Is horse chestnut wood good for anything?

[Doug Winterburn]

Who's "us"?

[Tim Daneliuk]

I'm not sure I understand the question. Please restate.

[Tim Daneliuk]

All of this is more-or-less true, but you're missing the point. The CRA created an *environment* or a *mentality* in which the bankers became comfortable with laying off risk to the public taxpayer while keeping the upside for themselves. Brother Obama has confirmed that this is, indeed, the case, by bailing their butts out of all the above.

[Tim Daneliuk]

Poor Lew - in the absence of a coherent counterpoint, you go for the personal attack. Truly the sign of the absence of any real thought on your part.

Lew, if you will (privately) send me your snail mail, I shall send you earplugs so as to never hear a dissenting opinion ever again.

I may sometimes be wrong, and occasionally abrasive, but I assure you I am never an "idiot". Was it William F. Buckley who said words to the effect that liberals love to hear all other points of view until they discover there actually *are* other points of view ...

[Mark & Juanita]

You really don't get it do you?

The CRA didn't have language in it that said, "you will loan to unqualified people". Instead, it used language about "fair housing" and "non-discriminatory lending practices". At that point, various groups such as community activists (ever heard of ACORN?) and the Janet Reno justice department began threatening civil and legal action against banks that did not meet "fair lending criteria". Those criteria used various things such as number of loans to various favored political classes as evidence of discriminatory lending practices. This, coupled with increasingly lowered qualification requirements promulgated by Fannie and Freddie served as the catalyst for both the bubble and the creation of the bundled securities. While lending institutions are not free of blame from this, they are not the root cause of the problem.

Sure seems like government coercion at work.

In the beginning, the banks simply determined that the best approach was to roll over and take the losses (some of which were covered by taxpayers anyway) rather than deal with an ACORN lawsuit for every loan turned down.

Unintended consequences suck.

[Larry Blanchard]

And I'll give you the point that the banks caved in, although I doubt it was as extensive as you claim. Too many banks, including mine, rode out the housing bubble with few or no problems. But again, banks, even under pressure, didn't make most of the bad loans. Non-bank finance companies did and they were under no government pressure.

The banks lost more money buying those securities than they did on bad mortgages they made. And they also lost some money they loaned to the non-bank mortgagors.

And we haven't even discussed the hedge funds that also bought the securitized mortgages.

Mortgage brokers, finance companies, and hedge funds were all unregulated. Could the government have prevented a lot of the crisis with good regulation? Yes. Would they have crafted "good" regulations? That's open to question :-).

I noted the news last night stated that legislators of both parties are getting campaign contributions from executives of bailed out firms - the dance goes on.

[Larry Blanchard]

You answered the question in your prior post. Pressure, not a legal requirement.

[onemug]

I wish I had thought of the local high schools. Too late now. It's all gone to the chipper.

It might not have been much good anyway. The reason we had to take it out was that it had serious root damage and started leaning. The tree guy showed me some of the cross sections. The damaged wood went pretty far in. He said the tree had been badly pruned for many years.

[Nucular Reaction]

This is complete bullshit and you are either a complete idiot or completely selfish. The latter is hilarious, because I doubt your net worth is anywhere near the level where any of Bush, the criminal's tax cuts would benefit you.

Yes, that's name calling, so sue me.

No one is advocating socialism. I certainly am not.

The funny thing is that the idiot right howls with righteaous indignation when skewered and then goes right on doing the skewering. How is tyhis statement not calling a whole group mindless (emotional) dolts? Hypocrital dipshit.

Let me guess. You are a big fan of Ayn Rand, right? You probably even named one of your kids John Galt, unless, thank god you are sterile and cannot reproduce more mindless dolts.

Citations, please, showing that this money was all spent on socialist programs (and you don't get to assign the label) and they are worse off than they would have been without that money.

An absolutely amazing pile of non-sequiturs and pure horseshit.

The gap between rich and poor in this country is getting worse. US corporations exploited the workers in absolutely immoral and obscene ways giving rise to labor unions. They then turned to raping the developing world for natural resources (including human resources). Now that the developing world is getting smarter, the corporations have turned to finance as a way to rape everyone. And your buddy, the criminal Bush, along with the entire congress (both parties) happily colluded in eliminating regulations to that hedge funds and derivatives, especially credit swaps, could rape the entire world economy.

Conservatives have opposed every kind of equality (racial, worker, gender) and still do.

Bottom line, you are an idiot and an asshole.

There, I'm done. I feel much better.

[Lurfys Maw]

Of course, typical conservative double standard. It's OK, though, because god told him so.

[Three Lefts]

Any reason both can't be true? ;-)

[Charlie Self]

Hey, be glad he's not like my first wife. Everything she did was OK because SHE did it. And she's a liberal.

[Tim Daneliuk]

I cannot think of any case in my lifetime where government regulation has been particularly effective in reducing fraud or stupidity. Regulation only works when the regulated are behaving in a sane manner ... in which case the regulation is largely unnecessary.

Exactly.

[Tim Daneliuk]

I am completely selfish and proud of it. If I worked for it (that is, I didn't steal or defraud to get it) it is none of your business how or where I spend it.

The Obamessiah is in everything but name. His Hopechangey administration is all about distracting people from his utter incompetence while he pays for the poor vote by stealing it from the middle class, all the while paying off the rich. Not terribly different that Soviet-era Russia.

Let me guess. You think you are smarter and more worthy to decide what happens with the hours of my life - and the product thereof - than I am. You are a petty tyrant.

cf New Deal, Great Society, Urban Renewal for starters. Then, go for a ride on Chicago's West side, LA Watts, NYC Harlem, or pretty much anywhere in Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, and good parts of Miami. Social spending has been a complete failure except for the very rare few.

This is arguable, but even if true, so what?

Your pharma is showing. This is irredeemable nonsense on pretty much every level.

It was *Republicans* that fought for, and passed, the racial equality laws of the early 1960s (and I am NOT a Republican) that the Dem president signed. The liberals of that time were largely closet racists.

You are still, however, illiterate in history, economics, and Reality, not to mention being rather rude.

[Tim Daneliuk]

That should read: "The *Democrats* of that time were largely closet racists." e.g., Robert "KKK" Byrd (though there were plenty of others).

[Mark & Juanita]

Lots of ad hominem, no facts or substance. Yep, you pretty much make my point, the left *feels*, it doesn't think.

Let's see, nationalizing banks, taking over auto companies and "suggesting" that the CEO leave, Turbo-tax Timmy pushing for the power to not only restructure bailed out institutions, but also to be able to take over any other companies that *he* thinks may be in trouble. Nope, no socialism there, uh-uh. You could be partially right, partial state ownership in this respect is pretty well closer to fascism, but then that's kind of a matter of degree.

... snip of more fuming that certainly reflects the nome de plume of this poster

This is one of those cases where one would think that the old engineering textbook caveat "the proof is straightforward and left to the reader" would be 5'th grade obvious.

... snip of more meltdown. My 2-year-old used to melt-down that way too.

[Mark & Juanita]

... snip

What kinds of things make up "badly pruning"? I have to admit that I don't have a really good feel for pruning well and would like to make sure that I don't do something that would irreparably damage any of the few trees that we have growing here.

[Lurfys Maw]

That's a completely different matter -- and a higher power than god.