As the election gets near...

[Bill Glasheen]

Gene

I sure would like to know these lenders who gave these loans out, because they weren't available to me. I was told so in quick order. I had to do it the old-fashioned way - with a 20% down payment - even or maybe perhaps especially when I had the means to pay off the mortgage.

Freddy and Fanny (as I understand them) were available to a certain sector of the population. I did not qualify.

- Bill

[Gene DeMambro]

I was never interested in taking such a loan out, so I never pursued one until I was comfy with my financial. Now, I have loan officers calling me, begging me to bank with them b/c I'm such a good candidate. Thanks, but no thanks.

But, I'm sure you've seen the news about sub-prime loans, interest only loans, adjustable rate loans and - my favorite - stated income loans. Those mortgage lenders and underwriters who didn't think placing all their eggs in those baskets would not be the kiss of death deserve to be 'encouraged' to find another line of work.

Cheers,
Gene

[Bill Glasheen]

The banks made the free market decision to make risky loans. Other banks and investment houses made the free market decision to buy and sell those same loans. Nobody - despite their and your protests to the contrary - made them do it. They made their bed all by themselves.

Good story for the Democrats but... WRONG!

UPDATED: Obama Sued Citibank Under CRA to Force it to Make Bad Loans

Posted on 03 October 2008

Do you remember how we told you that the Democrats and groups associated with them leaned on banks and even sued to get them to make bad loans under the Community Reinvestment Act which was a factor in causing the economic crisis? Well look at what some fellow bloggers have dug up while researching Obama's legal career. Looks like a typical ACORN lawsuit to get banks to hand out bad loans.

In these lawsuits, ACORN makes a bogus claim of Redlining (denying poor people loans because of their ethnic heritage). They protest and get the local media to raise a big stink. This stink means that the bank faces thousands of people closing their accounts and get local politicians to lobby to stop the bank from doing some future business, expansions and mergers. If the bank goes to court, they will win, but the damage is already done because who is going to launch a big campaign to get the bank's reputation back?

It is important to understand the nature of these lawsuits and what their purpose is. ACORN filed tons of these lawsuits and ALL of them allege racism.

- Mediacircus.com


- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

It actually was a confulence of events that created "the perfect storm."

1) Freddy and Fanny making sub-prime loans (a.k.a. "junk loans") available to a large group of people unable to pay them back.

2) ACORN and other groups litigating (as referenced above) to enforce banks to take on these "junk loans."

3) The Federal Reserve dropping the prime rate to historic low levels.

The combination of the three events caused the demand for housing temporarily to outstrip the supply. That made the prices of the homes go up. God did I know. I saw my home ARTIFICIALLY double in value in just a few years. Suks, because I had to pay higher personal property taxes on the non-value of my bank-owned asset. Soon speculators began jumping into the market buying homes with interest-only loans and re-selling them. (a.k.a.house flipping.) The bubble grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger...

When the supply finally met the TRANSIENT bump in demand with massive overbuilding, the market overshot. (In math, we call this an under-damped, 2nd order system response to an impulse function.) With supply high, interest rates going up, the first defaults coming in, etc., etc., more and more people saw the value of their homes go down below the amount they owed to the banks. That made more people default, which dropped the price of housing more, etc., etc. Pretty soon banks that were heavy in these junk loans (by direct or indirect acquisition) began to tank. The banks heavy in sub-prime loans began hurting banks with a broader spectrum portfolio. The dominoes began to fall.

And now we ALL are suffering with credit having dried up, people not spending, companies not making profits to cover expenses, companies laying workers off, etc., etc.

There is plenty of bad behavior to go around here. But the people now in charge were at the beginning of the chain of events. And in the words of Barney Frank, there's no use pointing fingers. Gee... wonder why he said that???

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

For folks who like visuals, this is a "normalized" curve which shows a system TRANSIENT response to a step input (e.g. a sudden increase in housing demand) when the system is 2nd order and underdamped.



Note the "overshoot" that I spoke of above. A market that at one time had demand out-stripping supply eventually changed to a market where supply was much greater than demand.

Add to that the STATIC concept of supply/demand curves in economics where price varies as a function of the "elasticity" of the demand.



The price P of a product is determined by a balance between production at each price (supply S) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand D). 2, along with a consequent increase in price and quantity Q sold of the product.

Moral of the story - it's all Gene's fault!

- Bill

[IJ]

I am merely curious--if this is all the doing of the Democrats, if the banks were forced to hand out risky loans, if the usual Republican tendency toward deregulation doesn't apply here and they tried to reign in risky business--why are we only getting vague snippets about ACORN lawsuits from third tier media outlets?

Why didn't McCain mention it instead of going on about who the real Obama is and his connections to domestic terrorists? I can imagine the entire media is covering up because they're a socialist cabal, but... this is the only place I've heard this, not CNN, the BBC, local news (leans right), or even a report that it's been on Fox--and I listened to the debates, and not once did either Republican bring this up. Why?

[Bill Glasheen]

I am merely curious--if this is all the doing of the Democrats, if the banks were forced to hand out risky loans, if the usual Republican tendency toward deregulation doesn't apply here and they tried to reign in risky business--why are we only getting vague snippets about ACORN lawsuits from third tier media outlets?

Why didn't McCain mention it instead of going on about who the real Obama is and his connections to domestic terrorists? I can imagine the entire media is covering up because they're a socialist cabal, but... this is the only place I've heard this, not CNN, the BBC, local news (leans right), or even a report that it's been on Fox--and I listened to the debates, and not once did either Republican bring this up. Why?

Ian, Ian, Ian...

Do you get that the cause of this meltdown cannot be contained in a 60 second soundbite, or that the average person hasn't taken either differential equations or introductory economics?

Smart people however should understand this. Alas there's a shortage of said folks in government and even in board rooms of corporate America.

- Bill

[Gene DeMambro]

Better luck next time, Bill, but...WRONG!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/loans.asp

Better luck next time, Bill.

Gene

[Bill Glasheen]

Better luck next time, Bill, but...WRONG!



http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/loans.asp

Better luck next time, Bill.

Gene

I was right all along, Gene. Read your own hotlink! What I posted is absolutely consistent with what is in Snopes. If you want to parse words on the title of the article, well fine. But the Snopes counter-point is the right answer to the wrong question.

All this analysis for naught...

If it makes you feel better, Gene, You are right and I am wrong. That is true of the past, present, and anything posted in the future.

- Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

This was written almost TWO YEARS ago. Emphasis is mine.

- Bill

Monday 16 July 2007

Under the guise of extending home ownership to all, predatory lenders undermine community reinvestment.

When the housing market began its rapid ascent in the mid-'90s, many observers waxed rhapsodic about the potential of high-interest, subprime loans to merge the financial interests of investors and low income and minority communities. The hope for subprime boosters was that such loans would allow the mortgage industry to continue business as usual while at the same time meeting government mandates for fair and affordable housing. As recently as April 2005, Alan Greenspan praised the deregulation of the banking and lending industries for having "vastly expanded credit availability to virtually all income classes."

It's true that the number of minority homeowners increased at a similar rate to that of all homeowners during the last decade, but the housing market's recent slump has brought to light serious weaknesses in the subprime model, raising doubts about its viability as a tool for community reinvestment...

- www.truthout.org

[Gene DeMambro]

Bill,

It takes a big man to admit it. I salute you!

[Jason Rees]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,449024,00.html

See, Ian? The free marketplace of ideas works both ways. I love this country. I say let the whackjobs on both sides eat eachother alive.

[Jason Rees]

I think you have again forgotten the difference between an equation and an analogy.

IJ: When you, even jokingly, drag out that nonsense about how gay marriages are just a domino on the way to marriage with animals, you say more about yourself than us.

And the double standards just keep coming...

I'm sure you would have told Alabama blacks the same thing in the 60s.

There you go again, jumping on that bandwagon, even after decrying it.

Ah, at least we found an issue you care about. You're getting PO'd. But you're missing the point. I'm not asking for a disco ball and a sex party. I'm asking that LGBs have the same right to serve openly and that all these pretenses about how we'll destroy cohesion and be blackmailed (don't ask don't tell facilitates that one) get dropped for the nonsense they are.

They're not nonsense. I'll get to why in a second.

There are a bunch of integrated military units which work just fine. Women were added with good success.

Here we go. Sex. Lovely thing, lust. Makes people go half-crazy when they're deployed. Or alone in a group of people they're attracted to. Even married people go off the deep end regularly. But women live and sleep in seperate quarters from men, Ian. Shall we set up seperate quarters for gays? How would that work, exactly?

Blacks were integrated despite the same objections about cohesion.

Here's that bandwagon you so dearly love again. The objections about cohesion with black integration had nothing to do about sex, Ian.

Do you know how many pride parades I've been to in my whole life? ZERO. I also find them objectionable. So don't lay that at my door.

I didn't lay it 'at your door' Ian. I said the most vocal people on your side of the debate. Whether you associate with them or not, they are identified by the majority of Americans as representing what you want. And they want nothing to do with them.

Don't tell me that everyone in a group should be punished for the actions of a few. Heck, the KKK members hold worse parades and you haven't asked them to lose their marriage rights.

No, I just want them to have to take their hoods off. To come out of the closet, so to speak.

Ok. I even asked you to think think think WE spent money because WE were under attack.

*sigh* See? You're taking this personally. I can't blame you, really, but you were not under attack. Gay 'marriage' was 'under attack.' The majority of Californians didn't want it. Boo hoo.

Even the Catholic church acknowledges that LGBs have an identity they don't choose that is independent of behavior. I'd be gay if I never had sex--just like you'd be straight if you never had sex.

... Ian, quoting the Catholic Church as an authority on being gay... I'm speechless. I also don't care about any of that. I'm not the one who shot down gay marriage, Ian.

BUT what I clearly said, several times in this thread alone, is that MY position is to take the government out of marriage and the religion out of civil unions. Let churches be free to pick the couples they marry. Let government give out civil unions without prejudice informing the selection. THAT is neutral. READ my posts.

Then instead of spending all that moolah to try and stop Californians from reclaiming the word marriage, why didn't you all draft up a resolution to allow civil unions? That would seem to be alot easier. Hell, it probably would have passed. Like I said, your advocates want that word marriage more than makes sense. And the other side won't let go of it, either.

As for the justification for 8, I see you still have none.

Where have I said I supported it, Ian? The only thing I support was their right to do it. Do I agree with it? I don't really care. The one thing I haven't heard, is whether San Fran made prostitution legal. I'm betting since it didn't make news, that it did not. Either way, I don't live in California, and I wrote off the Left Coast a long time ago.

PS: what the heck are you talking about, we mock people who bring in money and put food on the table? Most of my gay friends are physicians, the remainder as other professionals, and in all the couples at least one cooks well. Just what is it you think we do at work and home? It's not satanic rituals, it's regular work and food on the table just like everyone else.

See above. I'm talking about your most vocal advocates, and most visible proponents. I'm sure that aside from your obsession with all things gay, you yourself are pretty vanilla. Not that it would change my estimation of you. Disagreements aside, you seem like a decent fella. It's fun to argue with people who are level-headed for the most part.

[AAAhmed46]

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/ ... ch=2165253

yeah.

[Bill Glasheen]

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/ ... ch=2165253

yeah.

The less she's "handled" and the more she's allowed to be herself, the more people will see why she had an 80% approval rating in Alaska before the anti-Bush feeding frenzy started. My guess is that after she's done being governor of Alaska, she'll end up in the Senate.

Sarah Palin is no constitutional law professor. On the other hand, I'm not particularly fond of a professor with no "real world" experience being allowed to run a country. (I can say that, because I came from academia.) Sarah Palin is no less a leader than my female boss who is the head of Research in my company. Is SHE a scientist? Far from it. But she has my back and helps run blocking and tackling so I can get my job done. She has faith in me, and vice versa. As Lao Tzu once said, "He is the leader of men who behaves as if he is their servant." Ronald Reagan - a man who grew up as an actor in Hollywood - was no professor either. But he was a great leader, visionary, and spokesperson for a cause. And he knew how to hire a team of people and let them do their jobs.

In the words of another Hollywood leader, "She'll be back." I wish her well.

And if it's sexist to say she's easy on the eyes, well... SUE ME!

- Bill