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Author Topic:   The new war of Independence
Node
Knowflake

Posts: 1385
From: 1,981 mi East of Truth or Consequences NM
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 04, 2011 10:32 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for Node     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
against corporate politics.


Good reads for the interested:

with one of my favorite Jefferson quotes "I hope [that] we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already
to challenge our government to a trial by strength and [to] bid defiance to the laws of our country."

excerpt from the essay:
We resisted Britain's state-sanctioned monopolies in 1776. Today's government-sanctioned corporations hang out on Wall Street, not by the chartered Thames. The spirit of the East India Company lives in the five banks which now control nearly 96% of the derivatives market in this country. Our financial oligarchs receive Treasury Department money, Federal Reserve giveaways, and get-out-of-jail-free cards for a corporate crime wave that would make Al Capone blush.

Some of our ancestors came to this country as slaves or indentured servants. The slaves were freed in body but their descendants' economic freedom is not yet fully won. Unemployment's much worse for African Americans. Infant mortality rates are 2.5 times higher than they are for whites and life expectancy is years shorter. Indentured servitude's making a comeback, too. In colonial days people signed away years of freedom for the "loan" of ship's passage to America, where they were sold to bidders for a period of bondage. If only Wall Street had existed then! Imagine the money Goldman Sachs could have made on selling "IBS's" -- "indenture-backed securities."

And then shorting them, of course.

And Frank Rich in NY magazine on Obama's Original Sin:


What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”


These are things we political junkies know. But in the hands of good writers, it makes for a good story too. And that's how the people will come to understand it.

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 3773
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 04, 2011 11:38 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Remind me!

Where is the defiance to the laws of our country leftists claim resides in corporations?

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katatonic
Knowflake

Posts: 6638
From:
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posted July 05, 2011 12:50 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
that was jefferson jwhop, not a leftist. unless you think he was a dirty druggie diaper-baby too?

i believe the original war of independence had a little to do with corporate scamming of the "people" too. and the east india company is STILL among us.

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 3773
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 05, 2011 10:52 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
There is an anti-Capitalist Marxist roar running through all the anti-corporate screeds, wheezes and whines put forth by those with their heads up their a$ses...like Frank Rich.

Banks and trading houses DID NOT kick off the trouble in the economy or the trouble in the financial markets Rich whines about.

Indeed, Socialists don't ever want to talk about the underlying culprits which were creations of demoscat congresses, protected by demoscat congresses and staffed at the top by demoscats as a payoff for work on behalf of demoscats.

Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelich and Tim Johnson, demoscats....installed at the top echelons of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed Enron like crimes in accounting at those congressional creations to boost their bonuses. They looted about $150,000,000 from those institutions in a matter of years...while dishing out campaign contributions to demoscat reelection campaigns and demoscat groups.

The screeching and howling from demoscats could be heard on Mars when Bush attempted...3 times..to rein in excesses at Fannie and Freddie.

Prominent demoscats howling, screeching and whining were Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Maxine Waters and a host of other demoscats in full shriek mode. Leave our gravy train alone!

Raines, Gorelich and Johnson wound up as advisers on the O'Bomber campaign staff...instead of stripped suits at a federal prison. What a joke. The 3 principle culprits for the Fannie and Freddie debacle were working for the zero O'Bomber...who was the number 2 recipient of campaign contributions from these congressionally created demoscat gravy trains. Chris Dodd was number 1.

In the end, Fannie and Freddie had American taxpayers on the hook for about 2.5 TRILLION dollars in sub-prime mortgage obligations. Mortgages made to people without the ability to repay the loans. When residential real estate prices stopped going up, these sub-prime borrowers couldn't borrow money to make their mortgage payments and the whole damned real estate market collapsed.

But, let's be very clear who was at the base of the collapse. Banks had their arms twisted up behind their backs to make sub-prime loans to borrowers by demoscat congressional members who threatened them AND by Janet Reno at the Justice Dept who threatened banks with investigations under the "Community Redevelopment Act" instituted by and signed into law by...Jimmy The Teeth Carter. demoscats one and all.

Derivatives trading...both issuing and buying should be illegal...but, it's not illegal under American Law.

But take a guess! Who is the prime culprit, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank worked on...and helped write the equations to establish the values of derivatives for real estate instruments.

If you guessed Timothy The Income Tax Evader Geithner, current Secretary of the Treasury in the brain dead O'Bomber administration...give yourself a red star on your forehead.

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katatonic
Knowflake

Posts: 6638
From:
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posted July 05, 2011 01:07 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.” ~ George Washington

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AcousticGod
Knowflake

Posts: 5462
From: Pleasanton, CA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 06, 2011 02:23 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
quote:
Banks and trading houses DID NOT kick off the trouble in the economy or the trouble in the financial markets Rich whines about.

False. They did indeed. Any contrary notion is absurd.

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 3773
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 07, 2011 10:50 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Memo to leftist mush-brains.

Here's a word for you!

TARP

"Banks and trading houses DID NOT kick off the trouble in the economy or the trouble in the financial markets Rich whines about."

"False. They did indeed. Any contrary notion is absurd."..acoustic

TARP, an acronym for..."Troubled Asset Relief Program".

TARP was passed to deal with foreclosures and sub-prime loans in default which were being carried on the books of financial institutions.

The federal government had already taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on September 6th...putting American taxpayers on the hook for about 2.5 Trillion dollars in mortgage loans...many or most of them sub-prime loans.

TARP was the feds answer to relieving lending institutions of their so called "troubled assets"...sub-prime loans in default caused by demoscat insistence banks and other lenders make mortgage loans to people who could not make their mortgage payments. TARP was signed into law on October 3, 2008.

Banks and other lenders have always had an income to monthly debt ratio of about 38-40% above which they would not make a loan to borrowers on residential mortgages.

demoscats...by intimidation and other tactics forced mortgage lenders to scrap those ratios and make sub-prime loans...many with no money down and loans above the contract price of the real estate contract...100%+ financing...and many with no proof of income..no doc mortgage loans.

This collapse of the economy was triggered by the collapse of the real estate market which was engineered by demoscats.

Gee, it's really not been all that long ago that TARP was a thoroughly covered topic on this forum...but then, some are so very forgetful.

Leftists would like everyone to believe Capitalism failed. But the reality is that government interference in the private economy..Socialism....failed and collapsed the US economy.

"False. They did indeed. Any contrary notion is absurd."..acoustic

This statement is false and can't come close to passing the smell test.

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jwhop
Knowflake

Posts: 3773
From: Madeira Beach, FL USA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 08, 2011 07:41 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for jwhop     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Buy leftists books and send them to school and...rather than learning anything, they tear pages out of the books and make spitballs.

More on the collapse of the economy
September 28, 2008
"How did Bush cause the economy collapse? It takes years to bring about something like that. Wall Street didn't force it either.
Hidden Clinton "Success Story": Fannie Mae subprime loans for minorities"
by Kurt Schulzke

Today's subprime mortgage meltdown began with a lofty, deliberate, fuzzy-headed effort by the Clinton administration to turn more latinos and blacks into homeowners, or so it appears from 1999 news reports - buttressed by hard data from a 2007 study of subprime lending. Yesterday's soft and cuddly government program is today's financial chainsaw massacre. Far from an illustration of free-market dysfunction, today's mortgage mess is a classic case of socialistic governmental intervention gone awry. Take, for example, the May 31, 1999 LA Times article* by Ronald Brownstein, excerpted below. In it, the author touts the proliferation of low-end mortgages as a signal accomplishment of Clinton's time in office: It's one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era. In the great housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded. The number of African Americans owning their own home is now increasing nearly three times as fast as the number of whites; the number of Latino homeowners is growing nearly five times as fast as that of whites. These numbers are dramatic enough to deserve more detail. When President Clinton took office in 1993, 42% of African Americans and 39% of Latinos owned their own home. By this spring, those figures had jumped to 46.9% of blacks and 46.2% of Latinos. . . . Since 1994, when the numbers really took off, the number of black and Latino homeowners has increased by 2 million. In all, the minority homeownership rate is on track to increase more in the 1990s than in any decade this century except the 1940s . . . What explains the surge? The answer starts with the economy. . . But the economy isn't the whole story. As HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo says: "There have been points in the past when the economy has done well but minority homeownership has not increased proportionally." . . . All of this suggests that Clinton's efforts to increase minority access to loans and capital also have spurred this decade's gains. Under Clinton, bank regulators have breathed the first real life into enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, a 20-year-old statute meant to combat "redlining" by requiring banks to serve their low-income communities. The administration also has sent a clear message by stiffening enforcement of the fair housing and fair lending laws. The bottom line: Between 1993 and 1997, home loans grew by 72% to blacks and by 45% to Latinos, far faster than the total growth rate. Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more. Note: These "securities" are instruments like the CDOs and CDSs that led directly to the collapse of AIG and other large finance institutions. In 1992, Congress mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains. It has aimed extensive advertising campaigns at minorities that explain how to buy a home and opened three dozen local offices to encourage lenders to serve these markets. Most importantly, Fannie Mae has agreed to buy more loans with very low down payments-or with mortgage payments that represent an unusually high percentage of a buyer's income. That's made banks willing to lend to lower-income families they once might have rejected. . . But with discrimination in the banking system not yet eradicated, maintaining the momentum of the 1990s will also require a continuing nudge from Washington. One key is to defend the Community Reinvestment Act, which the Senate shortsightedly voted to retrench recently. Clinton has threatened a veto if the House concurs. The top priority may be to ask more of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies are now required to devote 42% of their portfolios to loans for low- and moderate-income borrowers; HUD, which has the authority to set the targets, is poised to propose an increase this summer. Although Fannie Mae actually has exceeded its target since 1994, it is resisting any hike. It argues that a higher target would only produce more loan defaults by pressuring banks to accept unsafe borrowers. HUD says Fannie Mae is resisting more low-income loans because they are less profitable. Barry Zigas, who heads Fannie Mae's low-income efforts, is undoubtedly correct when he argues, "There is obviously a limit beyond which can't push {the banks} to produce." But with the housing market still sizzling, minority unemployment down and Fannie Mae enjoying record profits (over $3.4 billion last year), it doesn't appear that the limit has been reached. All signs point toward a high-velocity collision this summer between two strong-willed protagonists: HUD's Cuomo and Fannie Mae CEO Franklin D. Raines, the first African American to hold the post. Better they reach a reasonable agreement that provides more fuel for the extraordinary boom transforming millions of minority families from renters into owners. To get a graphical perspective of the problem, take a close look at the picture below (excerpted from p. 21 of the 2007 study referenced at the top of this blog entry) showing loans made in 2005 by one subprime lender in New York City. Red dots represent subprime loans made. Cross hatching shows a part of the city populated 50% by blacks and latinos. The correlation is pretty hard to miss. Subprime loans 2005 Yes, this is just one lender and one city. But the study indicates that the pattern is replicated across the country. I absolutely believe that banks should make loans to the individuals they most trust to repay them. Those loans should be made on the basis of purely business considerations without regard to skin color or national origin. That would be the morally and economically wise thing to do. What the Clinton administration did, in forcing loans into these communities, was an economic crime. It was immoral and stupid but it offered short term political advantage by helping Clinton sneak into his second term in office. I suspect today's Congress will be equally immoral in crafting yet another government solution to this government-originated economic nightmare. I can only imagine how much worse things will be, ten years from now, if we have another eight years of Clintonian socialism (or worse) in the White House. *The article, "Minorities' Home Ownership Booms Under Clinton but Still Lags Whites'," appeared on page 5 of the LA Times Home Edition.
http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-97302

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katatonic
Knowflake

Posts: 6638
From:
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posted July 08, 2011 10:58 AM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
so is the majority of home loss based in those communities? not really up on that, but i think it is spread across the board. SO many people bought HIGH when had they waited, as even a fool like i could see, the price would have come down eventually anyway. nothing goes up forever without any corrections, not even real estate.

and wasn't that a REPUBLICAN congress that helped clinton make this happen? since you always blame the democrats under bush for all his failures?

it just so happens that a lot of blacks and hispanics work their butts off - often two or three pissy jobs to take the place of one white-collar one - and many have KEPT their homes...as far as i know

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AcousticGod
Knowflake

Posts: 5462
From: Pleasanton, CA
Registered: Apr 2009

posted July 08, 2011 12:07 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for AcousticGod     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Jwhop, anyone doing a small modicum of research on the topic will find you mostly off base. The institutions providing the bulk of subprime loans were not regulated by the Federal government. That's the truth of where this surplus of subprime loan-making comes from. Blaming it on the Community Investment Act, which didn't and COULDN'T require these subprime loans by banks not under Federal perview, is nonsense. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weren't the only trade houses flush with these bad securities either.

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katatonic
Knowflake

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posted July 08, 2011 04:13 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for katatonic     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
it was as much due to the overuse of refinancing to get cash out of one's home as people taking on mortgages they couldn't afford...rather than paying down their mortgages and living on their earnings, even high earners were refinancing as if those loans were credit cards. this is what is tying up the funds of a lot of still-high earning people.

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