What the right offers

bongsaway said:

Sharia law bad, christian law good. I read your stuff and ask myself, how does this person claim to be a christian?

Click to expand...

Well I've read the whole Bible twice now, with multiple other reading around the pages and I have read the Koran from front to back, first Muslims believe in the God of Abraham which of course is the same God we believe in and the bible is considerably more violent then the Koran.

Jay59 said:

I am referring to CRA, particularly after the 1995 changes in enforcement. CRA was given priority over creditworthiness. The end result was predictable, and predicted, but it worked as long as prices kept going up.

You said that there was not a single case of a bank being forced to make a loan. There is such a case. I knew the bank officer that was forced to make it. The bank would take a bigger hit by being out of compliance than it would take from a bad loan. Such decisions are not isolated. If there was one--and there was--there were probably thousands.

Click to expand...

bull**** again.

Jay59 said:

Sharia makes it legal to execute homosexuals, kill nonbelievers, and treat women as chattel. That works for bad.

Click to expand...

so does the bible. You bring nothing of any meaning here,

Jay59 said:

If you cannot accept this as proof, you made your mind up before looking at the facts.

Click to expand...

Belonging to the same hate club makes members tell the other members what they want to hear
.Small minds don't look any further then any hate that is spread, that in fact in general terms is how the republican party became the hate party

JasperL said:

Right that was CRA. And, no, it didn't start with Clinton.

Some reading if you're interested: https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/cra_past_successes_future_opportunities1.pdf

FWIW, virtually no applications were denied. Literally only dozens of 100,000+ were denied. And it's because getting a passing CRA grade wasn't that difficult - as I said a nuisance mostly - and even those banks with bad records almost never had their applications denied.

The CRA obligated banks buying up other banks or wanting to open up new branches to make loans in formerly redlined areas. The idea was if you had a branch in a poor area, you couldn't strip the capital out to make loans to multinationals in NYC. What the law did NOT do was force them to make bad loans, which is what the default data show.



I just don't have any patience for arguments that start and end with CLINTON!!! and pretend the Bush II years didn't happen. Were Bush, his hand picked regulators and the GOP too damn stupid or lazy to change those rules, the same way CLINTON!!! did? If not, why do you pretend that whatever Clinton did was carved in granite? The bubble blew up on Bush II's watch, and it's amazing how Bush had nothing to do with anything, and it was all Clinton's fault... :roll:

From the link above:



Bottom line is the subprime LOAN market didn't cause any crisis. What did was the "secondary and tertiary financial products" which I've best seen described as highly leveraged bets on bets on bets on bets. The mortgage was just one of those bets, so you might have a $100k subprime loan that when it defaulted brought down $1 million or more in losses.

It's why when all this started, lots of almost smart people who didn't understand this were saying, "Hey, worst case, 20-30% of this $2 trillion in subprime (that was the total of all outstanding subprime loans in 2008) goes poof, and that's really bad, but the system can EASILY handle that!" And they were right, but not when you take that loss and multiply it by 10 or 20 or 40 which was what was actually riding on those mortgages because of hundreds of $TRILLIONS in derivatives, all of them completely unregulated. Total CDS was about $60 trillion at the peak - with a T - or 30 times the entire subprime LOAN market. And that was just one type of those 'bets on bets.'

Click to expand...

Most of this is irrelevant and some outright wrong. For example, I said Carter not Clinton. Things accelerated under Clinton executive orders, but the law was long in place by then.

You go on at length about derivatives, but all they did was put lipstick on the pig. It was still the bad loans. However, you do make a valid point. Banks paid dearly for the appearance of diversity that a CDS brought. Insolvent banks stayed open far too long and that's on the Bush Treasury Department.

Bullseye said:

The CRA dates back to the Carter Administration, Clinton just weaponized it.

Click to expand...

How exactly? Can you cite the law change? Was Bush incompetent or just stupid?

Saw it years ago.

Click to expand...

Then why are you telling me things the Fed's study says isn't true?

Of course not, banks were pressured to pad the EO stats and lenders saw a good thing and jumped on it.

Click to expand...

So, you're saying making loans in CRA areas was a money maker, and the government didn't need to incentivize lending during the bubble years? OK, I agree 100% so why were CRA requirements a cause of the crisis, if unregulated lenders not subject to CRA made far worse loans to worse credit risks and made piles of money doing it?

Yep, that's my point - loans with few if any criteria.

Click to expand...

But you made that up. You can't point to that in the Fed study, for example.

LOL, so, you advocate partisanship over facts. Wasn't a republican who saw the coming problems and said "I want to roll the dice a little longer" was it. Without Clinton bulking up the CRA to boost his affordable housing cred things wouldn't have gotten out of hand.

Click to expand...

Explain to me why Bush was unable to change the Clinton rules. How does that work? Clinton could jam through these things with a GOP House and Senate for the last six years of his presidency, and Bush with a GOP Congress was helpless? How did that happen?

BTW, see my edit to that post. CRA loans didn't cause any crisis in any event, because subprime LOANS of any sort (not that CRA is subprime - often it wasn't in any sense) weren't the actual problem - it was derivatives that caused the crisis, and those were unregulated.

JasperL said:

Right that was CRA. And, no, it didn't start with Clinton.

Some reading if you're interested: https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/cra_past_successes_future_opportunities1.pdf

FWIW, virtually no applications were denied. Literally only dozens of 100,000+ were denied. And it's because getting a passing CRA grade wasn't that difficult - as I said a nuisance mostly - and even those banks with bad records almost never had their applications denied.

The CRA obligated banks buying up other banks or wanting to open up new branches to make loans in formerly redlined areas. The idea was if you had a branch in a poor area, you couldn't strip the capital out to make loans to multinationals in NYC. What the law did NOT do was force them to make bad loans, which is what the default data show.



I just don't have any patience for arguments that start and end with CLINTON!!! and pretend the Bush II years didn't happen. Were Bush, his hand picked regulators and the GOP too damn stupid or lazy to change those rules, the same way CLINTON!!! did? If not, why do you pretend that whatever Clinton did was carved in granite? The bubble blew up on Bush II's watch, and it's amazing how Bush had nothing to do with anything, and it was all Clinton's fault... :roll:

From the link above:



Bottom line is the subprime LOAN market didn't cause any crisis. What did was the "secondary and tertiary financial products" which I've best seen described as highly leveraged bets on bets on bets on bets. The mortgage was just one of those bets, so you might have a $100k subprime loan that when it defaulted brought down $1 million or more in losses.

It's why when all this started, lots of almost smart people who didn't understand this were saying, "Hey, worst case, 20-30% of this $2 trillion in subprime (that was the total of all outstanding subprime loans in 2008) goes poof, and that's really bad, but the system can EASILY handle that!" And they were right, but not when you take that loss and multiply it by 10 or 20 or 40 which was what was actually riding on those mortgages because of hundreds of $TRILLIONS in derivatives, all of them completely unregulated. Total CDS was about $60 trillion at the peak - with a T - or 30 times the entire subprime LOAN market. And that was just one type of those 'bets on bets.'

Click to expand...

Banks could except anyone if they wanted to because the mortgage raters would always give top rating even if there was a bunch of bad loans in the bundle. The banks had nothing to lose because they simply sold of the bundles , they got their money and ran, the problem was that some of the banks saw the gold writing credit default swaps and jumped into it with both feet and got hammered.47 trillion dollars worth of mortgages in credit default swaps. Yup that's a T. These right wing haters here Know absolutely nothing about this and of course they will never know the facts because no one can tell them anything, They have Fox crap news and Rush and it stops right there.

jbander said:

Belonging to the same hate club makes members tell the other members what they want to hear. Small minds don't look any further then any hate that is spread, that in fact in general terms is how the republican party became the hate party

Click to expand...

Jay59 said:

Most of this is irrelevant and some outright wrong. For example, I said Carter not Clinton. Things accelerated under Clinton executive orders, but the law was long in place by then.

Click to expand...

I wasn't replying to you, and the person I WAS replying to only mentioned Clinton, Clinton, Clinton. Did the 2001-2009 Bush years disappear without me knowing it into a black hole?

You go on at length about derivatives, but all they did was put lipstick on the pig. It was still the bad loans. However, you do make a valid point. Banks paid dearly for the appearance of diversity that a CDS brought. Insolvent banks stayed open far too long and that's on the Bush Treasury Department.

Click to expand...

Yeah, OK, the study published by the FRB of SF says differently, but I'll go with the guy who has a friend who worked at a bank.

Every president from Hoover on tried to make it easier for people to buy a home even Bush the baby killer did It was called American Dream Downpayment Act of 2003

Trump said:

GOP defends LABOR....

Click to expand...

Where does it say this other than in your own mind?

Trump said:

GOP defends LABOR....

Click to expand...

Trump:

So birth is not a human right? Can I put you down as an abortion rights advocate then?

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

A quote from Bush the baby killer "we want everybody in America to own their own home. That's what we want. " We can put light where there's darkness, and hope where there's despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home."
- President George W. Bush, Oct. 15, 2002"

"Concerned that down payments were a barrier, Bush persuaded Congress to spend as much as $200 million a year to help first-time buyers with down payments and closing costs.

And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for government insured mortgages with no money down. Republican congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view.

The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. "Corporate America," he said, "has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place."

And corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered in ways Bush might not have expected, with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment. But Bush populated the financial system's alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more." This is from International business Bush drive for home ownership fueled housing bubble - The New York Times
So all you Rednecks that said The democrats are to blame for the meltdown are wrong wrong wrong.

Jesse Booth said:

Same. I bought into their bull**** for entirely too long, but the research I've been doing the last year or so has helped break me completely away from right-wing talking points.

Click to expand...

I had similar epiphanies back in the 80s, during Reagan. I researched it, and as it turned out, in many categories, Dems actually do better for America than repubs in the whitehouse. Presidential Data 2016 is where much of the data is now.

jbander said:

Every president from Hoover on tried to make it easier for people to buy a home even Bush the baby killer did It was called American Dream Downpayment Act of 2003

Click to expand...

Good point. Here's the speech BTW: Remarks by the President on Homeownership - HUD

The same guy who supposedly tried to crack down on Fannie and Freddie pressured them to make $440 billion more on low income loans...

And while we're talking about the Forgotten Administration that just happened to be in charge during the peak bubble years but whose name we cannot mention, might as well mention that Bush pre-empted efforts by states to crack down on subprime lending - nullified their laws in effect.

States warned about mortgage crisis - Business - US business - Bloomberg Businessweek | NBC News

A number of factors contributed to the mortgage disaster and credit crunch. Interest rate cuts and unprecedented foreign capital infusions fueled thoughtless lending on Main Street and arrogant gambling on Wall Street. The trading of esoteric derivatives amplified risks it was supposed to mute.

One cause, though, has been largely overlooked: the stifling of prescient state enforcers and legislators who tried to contain the greed and foolishness. They were thwarted in many cases by Washington officials hostile to regulation and a financial industry adept at exploiting this ideology.

The Bush Administration and many banks clung to what is known as "preemption." It is a legal doctrine that can be invoked in court and at the rulemaking table to assert that, when federal and state authority over business conflict, the feds prevail — even if it means little or no regulation.

Click to expand...

The Supreme Court overruled Bush's efforts, but it was too late:

Supreme Court Strikes Down Bush-Era Preemption Rule -- But Decision is Too Late To Impact Subprime Mortgage Mess | Constitutional Accountability Center

Although the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling today in Cuomo v. Clearing House Association won’t garner anywhere near the attention being given to the Court’s other 5-4 decision today, Ricci v. DeStefano, the ruling in Clearing House is an important one that will help states protect their citizens through enforcement of fair lending laws. The ruling is also the death knell for one of the remaining vestiges of the Bush Administration’s aggressive pro-preemption campaign that protected corporate interests at the expense of both our federalist system and everyday Americans.

As we’ve previously discussed here, at issue in Clearing House was the validity of a regulation adopted by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) under President George W. Bush that preempted state efforts to enforce fair lending laws against branches of national banks. The regulation prevented states from enforcing their own laws against predatory lending and discriminatory credit practices – including the types of practices that directly resulted in last year’s subprime mortgage crisis — and was part of an aggressive effort by the Bush Administration to use federal preemption to trump important state laws that protect consumers, the environment, and public health and safety

Click to expand...

JasperL said:

I wasn't replying to you, and the person I WAS replying to only mentioned Clinton, Clinton, Clinton. Did the 2001-2009 Bush years disappear without me knowing it into a black hole?

Yeah, OK, the study published by the FRB of SF says differently, but I'll go with the guy who has a friend who worked at a bank.

Click to expand...

What happened was Clinton. We covered that.

The report does not say otherwise. I can see how you want to read it that way. Some people want to read the Mueller report as proving obstruction. They aren't right either.

jbander said:

You can look at any distribution of wealth chart and it all says the same thing , from the day he got his plan through , the trickle down lie made it all go to the top, and that has been the case for 40 years now, massive increases in wealth all going to the chosen few.
View attachment 67260448

this chart shows exactly what the right represents and who's boots they are kissing

Click to expand...

Another historic fact, when republicans get in the white house, spending goes up and taxes on the wealthy and corporate america go down. And yet election after election they label the dems as spend and tax advocates when in reality it's the republicans helping to keep the top ten percent, the top ten percent. After forty years you would think some on the right would wake up to reality. Their hatred of liberals and socialism blinds them and keeps them voting against their own best interests.

Jay59 said:

What happened was Clinton. We covered that.

The report does not say otherwise. I can see how you want to read it that way. Some people want to read the Mueller report as proving obstruction. They aren't right either.

Click to expand...

Here's another source:

https://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-testimony/2010-0630-Greenberger.pdf

From the conclusion at page 21:

The darkness of this huge multi-trillion dollar unregulated [CDS] market not only caused, but
substantially aggravated, the financial crisis

Click to expand...

https://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-testimony/2010-0630-Masters.pdf

Conclusion
Many factors contributed to the rapid deterioration in credit markets and large
losses on Wall Street during 2008. One single factor, however, threatened to
bring down the financial system as a whole: the massive interlocking web of
over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives exposures amongst the biggest Wall Street
swaps dealers. Many financial institutions might have gone bankrupt or suffered
severe losses, but the system as a whole would not have been imperiled were it
not for these completely unregulated dark markets.

Click to expand...

Etc. I could do this all day but you get the point. So far, your argument is baseless. Do you have any cites, any data?

JasperL said:

How exactly? Can you cite the law change? Was Bush incompetent or just stupid?

Click to expand...

You do understand that this wasn't just a President to President issue, right? Congress was deeply involved. I'm not going to waste my time trying to dredge up twenty year old laws.

JasperL said:

Then why are you telling me things the Fed's study says isn't true?

Click to expand...

The Fed study stuck purely to CRA loans. I'm telling you they served as an example for other leaners to get into the game.

JasperL said:

So, you're saying making loans in CRA areas was a money maker, and the government didn't need to incentivize lending during the bubble years? OK, I agree 100% so why were CRA requirements a cause of the crisis, if unregulated lenders not subject to CRA made far worse loans to worse credit risks and made piles of money doing it?

Click to expand...

Again CRA as weaponized by Clinton coerced lenders to make risky loans as well as encouraged other lenders to get into the "creative loan" game.

JasperL said:

you made that up. You can't point to that in the Fed study, for example.

Click to expand...

What part of the Fed study NOT being the entire story do you have problems understanding

JasperL said:

Explain to me why Bush was unable to change the Clinton rules. How does that work? Clinton could jam through these things with a GOP House and Senate for the last six years of his presidency, and Bush with a GOP Congress was helpless? How did that happen?

Click to expand...

Politics. Congress writes the laws and Chris Dodd and Barney Frank didn't want to play along.

JasperL said:

BTW, see my edit to that post. CRA loans didn't cause any crisis in any event, because subprime LOANS of any sort (not that CRA is subprime - often it wasn't in any sense) weren't the actual problem - it was derivatives that caused the crisis, and those were unregulated.

Click to expand...

Actually, the mortgage market collapse caused the crash - derivatives crashed because the mortgages backing them crashed, not the other way around

JasperL said:

Here's another source: https://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-testimony/2010-0630-Greenberger.pdf

From the conclusion at page 21: https://fcic-static.law.stanford.edu/cdn_media/fcic-testimony/2010-0630-Masters.pdf Etc. I could do this all day but you get the point. So far, your argument is baseless. Do you have any cites, any data?

Click to expand...

We have basically covered this. As long as the prices kept going up, things worked. It was when banks started to use the derivatives to conceal weakness that things started getting ugly. Your quote says that the whole system was imperiled, which is not an established point. In typical academic fashion, the article sells the lack of regulation as a primary factor. It was the lack of transparency and of the regulator's not following things through. This was the area Republicans fell down, because it was their job at the time.

Regardless, derivatives only muddied water. The actual defaulting loans were the problem. To the extent that derivatives tied multiple financial institutions together, the articles term is interlocking, multiple financial institutions were taking hits from the same defaults. It was still the defaults that were the problem. It isn't hard to understand so don't overthink it.

Jay59 said:

We have basically covered this. As long as the prices kept going up, things worked. It was when banks started to use the derivatives to conceal weakness that things started getting ugly. Your quote says that the whole system was imperiled, which is not an established point. In typical academic fashion, the article sells the lack of regulation as a primary factor. It was the lack of transparency and of the regulator's not following things through. This was the area Republicans fell down, because it was their job at the time.

Regardless, derivatives only muddied water. The actual defaulting loans were the problem. To the extent that derivatives tied multiple financial institutions together, the articles term is interlocking, multiple financial institutions were taking hits from the same defaults. It was still the defaults that were the problem. It isn't hard to understand so don't overthink it.

Click to expand...

You know i don't believe a.prudent banker would have made these loans with his money.

But for wall street they needed the mortgages to create these fraudulent securities. when they allowed the investment banks into the mortgage market and deregulated the derivative trade it only took 5 years to blow up the entire worlds financial system.

There is a clue here.

Bullseye said:

You do understand that this wasn't just a President to President issue, right? Congress was deeply involved. I'm not going to waste my time trying to dredge up twenty year old laws.

Click to expand...

The only law impacting CRA during the Clinton years was the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking Act. In the Senate the vote was 94-4, with all Republicans voting in favor. That gave the banks what they'd fought for over a decade or more, which was federally authorized interstate banking. Wall Street approved, everyone did. The other big changes came in 1995 and were regulatory changes.

And the GOP held the House and Senate for almost the entire period of January 1995 through January 2007.

The Fed study stuck purely to CRA loans. I'm telling you they served as an example for other leaners to get into the game.

Click to expand...

So, CRA showed non-regulated banks that standard lending to formerly redlined areas was profitable. I'd think that's a good thing!

And you blame CRA for the crisis caused a decade later when it wasn't conforming loans that were the problem, but unregulated garbage and exploitative loans. Makes total sense.

Again CRA as weaponized by Clinton coerced lenders to make risky loans as well as encouraged other lenders to get into the "creative loan" game.

Click to expand...

CRA loans weren't "creative" loans if by that you mean the unregulated subprime garbage. And you keep saying "weaponized" but I don't know what that means. CRA was on the books for a long time pre-Clinton and it's still on the books. Why is this weaponized CRA not bringing the banks down now? Why no push by the banks or Bush regulators or the GOP Congress during the Bush II years to repeal the "weaponized" provisions? If you're going to blame CRA for the crisis, these should be simple questions.

What part of the Fed study NOT being the entire story do you have problems understanding

Click to expand...

You said the regulated banks made CRA-qualifying loans with "few if any criteria." I'm asking you to back that up with....anything.

Politics. Congress writes the laws and Chris Dodd and Barney Frank didn't want to play along.

Click to expand...

They were both in the minority in Congress. Frank was in the House and didn't have any power from 1995 through 2007. So how does a Democrat in the minority thwart the will of the President and the GOP Congress? Bush could also have used the same regulatory power Clinton used in 1995 to change CRA regulations to change them back or differently and he did not. Bush for his part had his own "affordable housing" initiatives - big ones actually.

It's fascinating that no republican plays any role in this narrative. And all they had when the bubble blew up was ALL THE POWER.

Actually, the mortgage market collapse caused the crash - derivatives crashed because the mortgages backing them crashed, not the other way around

Click to expand...

That wasn't the point. The derivatives fueled the bubble and were the actual problem when the mortgage crisis hit. As I said, the total in subprime LOANS outstanding was only $2 trillion, but there was over $60 trillion in bets on bets on bets on bets on those mortgages through CDS contracts. So the CDS exposure of the market was 30 times that of the entire subprime loans, and CDS was just one way to gamble on the debt market. The lenders holding the subprime paper could have written every loan to zero and it would have been a huge loss, but wouldn't have threatened the financial system because that debt was widely dispersed, lots of it in 401(k) plans, IRAs, mutual funds, etc.

Jay59 said:

We have basically covered this.

Click to expand...

You said derivatives just put lipstick on a pig. The problem with your narrative (it's false of course) is that the "lipstick" in the crisis was at least 100 times bigger than that fat hog. Total subprime outstanding at the peak was $2 trillion. CDS alone outstanding totaled about $60 trillion - 30 times bigger. You've got your analogy exactly 180 degrees flipped. The underlying mortgage was just a vehicle for bets on that mortgage that totaled maybe 50-100 times that mortgage.

As long as the prices kept going up, things worked. It was when banks started to use the derivatives to conceal weakness that things started getting ugly. Your quote says that the whole system was imperiled, which is not an established point.

Click to expand...

They didn't use derivatives to 'conceal weakness' but to make massive, leveraged bets. And of course the 'system' was imperiled. We who lived through it watched it in real time.

In typical academic fashion, the article sells the lack of regulation as a primary factor. It was the lack of transparency and of the regulator's not following things through. This was the area Republicans fell down, because it was their job at the time.

Click to expand...

So it wasn't a lack of regulation, but just a lack of regulation! Excellent point. There was no transparency because the products were not regulated, and the regulators not following through is the definition of lack of regulation. When the states tried to rein in subprime, the Bush administration used Federal pre-emption to bring the banks under federal regulators, who didn't regulate.

Regardless, derivatives only muddied water. The actual defaulting loans were the problem. To the extent that derivatives tied multiple financial institutions together, the articles term is interlocking, multiple financial institutions were taking hits from the same defaults. It was still the defaults that were the problem. It isn't hard to understand so don't overthink it.

Click to expand...

What I'm asking for is authority/evidence for any of your claims. I've done my part, which you reject with arguments like, "lack of regulation!? So stupid - it was the lack of regulation!!"

JasperL said:

You said derivatives just put lipstick on a pig. The problem with your narrative (it's false of course) is that the "lipstick" in the crisis was at least 100 times bigger than that fat hog. Total subprime outstanding at the peak was $2 trillion. CDS alone outstanding totaled about $60 trillion - 30 times bigger. You've got your analogy exactly 180 degrees flipped. The underlying mortgage was just a vehicle for bets on that mortgage that totaled maybe 50-100 times that mortgage. They didn't use derivatives to 'conceal weakness' but to make massive, leveraged bets. And of course the 'system' was imperiled. We who lived through it watched it in real time. So it wasn't a lack of regulation, but just a lack of regulation! Excellent point. There was no transparency because the products were not regulated, and the regulators not following through is the definition of lack of regulation. When the states tried to rein in subprime, the Bush administration used Federal pre-emption to bring the banks under federal regulators, who didn't regulate. What I'm asking for is authority/evidence for any of your claims. I've done my part, which you reject with arguments like, "lack of regulation!? So stupid - it was the lack of regulation!!"

Click to expand...

I never said lack of regulations. I said failure to regulate. The regulations were there, but not followed. Bank examiners should have started reserve stress proceedings, but were often too late or never at all. The subprime intervention figures into that, so why are you arguing?

If you will not accept that CRA and other assistance programs were a central part of creating the stress, we should stop talking. That's a bottom line principle in all this. Add the 1994-1995 enforcement guidelines and failure to monitor the creeping damage to reserves and a bubble formed. It did what bubbles do.