in. Of course, I'm no economist but it's not something I haven't thought about.

Maybe there are economists or market regulatory entities that think letting the inevitable run on dozens of the worlds largest banks to the estimated tune of tens of trillions of dollars if AIG collapsed is the way to go, but I haven't seen it.* Again, I am just talking about AIG here. Maybe there are viable reasons to let it fail and I've just been blinded by the Obama charm and Dem fear mongering but I'm not so sure.

michaelarmand, I dig it. Just trying to provide some thoughtful input and maybe shift some opinions or have my opinions shifted for me. Thoughtful discussion kicks ass.

The protest thing can be pretty dang useful, if there's a recognized purpose. Ghandi and Thoreau didn't just sit down and say things sucked. They sat down, explained why things suck, and presented another option to maybe mitigate the suck.

In the end all we have are our actions so if you're comfortable with the action by all means roll with it.

*runon sentence ftw

Post by **krampus** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:09 pm

sounds like you righties will learn what we lefties have figured out years ago, and that is that protesting is fun, and exciting and it usually doesn't matter what you are protesting because you can fit any number of words into the little chants so you can have fun every night if you want to. You also get to feel like you are doing something without really having to do anything and who knows, you might even hook up with that politico feminazi with the nice ass. Though I can't imagine the after party will be nearly as bohemian and interesting, probably just budwiser and sports center (so much for hooking up with the feminazi). oh well, there will be something to protest next week and your buddies can fill you in on the way.

Post by **TradMike** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:32 pm

rhunt wrote:
TradMike wrote:Who let these banks write bad loans and resell them? Why were so many people duped into thinking they can afford them?.
Duped? People weren't duped, they just were stupid..period. My GenX generation with all its entitlements felt they were owed a house they could not afford. I am so sick of hearing about all the poor people who were tricked/duped.

What ever happened to qualifying for a loan you can afford? This was changed recently by someone. Then the upward and eventual downward spiral began. The banks were writing loans they knew were very risky. And yes people are naive and want to keep up with the Jones'. So, tell me how it makes sense to write a bad loan to someone who is scraping by and by no means able to afford the next interest level. How were they qualified for the next interest level? They weren't! Would you allow a loan like this if it were your money being lent?

Post by **TradMike** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:47 pm

Unfortunately, we need more government oversight; the opposite of a Tea Party. The government needs to step in and be a watchdog and snap the whip when people get out of line. I hope the hardest working get the greatest benefit of the stimulus.

Post by **michaelarmand** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:17 pm

TradMike wrote:Unfortunately, we need more government oversight; the opposite of a Tea Party. The government needs to step in and be a watchdog and snap the whip when people get out of line. I hope the hardest working get the greatest benefit of the stimulus.

Careful there....agree the nonsense the banks did needs to be stopped. And I am ok with some common sense government regulation for this. And I don't think the tea party opposes that - what we oppose is massive growth in federal government spending and power.

Also remember - much of what caused this problem is borderline fraud! People flat out lied about their income to qualify for these mortgages. I mean, do we really need a law that says:

"Banks shall do their jobs, they shall verify the validity of the credit applications, they shall accurately record and disclose the risk within their portfolios, they shall not give 105% mortgages to people with no proof of income...."

One could argue that government involvement is actually the problem. If Fannie and Freddie did not exist, then banks certainly would have thought more carefully about making these loans. But since they could dump all this crap on these government backed, poorly run organizations.....well here we are.....

Post by **TradMike** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 3:26 pm

Good point - common sense government regulation.

Post by **charlie** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 4:13 pm

TradMike wrote:........ The banks were writing loans they knew were very risky. And yes people are naive and want to keep up with the Jones'. So, tell me how it makes sense to write a bad loan to someone who is scraping by and by no means able to afford the next interest level. ..........

CDO's, credit default swaps, and derivative trading. If the mortgage broker were actually on the hook to back their own loans it would be different but things like the Financial modernization bill in '99 aggressively deregulated banks and financial institutions set the stage for catastrophic failures like this. They make bad loans, then trade them with a few good loans to huge banks who believed they could accept the risk. Pretty nice example of the problems with laissez faire capitalism really.

Although subprime mortgages were the straw that broke the camel in this case, the problem was consolidation of many, many loans built on bad debt. This consolidation of bad debt was allowed by deregulation ala Phil Gramm, Tom Bliley (financial institution deregulation) and then the bad debt fostered by Bill Clinton (mortgage deregulation) provided catastrophic failures instead of one bad bank here and one bad bank there. Of course, Bush and Greenspan kinda let it spin out of control but there's plenty of blame to go around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_ ... ct_of_2000

Post by **pigsteak** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 4:34 pm

wow, Charlie and I 100% agree. This mess has plenty to blame.

Post by **Andrew** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 5:32 pm

Thats funny charlie, I was about to write nearly the same thing.

Post by **charlie** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 6:19 pm

pigsteak wrote:wow, Charlie and I 100% agree. This mess has plenty to blame.

Awesome, quoted and saved to my local machine for future reference.

Andrew wrote:Thats funny charlie, I was about to write nearly the same thing.

Less eloquently I'm sure but at least you understand.