Thread: "Class Warfare"

Originally Posted by ARealConservative

context is vital in these discussions.

I am very much a libertarian when we discuss the federal government, but even there I imagine you could dream up some examples where I would violate some litmus test some use to define the philosophy.

At the state level, I am conservative.

At the local level I am somewhat liberal.

the lowest level of power structure I acknowledge most closely resembles communism because my wife and kids seem to have most of the needs, while I am responsible for most of the production. :-)

I have no problem with people that admit they are not libertarians, and hold non-libertarian positions.

Originally Posted by Catawba

Not interested in taking the libertarian test, eh?

I've taken such tests, but that has nothing to do with the comments you were quoting.

Originally Posted by Catawba

I have no problem with people that admit they are not libertarians, and hold non-libertarian positions.

A person doesn't have to be a liberal on every single issue in order to be a liberal. The same goes for libertarians, conservatives, etc. You obviously knew that, but still made it necessary for me to say it.

Originally Posted by mpg

A person doesn't have to be a liberal on every single issue in order to be a liberal. The same goes for libertarians, conservatives, etc. You obviously knew that, but still made it necessary for me to say it.

Everything I have read about libertarians is that they believe in a small government. Spending almost as much of the rest of the world combined on the military is not small government.

Originally Posted by Boo Radley

Yes, yes they do. Sorry. That and more.

Your unsupported babbling means nothing

You lefties are in a contradictory position

some, LIke Haymarket, argue that what you use has absolutely no relevance to tax rates. For him, its purely ability to pay as determined by "representative government". HIs position benefits from not being based on an obvious lie

then there are people like you who try to pretend that the rich should pay more because they use more That position is moronic because you would have to argue that the rich, who pay 40% of the income tax and all the death tax, are using more of the government benefits than the 80% or more who pay far far less taxes than what that one percent pays and this 80% also USE less

you would have to be nuts to claim that 80% of the US Population use less government resources than the top one percent

Originally Posted by Catawba

Everything I have read about libertarians is that they believe in a small government. Spending almost as much of the rest of the world combined on the military is not small government.

So the military is part of the government? Whodathunkit?

Originally Posted by Sparkles

When you say "sub prime credit markets", that includes tons of other types of lending...

No, when I say that rapacious private brokers were guilty of serially abusing subprime credit markets (even forcing some prime borrowers into subprime contracts), I am referring specifically to subprime mortgage markets. What with the pounding you've been taking here on one topic after another, I do of course understand your desperate need to change the subject at every opportunity. This is kind of the risk you run when you start pontificating on a subject in public as some unstudied, uninformed, and untalented amateur.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

Now, regardless of what silly label you want to slap onto this, sub-prime loans were always high risk, and nearly always net losers. This is why, if you look at the graph, prior to 1997, the increase in the sub-prime market was nearly flat line. At some point in 1997, that changed.

More from The Book of Really Silly. Subprime lending by traditional lenders was virtually non-existent prior to the mid-1990's because of red-lining. That's where banks refuse to extend credit because of your street address. If you lived in an urban, minority, low- or moderate-income neighborhood, you were not considered a potential customer. LMI communities of course still had credit needs. They needed mortgage loans, car loans, student loans, home repair and improvement loans -- they just had to get them all through their local finance companies which merely began their exploitaion with interest rates 4-5 points higher than those in the prime world. Your chart doesn't include subprime lending by finance companies, does it. Do you even know?

Originally Posted by Sparkles

That doesn't change the fact that the Government specifically pushed bad loans.

That's false and continued repetion of the claim is rapidly turning you into a simple liar. There has never been any law, rule, policy, directive, or court order that has required anyone to make any loan to any borrower who was not qualified to receive it. Direct or indirect statements to the contrary are flat out lies.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

Freddie Mac in 1997...

Yada, yada, yada. I'm more familiar with the deal than you are. Why don't you tell us how it worked out for investors? Tell us what the default rates were on those and other subprime loans of the period.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

The facts are, the two banks who signed deals with the government to provide the loans government wanted them to push, both crash.

Along with many others, these two banks went to pieces a decade later. On the back end of the credit crisis that unregulated abuse of subprime credit markets between 2002 and 2006 had done so much to make possible.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

That's interesting since congressional testimony and SEC reports, seem to show the opposite. Every time I look up information from someone actually in the banking business, who talks about CRA loans, they are always bad.

LOL!!! Edward Pinto. Mr. Dog-and-Pony-Show. If this is the sort of testimony you take, it's no wonder all your understandings are so thoroughly messed up. Has anyone ever been able to reproduce the work done on the laptop in his den using his own proprietary formulas and data he claims were taken from published internet sources that have been taken down since the day he relied on them?

Originally Posted by Sparkles

This is another one of the slick dirty secrets many people don't know. Everyone knows about the very official TARP fund, and the $800+ Billion lost there. But many people are not aware of the Federal Home Loan Banks...

No, everyone knows about the member-owned FHLB system as well.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

...which have been giving money to banks that could not afford the debt. In this specific case Bank of America would not buy countrywide, unless they could get the money they needed to remain in operation. But of course, who is going to give money to a company that is openly, and obviously on the brink of failure? Well the government of course. The FHLB gave Countrywide $50 Billion dollars in low interest loans, and then the Federal Reserve rubber stamped BoA buying Countrywide...

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 11 2008 -- Bank of America Corporation today announced a definitive agreement to purchase Countrywide Financial Corp. in an all-stock transaction worth approximately $4 billion.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

Why would government do this? Well because Freddie and Fannie, were the largest purchasers of Countrywide mortgages.

Yes, their PRIME mortgages. Their subprime mortgages failed to meet the GSE minimum standards for purchase. That junk went off to Wall Street.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

This is new to me. I'll have to look into it.

Add it to the long list.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

And so do the rich. That argument cancels itself out.

No, the phony right-wing claim that the 51% (as of 2009) who do not owe any net income tax don't pay taxes and have "no skin in the game" is simply given the kibosh by the fact that even the bottom 20% pays 16.3% of its income in federal, state, and local taxes. What the rich do or do not do is not in any way material to the question. It is merely another of your feckless attempts at deflection and diversion.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

Further, it is funny because the left routinely argues for Social Security as "an investment" or "an insurance system" and not a tax.

Being such consistent dullards, right-wingers often mistake a public insurance program for some sort of investment plan, but I don't think you'll find a lot of folks in any camp claiming that payroll taxes are not taxes.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

So... we can justify the confiscation of anything, or everything we want from someone, because we're just taking their property, and not them?

Get used to it. We can tax in any way we want income from whatever source derived. It's in the Constitution, you know.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

And like I side before, you don't have the right to tell me what to do with my own property at all. Doesn't matter if it's $50 dollars, or $50 Million.

No, it's you who does not have the right to ignore the legitimate powers of government. Those include the power to tax, and to regulate and even prohibit your holding of property. Your precious property rights exist at all only because the government created and defends them for you. You are a complete nobody in the equation.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

I hope I wasn't unclear.

Not at all. Just lost in a pea-soup fog of conceit and ignorance. April 15 is approaching fast you know. Time to pay up again.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

Irrelevant. The GSEs guaranteed the loans. This caused the loans to look safe.

Hey, rookie...the GSE's PURCHASE loans from originators. They hold some in their own portfolios. The rest they bundle into MBS's that they sell into the secondary market. It is the income stream from those securities that they guarantee.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

Again, if the GSE's had nothing to do with it, why did the sub-prime market only take off after they guaranteed them? Why was sub-prime loans market flat until 1997?

The latter question is already answered: Red-lining by traditional lenders until CRA in particular revealed subprime as a huge new pool of profitability. As for the first, the GSE's at the time purchased only conforming loans. Subprime loans by definition are not conforming. The GSE's did not purchase subprime loans in 1997. They began to offer guarantees on select packages of subprime loans that had been purchased by private entities on an experimental basis as they worked toward roll-out of their own subprime acquistion programs which happened in 2003.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

How ironic. Normally it's the idiotic left that claims the poor stay poor, and the rich stay rich. Now suddenly when it suits your purpose, you admit people earn more money over time. Here's a thought.... try being consistent for once, before you attack others.

LOL!!! You assumed in your doomed calculations that someone making $50K today also made $50K forty years ago, even though $50K in 1972 would be the equivalent of more than $270K today. Hopefully, you don't do your own income taxes.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

That said, the point is irrelevant. If a person earned less to begin with, they will receive less from the SSI. Which makes the amount they get back, compared to what they put in, even more skewed. I was actually painting a best case scenario.

No, you were again painting in the dark out of a can whose contents you know nothing about.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

Ok well my source is Social Security Online. What's yours? It doesn't say, cut your SS benefits in half, add your other income, and if it's under $25K, then you don't pay taxes on it. What part of "total combined income" to you means 50% of your SS benefit? Another lib-tard idiocy spewing on the forum? Want to try that with the IRS?

Tell you what, smart-boy. Go get your 1040 instructions from 2011 and turn to the worksheet on page 26. See if you can make sense of what you are supposed to do on Lines 1 and 2.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

You are correct. I got confused.

You still are confused. About virtually everything.

Originally Posted by Sparkles

You show me one person who reported only half of their SS benefits on their income tax form, and I'll show you a person in trouble with the IRS.

See what I mean?

Originally Posted by Catawba

I think that will put him at about age 85 so maybe he will be too old to commit further crimes. Isn't his son, Peter, sort of following in his Dad's footsteps by trying to profit off other's fears that he stokes?

Yes, Irwin's son Peter Schiff is another right-wing, Prophet-of-Doom type who somewhat regularly appears in public via such trash-based outlets as FOX News.