What GOP Leaders deem wasteful in Senate stimulus bill

[invisible trousers]

Why are we pretending that conservative Republicans have valid ideas about economic policy?

Conservative Republican economic policies for the last 30 years have gotten us to where we are now. Why on earth should we continue to listen to them and give their ideas any sort of validity?

 

[ScottBot]

Why are we pretending that conservative Republicans have valid ideas about economic policy?

Conservative Republican economic policies for the last 30 years have gotten us to where we are now. Why on earth should we continue to listen to them and give their ideas any sort of validity?

Why should we believe that secular, socialist, "progressive" Democrats have any ideas about anything other than how to keep themselves in office and live on the public dime. Give it a rest. Politicians and political parties don't solve problems, they create them to help themselves stay in power.

 

[jamesrwright3]

Why are we pretending that conservative Republicans have valid ideas about economic policy?

Conservative Republican economic policies for the last 30 years have gotten us to where we are now. Why on earth should we continue to listen to them and give their ideas any sort of validity?

Actually liberals got into this mess by trying to put everyone into homes and not regulating Freddie and Fannie and giving an implicit government guarantee that allowed these banks to take giant risks, knowing they would get bailed out. Repubs wanted to regulate. Dems did not.

 

[ScottBot]

Actually liberals got into this mess by trying to put everyone into homes and not regulating Freddie and Fannie and giving an implicit government guarantee that allowed these banks to take giant risks, knowing they would get bailed out. Repubs wanted to regulate. Dems did not.

In all fairness, what got us into this mess was immorality on a massive scale and on both sides of the isle. The legal manuevering on the left (Community Reinvestment Act, et al, political pressure from the likes of Jessie Jackson, et al...) opened the floodgates so unscrupulous lenders (often associated with the right) could make bad loans.

 

[kermit]

Actually liberals got into this mess by trying to put everyone into homes and not regulating Freddie and Fannie and giving an implicit government guarantee that allowed these banks to take giant risks, knowing they would get bailed out. Repubs wanted to regulate. Dems did not.

As has been demonstrated to you many times the vast majority of the foreclosures are not CRA loans and were in no way legally or implicitly guaranteed by the government. If anything they knew they would get bailed out because the W Whitehouse was staffed with bankers! Is it any surprise to anyone that they two biggest recipients of government trough was oil and banking when you had president that, big surprise, was an oil man and a banker?

 

[ScottBot]

As has been demonstrated to you many times the vast majority of the foreclosures are not CRA loans and were in no way legally or implicitly guaranteed by the government. If anything they knew they would get bailed out because the W Whitehouse was staffed with bankers! Is it any surprise to anyone that they two biggest recipients of government trough was oil and banking when you had president that, big surprise, was an oil man and a banker?

Is it any surprise that the biggest recipients of Fanny and Freddie money were Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Barrack Obama?

 

[jamesrwright3]

As has been demonstrated to you many times the vast majority of the foreclosures are not CRA loans and were in no way legally or implicitly guaranteed by the government. If anything they knew they would get bailed out because the W Whitehouse was staffed with bankers! Is it any surprise to anyone that they two biggest recipients of government trough was oil and banking when you had president that, big surprise, was an oil man and a banker?

Sorry, wrong. No one is saying all of the loans had to be CRA. There were implicit government guarantees. When the regulators went in front of the respecitive committees warning Congress of the problems at Freddie/Fannie, the Dems accused the regulators of overreacting and being racists. When GW tried to reign in Freddie/Fannie, the Dems blocked regulation.
Sorry, this lies at the feet of the Dems.

And throw in the fact Robert Rubin pushed for deregulation..then went to Citi that benfitted from the deregulation.

 

[JoyJuice]

Is it any surprise that the biggest recipients of Fanny and Freddie money were Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and Barrack Obama?

I think Barracks were personal contributions. You know, the two thousand dollar max kind.

 

[fated]

Why are we pretending that conservative Republicans have valid ideas about economic policy?

Conservative Republican economic policies for the last 30 years have gotten us to where we are now. Why on earth should we continue to listen to them and give their ideas any sort of validity?

Well, we're in theoretical territory about what went wrong. I could suppose that the Democrats are now doing the same things that got us into this mess, only at a much larger magnitude, and expect to get us out of this crisis. Which would be like standing at the bottom of a huge hole and deciding that digging down was the best way to get out. And, by the way, much of the last 30 years has been quite good on several fronts.

 

[kermit]

Sorry, wrong. No one is saying all of the loans had to be CRA. There were implicit government guarantees. When the regulators went in front of the respecitive committees warning Congress of the problems at Freddie/Fannie, the Dems accused the regulators of overreacting and being racists. When GW tried to reign in Freddie/Fannie, the Dems blocked regulation.
Sorry, this lies at the feet of the Dems.

And throw in the fact Robert Rubin pushed for deregulation..then went to Citi that benfitted from the deregulation.

So you would have us believe that these large banks that teams of lawyers to ensure that can maximize their benefit by barely operating within the law would assume that their non-CRA loans are guaranteed? If so it seems those teams of lawyers should be fired.

Also, I notice the switch from "implicit government guarantees" to fanny/freddy in your post. How does the problems with fanny/freddy equate to an "implicit government guarantee"? Were is your evidence that there was an implicit government guarantee on non-CRA loans? Provide explanations not just a series statements.

 

[DaisyDay]

I am A-OK with ditching the entire bloody mess and letting the free market fix itself.

The market isn't free and hasn't been for quite some time.

The way the free market would fix itself, if it were free, would be to let millions perish.

This whole stinking bill shouldn't be called "Stimulus". They should call it by its proper name: the Democrat "Thanks for putting us in office" Payoff Bill.

Yeah, like the Republicans have had no hand in it whatsoever.

 

[iwanttobefree]

As has been demonstrated to you many times the vast majority of the foreclosures are not CRA loans and were in no way legally or implicitly guaranteed by the government.

That's a little deceptive. Banks have been pressured by the government to extend loans to minorities since the Clinton administration. The banks 'rating' , which directly effected their credit line, was a least partially tied into meeting minority loan quotas.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_1_the_trillion_dollar.html
the Clinton Treasury Department's 1995 regulations made getting a satisfactory CRA rating much harder. The new regulations de-emphasized subjective assessment measures in favor of strictly numerical ones. Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race, to rate banks on performance.

It seems almost Orwellian, but yes a bank's credit worthiness was tied into the % of loans they extended to minorities; whether they were good loans or bad did not matter.

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/541234
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie
How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis

Bush had an opportunity to stop it and he expanded it because Rove thought they could win black and latino votes. There's a lot of blame on both sides. Lets stop name calling, finger pointing and face the issues. Simple minded 'the democrats did it' or the republicans did it will never fix the situation. The Washington inside establishment is corrupt.

 

[jamesrwright3]

So you would have us believe that these large banks that teams of lawyers to ensure that can maximize their benefit by barely operating within the law would assume that their non-CRA loans are guaranteed? If so it seems those teams of lawyers should be fired.

Also, I notice the switch from "implicit government guarantees" to fanny/freddy in your post. How does the problems with fanny/freddy equate to an "implicit government guarantee"? Were is your evidence that there was an implicit government guarantee on non-CRA loans? Provide explanations not just a series statements.

Don't have time to get into it now, but GSE's were not regulated like other banks. They did not come under Sarbanes Oxley-that was pointed out in the hearings where Republicans wanted to regulate them, but the Dems refused to do so.

 

[kermit]

That's a little deceptive. Banks have been pressured by the government to extend loans to minorities since the Clinton administration. The banks 'rating' , which directly effected their credit line, was a least partially tied into meeting minority loan quotas.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_1_the_trillion_dollar.html
the Clinton Treasury Department's 1995 regulations made getting a satisfactory CRA rating much harder. The new regulations de-emphasized subjective assessment measures in favor of strictly numerical ones. Bank examiners would use federal home-loan data, broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race, to rate banks on performance.

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/541234
Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie
How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis

The banks that we are bailing out are primarily non-CRA banks.

The Village Voice is a right-wing rag. The objective analysis shows that not only did CRA not encourage the sub-prime bust, but that it helped to deter risking lending.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS135259+07-Jan-2008+BW20080107

 

[iwanttobefree]

The Village Voice is a right-wing rag.

Funniest post on this thread.

 

[jamesrwright3]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/nov/10/obama-white-house-useconomy

 

[iwanttobefree]

The banks that we are bailing out are primarily non-CRA banks.

Seems to me like you're trying to avoid an obvious issue and major factor in this meltdown.
http://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=4921
Bank of America Earns Outstanding CRA Rating
April 3, 2003

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7832484.stm
Bank of America bail-out agreed

its very easy to google and find that:

http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x222307523/In-My-View-Economic-woes-tied-to-Dem-policies
Obama willingly took part in an ACORN-promoted lending discrimination lawsuit against (then) Citibank. Citibank lost. He has personal responsibility for (now) Citigroup’s current problems.

You honestly mean to tell me these lawsuits and the 'racism' charge didn't drive banks to make bad minority loands.

 

[iwanttobefree]

CRA not encourage the sub-prime bust, but that it helped to deter risking lending.

Like I said, as long as we keep avoiding the issue, we will never fix it.

Simply calling something a 'right wing rag' which states facts, provides data, indicates to me an unwillingness to face the issues here.

I am willing to be non-partisan, are you?

 

[kermit]

Like I said, as long as we keep avoiding the issue, we will never fix it.

Simply calling something a 'right wing rag' which states facts, provides data, indicates to me an unwillingness to face the issues here.

I am willing to be non-partisan, are you?

I am willing to be non-partisan. That's why I referenced an objective analysis (or at least a page that is summarizing the conclusion of that analysis) and not a partisan opinion piece.

 

[iwanttobefree]

I am willing to be non-partisan. .... not a partisan opinion piece.

Calling something a right wing rag is being non partisan? The opinion piece was citing a fact. Obama was part of the group that sued citibank . Is it a 'right wing rag ' fact? An inconvenient fact? Do you say this is made up? Obama didn't? Do you need further proof?
he participated in:
ACORN-promoted lending discrimination lawsuit

The law is set up so that any bank merger, branch expansion or new branch creation can be postponed or prohibited by the Fed, the comptroller of the currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation if a CRA “protest” is issued by a “community group.”

These CRA lawsuits created an atomosphere where banks were pressured by the government to loan to minorities, qualified or not. Yes or no?

You state:

The banks that we are bailing out are primarily non-CRA banks.

please prove or explain.
Do you mean in dollars or the numbers of banks?

PS the press release you linked is from a law firm involved in the CRA business it is rather easily refuted.
http://mises.org/story/2963

Gordon cites Fed bureaucrat Janet Yellen as the source of a "killer statistic" that absolves the government of all guilt: "Independent mortgage companies" which are not covered by the CRA made many more "high-priced loans" to borrowers with bad credit than did CRA-regulated banks, she says. Well, so what? Even if Yellen is correct, that does not mean that CRA-regulated loans have not caused tens of billions of dollars in defaults.

Moreover, Yellen and Gordon don't seem to understand what an "independent mortgage company" is. Many of these companies are like the one in which my next-door neighbor is employed: they are middlemen who arrange mortgage loans for borrowers — including "subprime" borrowers — with banks, including CRA-regulated banks. Some killer statistic.

.

In his April 26 New York Post article on the CRA entitled "The Real Scandal," Professor Liebowitz explains how the government's Fannie Mae Foundation singled out one bank in particular as the role model for all other banks in America in terms of its commitment to CRA lending: Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, had committed to $600 billion in low-income or "subprime" loans as of 2003.

Do you or do you not agree that CRA has been at the very least, a major factor in the mortgage mess?