Agree, believer. This is a subject that is so serious and so dangerous to our nation, that partisan cheap shots have no place in the discussion. They are a needless diversion.

Our leaders have some serious explaining to do. The guilty parties should be removed from office and brought to justice. I don't give a hoot if the guilty ones are Republicans, democrats or martians; it matters not to me. They need to be removed in handcuffs. I won't waste my time playing politics with something so serious. I just want the FACTS.

What are the FACTS that lead to our conclusion that the first video linked in this thread is dishonest (which is what we W2S and I are talking about)? We already gave you that...the simple FACT that the article itself, which was the cornerstone of the video, now states "The neutrality of this article is disputed" at the top of it is pretty solid proof. Also, the fact that the insinuation of the video that Obama had some huge hand in getting his friends rich due to his political presence is laughable when one considers how long he has actually been in Washington!

If you are talking about the Keating Five scandal and McCain getting his hands slapped while some of the others went to prison, well, I never said he was guilty. I simply stated that you cannot be named in that kind of scandal without some involvement in it. W2S said it "doesn't make him any LESS guilty" that he was not actually charged...only that he was slimy enough to slither out of the mess unscathed. The fact that he jetted around with Keating and took huge contributions from him for years (among other things) before the scandal erupted is also a fact.

This is the most even-keeled article I have found on it so far (but like I said, you can only trust the "facts" as reported by this jouranalist, so...):

Keating Five Scandal

No, that is not proof of anything. There were MANY articles in the video. I want to know what FACTS led you to the conclusion that the video was not honest and proffers a dishonest conclusion. In order for you to know that the conclusions drawn there are dishonest, you have to know the TRUTH of what happened. That is all I am after.

The Keating Five scandal will not give me TRUTH about THIS SCANDAL. I don't give a ratsass about a 20 year old scandal, it tells me nothing about THIS scandal. That is just a CANARD that has nothing to do with this.

WHAT happened then to cause this crisis if you don't believe this version? If you are disputing that "STORY" then give me the opposing FACTS that led you to believe this story is false. That is all I want to know. Just the FACTS.

Again, I don't CARE about partisan politics, I care about TRUTH, whereever that leads, and unless I see something that refutes the information given in this article, I can't reasonably dismiss it.

I read all sides of this problem, and I really don't know who is to blame. But we need to figure it out, so it never happens again.

The old thought of taking care of your finances and planning for the future is no longer true.

By the way, I HAVE noticed a lack of advertising for second loans on television. For awhile they were there constantly, advising people to take the equity out of their home.

The problem is mind-boggling to me. How can an illegal get a legal bank loan??????? My neighbor and her husband have no credit - she cleaned homes and he mowed yards. They put down $3,000. on a home that cost $150,000. and then took out a second for $200,000, and paid cash for a second home. And the loans were through Bank of America.

They have been in the US for 8 years. I have been here for 60 years. How could this be???????

Just to put the Keating Five "scandal" to rest so we can move on and focus on the banking scandal, Robert Bennett, the Senate Ethics Committee lawyer - a DEMOCRAT who was working for the DEMOCRATS - investigated McCain during the Keating Five scandal, [most famous for defending President Clinton a few years ago] had this to say in February this year, on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes,":


Even if John McCain HAD been implicated in the S&L scandal, which he wasn't, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the current mortgage crisis. This crisis was caused by affirmative action principles being forced on the mortgage industry in the Clinton era and relaxed underwriting principles from the FED.

White House economist N Gregory Mankiw tried to warn people about the impending crash in 2003 and was shot down.

Wall Street Journal
REVIEW & OUTLOOK NOVEMBER 11, 2003

White House Fannie Pack Article


With an election year coming, most public officials prefer to make nice with just about everyone. So give White House chief economist N. Gregory Mankiw full marks for daring to tell the truth about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last week. The mortgage giants were not amused, which means we're getting somewhere.

Mr. Mankiw did taxpayers a service by wading into the debate over how to monitor these companies that have become repositories of enormous financial risk. Fannie in particular has marshaled its political troops to stop a bill in Congress that would transfer its regulation to the Treasury Department from a feckless unit of HUD. Fannie prefers feckless.

Mr. Mankiw did taxpayers a service by wading into the debate over how to monitor these companies that have become repositories of enormous financial risk.

In his speech last week, Mr. Mankiw explained a few undeniable facts that Fannie spokesmen like to deny. One is that the "perception" that the federal government guarantees Fannie's debt creates an "implicit subsidy." Mr. Mankiw cited evidence showing that, instead of helping home-owners by reducing mortgage rates, most of this subsidy is pocketed by Fannie itself: "It goes to executive compensation and to shareholder profits."

Worse, "the subsidy creates a source of systemic risk for our financial system." This is because "the subsidy has allowed" the companies "to become gigantic," with their debt more than tripling to $2.2 trillion from 1995 to 2002. On present trends, their debt will soon surpass the privately held debt of about $3.2 trillion of the entire federal government.

The two companies have so far avoided a calamity, though you might get an argument from shareholders who've had to cope this year with at least three accounting or earnings surprises. But Mr. Mankiw says the "implicit public guarantee" may create an incentive for the duo to take even more risk. What's the worry if they know Uncle Sam will pick up the pieces? "The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s illustrates the adverse incentive effects that can arise as a result of government guarantees," Mr. Mankiw said, in epic understatement.

Fannie responded with its usual huffing and puffing, and by (cheekily) citing a new study by Mr. Mankiw's White House predecessor, Glenn Hubbard, that it claims shows there is no "systemic risk." But all Mr. Hubbard studied was the narrow area of "liquidity risk." And Mr. Hubbard's post-White House work only underscores how powerful Fannie and Freddie are. They throw around so much money that they have been able to make themselves immune from serious political accountability.

Their kept politicians on Capitol Hill are bipartisan. But especially notable is the support for Fannie and Freddie from liberals who normally detest corporate welfare. In this case, Congressman Barney Frank criticized Mr. Mankiw because he is worried about the tiny little matter of safety and soundness rather than "concern about housing." But as Mr. Mankiw pointed out, most of the federal subsidy for the companies goes to enrich private investors and executives, not poor home-owners.

One weakness of democracy is that it tends to ignore problems before they erupt into crises. The risk portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a classic example. We'd prefer to see both privatized. But short of that, the least U.S. taxpayers deserve is the assurance that companies that profit from their subsidy are subject to a complete financial entrail reading by the U.S. Treasury.

article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB106851042414562400.html?mod=googlewsj

I agree 100% w/ everything you said.

How can we fix the problem if we don't examine what went wrong?

And how can we fix DC if we don't hold people ACCOUNTABLE for what they did/do?

Those who are guilty of this mess keep pointing to the free market as the problem, trying to push this country even further towards socialism.

They just keep lining their pockets and say “see, how corrupt capitolism is?”.


HE!! YES!!!

Mel, just to bring it back to the original topic of the thread for a moment, which is what we were protesting in the first place- you are saying that you do not care what side of the aisle the guilty parties are on, you just want JUSTICE done. I agree completely...BUT, the basis of this thread (and the video) was to point the finger at the democratic party for the entire (current) economic mess. It was also specifically trying to point the finger at Obama after he has only spent a couple of years on Capitol Hill. You talk about "cheap partisan shots," well, THAT WAS THE SOLE PURPOSE OF THE VIDEO!

So, to base your opinion of who is to blame on a BLATANTLY PARTISAN video and then to say that you don't care to what party the guilty belong is a little bit contradictory. Then to ask me to PROVE that it is not legit is backwards. The burden of proof lies with the makers of the video, or those who support it. The VERY FIRST THING that W2S searched for to see whether the claims in the video were true (which the video challanges you to do over and over- "Google it" flashes on the screen several times) came up bogus. That tells me that this is nothing more than a political scheme by the Republicans to pin the blame on the Democrats in order to win the election. THAT is what we were protesting...THAT is what the problem is in Washington. Shift the blame--"it's their fault, NO IT'S THEIR FAULT," and on and on...

As I said before, all we can do is HOPE that SOMEONE still has some honesty in Congress and will get to the bottom of it. I could care less to what party he/she/they belong.

So, show me some PROOF that what is said in the video is true...W2S has some facts that dispute the validity of the video as well.

Here ya go! Almost every source and graph used to compile the video that started the thread. I whole heartedly AGREE that the people responsibile for this mess should be held accountable. What I object to is the fact that the video is an obvious attempt to lay all the blame at the feet of the Democrats with the hope of derailing the election. Both parties are guilty! They all knew this was coming and they did nothing to prevent it. Wall Street is guilty. The banking industry is guilty. All in the name of GREED! Now the American taxpayers are going to pay for it.

Subprime Lender Implosion: Bad Omen For Housing Market

The Community Reinvestment Act

Policy Link: Community Reinvestment Act

The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities

First Union Capital Markets Corp., ... Offering Backed By Affordable Mortgages

Fannie Mae Announces Pilot to Purch...s For Low- and Moderate-Income Borrowers

Going Subprime - Will low-income ho...c move into the subprime lending market?

Fannie’s Perilous Pursuit of Subprime Loans

Loans with Affordability Features and Adjustable Rates Have Lost Significant Market Share (Page 2)

give flexibility to lenders by allowing variances that borrowers need to qualify for loans

Loans with Affordability Features and Adjustable Rates Have Lost Significant Market Share

Caused the Collapse of Subprime Credit Originations (Page 3)

Skyrocketing Subprime Delinquencies … (Page 3)

Options expert calls Fannie, Freddie shares ‘worthless’

Regulators spin public to boost fannie, freddie: Jonathan Weil

12th bank failure of the year announced

IMF says US crisis is ‘largest financial shock since Great Depression’

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

John McCain Warned Of Mortgage Collapse In 2005

S. 190 [109th]: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005

Chris Dodd’s Loan Problem

Obama turns to trusted political insider Jim Johnson for key campaign role

Barack Obama advisor Jim Johnson quits under fire

Advice from Raines

Senior Fannie Mae bosses resign

All Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

Miner, Barnhill & Galland

Strong, silent type

Schools in Chicago Are Called the Worst By Education Chief

Obama, Education, and Accountability

Kids’ protest highlights rich-poor schools gap in Illinois

The Immigration Debate: Its Impact on Workers, Wages and Employers

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac blind to bubble

4 Fannie Mae senior execs resign

Pelosi: Dems bear no responsibility for economic crisis

Obama Ridicules McCain’s Economic Response

Lala, until you produce something valid that refutes it, the facts put forth in the video stand. The video was well documented and in the absence of any refuting evidence, it stands. I am certainly willing to look at refuting data, but I have no reason to reject it.

Even so, I found an excellent article from Forbes that does the best job of explaining the crisis I have seen thus far. I am still reading, though, but have come to the conclusion that a big part of the problem was our government's encouragement, via Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, to lower qualifications to borrowers. The banks are also responsible for going along with that, but many DID because the FED would then BUY the bad loans, leaving the US taxpayer holding the bag. If the FED had not been willing to take the bad loans, the underwriting standards would not have been so relaxed.

A small part of this crisis is the CRA, Community Reinvestment Act, a concoction of the democrats that "forces banks to make loans in poor communities, loans that banks may otherwise reject as financially unsound." THAT BEING SAID, my research shows that this only effects about 20% of the bad loans, so it can't be pushed off on that. It is a BAD program that needs to be scrapped. Minorities are already protected under the EEOC, and the CRA stupidly forces banks to just lower standards to meet skin color quotas. :RollieEyes: BUT... as I said, that is a small part of the problem.


Forbes.com
Commentary
The Government Did It
Yaron Brook 07.18.08, 11:30 AM ET

Yaron Brook
The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--the government-sponsored, government-regulated mortgage giants regarded as instrumental in solving the nation's mortgage market problems--has one benefit. It should help expose the lie that today's financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.

For too long, the refrain has gone, Congress and the administration have been asleep at the wheel when they should have been steering the economy by expanding government control over the housing and financial markets. Economist Paul Krugman slams the administration's "free-market ideology"; he urges Bush to "reverse course now" and "seek expanded regulation."

All this overlooks a crucial fact: There has been no free market in housing or finance. Government has long exercised massive control over the housing and financial markets--including its creation of Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac (nyse: FRE - news - people ) (which have now amassed $5 trillion in liabilities)--leading to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.

Consider the low lending standards that were a significant component of the mortgage crisis. Lenders made millions of loans to borrowers who, under normal market conditions, weren't able to pay them off. These decisions have cost lenders, especially leading financial institutions, tens of billions of dollars.

It is popular to take low lending standards as proof that the free market has failed, that the system that is supposed to reward productive behavior and punish unproductive behavior has failed to do so. Yet this claim ignores that for years irrational lending standards have been forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and rewarded (at taxpayers' expense) by multiple government bodies.

The CRA forces banks to make loans in poor communities, loans that banks may otherwise reject as financially unsound. Under the CRA, banks must convince a set of bureaucracies that they are not engaging in discrimination, a charge that the act encourages any CRA-recognized community group to bring forward. Otherwise, any merger or expansion the banks attempt will likely be denied. But what counts as discrimination?

According to one enforcement agency, "discrimination exists when a lender's underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants." Note that these "arbitrary or outdated criteria" include most of the essentials of responsible lending: income level, income verification, credit history and savings history--the very factors lenders are now being criticized for ignoring.

The government has promoted bad loans not just through the stick of the CRA but through the carrot of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchase, securitize and guarantee loans made by lenders and whose debt is itself implicitly guaranteed by the federal government. This setup created an easy, artificial profit opportunity for lenders to wrap up bundles of subprime loans and sell them to a government-backed buyer whose primary mandate was to "promote homeownership," not to apply sound lending standards.

Of course, lenders not only sold billions of dollars in suspect loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, contributing to their present debacle, they also retained some subprime loans themselves and sold others to Wall Street--leading to the huge banking losses we have been witnessing for months. Is this, then, a free market failure? Again, no.

In a free market, lending large amounts of money to low-income, low-credit borrowers with no down payment would quickly prove disastrous. But the Federal Reserve Board's inflationary policy of artificially low interest rates made investing in subprime loans extraordinarily profitable. Subprime borrowers who would normally not be able to pay off their expensive houses could do so, thanks to payments that plummeted along with Fed rates. And the inflationary housing boom meant homeowners rarely defaulted; so long as housing prices went up, even the worst-credit borrowers could always sell or refinance.

Thus, Fed policy turned dubious investments into fabulous successes. Bankers who made the deals lured investors and were showered with bonuses. Concerns about the possibility of mass defaults and foreclosures were assuaged by an administration whose president declared: "We want everybody in America to own their own home."

Further promoting a sense of security, every major financial institution in America--both commercial banks and investment banks--was implicitly protected by the quasi-official policy of "too big to fail." The "too big to fail" doctrine holds that, when they risk insolvency, large financial institutions (like Countrywide or Bear Stearns) must be bailed out through a network of government bodies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Home Loan Banks and the Federal Reserve.

All of these government factors contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually the bubble burst; the rest is history.

Given that our government was behind the wheel, influencing every aspect of the mortgage crisis, it is absurd to call today's situation the result of insufficient regulation.

We do not need more regulation or economic "steering"--laws or bureaucrats dictating to financiers and investors the kind of innovation they may or may not engage in. If that were the solution to economic problems, then Hugo Chavez would preside over the world's healthiest economy in Venezuela. What we need to do is remove the government's power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It's time for a truly free market.

Yaron Brook is managing director of BH Equity Research and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/18/fannie-freddie-regulation-oped-cx_yb_0718brook.html

This is a really cool tool. You would think that CRA being an "Affirmative Action" program that there would be a distinct pattern to the foreclosures, not so. You can see from this map that it is much more a country wide middle class problem than an "Affirative Action" problem.

I think most of the blame truly lies with the predatory lenders that gave these loans. I know at the height of the loan boom, we were receiving 2-3 offers a day for new loans. Loans that there was no way they could justify giving us.

Foreclosure Heat Map

Check it out.....

Want2Stay

LOL-that was W2S's job!

Want, thanks for the links. How do you feel about the involvement of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in all this? Are you concerned that people like Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae, who left under a cloud of suspicion and was later fined for irregular practices, were buying up these subprime loan packages from lenders in order to get bigger bonuses? The executives were given million dollar bonuses based on the # of loans purchased from lenders.

I am still doing research, but there is some evidence that the CRA demanded relaxed standards to force banks to give loans to illegals. Have you read anything on that?

I sure appreciate the links, but haven't seen anything yet that refutes it. Thanks though!

thanks! So far, my research shows that the so called affirmative action loans, if you mean CRA, only constitute 20% of the problem. Banks had to make those loans or they would in violation of federal law. However, another big part of the problem was the fact that the FED, who guarantees the loans mind you, RELAXED THE STANDARDS:


Analysis: Reckless Mortgages Brought Financial Market to Its Knees
Thursday, September 18, 2008

By John R. Lott, Jr.

The stock market has fallen dramatically from its peak a year ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has declined by about 25 percent, a significant drop, though not anywhere near as large as the 36 percent drop that occurred over two months from August to October 1987. Few would argue, though, that the financial market is not in a mess.

Meanwhile the economy has kept growing. In the second quarter of this year from April to June, GDP grew at a fairly fast 3.3 percent. For the first half of this year GDP has grown at about 2.2 percent, near the historical average. Obviously some sectors of the economy have been doing well, while others, such as housing, have been in a real mess.

With the government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as well as other bankruptcies in the financial sector, there are a lot of questions. The strangest fact is that the housing sector is having such problems when the economy otherwise has been doing well. Why have there been so many defaults when the economy has not been in a recession? Defaults have been at historically high rates despite reasonable economic growth and a relatively low unemployment rate of 6.1 percent.

Some, such as James H. Carr, the CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, argue that the high default rates are a result of "unfair and deceptive practices, steering customers to high price loans . . . High upfront payments made it so that they couldn't later pay their mortgages."

Others did not share these economists' concerns. The Wall Street Journal quoted Congressman Barney Frank in 2003 as criticizing Greg Mankiw, chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, "because he is worried about the tiny little matter of safety and soundness rather than ‘concern about housing.'"

The changes in underwriting standards were pushed to accomplish what many called a "noble goal" -- an increase in home ownership among poor and minority Americans -- but the changes created a time bomb that was set off as soon as property values began to decline. The new rules involved eliminating verification of income or assets, little assurance of the ability to pay the mortgage, and virtually eliminating down payments.

Making it possible for otherwise unqualified people to buy homes increased demand and increased the price of houses. As long as housing prices rose, the problems inherent in not requiring down payments or relaxing other standards were hidden. While prices rose, no one had to default. Instead, if someone was unable to pay the mortgage, the obvious option was to sell the house at a profit. As long as prices continued to rise, people could accurately claim that the new standards did not have an appreciably different default rate than the old standards.

The federal government gives all sorts of subsidies to encourage home ownership. The mortgage deductibility in the income tax is a big subsidy, but that is not the only one. The Federal Housing Administration guarantees mortgages against default. Subsidies given to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac allow them to charge less in repackaging private mortgages that are then sold to financial institutions.

There are also subsidies to certain types of mortgages. The Community Reinvestment Act bans so-called "red lining" -- requiring banks to offer mortgages in the entire geographic area in which they operate, not just to do business in suburbs. Loans in profitable areas were then used to subsidize loans in areas where banks were losing money.

Yet, there was another major change that has gotten little attention. Back in 1992, a Boston Federal Reserve study claimed to find evidence of racial discrimination -- claiming that minorities got denied mortgages at higher rates than whites even after important factors such as creditworthiness were accounted for. The data used in the study were riddled with typos and other serious errors. For example, of the 3,000 mortgages studied, 50 of the loans supposedly had the banks paying interest to the borrowers, 500 of the mortgages were not even in the data set from which the data was supposedly obtained, and some mortgages were supposedly approved for individuals who had negative net worth in the millions of dollars. When those mistakes were corrected, no evidence of discrimination remained.

Professor Liebowitz told FOX News that Lawrence Lindsey, then a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, "was warned about these errors in this study but the Fed ignored them."

The Boston Fed still used the study to produce a manual for mortgage lenders that said: "discrimination may be observed when a lender’s underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower–income minority applicants."

So what were some of the "outdated" criteria?

Credit History: Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor.... In reviewing past credit problems, lenders should be willing to consider extenuating circumstances. For lower–income applicants in particular, unforeseen expenses can have a disproportionate effect on an otherwise positive credit record. In these instances, paying off past bad debts or establishing a regular repayment schedule with creditors may demonstrate a willingness and ability to resolve debts....

Down Payment and Closing Costs: Accumulating enough savings to cover the various costs associated with a mortgage loan is often a significant barrier to homeownership by lower-income applicants. Lenders may wish to allow gifts, grants, or loans from relatives, nonprofit organizations, or municipal agencies to cover part of these costs. . . .

Sources of Income: In addition to primary employment income, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will accept the following as valid income sources: overtime and part–time work, second jobs (including seasonal work), retirement and Social Security income, alimony, child support, Veterans Administration (VA) benefits, welfare payments, and unemployment benefits.

Accepting these new criteria was hardly voluntary. The Fed warned the banks:

"Did You Know? Failure to comply with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act or Regulation B can subject a financial institution to civil liability for actual and punitive damages in individual or class actions. Liability for punitive damages can be as much as $10,000 in individual actions and the lesser of $500,000 or 1 percent of the creditor’s net worth in class actions."

And mortgage lenders followed these rules. Liebowitz explained to FOXNews.com that these changing financial standards "encouraged speculation -- potential homeowners could gamble on the price of homes going up without using any of their own money. Remember, 25 percent of homes being purchased were purchased for speculation."

Others dispute Liebowitz's claim that these changes in rules mattered. For example, James Carr notes that it "may seem on paper that these are a curious thing to count [welfare and unemployment benefits] as income, but they simply didn’t matter."

One lender singled out by Fannie Mae for special praise for following these new criteria was Countrywide:

Countrywide tends to follow the most flexible underwriting criteria permitted under [Government Sponsored Enterprises] and FHA guidelines. Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac tend to give their best lenders access to the most flexible underwriting criteria, Countrywide benefits from its status as one of the largest originators of mortgage loans and one of the largest participants in the [Government Sponsored Enterprises] programs. When necessary — in cases where applicants have no established credit history, for example — Countrywide uses nontraditional credit, a practice now accepted by the [Government Sponsored Enterprises].

Or take a 1998 sales pitch from Bear Stearns, which also followed the Boston Fed manual:

Credit scores. While credit scores can be an analytical tool with conforming loans, their effectiveness is limited with [Community Reinvestment Act] loans. Unfortunately, [Community Reinvestment Act] loans do not fit neatly into the standard credit score framework… Do we automatically exclude or severely discount … loans [with poor credit scores]? Absolutely not.

Given these lending practices mandated by the Fed and encouraged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the resulting financial problems for financial institutions such as Countrywide and Bear Stearns are not too surprising.

Liebowitz told FOX News that "such reckless behavior by [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] has lead to their financial meltdown and to the financial problems for the whole country. During Franklin Raines' chairmanship of Fannie Mae, they were a major proponent of relaxing standards."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,424945,00.html


John Lott is the author of Freedomnomics and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland.

The purpose of the links was to illustrate that the video was yet another example of "snippets for show" that has become the cornerstone of journalism. All the maker(s) of that video did was pull little bits and pieces out and put them all together (completely out of context) to form a partisan finger-pointer.

We ALL agree that FM and FM are a HUGE part of the problem, as are predatory lenders. The ARGUMENT is in WHICH SIDE IS TO BLAME. They BOTH are, as far as I am concerned. I would bet that when all is said and done, there will be criminals prosecuted on BOTH sides of the aisle.

Anyone who wants to blame the Democrats, for example, would have to explain to me why it is that Hillary Clinton has fought tooth and nail against predatory lenders.
Hillary Clinton fights predatory lenders

Or why Republicans dug their heels in instead of putting an end to it...
Reublicans turn a blind eye

Or this one:


Full article here


Look, the fact is- we must look at the whole picture- not a short, purposely fast-paced video which is so blatantly partisan.

huh? But that doesn't refute the points made, Lala. Of course they were snippets, that is the nature of a documentary. That doesn't mean the snippets are false. In order to refute something, you have to take a POINT expressed in the video and produce EVIDENCE that it is inaccurate. If you have evidence that some point was in fact, 'out of context", it is up to you to substantiate your case. Just stating something is a "snippet" does not make that case.

ok, but how do you coincide that with the fact that the FED was promoting those very loans via relaxed standards? The above was a LAW proposed to control banking institutions, but our OWN FED was the one who relaxed those standards. We had Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae eagerly buying up those subprime loans. I don't see how a bill designed to punish banks would overcome the problem of the FED?

Can ya help me understand how that fits together, because I don't get it?

p.s. that was a very informative article and I trust the IBD. thanks for posting it.

Michelle Malkin has a very interesting take on this and is slamming Bush for a big part of this - this dovetails with believers post about her illegal immigrant neighbor getting a loan:

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/09/24/illegal-immigration-and-the-mortgage-mess/