• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PoliGAF Thread of First Debate Election 2008 - GAF doesn't know shit

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

MassiveAttack

Banned
RapeApe said:
putinrearshisheadnz7.jp
Click to expand...

:lol :lol
 
S

soul creator

Member
Stridone said:
I have a question about the economic crisis. I've heard many say that it's due to greed, but a Dutch article I just read explains how banks were actually forced to lend money with great risks due to Jimmy Carters Community Reinvestment Act. Is this true?
Click to expand...

from everything I've seen, that's a relatively tiny part of the problem. Any "big government lending money to poor people" rationale for the issue is largely a distraction from the structural issues in our economy that's been heavily in favor of "free market will solve everything!"

I think someone posted a flowhcart once that shows the role that the consumer played in the whole mortage issue. It was 1 circle out of like 10 or something.
 
R

Rur0ni

Member
That Obama VA video is great. I think he's gonna take it. Talk about slap in the face. (past 10 elections VA has gone Red)

Edit: Holy at that Kennedy/Young Obama button. Must have now.
 
E

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
The ghost of John Kennedy is whispering in Obama's ear.
 
T

Tobor

Member
Rur0ni said:
That Obama VA video is great. I think he's gonna take it. Talk about slap in the face. (past 10 elections VA has gone Red)
Click to expand...

We're looking good. I'll be disappointed if we don't turn blue, it's so close.
 
R

Rur0ni

Member
Tobor said:
We're looking good. I'll be disappointed if we don't turn blue, it's so close.
Click to expand...
I would have loved to be there in the rain like that, while he was making those statements about this too shall pass and whatnot. Those people have a great memory there.
 
T

Tobor

Member
Rur0ni said:
I would have loved to be there in the rain like that, while he was making those statements about this too shall pass and whatnot. Those people have a great memory there.
Click to expand...

I'm kicking myself for not going. It's a 45 minute drive up 95 to Fredericksburg. I had to work, though.
 
A

artredis1980

Banned
Tom Brokaw is a republican shill, just look at the video of Meet the press with Axelrod and Shmidt, conveniently at the end of the program, well, just look at what he did at the end of the iRaq video


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/axelrod-schmidt-clash-on_n_130026.html


MR. AXELROD: It is, it is, it is...

MR. SCHMIDT: ...a fundamental consideration for the American people.

MR. AXELROD: ...ludicrous, it is ludicrous to assert after four years of mistake after mistake after mistake, when he didn't challenge Mr. Rumsfeld, when he didn't challenge the Bush policy, when he cheerleaded for it to then say that he was a critic of the policy.

MR. SCHMIDT: Just not true that he didn't challenge Secretary Rumsfeld.

MR. AXELROD: Just a, just a, just a second. Just a second, Steve. I let you speak.

MR. SCHMIDT: Not true, David.

MR. AXELROD: I let you speak, let me, let me finish.

MR. SCHMIDT: Not true.

MR. AXELROD: What has happened is, as Senator Obama predicted from the beginning, that we got distracted in Iraq and now Osama bin Laden, who was the person who attacked the United States, killed 3,000 American citizens, is now resurgent. He is stronger. And that's the result of the misbegotten decision of John McCain. And he stubbornly wants to continue, even as the Iraqis won't take responsibility, sitting on $79 billion of their own surplus while we spend $10 billion a month. It doesn't make sense. We can't take more of the same, Steve.

MR. BROKAW: In fairness to everybody here, I'm just going to end on one note, and that is that we continue to poll on who's best equipped to be commander in chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. I wish we could spend the rest...
Click to expand...
 
S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Stridone said:
I have a question about the economic crisis. I've heard many say that it's due to greed, but a Dutch article I just read explains how banks were actually forced to lend money with great risks due to Jimmy Carters Community Reinvestment Act. Is this true?
Click to expand...

NO.

The Community Reinvestment act is a good piece of legislation that states banks cant simply ignore poor people and only loan money to super duper qualified customers. Before the CRA was passed minorities were discriminated against, banks wouldnt open branches in poor neighboorhoods and all kinds of other bullshit. In fact, they would very often not allow poor people without perfect credit to even have a bank account, meaning poor people were stuck living hand to mouth or paying check cashing places insane amounts of money to cash their paychecks.

The CRA has done a ton of good in helping poor and underprivledged americans grow their net worth and standard of living. There is a difference between lending to lower and middle income americans and the horseshit "No Doc, % only loans" that came out in the last 5 years.

Lets put it this way, the CRA was passed in the last 70's and worked just fine for 30 years. There is nothing wrong with sub-prime loans as long as they are treated as such. What wound up causing the damage is two things

1) Sub prime loans became crazy. You didnt have to prove your income or that you even had a job. You could just sign a piece of paper saying "I make 100K a year" even if you didnt. Then, if you STILL couldnt afford the loan the mortgage broker would sell you a 5 year % only loan so you didnt have to pay as much in the first 5 years.

2) Sub prime loans were not treated as sub prime loans. CDO's and CMO's bundled a shitload of this bad debt together and treated much of it as though it was AAA rated paper. As good as gold. So people were buying complete shit but thought they were buying good assets.

That "the CRA and poor people caused this problem" is complete horse shit. Its just republicans grasping at straws because their entire free market knows best economic theory came crashing down this month.

The CRA worked just fine for years until lax regulation allowed retail banks to start acting as investment banks and dealing with unregulated securities... and that happened in the last 10 years.
 
L

Learn2read

Member
StoOgE said:
NO.

The Community Reinvestment act is a good piece of legislation that states banks cant simply ignore poor people and only loan money to super duper qualified customers. Before the CRA was passed minorities were discriminated against, banks wouldnt open branches in poor neighboorhoods and all kinds of other bullshit.

The CRA has done a ton of good in helping poor and underprivledged americans grow their net worth and standard of living. There is a difference between lending to lower and middle income americans and the horseshit "No Doc, % only loans" that came out in the last 5 years.

Lets put it this way, the CRA was passed in the last 70's and worked just fine for 30 years. There is nothing wrong with sub-prime loans as long as they are treated as such. What wound up causing the damage is two things

1) Sub prime loans became crazy. You didnt have to prove your income or that you even had a job. You could just sign a piece of paper saying "I make 100K a year" even if you didnt. Then, if you STILL couldnt afford the loan the mortgage broker would sell you a 5 year % only loan so you didnt have to pay as much in the first 5 years.

2) Sub prime loans were not treated as sub prime loans. CDO's and CMO's bundled a shitload of this bad debt together and treated much of it as though it was AAA rated paper. As good as gold. So people were buying complete shit but thought they were buying good assets.

That "the CRA and poor people caused this problem" is complete horse shit. Its just republicans grasping at straws because their entire free market knows best economic theory came crashing down this month.

The CRA worked just fine for years until lax regulation allowed retail banks to start acting as investment banks and dealing with unregulated securities... and that happened in the last 10 years.
Click to expand...
Not to mention that the crisis was primarily the fault of non-bank financial institutions, which the CRA didn't touch.

So basically, those that are making that argument are racist pieces of shit.
 
K

Krowley

Member
Barring some unforseen controversy or massive blunder, I think this election is basically over. I think Palin's inability to handle the heat with the press, and McCains lack of new ideas or leadership on the economy have essentially doomed him. McCain proved to be a very aggressive candidate with the mentality of a gambler. Some of his gambles didn't pay off.

I haven't supported Obama, but I wish him the best and hope he does a decent job as president.

edit// I honestly can't think of any way that McCain could turn this around at this point. Maybe a change of running mates to generate a whole new wave of excitement? It would take something huge and unexpected, or Obama would have to make an incredible error.
 
S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
artredis1980 said:
Tom Brokaw is a republican shill, just look at the video of Meet the press with Axelrod and Shmidt, conveniently at the end of the program, well, just look at what he did at the end of the iRaq video


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/axelrod-schmidt-clash-on_n_130026.html
Click to expand...

I got pretty pissed as well when he pulled that shit. I mean, what the fuck, you are the host of a debate essentially. You dont get to declare a winner at the end of it.

I hate the fact that this asshole gets to moderate a debate.
 
S

Stridone

Banned
StoOgE said:
NO.

The Community Reinvestment act is a good piece of legislation that states banks cant simply ignore poor people and only loan money to super duper qualified customers. Before the CRA was passed minorities were discriminated against, banks wouldnt open branches in poor neighboorhoods and all kinds of other bullshit. In fact, they would very often not allow poor people without perfect credit to even have a bank account, meaning poor people were stuck living hand to mouth or paying check cashing places insane amounts of money to cash their paychecks.

The CRA has done a ton of good in helping poor and underprivledged americans grow their net worth and standard of living. There is a difference between lending to lower and middle income americans and the horseshit "No Doc, % only loans" that came out in the last 5 years.

Lets put it this way, the CRA was passed in the last 70's and worked just fine for 30 years. There is nothing wrong with sub-prime loans as long as they are treated as such. What wound up causing the damage is two things

1) Sub prime loans became crazy. You didnt have to prove your income or that you even had a job. You could just sign a piece of paper saying "I make 100K a year" even if you didnt. Then, if you STILL couldnt afford the loan the mortgage broker would sell you a 5 year % only loan so you didnt have to pay as much in the first 5 years.

2) Sub prime loans were not treated as sub prime loans. CDO's and CMO's bundled a shitload of this bad debt together and treated much of it as though it was AAA rated paper. As good as gold. So people were buying complete shit but thought they were buying good assets.

That "the CRA and poor people caused this problem" is complete horse shit. Its just republicans grasping at straws because their entire free market knows best economic theory came crashing down this month.

The CRA worked just fine for years until lax regulation allowed retail banks to start acting as investment banks and dealing with unregulated securities... and that happened in the last 10 years.
Click to expand...

That was insightful, thank you very much.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
artredis1980 said:
Tom Brokaw is a republican shill, just look at the video of Meet the press with Axelrod and Shmidt, conveniently at the end of the program, well, just look at what he did at the end of the iRaq video


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/28/axelrod-schmidt-clash-on_n_130026.html
Click to expand...
Calling Brokaw a Republican shill is joke.
He is one of the most respected TV journalists in this country and he was fine in this interview.
Not everyone who quote an unflattering poll is out to get your candidate, leave that BS to Fox News.
 
B

BenjaminBirdie

Banned
Chichikov said:
Calling Brokaw a Republican shill is joke.
He is one of the most respected TV journalists in this country and he was fine in this interview.
Not everyone who quote an unflattering poll is out to get your candidate, leave that BS to Fox News.
Click to expand...

Seriously.
 
C

CharlieDigital

Banned
Stridone said:
I have a question about the economic crisis. I've heard many say that it's due to greed, but a Dutch article I just read explains how banks were actually forced to lend money with great risks due to Jimmy Carters Community Reinvestment Act. Is this true?
Click to expand...

Not even close. If you have any question about what motivated this mess, you only have to look to see where the epicenter of the meltdown is: Wall Street. The mess is in how investors, fueled by greed with total lack of responsibility reaped billions of dollars by reselling mortgages made to anyone who applied. If they were motivated by anything to extend mortgages to minorities and those of lower economic status, it was only motivated by their ability to package their mortgages -- good or bad -- into securities to be sold.

Justin Fox has an excellent column on this in this week's Time: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1844547,00.html

This country's move into big-time debt exports began with the big-time government deficits of the early 1980s--which had to be financed by somebody. "The Reagan Revolution was essentially an experiment in seeing how much money America could borrow from overseas," says Murphy, who at the time was an investment banker in Tokyo. The answer was lots. Guided by Murphy and his ilk, Japan snapped up U.S. treasuries and other debt, keeping interest rates here from exploding as many had feared.

In the early 1990s, as the U.S. got its fiscal house in order, the capital inflows from overseas shrank. Late in the decade, they returned, with a twist: foreign investors and companies were buying into corporate America to get in on an economic boom. That boom ended in 2001. But the Bush Administration soon began running deficits, and foreigners discovered an American financial product to which they'd never paid much heed before: mortgage securities.

The result was a staggering increase in capital inflows. The inevitable flip side was a staggering rise in the current account deficit--basically, the trade deficit plus a few other things. It grew from $114 billion in 1995 to $417 billion in 2000 to a record $788 billion in 2006 before falling to $731 billion, or 5% of GDP, last year.​

It was a race to create these CDOs, built from mortgages since it was the hottest market there was. Anyone with a pulse could get a loan because it meant that there was more product to sell to investors. It mattered not whether each individual loan was made responsibly to people who could actually afford them. In fact, it was in the mortgage lender's best interest to lend to anyone since mortgage broker's never held them for long; it was all about quantity and not about quality. They were bundled and sold up the food chain to larger and larger institutions. Why worry whether an individual could actually pay back the loan if you weren't responsible for the mortgage if the lender defaulted?

It's greed, simple as that. It was untethered by any sort of regulation, even something so simple as to prove your income as a mandatory requirement for ANY loan; mortgage brokers readily made loans without requiring a W2 or a credit check.

Also, have a look at the difference in income over the last 8 years. Median income has barely moved from the Clinton presidency.

Check out the data here: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h06AR.html

Code: 
 ______________________________________________________________________
                                   Median income        Mean income
 Region                         ___________________ ___________________
 and                   Number   Current      2007   Current      2007
 year                 (thous.)  dollars   dollars   dollars   dollars
 ______________________________________________________________________

 UNITED STATES
 2007                   116,783   $50,233   $50,233   $67,609   $67,609
 2006                   116,011    48,201    49,568    66,570    68,459
 2005                   114,384    46,326    49,202    63,344    67,277
 2004 35/               113,343    44,334    48,665    60,466    66,373
 2003                   112,000    43,318    48,835    59,067    66,590
 2002                   111,278    42,409    48,878    57,852    66,677
 2001                   109,297    42,228    49,455    58,208    68,171
 2000 30/               108,209    41,990    50,557    57,135    68,792
 1999 29/               106,434    40,696    50,641    54,737    68,114
 1998                   103,874    38,885    49,397    51,855    65,873
 1997                   102,528    37,005    47,665    49,692    64,007
 1996                   101,018    35,492    46,704    47,123    62,009
 1995 25/                99,627    34,076    46,034    44,938    60,708
 1994 24/                98,990    32,264    44,636    43,133    59,673
 1993 23/                97,107    31,241    44,143    41,428    58,537
 1992 22/                96,426    30,636    44,359    38,840    56,238

In particular, use the columns marked "2007 dollars" as it adjusts for inflation. Under Clinton, the median income increased by over $6,000. Under Bush, from 2000-2007, median income has completely stagnated.

Now check this out: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/midclass/midclsan.html

Generally, the long-term trend has been toward increasing income inequality. Since 1969, the share of aggregate household income controlled by the lowest income quintile has decreased from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent in 1997, while the share to the highest quintile increased from 43.0 percent to 49.4 percent. Most noticeably, the share of income controlled by the top 5 percent of households has increased from 16.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Over the same time period, the Gini index rose 17.4 percent to its 1997 level of .459.

Researchers believe that changes in the labor market and, to a certain extent, household composition affected the long-run increase in income inequality. The wage distribution has become considerably more unequal with workers at the top experiencing real wage gains and those at the bottom real wage losses. These changes reflect relative shifts in demand for labor differentiated on the basis of education and skill.​

I know what some people are going to say: "you can't just blame the president for the economy!" But given that the president has the power of line item vetoes, the power to influence the economy through his cabinet and staff selection (very important), and the power to influence the citizens, I think the president deserves a fair chunk of the blame for financial disasters.

When you think about it, the quarterback on an NFL team is the only player position whose success is measured by wins and losses. We don't measure Jerry Rice by how many wins and losses he has, we measure him by how many touchdowns he caught. We don't measure Emmit Smith by how many wins and losses he had, we measure him by his yards and touchdowns. Of all positions in football, wins and losses are only used to measure the success of the quarterback.

Likewise, in the MLB, we don't count the wins and losses as a measure of success for guys like Alex Rodriguez. We count them for the pitchers. Even if a loss is due to an error, the blame for it, the "L" goes to the pitcher.

George Bush isn't solely to fault for this, but he deserves the "L".
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

  • Locked
Trump holds town hall that's totally not debate prep you guys
2 3
149
22K
Mahonay replied
  • Locked
Politico: Democrats dread Hillary's book tour
2 3 4
187
17K
ModBot replied
  • Locked
The Democratic National Committee Chair Debate |OT| - Dem One: A Politics Story
2
79
8K
kirblar replied
  • Locked
RNC suspending GOP Feb '16 debate with NBC (Because lol CNBC)
2 3 4 5
212
20K
OuterLimits replied
  • Locked
GAF Elects: Help Elect a Democratic Senate
2 3
101
12K
jiggle replied
Top Bottom