And while we're at it, check out Planet Money blog (and podcast), it's from the same guys, and probably some of the best ongoing reporting on the crisis.electricpirate said:
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PoliGAF 2nd Pres. Debate 2008 Thread (DOW dropping, Biden is off to Home Depot)
- Thread starter Amir0x
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The Lamonster
Member
Well said. I will be feeling good if the polls look like this next Monday or even on Friday!GhaleonEB said:
Beer Monkey
Member
TheKingsCrown said:
The country has lots to lose.
This bogeyman horseshit is going to further divide our country at a time when polarization is a big contributor to our general disfunction.
Remember the concerns that Hilary could destroy the Democratic Party if she pursued a split convention?
We're getting into the same territory but the collective mental health of our country is at stake this time.
It's one thing for us to not agree on the issues. It's another to spread divisiveness based on fear and hate. This bullshit about palling around with terrorists and "who is this guy anyway" is just playing up irrational fear based on prejudices. These fuckers are seriously trying to turn back the clock.
It's more important than ever that Obama win.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Krowley said:
THIS IS SOME BULLSHIT!!!!!
Stop blaming blacks and latinos.
Fox318 said:
Even if she did, she wouldn't have any issue getting elected to another term as governor and then going to either our only house seat or getting one of the senate seats. She still is extremely popular here in Alaska, but mostly because the guy before really FUCKED things up :lol
The Lamonster said:
I'm feeling pretty good tonight. I've heard several people on TV tonight say that we, the American voting public, will still be talking about the economy as our #1 issue through October and well into November.
John McCain is a barely-alive goldfish swimming upstream in a toilet that is in the process of flushing. He can struggle and strain and jump all he wants against the current - but as long as the economy forces itself to the forefront of voters' minds, he's still going down the crapper.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Hitokage said:
No shit. I mean damn why would they keep crapping on us year after year? We make up 12% of the population. And most of us didn't have sub-prime loans. So you're probably looking at 1% of the population that cause a multi-hundred billion dollar financial crisis?
Who does the REPs think they are tricking?
They should start adding the disclaimer that it isn't their fault that they couldn't understand the evil libruls schemes to destroy america, that they are genetically predisposed to be taken advantage of, and that the republicans will protect them from the liberal bogeyman.Hitokage said:
Remember "we don't want latinos to turn into the next black community"? That will get them to vote against their interests!
endearing no.
Idiot mob of Palin supporters harass reporters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/06/AR2008100602935.html
ugh
good job, you fuckin' douchebag. keep getting these morons more and more angry
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/06/AR2008100602935.html
ugh
good job, you fuckin' douchebag. keep getting these morons more and more angry
electricpirate
Member
Some other thoughts for RiskyCris
This is more than just the mortgage meltdown. The mortgage meltdown is contained at around maybe 50 billion in losses, and people are losing their homes. That's pretty terrible, but it's not, "HOLY SHIT OUR ECONOMY IS FAILING" terrible. That portion is where these fringe economists, and a few lawmakers (When did ron paul get stupid?) are trying to place the blame. As per the article I posted, even blaming the CRA and acorn is pretty dicey, and the "Giant Pool of Money" TAL does a better job of explaing what's going on.
The second part is the securitization, and turning these mortgages into CDO's. In doing so, they fooled the rating agencies, and sold garbage as AAA investments. This increased the colateral damage, and sent a few companies bankrupt. It has also really hit things like pension plans that were heavily invested in bond markets.
The third part is the massive over leveraging of these companies through financial WMD; Credit Default Swaps, and complex derivatives. Basically these are extremely complex bets, used as insurance. IE, Person A gives a mortgage to person C, person A then says to person B, Hey I'll give you x per year, and if the mortgage to C fails you assume the loan to C, and pay me a bunch of money. This itself isn't a bad thing, just like insurance is a pretty nominal part of our lives. But these aren't insurance, so they don't follow the requirements of insurance, so for one, anyone could take out a default swap on anything. For example, you could have a hundred people basically beting that C will default on their mortgage. None of this needs to be reported, so if I want to go into CDS agreement over C's mortgage, I have no ability to judge if this company will be able to pay in the result of C's mortgage. Many companies decided they could instead take out another complex dividend, in the other direction. If they played it right, ideally they could be making money from the mortgage, possibly administration fees on the CDS, and if something went bad they would cash out the CDS.
The problem is, everyone is doing this, and none of these companies have the money to pay for it. In a simplified example, hedge fund A takes out a CDS on mortgage M with company B. B is getting administration fees, but doesn't have enough to cover the swap, so they take out a complex derivative with C. C is getting fees, but doesn't have enough to cover it, so they take out a complex derivative against the mortgage with D. Now the mortgage fails, A goes to B and says, "Where's our money." B tells them to hold on, and goes to C, asking for their money, C goes to D trying to get their money, but D just went bankrupt for some reason. Now A is on the hook, and has nowhere to go. When the feds take over these banks, they are often ensuring that D can pay it's complex derivatives.
And did I mention that there's no way to see how leveraged with Complex Derivitives and CDSs, Phil Gramm, Former McCain advisory and McCain's Likely sec. of the treasury wrote the legislation that keeps these markets hidden.
Wow, sorry for the novel, that was supposed to be a tiny post :lol
This is more than just the mortgage meltdown. The mortgage meltdown is contained at around maybe 50 billion in losses, and people are losing their homes. That's pretty terrible, but it's not, "HOLY SHIT OUR ECONOMY IS FAILING" terrible. That portion is where these fringe economists, and a few lawmakers (When did ron paul get stupid?) are trying to place the blame. As per the article I posted, even blaming the CRA and acorn is pretty dicey, and the "Giant Pool of Money" TAL does a better job of explaing what's going on.
The second part is the securitization, and turning these mortgages into CDO's. In doing so, they fooled the rating agencies, and sold garbage as AAA investments. This increased the colateral damage, and sent a few companies bankrupt. It has also really hit things like pension plans that were heavily invested in bond markets.
The third part is the massive over leveraging of these companies through financial WMD; Credit Default Swaps, and complex derivatives. Basically these are extremely complex bets, used as insurance. IE, Person A gives a mortgage to person C, person A then says to person B, Hey I'll give you x per year, and if the mortgage to C fails you assume the loan to C, and pay me a bunch of money. This itself isn't a bad thing, just like insurance is a pretty nominal part of our lives. But these aren't insurance, so they don't follow the requirements of insurance, so for one, anyone could take out a default swap on anything. For example, you could have a hundred people basically beting that C will default on their mortgage. None of this needs to be reported, so if I want to go into CDS agreement over C's mortgage, I have no ability to judge if this company will be able to pay in the result of C's mortgage. Many companies decided they could instead take out another complex dividend, in the other direction. If they played it right, ideally they could be making money from the mortgage, possibly administration fees on the CDS, and if something went bad they would cash out the CDS.
The problem is, everyone is doing this, and none of these companies have the money to pay for it. In a simplified example, hedge fund A takes out a CDS on mortgage M with company B. B is getting administration fees, but doesn't have enough to cover the swap, so they take out a complex derivative with C. C is getting fees, but doesn't have enough to cover it, so they take out a complex derivative against the mortgage with D. Now the mortgage fails, A goes to B and says, "Where's our money." B tells them to hold on, and goes to C, asking for their money, C goes to D trying to get their money, but D just went bankrupt for some reason. Now A is on the hook, and has nowhere to go. When the feds take over these banks, they are often ensuring that D can pay it's complex derivatives.
And did I mention that there's no way to see how leveraged with Complex Derivitives and CDSs, Phil Gramm, Former McCain advisory and McCain's Likely sec. of the treasury wrote the legislation that keeps these markets hidden.
Wow, sorry for the novel, that was supposed to be a tiny post :lol
SpeedingUptoStop
will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
You know you're the scum of America when you think Katie Couric asks hard hitting questions.Clevinger said:
SpeedingUptoStop
will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
Arizona is a toss up ??!?!?!?!?!?!?syllogism said:
The Lamonster
Member
What a fucking joke Dick Morris is.syllogism said:
electricpirate
Member
syllogism said:
Dick Morris is unbeliviebly dumb. Anyone have his map from 2 weeks ago, with McCain strongly winning Iowa?
Clevinger said:
That is sad. And depressing. Stand and be counted racially bigoted dip shits. Your age is ending, 200 years to late.
One of the potential positives of the fiery implosion of the McCain campaign, I know who I don't have to talk to anymore, if they say some dumb shit on election night.
Stoney Mason
Banned
syllogism said:
Jesus Christ Dick Morris is retarded.
Dude actually gets a salary for this dumb shit.
monchi-kun
Member
Clevinger said:
crash and burn
mckmas8808 said:
There are poor people of all colors and creeds. There was nothing racial in my comment anywhere. Nothing. I'm actually outraged that you would accuse me of racism in such an out of the blue way. It's honestly fucking shameful. There are poor white people too, and they get sub prime loans too. There are also middle class white people buying mansions when they can't afford them.
The truth is, we probably shouldn't have been encouraging so much lending in general, and nobody in Washington was in favor of cutting back on the lending, even when things started looking bad. Nobody wanted to fuck with the bubble while it was still blowing up.
There was a time when people used to rent houses until they could pay 20% down and had excellent credit. This sort of thing couldn't have happened in that kind of environment. The republicans aren't in favor of any regulations and the democrats aren't in favor of less people owning houses. Both positions helped cause this problem. We can't afford to have a country where everybody has a house and uses it as a vending machine. It's not a workable model.
Now everybody is a revisionist and claims they were always in favor of regulations and cutting back on the excess, but the truth is that both party's were complicit in this to some extent. It's the same old American problem of waiting until the shit hits the fan before we try to fix something.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Clevinger said:
White folks are getting a little too cocky with their racism lately. I'm starting to get afraid for Obama.
FitzOfRage
Member
Stoney Mason
Banned
HylianTom said:
Forgot that. We got Kentucky and Tennessee leaning our way!
fucking dumbass.
SpeedingUptoStop
will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
The more vocal a person is, the less they'll probably do shit.mckmas8808 said:
Vestal
Junior Member
Clevinger said:
That shit right there is dangerous. I hope it is just an isolated incident and won't come up in other rallies. If it does and Palin/McCain don't denounce it, shit could get real FAST.
Sure it would benefit Obama Campaign, but seriously I don't think we want to go down this road, cause it leads to some very very dangerous territory.
mckmas8808 said:
That same point came up in this week's Bill Moyers Journal program covering the bankruptcy bill. While there's blame to pass around to both parties on the issue, I don't really see the purpose in some Republican sided people trying to implicitly throw race into the bankruptcy fire.
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Krowley said:
Well your excuse was the same excuse that some racist people have been using lately. Poor people weren't the problem. So many of the people that flopped on their mortage were middle class people.
And some of them were investors trying to flip properties. But you should blame the banks before you blame the DEMs or poor people.
Why would the banks give people the loans if they couldn't afford it?
The Blue Jihad
Member
Clevinger said:
......
Byakuya769
Member
SpeedingUptoStop said:
Tennessee is leaning Obama!?! Hahahahah, that jack ass should be out of work. "Lying sack of shit" indeed.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Gruco said:
He is trying to fire up the base.
monchi-kun
Member
mckmas8808 said:
Owning a home is "The American Dream (tm)"
For generations this culture of home ownership has been sold to generations of Americans, this was the status symbol of "making it" in American Society.
Stoney Mason said:
You know... is he really that retarded? Imagine how easy his job is...fox news "analysts" basically don't have to do any work. They just get their RNC talking points email in the morning and go say them on every show possible. Sounds like a pretty cushy job to me...that is if you don't care about your soul :lol
wonderkins
Member
RESPA, FCRA, HMDA, ECOA, CRA, TILA, FACTA, FRB Regs... We'll stop now, lest the lolbertarians suffer a head-splosion.mckmas8808 said:
Take your pick from any of the above regulations. Remember, regulations are the mutant spawn of democrats. Oh and mention GLBA, but don't mention the name of the authors. All you need to know is that Bill Clinton signed it so he's to blame.
Thank god John "Wayne" McCain will save us from those pernicious regulations...oh wait.
Obama should let McCain speak the whole time tomorrow. Let John "Maverick" McCain sink his own battleship. He's thisssss close.
@ electricpirate: good post! illiquidity, high-leverage, and falling prices. yeah, we're fucked for awhile.
Vestal
Junior Member
Clevinger said:
Well its a path that has to be stopped, or its going to get UGLY for McCain/Palin fast. REAL fast. I don't think the MNM will stand for it, or turn a blind eye to those types of attacks coming from a crowd in their rally with McCain/Palin not doing anything to sway them away from it.
To the contrary, they seem to be tring to stoke it to some extent:Vestal said:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49602520081007?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=10279
It's a pretty subtle but clear message: He's "different" from you or I. You should fear the "different" guy.
Even then, if he's going to just randomly give Obama states like TN and KY, why is IN still dark red? Can't he even try to make this look plausible if that's his goal? Dude is just splattering paint.ryutaro's mama said:
Meh, I guess the point is the people seeing this don't have any other reference for what is or isn't realistic.
WickedAngel
Banned
Nabs said:Heh I was expecting this
Might as well throw Canuckistan in there too.
Too many people want to make this a strict partisan issue. People need to realize that it isn't either or as far as who was right or wrong. The lack of strict regulation in lending was just one facet in this crisis. There are oversight polices enacted that should have been enforced better but obviously were not. The creation of the housing bubble itself was a problem because no one wanted to believe it was just where all the money from the dot com bubble went. I don't pretend to know everything or even much about this crisis but I do know it can't be simplified into a single cause. I also know that we can't simply throw massive regulation and honestly believe that everything will be perfect - I don't believe it ever was.mckmas8808 said:
You may not want to hear it, but the truth is there were some that had no business getting a mortgage or a loan. There were idiots all the way around; the people who thought it was within their means, the institutions that allowed them knowing full well it wouldn't last, the people doing the oversights of the institutions, and even the government policies that allowed them to begin with. There truly is no personal responsibility anymore in our society. Just because some other idiot is doing something wrong doesn't make you less of an idiot for doing it too.
Part of this crisis relates to socioeconomic issues, there is no doubt. It is hard to discuss because it carries connotations that can easily offend.
mckmas8808 said:
from my own very rudimentary understanding (I know very very little): Because real estate prices were rising so fast. The assumption was that everybody's house would go up massivley every year, and then they could take out loans on that, because the house becomes like a profit machine.
Somebody loses a manufacturing job, so they go to work at mcdonalds/walmart and replace their income by mortgaging their house every few years. They show up as employed, and they are still pumping money into the economy even though they now have a shitty job, so everything looks nice and the economic fundamentals are sound.. But now it's all crashing down because our whole economy was based on credit and not on anything real.
You're right that it mostly wasn't poor people that caused the problem. Poor people bought houses to live in. The middle class got into houses as an investment. A very different situation and a lot more of the problem would have come from that. But, The kind of regulations needed to deal with it would have probably also hurt poor people trying to buy houses, so you got to assume that the democrats wouldn't want to mess with that at all. In the same breath, republicans wouldn't want to deal with it because wall street was making piles of money, so there was a complicit desire to avoid the problem. Heads were firmly buried in the sand.
the truth is that nobody every seriously considered trying to fix this in advance, and it honestly wouldn't have been popular with the american people if they had tried.
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