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More Job Seekers Give Up

Here is a clue. Stop bashing the corporations you want to hire folks and find collaborative ways for them to hire here. Does it sound as stupid to anyone else that we scream and curse at corporate heads and then wonder why they want to locate elsewhere?



The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

A Man and his Wife had the good fortune to possess a Goose which laid a Golden Egg every day. Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the whole store of precious metal at once. But when they cut it open they found it was just like any other goose. Thus, they neither got rich all at once, as they had hoped, nor enjoyed any longer the daily addition to their wealth.

Much wants more and loses all.​
 
more lessons for children:

The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen (1805-75) adapted by Stephen Corrin in Stories for Seven-Year-Olds. London 1964

None of the Emperor's clothes had ever met with such success.

But among the crowds a little child suddenly gasped out, "But he hasn't got anything on." And the people began to whisper to one another what the child had said. "He hasn't got anything on." "There's a little child saying he hasn't got anything on." Till everyone was saying, "But he hasn't got anything on." The Emperor himself had the uncomfortable feeling that what they were whispering was only too true. "But I will have to go through with the procession," he said to himself.

So he drew himself up and walked boldly on holding his head higher than before, and the courtiers held on to the train that wasn't there at all.

the adult version: Economy in U.S. Grew 1.8% in First Quarter - Bloomberg
 
unless you'd prefer to consult some pizza guy

hes running for president. He should have a rough idea on how he'll handle the hows and tell us about them.
 
tell it to the president

tell it to kent conrad

in times like these

if something isn't done imminently to fundamentally reform our big 3 federal programs (as well as state pensions), they will cease to exist as we know them for our next generation

770 days...

and counting

leadership, anyone?
 
and you think that regulation by agency capture is better?

In some cases yes.

ponzi schemes aren't an argument for or against the glass-steagle act. you know better.

I didn't argue that. I argued that basically regulation failed on so many levels, including but not limited to the GSA.
 
Default swaps and mortgage derivatives as a percentage of trading skyrocketed and became a problem AFTER the CRA sponsored legislation and debt engineering.

This doesn't make much sense in blaming the CRA as CRA banks have always been relatively small bit players in the total market. Furthermore, CDS of the large scary kind are not issued within the banking sector in the first place on mortgages. I think you are confusing corrolation with causation.

Saying when they started is a good talking point but knowing when they became a large enough portion of the market is whats important, not when they started. They became big business AFTER CRA.

But as the CRA didn't cover the players issuing them how can you reasonably say it's the CRA's fault? How can the legislation be at fault when the legislation didn't apply to the players?

You are not a lender. All loans carry a risk assessment. An assessment that near disappears when backed by Fannie May and Freddie Mac because as GSAs it was always assured that the loans were government backed---directly or indirectly. A lender knows damn good and well what the default chances are on a loan when they write it, the kicker is whether it is backed by another entity or not. With FM backing they had never had the gigantic default issues they are experiencing now.

But that doesn't address my point. There were always subprime mortgages out there. Fannie and Freddie never had sizable portions on their books. They kept to prime and jumbo loans.

AIG certainly is at fault, the government is also at fault not just for regulating a structure to make those types of transactions legal but through administration process making them preferrable to a certain extent if it was covering mortgage derivatives and FM backed debt. AIG never expected nominally backed mortgages to collapse in the way they did.

Which is why I blame them. No company should issue potential liability that it doesn't have the assets to cover even a fraction of. Even if they never expected nominally backed mortgages to collapse, they should have been at least able to cover a decent size of their CDS liability. They didn't. Seems like eternal optimism sprung at AIG. Also remember that most of the bad CDS came out of a single department in AIG's London office which had a toxic corporate culture of selling at all costs with 50% bonus structure based on sales. It's amazing that a tiny portion of the company nearly bought the behemoth down.

LOL of course they did...a mortgage derivative is what someone says a group of bundled mortgages is supposedly worth, how in the name of god can you assume it going to be worth anything without individual risk assessment? You cannot but it didnt matter because the government had its paws all over the mortgage market with CRA guidelines ensuring that the loans were made and had to written off someway, somehow. Its easy to see now it was a terrible practice, but at that point it was all the rage to push home ownership for votes---on both sides of the aisle.

You appear to be confusing the CRA and the rating agencies. I'll let you sort that out.

You seem to want to push all the blame for this onto the companies.

Considering how small the CRA was in total to the aggregate mortgage much less the unrelated CDS market, yes it is mostly company's fault's. True the government basically didn't do any regulation at all, which does make them complicit.

Well I dont agree with that as I know the corporate cronyism was alive and well---the influx into the housing market walked hand in hand with government legislation pushing risky loans and when you run anything by positive feedback eventually it goes out of control.

True, but that's not the CRA's fault. You seem to be unaware of the reduction in home ownership obstacles under the Bush administration. That's not CRA related.
 
This doesn't make much sense in blaming the CRA as CRA banks have always been relatively small bit players in the total market. Furthermore, CDS of the large scary kind are not issued within the banking sector in the first place on mortgages. I think you are confusing corrolation with causation.
Untrue. Washington Mutual collapsed due to their exposure in this market. They were the 4th largest bank at the time. Its hard to PROVE causation but if you remove what you think is the cause and it stops...well, there you are.



But as the CRA didn't cover the players issuing them how can you reasonably say it's the CRA's fault? How can the legislation be at fault when the legislation didn't apply to the players?
Because it did. In 95 banks were required to meet a certain percentage of LMI (Low and Moderate Income) customers to meet CRA standards as required by regulators and could then also not refuse loans to more qualified customers who were only slightly better off but not up to previous standards of financial stability.



But that doesn't address my point. There were always subprime mortgages out there. Fannie and Freddie never had sizable portions on their books. They kept to prime and jumbo loans.
In 2007 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were required to show that 55% of their loans were LMIs. From 2005 to 2007, Fannie and Freddie bought approximately $1 trillion in sub-prime and Alt-A loans. This amounted to about 40 percent of their mortgage purchases during that period. Seems sizable to me.

Which is why I blame them. No company should issue potential liability that it doesn't have the assets to cover even a fraction of. Even if they never expected nominally backed mortgages to collapse, they should have been at least able to cover a decent size of their CDS liability. They didn't. Seems like eternal optimism sprung at AIG. Also remember that most of the bad CDS came out of a single department in AIG's London office which had a toxic corporate culture of selling at all costs with 50% bonus structure based on sales. It's amazing that a tiny portion of the company nearly bought the behemoth down.

But that doesnt explain CountryWide, Lehmen Bros, or Washington Mutual. The CDS were a symptom, the toxic loans were the true problem.




Considering how small the CRA was in total to the aggregate mortgage much less the unrelated CDS market, yes it is mostly company's fault's. True the government basically didn't do any regulation at all, which does make them complicit.
Just the opposite, they regulated riskier loans and relaxed standards, they encouraged and enforced them. Maybe you cant see it but government incentives drove all the stupid reckless behavior. If they couldnt make money off it and it were not encouraged by legislation and regulation, they wouldnt have done it. Banks dont just start making risky loans.



True, but that's not the CRA's fault. You seem to be unaware of the reduction in home ownership obstacles under the Bush administration. That's not CRA related.

From 2003 to late 2006, conventional loans (including jumbo loans) declined from 78.8 percent to 50.1 percent of all mortgages, while subprime and Alt-A loans increased from 10.1 percent to 32.7 percent. Because GSEpurchases are not included in these numbers, in the years just before the collapse of home prices began, about half of all home loans being made in the United States were non-prime loans. Since these mortgages aggregate more than $2 trillion, this accounts for the weakness in bank assets that is the principal underlying cause of the current financial crisis.

Personally, sounds to me like you think it was all the greedy bankers. It wasnt just that. It was the bankers, brokers, regulators, terrible housing policy, and paid for polticians all responsible. I still feel that the government representatives didnt pay enough and the banks should have been allowed to fail.
 
today: Chronic unemployment worse than Great Depression - CBS Evening News - CBS News

There is an unfortunate adage for the unemployed: The longer folks are out of a job, the longer it takes them to find a new one.

CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports that the chronically unemployed face the hardest road back to recovery, and that while the jobs picture may be improving statistically on a national level, it is not for them.

About 6.2 million Americans, 45.1 percent of all unemployed workers in this country, have been jobless for more than six months - a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.

The bigger the gap on someone's resume, the more questions employers have.

Here's another problem: more than 1 million of the long-term unemployed have run out of unemployment benefits, leaving them without the money to get new training, buy new clothes, or even get to job interviews.
 
today:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the real cost of the federal government guaranteeing the business of failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is $317 billion -- not the $130 billion normally claimed by the Obama administration.

In a report delivered to the House Budget Committee on June 2, the CBO said a “fair value” accounting of guaranteeing the two defunct mortgage companies – known as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) – was more than twice as high as the Office of Management and Budget had accounted for.

“Specifically, CBO treats the mortgages guaranteed each year by the two GSEs as new guarantee obligations of the federal government,” the CBO report said. “For those guarantees, CBO’s projections of budget outlays equal the estimated federal subsidies inherent in the commitments at the time they are made.”

“In contrast, the Administration’s Office of Management and Budget continues to treat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as nongovernmental entities for budgetary purposes, and thus outside the budget,” the report stated. “It records as outlays the amount of the net cash payments provided by the Treasury to the GSEs.”

The total of those cash payments is $130 billion, and is normally reported as the cost of the bailout of the GSEs to date. However, the CBO said that merely counting the cash payments, and not the cost of federal subsidies granted to the GSEs, obscures their real costs.

Essentially, the CBO is accounting for the cost of the federal government guaranteeing the loans bought and securitized by the GSEs.

True Cost of Fannie, Freddie Bailouts: $317 Billion, CBO Says | CNSnews.com
 
Yay, unemployment drops!!!........ well, sorta ........... :(


remember ya'll : Keynesian Stimulus Bills worked in 2008 to avoid a recession, and they worked in 2009 to keep unemployment low. Don't you go believing your lying eyes, and don't forget to vote Democrat in 2012!

More than 90 percent of the jobs created by this plan will be in the private sector. They're not going to be make-work jobs, but jobs doing the work that America desperately needs done: jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, repairing our dangerously deficient dams and levees so that we don't face another Katrina.

Transcript: Obama takes questions on economy - CNN.com
In pushing to get his $787 billion stimulus package passed in Congress, President Obama's economic team said that without the federal spending jolt, the unemployment rate would hit 8.8 percent by the last fiscal quarter of 2010. With the package, his advisers argued, the unemployment rate would reach only 7 percent.

Republicans Blast Obama Administration as Jobless Rate Hits 9.4 Percent - FoxNews.com

Could they have been more wrong???
 
As i posted before a few hours ago Fox News reported the the actual Unemployment number for April 2011 was 15.9%, this includes those who are no longer receiving any benefits.

This is why the numers of people on food stamps is through the roof.

I live in Riverside/ San Bernardino county. What are ya'all doing to squash Jerry Browns job killing policies?
 
today:

Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows.

The survey of 1,300 employers says those who are keenly aware of the health-reform measure probably are more likely to consider an alternative to employer-sponsored plans, with 50% to 60% in this group expected to make a change. It also found that for some, it makes more sense to switch.

“At least 30% of employers would gain economically from dropping coverage, even if they completely compensated employees for the change through other benefit offerings or higher salaries,” the study says.

Firms to cut health plans as reform starts: survey - MarketWatch
 
today:

State and local governments are forecast to shed up to 110,000 jobs in the third quarter, the first time the blood-letting has risen into the triple digits, according to IHS Global Insight.

State and local government employment has been a drag on the economy all year, averaging a loss of 23,000 jobs a month over the past three months. Meanwhile, the private sector has created an average of 180,000 a month during the same period.

In May, public employment shrunk by 29,000 jobs, mostly at the state and local level, while businesses created 83,000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. All told, the sector has lost 510,000 positions since its peak in August 2008.

Though tax revenue is starting to rise, states are still wrestling with multi-billion-dollar budget gaps. Federal stimulus funds helped minimize job cuts until now, but that money essentially runs out on June 30.

So states are planning to slash funds for education, social services and local governments, as well as downsize their payrolls even more, in the coming fiscal year.

And that's the good news.

The bad news is that local governments are in even worse shape. Not only are they losing state aid, but they are finally feeling the fallout from the mortgage meltdown. Property tax assessments, a major funding source for municipalities, have only started to drop.

State, local governments set to see record job cuts, layoffs - Jun. 5, 2011

helter skelter is comin down fast

hold on!
 
That's no surprise. If employers can push the cost of health care off on the general taxpayers, of course they will.
 
today:

The U.S. Treasury next month will go back to relying on the kindness of strangers like never before to purchase the nation’s burgeoning debts — and taxpayers may have to pay higher interest rates to attract enough foreign investors, analysts say.

Though a significant rise in interest rates could be toxic for a softening U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve has said it will end its program of purchasing $600 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds as planned on June 30. The Fed is estimated to have bought about 85 percent of Treasury’s securities offerings in the past eight months.

That leaves the Treasury, which is slated to sell near-record amounts of new debt of about $1.4 trillion this year, without its main suitor and recent source of support, and forces it back into the vagaries of global markets. Among the countries that will have to step forward to prevent a debilitating rise in interest rates are China, Japan and Saudi Arabia — and even hostile nations such as Iran and Venezuela with petrodollars to invest, according to one analysis.

The end of the Fed’s program would never be easy given the huge onslaught of scheduled Treasury borrowing, but the task will be more difficult because foreign investors in the past six months have been reducing their sizable holdings of U.S. debt, not increasing them.

Lack of buyers may force Treasury to boost interest rates - Washington Times
 
Man, I love me some over the top hyperbole and misrepresented facts.

What is "misrepresented"? Just because the administration, as has administrations before it created some BS numbers and calculations that dismiss people that have become discouraged, or dropped from the roles of collecting unemployment because their benefit ran out doesn't mean that they don't exist anymore.

What is a lie is that we treat them like they are no longer people without jobs.


j-mac
 
Untrue. Washington Mutual collapsed due to their exposure in this market. They were the 4th largest bank at the time. Its hard to PROVE causation but if you remove what you think is the cause and it stops...well, there you are.

But as a percent of their total holdings, CRA couldn't have been that large. You seem to be ignoring the other factors in play here, such as tanking commercial holdings, weakening deposits, reduction in non-loan based income.

Because it did. In 95 banks were required to meet a certain percentage of LMI (Low and Moderate Income) customers to meet CRA standards as required by regulators and could then also not refuse loans to more qualified customers who were only slightly better off but not up to previous standards of financial stability.

Except that the CRA did not apply to all banks. In fact the CRA's actual coverage was relatively small as a percent of the market and most of the subprime were mortgages issued outside of the CRA regulation. If you want to claim that the CRA lowered requirements, then we can also blame a whole host of other factors, including the Republican drive to eliminate obstacles under the grandiose theme of Bush's "Ownership Society." The fact that the CRA operated for three decades without this mess suggests it wasn't the primary issue. Removing the housing sector ENTIRELY, American debt from corporations to governments to individuals was due for a correction. No country can keep moving with that use of leverage and not encounter a correction sooner or later. Sure did the housing market cause the first tumble? No doubt. But if we had moderate levels of leverage, responsible banking, responsible CDS, healthy individual savings, we would absolutely NOT be in this mess.

In 2007 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were required to show that 55% of their loans were LMIs. From 2005 to 2007, Fannie and Freddie bought approximately $1 trillion in sub-prime and Alt-A loans. This amounted to about 40 percent of their mortgage purchases during that period. Seems sizable to me.

That's right off American Spectator. Do you have anything more reliable, such as actual legislation on Fannie and Freddie?

But that doesnt explain CountryWide, Lehmen Bros, or Washington Mutual. The CDS were a symptom, the toxic loans were the true problem.

Toxic loans just caused a problem that was going to go bad to go bad faster. And CDS were not a symptom. CDS were a different problem that was exacerbated by the crisis. AIG should never have been issuing liability well in the hundreds of billions pass its liquid capacity to meet even a fraction of that.

Just the opposite, they regulated riskier loans and relaxed standards, they encouraged and enforced them. Maybe you cant see it but government incentives drove all the stupid reckless behavior. If they couldnt make money off it and it were not encouraged by legislation and regulation, they wouldnt have done it. Banks dont just start making risky loans.

The problem is you are arguing that every loan was a CRA loan, covered, regulated and mandated by the CRA. The legislation simply does not support such an argument. And you seem to be highly unable to blame anything but the CRA.

From 2003 to late 2006, conventional loans (including jumbo loans) declined from 78.8 percent to 50.1 percent of all mortgages, while subprime and Alt-A loans increased from 10.1 percent to 32.7 percent.

Volume or dollar value? You really need to say that. It appears you are just copying the American Spectator article without actually doing any research yourself.
Which by the way I can report you for plagiarism.

Because GSEpurchases are not included in these numbers, in the years just before the collapse of home prices began, about half of all home loans being made in the United States were non-prime loans. Since these mortgages aggregate more than $2 trillion, this accounts for the weakness in bank assets that is the principal underlying cause of the current financial crisis.

The fact that the CRA was operating for thirty years suggests it was something else that caused the decline in home quality sales. that is left out of your American Spectator article. No one is arguing that home buying got real easy. But what you seem to ignore that the CRA wasn't a new thing. And that home ownership didn't get any easier in the thirty years it was operating. If one factor remains constant, doesn't that suggest it was not in fact the issue?

Personally, sounds to me like you think it was all the greedy bankers.

Then you haven't been reading my posts carefully.

It wasnt just that. It was the bankers, brokers, regulators, terrible housing policy, and paid for polticians all responsible. I still feel that the government representatives didnt pay enough and the banks should have been allowed to fail.

Actually it was more then just that. It was massive overuse of leverage in business and individuals (not mortgages) that did us in. Housing alone should not have caused a mess like this. Businesses reliant upon credit circa South Korea 1997 and a savings rate that's negative are honestly IMO the real issue.
 
I will agree that the CDSs were a huge problem. Trading on leverage is like Russian roulette, one wrong guess will kill ya. Mortgage deravitives are even worse, they are like putting 5 bullets into the gun.

My argument is that CRA relaxed lending practices as a whole. They may have only applied to a small percentage but...when its all a corporation structure, their hands are tied when it comes to applicants that are only slightly better off and would have been refused before. Plus, its crazy to give banks better and better CRA ratings by making more risky loans.

Again saying that the CRA worked for three decades without impact is misleading, in 1995 they underwent some dramatic and forceful changes to their regulatory mission and powers. Things take time to go off the rails when it comes to long term investments like mortgages. It took 7 to 8 years, I was saying in 2004-2005 that home prices are crazy inflated and took my own advice and got out. Things are ripe for a tumble anytime something just drifts off the CPI like home prices did.

Bank margin weakness and asset weakness stemmed from a cheap money policy that was excerbated by the push to more affordable housing at the same time---the homes were the assets. Thats why large scale losses impacted so heavily.

There are a large variety of causes and effects in this mess...all the more reason to let the market work them out and not have government regulating financial actuarials OR rescuing financials that make bad choices.
 
I will agree that the CDSs were a huge problem. Trading on leverage is like Russian roulette, one wrong guess will kill ya. Mortgage deravitives are even worse, they are like putting 5 bullets into the gun.

CDS are fine in themselves. CDS is just insurance. The same risky rules of insurance apply to CDSs. No insurance company should be issuing liability that surpasses its capacity to even meet a fraction of it with quick assets. AIG's London office had a really toxic sales environment where bonus were dependent upon total sales with 50% of profit going straight into the office. With a small office, it's not hard to see why people got greedy and then go stupid. It amazes me that AIG actually let this go on for so long as a division that should not have been able to cause the whole company to become a going concern became so. It's like a tiny portion of Ford's luxury brands able to cause the whole firm to go under. One really has to wonder about the leadership there. When people get uber-greedy, they get uber-stupid.

My argument is that CRA relaxed lending practices as a whole.

No one is going to argue otherwise. I just don't buy that as the primary problem as the CRA was ongoing for thirty years before the crisis. We should have seen relaxed practices earlier. That said, I do believe that non-CRA related legislation and practices such as the overarching Bush Ownership Society did contribute to the huge mess not to mention the an even BIGGER problem I didn't touch on earlier. Honestly, this whole mess is Greenspan's fault. Low interest rates fueled much of the tech bubble. When that collapsed astronomical amounts of capital went into real estate producing a massive bubble further fed with cheap rates. Add that to relaxed overall housing and commercial loans and the overuse of non-mortgage leverage, it's actually a good question why this isn't happen sooner. If we are to blame an individual, I blame Alan. :peace

They may have only applied to a small percentage but...when its all a corporation structure, their hands are tied when it comes to applicants that are only slightly better off and would have been refused before. Plus, its crazy to give banks better and better CRA ratings by making more risky loans.

Except that CRA loans were never as profitable as non-CRA loans. So even getting poor rantings doesn't mean squat to a bank. It's about the bottom line. A bank will always heavy on the profitable good mortgages.

Again saying that the CRA worked for three decades without impact is misleading, in 1995 they underwent some dramatic and forceful changes to their regulatory mission and powers.

And that was 13 years before the crisis as well. If the CRA was truly to blame, the problem should have arouse quickly after the changes.

Things take time to go off the rails when it comes to long term investments like mortgages. It took 7 to 8 years, I was saying in 2004-2005 that home prices are crazy inflated and took my own advice and got out. Things are ripe for a tumble anytime something just drifts off the CPI like home prices did.

But that also ignores a whole host of completely CRA-unrelated factors.

Bank margin weakness and asset weakness stemmed from a cheap money policy that was excerbated by the push to more affordable housing at the same time---the homes were the assets. Thats why large scale losses impacted so heavily.

Which had nothing to do with the CRA. Leverage of that amount HAD to have a correction coming on its own.
 
No one is going to argue otherwise. I just don't buy that as the primary problem as the CRA was ongoing for thirty years before the crisis

Jesus. CRA was never the same thing after the rules changes in 1995. Stop playing the false meme of 30 years of blah blah bull****. It was not the same thing AT ALL after 95.

Except that CRA loans were never as profitable as non-CRA loans. So even getting poor rantings doesn't mean squat to a bank. It's about the bottom line. A bank will always heavy on the profitable good mortgages.

Except once the CRA loans started defaulting they crapped all over market values and depressed the construction market. Which led to housing downward spiral.

Which had nothing to do with the CRA. Leverage of that amount HAD to have a correction coming on its own.
Again....ALL of the CRA loans are essentially leveraged because so many are expected to fail. They are pure write off material. They are systemic asset weakness. Asset weakness that was regulatory enforced and mandated. When you have 8% margins, eating 4% of your loans(by your own numbers) means you are in a world of hurt--because losing 4% of your loans means a hit of more than 4% of your margin.

d that was 13 years before the crisis as well. If the CRA was truly to blame, the problem should have arouse quickly after the changes.

Do I really need to dig out the number of times the Bush Administration was trying to reform Fannie and Freddie from 2002 onward? There WERE signs, you are just being too pigheaded and partisan to see them. If you were into real estate, you could see by 2003 and 2004 that market prices were approaching critical mass. I certainly could.

But that also ignores a whole host of completely CRA-unrelated factors.
Really? Why dont you back that assertion. Show me your evidence. My turn to pick apart your assertions without saying anything substantial.

PS Ill give you the Greenspan knock, you cant continually have cheap monetary policy without consequences. I agree to that to some extent.
 



video proof of demo's standing in the way of reform that may have averted this mess.

j-mac
 
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