The Troglodytes are risking injury by pretzelizing themselves over this financial mess.  Their attempt to blame this monumental crash on minorities getting mortgages is pathetic.

The problem is not so much the subprime mortgages themselves, but the repackaging and reselling of them as investment instruments with little or no oversight from the regulators.  The Gordon Geckos on Wall Street have built themselves a Ponzi Money Tree out of bad paper, and it's now on fire.  They've taken their billions and run, leaving us to clean up their mess.

This is a very astute observation from you, but it was part of the deal...banks/lenders loan to riskier borrowers and at more up-front favorable costs to the borrower, and in return they get to package the loans in securities that were considered good assets.

From here on out, let banks and lenders decide who they're going to loan to. Offer incentives like lowering fed rates if you want them to loan out more money, but don't require or pressure them to loan based on race or lack of income (really? encouraging loans to those who LACK the income??) Let the government regulate and encourage, but not instigate, threaten and demand.

One problem was the brokers who steered people into sub-prime variable interests loans when they would have been better off with a fixed rate which they could have afforded.

Many of the borrowers became risky only when their interests rates rose.

Agreed!

You are correct in part, but it was only because of these sub prime loans that they could afford them in the first place. The lower ARM payment in the beginning allowed them to make the payments in the first place. Then, when the ARM expired and they were not able to refinance the loan, the problems only got worse.

The CRA was a part of the problem for sure, and there were threats by the govt that forced banks to make loans they would not normally make. Frannie and Freddie were also huge parts of the problem, making loans they knew were in jeopardy to increase the share of the market.

Please present some evidence of these "threats" the government made.

Was that in the second paragraph, Snoop? I sort of dozed off during the first paragraph where he repeated Worrierkings comment, but dumbed it down to the Rush Limbaugh grade level.

Yup. It was difficult reading fer sure...

there were threats by the govt that forced banks to make loans...

I am not suprised Col.  Any comment that does not 100% follow the dem line is above your pay grade.  Heaven forbid that the responsibility for this mess may be spread across more than one party or group of people.  And if it requires any intelligent thought or critical thinking, you are left behind for sure. 

It's not that, it's just that you can't prove out that the government threatened FM and FM with anything. And hasn't the republicans been running the government more or less for the last 8 years, and Congress for the last 14?

I guess you forget that CRA was passed under Carter, and revised under Clinton.  And we all remember the dem congressmen basically accusing the republicans of being racist for wanting to tighten lending rules created by the CRA.  Many in congress have made a living from false charges of racism, and this was no exception. 

What's to forget, that's the point! It was passed back in what - late 1970's? It's almost 30 years old. You are so determined to pass the blame around you keep forgetting that pesky little fact that CRA failures make up just a fraction of all the loans in question. It's got nothing to do with the issue, and your false charge of false charges of racism is just a pathetic attempt to deflect blame.

What does that have to do with you responding to Worrierking's comment by saying the same thing he said (simplified for children) followed by some GOP talking points?

If you're going to toss out insults, it's a good idea to make sure you understand the conversation going on first.

"Let the government regulate and encourage, but not instigate, threaten and demand."

ANd how exactly would you describe what's been going on pretty much forver, at least up until the current disaster started really ratcheding up only a few weeks ago?  CRA is hardly some jack-boot financial strait jacket.  It applied to onlu 20% of the banks making the loans, and I didn't (and still don't) hear a lot a banks crying about it, or asking fro it's repeal or reform.

They threw the standards out the window volunatarliy becuause in the business environemnt that exsisted they found a way to make big money making risky loans by selling them off using complictaed instruments that obfuscated the inherent risk. 

Did people by homes they couldn't afford? You betcha.  Were they all  minorities or under CRA or even risky borrowers?  Nope.  The mortage brokers snow-jobbed the borrowers, and then snow jobbed the banks and investment houses that bought the bundled up loans.  If we can't acknoledge the underling fruad that was being practciced, we will NEVER fix this.

Furture regluations should be written to prevents this sort of thing, and make the risks involved more transparent for all.

I have no problem or argument with anything you said. I think the entire regulation book on this industry should be rewritten, not simply added to. We need better regulation, not "more".

Untenable. We barely have any regulation as is, it's going to take more and better regulation. 

The attempt to blame all of this on the CRA is just one more Republican myth.  It may be a small part of the problem, but if it were so inherently flawed, it wouldn't have taken 30 years to create this crisis.

One thing that sounds fishy to me are the Credit Default Swaps.  Maybe somebody should look into those and see if they've been abused.   From the way I've heard them explained, they're no more than "gentlemen's bets".

He bashes Democrats, gays, AND black people in one shot. A triple double!

Did you know that boor is the root word of Boortz?

Har! That is pretty impressive, Watershed. I believe that's an asshat trick.

Republican criticism of Democrats over the housing crisis is racially motivated...The last refuge of scoundrels.

Good for you Boortz, admitting that the racism and scapegoating is desperate. As ridiculous as the oversimplification and scapegoating is, the media is doing a good job of promoting it. I've talked to several people who seem pretty sure that FMae & FMac are not symptoms, but the prime cause ,of the state of our economy.

On my drive home from work yesterday, I heard a brilliantly disconnected moment on the Hugh Hewitt show. He stated very matter-of-factly that FM & FM were absolutely the cause of our problems. His guest, one of the Townhall apparatchiks, turned the subject to the international markets, to which Hewitt responded "Right, so this is global, not a Bush economic problem".

The two comments were within 30 seconds of each other, narrowing the whole thing down to the two entities who buy loans, then immediately broadening it to much bigger than the Bush administration or our countries borders or policies.

It was one of those knee-slapping cognitive dissonance moments that make you wonder how the zombies can take in so much contradictory bullshlt without a light bulb going on occasionally.

Col., I just saw the latest polling numbers and now it looks like McCain is struggling to get to the 30% mark on the hispanic vote. You've got to wonder if republicans have become batpoo stupid the way they keep talking down minorities. It's as if they only want white people voting for them.

It's as if they only want white people voting for them.

And from what I'm reading today, Gramps McCain is losing voted with working-class white voters, too:

McCain losing ground with working-class whites

Associated Press - October 10, 2008 6:13 AM ET

KITTANNING, Pa. (AP) - John McCain appears to be losing ground with white-working class voters.

Polls show people are moving away from McCain over fears their personal finances could farther deteriorate with him as president. Many are belatedly coming around to Barack Obama who is seen as a leader who cares more about the working class.

In early September, McCain had a 26-point advantage among white voters without a college degree who were likely to vote. By late September, the advantage had dropped to 7 points.

In Pennsylvania, a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Obama with a double-digit lead over McCain, compared with a close race after the political conventions.

One 64-year-old, lifelong Pennsylvania Republican says it's not a fondness for Obama, but a dislike of McCain and the way the country is. Ruth Ann Michel says "Republicans need to change."

http://www.whnt.com/Global/story.asp?S=9157184

WZ, did you see this article at salon? Here are a few excerpts showing those loving christian republican ways:

Just look at the videotapes of the angry, hateful hordes attending these rallies — screaming that Obama is a socialist; that he’s both a Muslim and a terrorist as proven by his “bloodline” and his name; that his supporters are “commie faggots”; that he’s guilty of treason; underscored by increasing racial invective and even punctuated in one case by a call from an audience member for someone to be killed.  These aren’t just isolated individuals; these sentiments are common at these rallies and becoming increasingly virulent and enraged — at the rallies and otherwise:

A billboard in West Plains, Mo., showing a caricature of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wearing a turban has caused quite a stir in town.

The sign, located south of West Plains on U.S. 63 across from the Dairy Queen, says: “Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama equals more abortions, same sex marriages, taxes, gun regulations.”

white voters without a college degree

I hate to say it, but this voting block has been the biggest obstacle to progress.

white voters without a college degree?

The only possible reason that some of these voters may have made it into high school is social promotion!  It is hard to imagine people of any hue to be as stupid as the ones on this evening's news attending McCain rallies posing questions!  It's hard to imagine a man who's supposed to be an American hero in the company of such hateful fools. Of course, he doesn't seemed uncomfortable in such venues--but then, he too was never at the top of his class--except that today it finally seemed to get to him.  However, I wonder if his reaction was genuine.  His campaign has been pushing this slime for a while.  Is it getting to him or is he beginning to realize that it's backfiring?

...McCain is struggling to get to the 30% mark on the hispanic vote..

Snoop, they're trying to put a positive spin on that. A McCain spokesman pointed out that 30% is 3 votes per Hispanic carload going to the polls.

(Don't tell your wife I wrote that, it's from McCain's camp)

Too late, col. She was looking over my shoulder. Walked off muttering something about cooking goose...

Now this is getting sick. McCain claimed they don't mention Obama's middle name ever at their rallies, yet there's this:

This is just sickening

By John Amato Friday Oct 10, 2008 5:00am

When all else fails, Republicans and their wives turn into monsters.

John McCain and Sarah Palin were backstage, and Lehigh County GOP Chairman Bill Platt was warming up the crowd of 6,000 at a rally here for the Republican ticket.

"Think about how you'll feel on November 5 if you wake up in the morning and see the news, that Barack Obama -- that Barack Hussein Obama -- is the president-elect of the United States," Platt said. The audience at the Lehigh University arena booed at the thought of it.

"The number one most liberal senator in the United States of America was, you guessed it, the ambassador of change, Barack Hussein Obama," he added.

All journalists covering the McCain-Palin events should take out extra life insurance. Read Milbank's entire piece. He finishes it off with this..

Audience members participated in the Obama critique by shouting words such as "liar!" and "socialist!"
"Who is the real Senator Obama?" McCain asked.
Unclear.
But we do know his middle name is Hussein. 

Hey, Snoop, mah dawg.  They should just hold their rallies at Nuremberg.  All those flags waving.  All that chanting.  Ahhh, it'll take them back.

Ha! I finally found the source. Been wanting to post this ever since I saw those video's of them race baiting republicans waiting to get into a mcsame rally.

Thanks for the cartoon, Snoopy..... we all need something to laugh at this week.

The sad thing is that it's not much of an exaggeration.

There is no God. At the very least, there is no God with a sense of humor. If there were, Boortz would awake one morning without a mouth. He would, however, still be able to talk. His anus would have marvelous muscular control and he would be able to articulate words out his back porch.

Where've you been, girl? I'm glad you're back... ;)

Been...busy.  But with everyone losing their jobs due to Captain ABush and his Great White Weapons of Destruction, I might soon have plenty of time.

Tell me about it. My last day here is Dec. 1st, just in time for x-mas. And thanks to McCain I don't have much of a 401K left to wipe out to pay off my mortgage. And yet we still have around 25% of the country who want 4 more years of this...

Yikes, Snoop.  I'm so sorry. 

How can you say that, Holly?  God has a great sense of humor.  The practical joke he played by giving us Boortz, and Hannity, and Limpaugh, and Hewitt, and... 

He's laughing himself to tears right now.

Why are all of these Libertarians carping about the lack of government oversight?

These con-job phonies, like Boortz, wanna go around touting personal responsibility as their guiding philosophy until they actually have to buck up and act upon it. Now, in the face of monumental failures of conservative market fundamentalism, it's all (preferably the disempowered) somebody else's fault. 

Not a soul forced those Wall St. punks to gamble away our economy in their restriction and consequence free culture of materialism. 

Get bent, Boortz, you sloven Ayn Rand sycophant. 

"sloven Ayn Rand sycophant" is a fine insult.  I wish I could find a way to use it everyday!

Thanks, Holly. I've been practicing the art of insult on these pages since about the time you stopped coming around on the regular. Which reminds me, like all of us here, I have missed you.

I hope my newly adopted aggressive nature toward conservatism isn't as off-putting to you as I suspect it is with many of the fine libs here. I rarely get responses anymore from anyone but the cons I offend. But I'm different these days. I have shed my kindly demeanor, I simply have no patience for the willfully ignorant.

Anyhow, enough about me. What do you think about me? :) No, seriously. Welcome back. Hope you can stay a little longer than usual.

I'm a fan of any man who can muster "sloven Ayn Rand sycophant," so that's what I think of you! 

Roundhouse and Holly,

I think you need to reread your Rand.  You both seem unclear on the concept of laissez-faire capitalism.  We are seeing much Atlas Shrugged playing out in real-time.

You may paint Rand as a kook if you like, but the free market failures here have occurred precisely because they are not "free".  We don't need money out of politics, we need politics out of money.

Riiiiigght. I'm a bit skeptical. But sure, I'd love to see how a market truly free from the shackles of federal insurance, military protection, bank insurance, contract protection from the legal system and free from the corporate communism of public money, I'd like to see how it would thrive on its own. I'd like to see a free market educate its own workforce, create and maintain its own infrastructure of roads, electricity, water, technology, etc. 

tbone -

I've reread Rand within the last couple of years.  She is a kook.  The antagonists in her books are bizarre caricatures of people who have never wielded any sort of power and whose policies have never been put into practice.  Her depiction of her protagonists, on the other hand, is equally bizarre.  Those ultra-capitalist heroes are never anything but the most noble and principled men (plus Dagny) of a sort that has never been seen in reality.  She won't consider for a single paragraph that those capitalists could ever stoop to things like child labor, environmental degradation, production of unsafe products, tolerance of unsafe working conditions, collusion on pricing or removing competition or any of the many other known abuses of unrestricted capitalism.

We are seeing much Atlas Shrugged playing out in real-time. - tbone

That's laughable.  Atlas Shrugged is a paranoid fantasy that has never come close to being played out in reality.

Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction but informs certain philosophies and ideas.  I would also say that there are a few capitalist heroes out there - Gates and Buffett come to mind.  I agree with you that there are far too few to support some Randian utopian (that is a mythical fantasy).  But at it's core, AS is an extreme representation of the tendencies of "capitalists" and "statists".  If you don't see the parallels vis-a-vis the unprecented increases of government intervention into the market this last month I'd say your not paying close attention. 

Roundhouse, Rand did not say government has no function.  She said it's legitimate role is primarily protection of the individual and individual rights.  This also happens to address the issue that Bill writes about regarding child labor, unsafe products, work conditions, etc..

I wasn't suggesting any demonization of capitalists.  There are a few of the heroic style, a few of the horribly evil style and the vast majority filling in all of the points of the middle ground.

As for intervention into the market, we're looking at a mixed bag.  A large portion of the reason for the collapse is unrestricted capitalism.  Financial institutions were manipulating the markets for ever-increasingly complex methods of financial gain with nothing of value going back into the market.  This was not the result of what you call statism, it was the result of capitalistic excesses.

On the other hand, there will always be disagreement on what constitutes reasonable intervention.  All we can do is use our best judgment and be willing to admit when an intervention is a success, when it's a failure and when it needs some adjustment.  I personally have a lot of problems with the exact measures the government is now taking, but I agree that nonintervention will lead to deeper suffering and battered markets than would be necessary.

We may not be as far from each other as I first thought, but I think we're reading Rand differently.  Atlas Shrugged still looks to me as paranoid fears of enemies that are actually almost nonexistent.

This failure was certainly not the collapse of unrestricted capitalism.  The initiating event was the housing initiative of Carter and Clinton, propagated by the Republicans.  The root of this is that Fannie and Freddie were GAOs - government affiliated organizations.  This promulgated two fundamental flaws - "private profit/public risk" (at least implicitly if not explicitly) and "too big to fail".   The greedy capitalists just did what they do in this regulated environment.  Government failed to intervene as well as failed to identify and go after those whose violated the few rules that did exist.

But if FM and FM weren't GAOs - this house of cards would never have been built.

"Rand did not say government has no function."

Then may I suggest you drop the term "free market," for a more neutral or more exact term?

And my comment stands, let the free marketers educate their workforce, let them maintain their own infrastructure. At the heart of it, given the absolute immoral behavior of the profligate majority of Wall Streeters, I am not prepared to hand the well being and prosperity of our society to them without the strict oversight of an open and accountable democratic government. Sorry. They have not, in my mind, proven themselves worthy of the kind of trust Rand attributes to these masters of the universe.

Riiiggghhhttt.  Because government has shown us through their moral behavior, regard for our prosperity, their high mindness and accountability that they are trustworthy.  LOL

"his lover"? Hear me, my friends. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will call different sex wives and husbands "sex partners" forever.

Everything Boortz said was true.

Keep up the good work, Copious. Always a treat.

Copious is back again? Oh great. Another blowhard with no data to back up, well, anything. Copious. Why don't you just call Obama a N*****! And get it over with already.

He would, but his drive-by time is too precious.  He must deposit weensie piles of poo on as many librul web pipes as possible.

What, the number of hits on your blog site drop off again? If you want free advertising send a note to Sean Hannity...

What is a repug like yourself to do. Stand at the position of attention and salute your new commander in chief President Obama.

I seem to recall a mid-western radio station a few years ago that in their bio for Boortz, he was described as a "Flaming, Closeted Homosexual!" Come on out Boortz you'll feel a lot better about yourself!

My money's on John Gibson being outed first- he's the loudest self-loathing gay man in the media today.  And considering that the media includes serial-marrier Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity (the perversions that must run through that guy's brain are terrifying to contemplate,) that's saying a lot.

Boortz, Hannity, and Rush are ONLY high school graduates!

 Boortz up to 2005, was telling the whole world that he graduated from Texas A&M! But one little pesky request to Texas A&M, blew Boortz's cover! Boortz quit college for good on June 3 1967, having never graduating! He claims he just 6 hours shy, but one would think after 40 years he should have earned those 6 hours and graduated!

 Now after being exposed as a world-wide liar, his bio reads "finished up at Texas A&M in 1967!" He can't even be honest with himself a fess up to the fact he's just a high school graduate from some podunk high school in North West Florida !

 Just to show you how ignorant he is, earlier this year he was blasting Media Matters as being Media Myrmidons, spelling the word myrmidons on his radio show  as "Mirmidons!" His web site is constantly full of spelling and punctuations errors daily!

He's a real warmonger too! He lied to the Selective Service about his status in college! He used a ROTC deferment from the fall of '64 till Feb of '68! He never told the truth about his status in college! He dropped out of school completely in '65 and re-enrolled in the fall of '65. He carried his original deferment till Feb of '68, 9 months after either failing,quitting school for good! This time he used the birth of his daughter to be draft free! He used to tell his listening audience and anyone who would listen to him that he was 4-F in the draft for eye problems,and or asthma. WRONG!

Check out    johnsugg.com  Just type his name in the search bar, then read all about Boortz!

As a minority congressman until January 2007, how is Barney Frank the sole perp in this tragedy? Does BOORtz expect us to believe that the GOP CONgress did the bidding of Frank? Let's say for the sake of entertain right wing delusions that Frank was "in the tank" for Fannie Mae. He represents ONE VOTE out of 435. How ONE VOTE holds more sway than ONE VOTE is just one of those right wing magic tricks, like hanging 9/11 around Clinton's neck, even though his administration, out of power for 7 1/2 months, had warned the heck out of the Bush administration about al Qaida, bin Laden, et al.

Randy

OK, OK, I'm convinced.

But can't we agree that Frank was technically in a conflict of interests having a lover heading up an institution he was in charge of monitoring?

I'm for Obama all the way, but I do find it disturbing.