Saturday, July 30, 2011
Maxine Waters 2004
"We were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr. Chairman, we DO NOT have a crisis at Freddie Mac and, in particular, at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines."............I'm sorry, folks, but this woman doesn't deserve to be anywhere near the U.S. capitol. She took what was obviously an important hearing and turned it into a God damned mockery (replete with playing the race-card). The way that I see it, this lady couldn't get elected dog-catcher in any other district in the country.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
23 comments:
Why four different posts when this should have been one post? Also, you've already covered this topic... in a prior multi-part post. Or did you forget?
First of all, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act did not pass the Senate 90-8 (despite all your exclamation points). It passed the Senate 55-44. This is according to Senate.gov.
I believe that, in response to Republican attacks on the GSEs, some Democrats went to far in the other direction... insisting there were no problems when there clearly were. The situation would not have been as dire, however, if not for the subprime mortgage fiasco (which was caused by the deregulation).
Bottom line: Did Fannie and Freddie have problems? Yes. Did Fannie and Freddie cause the recession as you have claimed? Absolutely not. Deregulation did.
You're focusing on one of the SYMPTOMS of the deregulation but IGNORING the deregulation itself.
The final bill passed 90-8.
OK. Regarding the votes in the Senate on Gramm-Leach-Bliley (the FINAL version)... you're right and I'm wrong. The Democrats also drank the deregulation kool-aid.
My point was that it was deregulation and not Fannie and Freddie that caused the financial crisis. Do you disagree? I assume you do, since you attributed the financial downturn to "loose lending" (which wouldn't have occurred without deregulation).
There was some "loose lending"... although I wonder who you blame for this... the people who were approved for the loans, or those doing the approving? There was also fraud, wherein people who qualified for a regular mortgage were instead given ARMs.
The problems at Fannie and Freddie were just a symptom of the deregulation. So why so many posts from Will Hart about Fannie and Freddie and ZERO about deregulation? (None that I've seen, in any case.)
Bottom line: I stand by my original assessment of blame... That prize goes to the champions of deregulation -- the Republicans. Bill Clinton and his conservative economic team (Greenspan, Rubin and Summers) can suck it too. I'm sure they influenced a lot of the Dem votes.
"Did Fannie and Freddie cause the recession as you have claimed? Absolutely not. Deregulation did."
Absolutely they did cause the recession. They caused banks to give out lots of bad loans. Which in its way is a form of over-regulation.
Why do we need these two government agencies around at all?
dmarks: They caused banks to give out lots of bad loans.
HOW did they cause banks to give out lots of bad loans? Are you talking about the Community Reinvestment Act? If so, it is a conservative myth that this act forced (or "caused") banks to give bad loans.
The truth is that "the CRA requires banks to lend to working-class families and people of color, but only when those people have been deemed credit-worthy".
I believe that dmarks is correct, in that most of the toxic assets that eventually ended up on Wall Street, etc. originated first at Fannie and Freddie. Franklin Raines - I would put him right up there with Greenspan, Bush, Clinton, and Christopher Cox.
I strongly believe that dmarks and Will are very, very incorrect.
Economist Dean Baker says pinning the financial meltdown on Fannie and Freddie is, "obviously not true".
According to Baker, "Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble, but they were trailing the irrational exuberance of the private sector. They lost market share in the years 2002-2007, as the volume of private issue mortgage backed securities exploded....
In short, while Fannie and Freddie were completely irresponsible in their lending practices, the claim that they were responsible for the financial disaster is absurd on its face".
Mr. Baker is a progressive economist with a progressive point of view and who reads complex social reality though a progressive prism. To blame F and F would be to poo poo the progressive notion of home ownership for all and to also blame upon a Democrat, Franklin Raines. To say that HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS in toxic loans didn't play a role in the financial crisis is borderline laughable.
A year ago Joe Biden was out touting "recovery summer."
Question to my liberal friends.What the hell happened with that?
Well, Rusty, the recover is happening here, where the rich get richer, and the number of people making over $100,000 on the public dime is soaring.
It's that version of the golden rule where those who make the rules get the gold.
Will: Mr. Baker is a progressive economist [who shares the] progressive notion of home ownership for all and [doesn't want to blame] a Democrat, Franklin Raines.
Wrong. Progressives realize not everyone can own their own home. Also, I've got no problem with blaming Franklin Raines, and neither does Dean Baker. He said (REPEATING a portion of my prior post that you obviously missed in your rush to label Mr. Baker's analysis partisan)...
"Fannie and Freddie got into subprime junk and helped fuel the housing bubble".
F&F did NOT cause the bubble!!!! Deregulation did!!! WHY is Will TOTALLY IGNORING what came first??? Perhaps because it is the Republican party that has traditionally championed deregulation?
The Democrats drank some of that kool-aid too, but they did recently try to reinstitute some of that regulation with the Consumer Protection Agency.
And the Republicans are fighting it tooth and nail. Will obviously doesn't want to go there.
Rusty: A year ago Joe Biden was out touting "recovery summer."
Question to my liberal friends. What the hell happened with that?
I don't really recall hearing about this "recovery summer", and I don't recall Joe Biden touting it. I'll take your word for it though... and say what happened is their analysis of how much they needed to stimulate was wrong.
They failed to realize just how deep the bush recession was (and continues to be). And now that Congress is going to be cutting spending... I don't see unemployment improving before the election. In fact it will probably get worse.
I'm very fearfull that what that means is that we'll go from the bush recession to the Romney depression.
Perhaps after Romney utterly fails THEN it will be time to elect an FDR type progressive to the presidency.
"Perhaps after Romney utterly fails THEN it will be time to elect an FDR type progressive to the presidency."
Time to open the camps again? Pack the Supreme Court too?
dmarks: Time to open the camps again? Pack the Supreme Court too?
The Constitution doesn't say how many members the Supreme Court should have... so I think FDR's idea to add more members (so it would stop ruling his programs "unconstitutional") was a good one.
As for the camps... that might happen if Romney is elected president. He might sign the legislation introduced by Peter King to round up the Muslims.
Good point on King. I remember seeing him on TV years ago arguing in FAVOR of terrorism.
What a terrible man.
Can one of my liberal friends here tell me the exact date the economic condition of the country becomes Obie's responsibility? And,if he's re-elected (shudder)next year does he get to blame the recession on the guy who was in office the prior four years? Or is it Reagan and Bush's fault for eternity?
Hey, wd, a lot of FDR's programs were voted down 9-0. The dude would have had to add 10 more just to get over the hump. It may not have been unconstitutional. But it certainly represented one of the most blatant Presidential power-grabs in U.S. history.............I hear what you're saying about the deregulation coming first (it was actually people like Dodd and Schumer who made the Gramm, etc. bill worse - Gramm initially did NOT want to expand the application of the Community Reinvestment Act because he thought that it would be too burdensome to banks and potentially to taxpayers). But there was also a lot of graft and mismanagement at Fannie and Freddie that made the crisis far worse (the fact that it itself bought up a lot of this garbage).
Obama inherited a severe economic downturn, Russ. But, yes, it's totally reasonable to question the efficacy of his programs. I mean, seriously, it is what it is, right?
Will: I hear what you're saying about the deregulation coming first (more falsehoods here)... [The CRA] would be too burdensome to banks and potentially to taxpayers.
Wrong. The truth is that "the CRA requires banks to lend to working-class families and people of color, but only when those people have been deemed credit-worthy".
I realize, however, NOTHING is going to stop you for doing what Conservatives do... blame the victims.
From Wikipedia.........."Predatory lending
In a 2002 study exploring the relationship between the CRA and lending looked at as predatory, Kathleen C. Engel and Patricia A. McCoy noted that banks could receive CRA credit by lending or brokering loans in lower-income areas that would be considered a risk for ordinary lending practices. CRA regulated banks may also inadvertently facilitate these lending practices by financing lenders. They also noted that CRA regulations, as then administered and carried out by Fannie Mae and Freddie MAC, did not penalize banks that engaged in these lending practices. They recommended that the federal agencies use the CRA to sanction behavior that either directly or indirectly increased predatory lending practices by lowering the CRA rating of any bank that facilitated in these lending practices.[103]"............It sounds like it might have been a problem for a while.
Dude, CNBC's John Carney, initially a strong proponent of the CRA, wrote an interesting article on it and it's effect on lending. Here's a piece of it............. * What about "No Money Down" Mortgages? Were they required by the CRA?
Actually, yes they were. The regulators charged with enforcing the CRA praised the lowering of down payments and even their elimination. They told banks that lending standards that exceeded that of regulators would be considered evidence of unfair lending. This effectively meant that no money down mortgages were required. A Treasury Department study published in 2000 found that the CRA had successfully lowered down payments not just for CRA loans, but for all mortgages.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra-debate-a-users-guide-2009-6#ixzz1TueG7lch...............This is hardly a settled issue, wd. Just because Paul Krugman and Thom Hartmann tell you to jump, you don't ALWAYS have to respond with, "How high?"............And I'm a little confused here. Are you now saying that the Gramm, etc. Act was a good piece of legislation because it contained inside it this fine piece of social engineering?
The information in the article contradicts some of the things you said earlier. The author places a lot of blame on the bush administration.
I have no problem putting a whole heap of blame on the Bush administration. He absolutely SHOULD have displayed more leadership.
Post a Comment