OT: Internal Combustion Breakthrough?

You're a bit of an abrasive f*ck, ain't you Jack?

I've been reading a book called "Chain of Blame" that explains what happened pretty well.

It only mentions deregulation in passing, which will upset the liberals. It doesn't blame it all on Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which will upset the conservatives. All in all, a pretty balanced analysis.

Talks about all the major players and their part in the meltdown. In essence, like you said, it was a bunch of mortgage brokers and non-bank lenders doing things that, if not illegal, were certainly unethical.

What part of the word "average" don't you understand? Did the GM dealer show up at your house with a gun and make you buy a van with a V8 engine? If you want to blame someone for GM selling a van in 1978 that got 10mpg, you can go find the nearest mirror.

todd

From the middle to end of the bubble I would agree with the analysis that everyone was jumping in on it. The initial impetus for the whole debacle does rest upon Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the CRA. The notion of the government guaranteeing loans led to abuse on both government and private industry sides. The idea of "affordable housing for everyone" with threats by the justice department (Janet Reno era) to prosecute banks for failing to loan to these new looser standards led to the creation of the mortgage-backed securities market (my speculation is that the banks, recognizing the risk, came up with a means of spreading the risk around). Given that the government through FMae and FMac had pretty much promised to back these risky loans, that opened the floodgates for the rest of the subprime industry that sprang up around this government-guaranteed lending approach.

That, plus your assessment later that people got carried away with the notion that prices of real-estate only go up continued to feed the fire. I was disabused of that notion early in 1987 after we had bought our first house and the housing market at that time took a serious dive -- actually, that's not totally true, I knew about business cycles and expected ups and downs, just not such a big down that soon after buying. Anyone standing outside the whole frenzy could easily see that this was not going to end well and that prices were eventually going to crash, just as they always do at the end of an unsustainable business cycle. People who should have been able to afford houses were being priced out of the market, people who should never have been given loans were getting them for outrageously priced housing -- who would have thought that this was going to crash? [he asks, sarcastically].

My concern is that the very people who helped stoke this fire are now the ones in charge of fixing it -- they are blaming and threatening the banks for implementing the very standards that these congresscritters were pushing.

That's only half right. Mortgage backed securities were not new with the bubble. Pretty much all loans and credit are sold as bonds or credit derivatives. The lender, say the bank in this case, doesn't want to or cannot by law hold the entire risk. Those loans are bundled and sold to investors. What should really irk you is that the investors are almost all professionals and institutions, not Joe Blow homeowner throwing darts at his investment board, and understood the risks of those investments. The normal presumption, especially in credit markets, is that returns are tied very closely to risk. Low risk, low yield; higher risk, higher yield. Investors demand the higher yield, a higher return on investment, for assuming the risk. Buying out the investors' risk and exposure with the bailout amounted to rewarding them with the high returns without the risk.

Don't disagree with that at all. Bottom line is that with the bailout, this just passed donation to DNC patrons (can't come close to really calling it a stimulus), TARP II, TARP III, TARP reloaded, etc. we are rewarding failure and penalizing success. This is going to have consequences and they are not going to be good.

I never react well to spelling cops...

So yes! I notice you ain't so full of sugar plums either...

What part of "required" don't you understand? There is no way the average GMC truck got 17 mpg. My little bitty GMC van only got 10!

Did the GM dealer

Nope, I had no problem getting 10 mpg. I loved the van, much better than any car built by anyone. MPG was a NON ISSUE to me.

Why would I blame GM for anything other than selling me a GREAT van. This thing gave me ZERO trouble for the whole 14 years I owned it. My very next NEW vehicle was a 2001 GMC pickup and it is the nicest vehicle I've ever owned. Had a few minor problems at first all under warranty. It has a big V8, 4 wheel drive and it gets 19 mpg on the road loaded, 13 in the city empty, in the summer...

You mean your little bitty GMC van with what looks like a GVWR of 6800 lbs and a roughly 6 liter V8? From what I can tell, CAFE requirements didn't include light trucks until 1979. In any case, if your van had a GVWR of over 6000 lbs, it would have been exempt anyway. And of course, the calculated MPG doesn't necessarily correlate to real-world numbers.

todd

No, my little bitty GMC van was a 1500 and had a small 305 cubic inch engine. I have no clue how many liters 305 CI is. America was not yet Amerika in 1978.

From what I can tell, CAFE requirements didn't include light trucks until 1979.

Who knows, just that my response was to the requirement for light trucks to average 17 mpg in 1978. I didn't say my 1979 van got 10 mpg. My wife's 1979 Caddy got around 10 mpg though, in the real world though, possibly not the same as in the world of government gobbledygook.

In any case, if your van had a GVWR of over 6000 lbs, it would have been exempt anyway.

It didn't, and it was definitely considered a light duty truck.

And of course, the

That's possible. "They" could require every vehicle sold to get 1000 mpg but if that is a fake number, or that number converted to a "real world number" of 10 mpg, then who really cares other than those that do not live in the "real world"? What I do know is my "real world" light duty, 1978 GMC van got 10 mpg and from my recollection, no one much cared, certainly not me.

At any rate, now that we live in a government controlled, socialist country, I think Big Brother should ban cars altogether as a waste of resources, considering cars do nothing a truck can do, but a truck does everything a car does, plus a ton more.

Beyond that, I don't see why any woodworker, other than perhaps pen turners would not own a truck for all the reasons listed in my previous post.

Oh, that's so hard: 305/61. It's almost exactly 5 liters. You're obviously not a car guy. Anybody following sports cars and/or Formula One since the '50s would know that.

Wow, misspelled the word appearing twice in one sentence half the times. Abrasive AND ignorant.

Oh, you're trying to make some sort of political statement? Well, at the risk of repeating myself, abrasive AND ignorant.

C'mon lightweight, give me your best shot. I'll never see it, though, as you've just been demoted to the "never read because they're ignorant buffoons" list.

Buh, bye.

and a roughly 6 liter V8?

Whelp the guy that thought my 305 was a 6 liter V8 should have done the math... is that your point?

Obviously. This is a wood working group.

I was a car guy in the 50's and 60's, and I didn't give a crap about sports cars or Formula One then either. I guess in your mind a "car guy" is into sports cars and Formula One?. I'd call that rather ignorant.

But, more to the point at hand, my little bitty GMC van WAS considered a light truck, are you arguing that point, or just being ignorant and abrasive for the hell of it?

Glad you managed to pick up on that... I'd hate to waste abrasive and ignorant on someone too ignorant to pick up on it...

So you did just chime in to be ignorant and abrasive and nothing else.

That's good, at least I see why you're ignorant, abrasive probably just come naturally...

There... fixed it for you.

I can't speak for Rod, but I can speak for me. It was my hope you would take the gentle hint and tone it down, rather than up the ante.

On Sun, 15 Feb 2009 09:48:14 -0500, Jack Stein cast forth these pearls of wisdom...:

Well - then learn to spell when you're posting in public forums and you won't suffer the heartburn of people correcting you. Oh - by the way, I didn't have to look it up on Dictionary.com - apparently you should have.

If calling someone ignorant and abrasive is a "gentle hint" then I took the hint and went with it.

Thanks for the insight though...

A truck halls people just like a car, but is easier to get

Well, learn that public forums are not second grade spelling contests. If you had trouble figuring out the meaning of the sentence that gave the other guy so much trouble, then there is little hope for you in the public forums.

Why? I doubt anyone that spent more than a day in the public forums had trouble understanding what was meant. I also doubt anyone thinks I, or anyone else posting, doesn't know the difference between hall and haul.

I appreciate the sanctimonious attitudes of the spell cops but they are seldom to never needed on a public forum. As a matter of fact, the spell cops generally rear their ugly little heads when they have nothing left other than an ad hominem attack.

Wait a minute! My dear departed Mum was a spell and grammar cop. She'd whack me upside the head when I strayed from her standards. :-)

But did she haunt the public forums? If she did, shame on her. Her time would have been much better spent preaching correct message format and editing methods than harassing adults for spelling and typing mishaps. Besides, when your Mum corrected your spelling or grammar she was teaching you because she wanted you to be successful, not mounting an ad hominem attack. Major difference.