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Americans Are Frighteningly Underwater Due To The Obama Regime’s Massive Debts

August 13, 2011

I’m not big on libertarians over all (I am a fiscal and moral conservative), but here’s a libertarian who seems to have a detailed and accurate take on fiscal and economic issues.  After looking over a few of his posts, I checked his “about” section – and wasn’t surprised to find out that he’s a professor of finance at a fine university.

Anyway, he caught something about our debt clock that will keep you awake at night if you’re smart enough to worry about impending future reality:

The Two Charts That Scare S&P and The World

The rhetoric in the U.S. from politicians, economists and the media over S&P’s downgrade of the U.S. Treasury debt has gotten vicious with most opining that it was undeserved. True, the U.S. can pay its interest payments for the foreseeable future. But can the U.S. actually pay off the PRINCIPAL? With housing, a borrow can qualify if the lender is satisfied that they are able to meet monthly mortgage payments. But with a mortgage, one of the assumptions made by lenders is that the principal can be paid in full upon sale of the house (the due-on-sale clause). In addition, mortgage debt is amortized so that the principal is gradually paid off.

But with Treasury bonds, the debt is interest-only. And the principal that is owed is $10 trillion to investors (and over $14 trillion to investors and other government entities). Can we pay off the $10 trillion? In theory we could pay it off. But it would be hard work. Take a look at usdebtclock.org. Now look at the bottom of the chart where it shows the taxpayer liability for entitlements: over $1 million per taxpayer!

The line above shows that Assets Per Citizen is just under $250,000 per citizen. Roughly, we have $250,000 per citizen in assets and $1,000,000 per taxpayer in liabilities. Stated differently, we are more underwater than the housing market in Arizona and Nevada.

Now, look at The Federal Government Savings chart (government receipts less government expenditures). Notice any alarming change in government indebtedness starting in 2007 and spiking in 2009 and 2010?

Admit it, wouldn’t YOU be scared about the ability of the U.S. Federal government (or taxpayers) being able to pay the interest AND the principal?

Hell yeah, I’m scared.

I’ve got $250,000 in assets that of course I’ll never be able to profit from, versus a million dollars in debt that I’m actually on the hook for.  And when it all comes crashing down somebody’s going to want their money back – and I don’t got it.

And I’m afraid I won’t have the wheelbarrow full of money I’ll need to buy a loaf of bread, either.

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Posted in Economy | Leave a Comment »

Unemployment Rises To 9.8% – When Will Obama Failure Quit Being ‘Unexpected’?

December 4, 2010

“Unexpected” is the very favorite adjective of the mainstream media these days.  And it will continue to be their favorite adjective until Obama is finally driven out of office in the same spirit of disgrace and abject failure that Jimmy Carter left under.

When a Democrat – and most especially when a liberal Democrat – is president, every single new negative economic report is an utter surprise that no one could possibly have every expected.

When a Republican is running the country, by contrast, no matter how good things might be, it’s actually a bad thing.

The media’s bias is simply mindboggling.  As I have frequently documented:

Media’s Bias, Dishonesty Re: Reagan Vs. Obama Unemployment Bodes Ill For America

And as researches have proven with media studies:

Partisan Bias in Newspapers?  A Study of Headlines Says Yes

An article titled, “Stocks Fall… Unemployment Rate Rises… Factory Orders Down” sums up the Obama economy:

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks have begun the trading day down, with a disappointing jobs report souring investors’ mood. The Dow, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 are all seeing modest declines in early trading.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Economists had expected better, but the Labor Department reports the nation’s employers added only 39,000 jobs last month. That was a sharp drop from the 172,000 created in October. It also pushes the nation’s unemployment rate to 9.8 percent. It’s now been above 9 percent for 19 straight months, the longest stretch on record.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Commerce Department reports orders to U.S. factories fell 0.9 percent in October. That’s the biggest drop since May. Plunging demand for commercial and military aircraft was the biggest factor. Excluding transportation, orders were off 0.2 percent.

But here we are.  With our most current “Unexpected Update To Unexpected Unemployment News.”

A Labor Department report released today reveals job creation in November was down by 133,000 jobs from October, bringing the total unemployment rate up to 9.8 percent.

This was a declared the most recent Unexpected Development in our long unemployment saga by the media.  Private-sector job creators are facing massive tax hikes, which the President and his Party say they will defend to the bitter end.  The cost of labor has skyrocketed due to a poorly designed, constantly mutating health care bill, which keeps spitting out unforeseen, but universally expensive, consequences.  Somehow there are “analysts” who think they will respond to these factors by expanding their operations and hiring more people.  Such analysts now live in a constant state of surprise.

Only 39,000 jobs were added in November, which makes it the sixteenth consecutive month in which unemployment has remained above 9.5%, the worst record since the Great Depression.  You may recall that the Democrats predicted 7% unemployment by now, after a peak below 8%, if their trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill was passed.  The Republican House Ways & Means Committee certainly does, and put out a press release to that effect this morning.

The ABC News report of the new unemployment figures contains an interesting quote from Daneil Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO’s Office of Investment, who thinks employers are squeezing more work out of few people by exploiting a “climate of fear”: “There are five applicants for every opening.  You have to work harder, or your job either will be done away with or outsourced.  Companies would just as soon open a factory in India as Peoria.”

No, they wouldn’t, or they already would have done so.  No CEO looks at pins in Peoria and Calcutta on a world map, shrugs, and says “Whichever.  I don’t know, flip a coin.”  They choose Calcutta because they have to.  They outsource when hiring American workers, or building facilities on American soil, no longer makes economic sense.  Both sentiment and practical considerations cause them to prefer American locations.  No sane executive would prefer to manage facilities on the other side of the world, commuting thousands of miles for meetings or inspections.  If companies truly would “just as soon open a factory in India as Peoria,” there has been very little stopping them for decades.  Are we supposed to believe America just keeps winning those coin tosses?

Furthermore, the idea of reducing personnel needs by enslaving current employees through a “climate of fear” is ignorant rubbish.  Anecdotal cases surely exist, but the bulk of job creation, on a national scale, is a response to demand. The ABC report makes much of the contrast between falling job creation and rising corporate profits, missing the point that long-term hiring decisions are made in anticipation of future opportunity.  Uncertainty breeds hesitation and thwarts expansion.

Look at it this way: suppose the government simply hired everyone, and guaranteed them a splendid income.  What would they all do? The government could give them make-work jobs, but this would not be a response to demand, so it wouldn’t last very long.  Every aspect of the economy, from consumer prices to interest rates, would be thrown wildly off kilter by a horde of people getting paid $30,000 per year to do whatever a government bureaucrat can think up… or more likely do nothing at all while waiting for the Federal Bureau of Imaginary Jobs to come up with something.  The government would quickly go bankrupt, while citizens waiting in line to buy ten-dollar loaves of stale Wonder Bread.  You don’t have to imagine what this looks like – just crack open a history book and look up “Soviet Union.”

Only demand and opportunity sustain job growth.  People need each other.  The only way government can help them hook up, and generate wealth through commerce, is to get out of the way.  Wise observers will expect robust, sustained job growth when they see signs of that happening.

This marks the nineteenth consecutive month of unemployment being over 9%.  The media continues to vilify George Bush, but do you know how many months the unemployment rate was over 9% during the Bush administration?  Try ZERO.

The worst month for unemployment for George W. Bush was 7.8% – which, interestingly, was the same worst month as Bill Clinton (who, as we all know, paved the streets with gold) had.

Nineteen straight months of 9+ percent unemployment.  Versus zero months.  So we blame the guy with the zero months for the record of the guy with the nineteen straight months.  And this from the very people who constantly harp about “fairness.”

Let’s blame the guy who had an unprecedented 52-consecutive months of job growth, rather than consider the policies of the guy who has clearly imploded our economy.

Let’s blame the guy who had one of the best records for appointing people with private sector business experience, rather than the guy with the worst record in history:

Whatever we do, let’s NOT blame the guy who doubled and then tripled the debt in the most massive spending binge in American history:

This ‘Blame Bush’ Crap Has Just GOT To End

George Bush inherited the policies that led to the 9/11 disaster only months into his presidency.  George Bush inherited the Dotcom disaster that wiped out 78% of the Nasdaq index along with $7.1 trillion in American wealth that was just vaporized as a result of Bill Clinton’s economy.  And rather than spend the next two years blaming his predecessor, Bush cut taxes and turned the economy around.  At least until Democrat policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act and Democrat refusal to reform and regulate Democrat-created Fannie and Freddie brought America crashing down.

Why don’t we blame the president who actually sued banks to force them to make bad loans to people who couldn’t afford the home loans that the banks were forced to provide???

By the standard the Democrats used to demonize George Bush in 2004, Barack Obama is the worst president in American history.

But the media prefers “the unexpected” to “the truth.”

For the record, I am rather fed up with “unexpected” lousy economic news that anyone with a scintilla of common sense saw coming before Obama even took office.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Conservative Issues, Economy, first Jeremiah Wright term, George Bush, Media, Politics, socialism, taxes | 7 Comments »

More Proof Democrats Destroyed The Economy In 2008: The Ongoing Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Disaster

November 8, 2010

Who destroyed the economy in 2008?  Democrats say it was Bush.  Why?  Well, because he was president, that’s why.

Why – when applying the same logic – Barack Obama STILL isn’t responsible for any of his economic mess fully two years after George W. Bush left office is anybody’s guess.

But stop and think.  The primary cause for the 2008 economic meltdown was a downturn in the housing market and the underlying mortgage market.

At the core of that meltdown was GSEs (that’s “Government Sponsored Enterprises” to you) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has always been that it was – and remains – a social welfare institution masquerading as a financial institution.  And they have made beyond-godawful “financial” decisions because their true loyalty has always been with socialist policies rather than financial ones.

Let’s look at Fannie and Freddie’s current picture:

Fannie, Freddie’s $685B fix
Bloomberg
Last Updated: 11:54 PM, November 4, 2010
Posted: 11:54 PM, November 4, 2010

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage firms operating under federal conservatorship, may cost taxpayers as much as $685 billion as the US covers losses and overhauls the housing-finance system, Standard & Poor’s said.

Costs for resolving the two government-sponsored entities could reach $280 billion, including $148 billion already delivered under a US Treasury Department promise of unlimited support, New York-based S&P said yesterday in a research report. The government may spend an additional $405 billion to capitalize a replacement for the two companies, which own or insure more than half the US mortgage market.

“It appears unlikely in our view that housing and mortgage markets will be able to operate normally without continuing and substantial government involvement,” S&P said, citing the GSEs’ growing portfolio of unsold homes, a sluggish economy, high unemployment, the prospect of rising foreclosures and billions in legacy losses.

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has said there is a strong case to be made for continued US involvement, has promised to deliver the Obama administration’s plan to overhaul the housing-finance system by the end of January. Republican lawmakers, who will take control of the House of Representatives in January, have called for the government to end its support for Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, of McLean, Va.

“Although federal authorities have taken no concrete public steps toward sponsoring a GSE alternative, Standard & Poor’s believes that it’s a useful exercise to consider how much such a recapitalization might cost taxpayers,” the report said.

$685 BILLION.  That’s quite a mess.

Did it just happen?  Hardly.  This was going on for years.  This was what caused the subprime crisis that destroyed our economy in 2008.

Let’s survey the record.  According to record provided by The New York Times, Fannie and Freddie were in huge trouble PRIOR TO the economic collapse.  And their holdings were so massive that there is simply no reasonable way that one can maintain that their crisis didn’t directly contribute to the greater crisis to be revealed.  Read the article dated July 11, 2008:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big — they own or guarantee roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market — that the thought that they might falter once seemed unimaginable. But now a trickle of worries about the companies, which has been slowly building for years, has suddenly become a torrent.

A timeline of the subprime loan crisis of 2008 clearly reveals that it was Fannie Mae’s collapse that started the entire mess rolling downhill.  From Wikipedia:

September 2008

    • September 7: Federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which at that point owned or guaranteed about half of the U.S.’s $12 trillion mortgage market, effectively nationalizing them. This causes panic because almost every home mortgage lender and Wall Street bank relied on them to facilitate the mortgage market and investors worldwide owned $5.2 trillion of debt securities backed by them.[151][152]
    • September 14: Merrill Lynch is sold to Bank of America amidst fears of a liquidity crisis and Lehman Brothers collapse[153]
    • September 15: Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy protection[154]
    • September 16: Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s downgrade ratings on AIG‘s credit on concerns over continuing losses to mortgage-backed securities, sending the company into fears of insolvency.[155][156] In addition, the Reserve Primary Fund “breaks the buck” leading to a run on the money market funds. Over $140 billion is withdrawn vs. $7 billion the week prior. This leads to problems for the commercial paper market, a key source of funding for corporations, which suddenly could not get funds or had to pay much higher interest rates.[157]
    • September 17: The US Federal Reserve lends $85 billion to American International Group (AIG) to avoid bankruptcy.
    • September 18: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke meet with key legislators to propose a $700 billion emergency bailout through the purchase of toxic assets. Bernanke tells them: “If we don’t do this, we may not have an economy on Monday.”[158]
    • September 19: Paulson financial rescue plan is unveiled after a volatile week in stock and debt markets.

Democrats who bother to offer any reason at all why “Republicans got us into this mess” claim that the Republicans refused to regulate and reform the economic sector.

Well, let’s dig a little further.  Was it George Bush who refused to regulate or reform?

Hardly.

From US News & World Report:

Seventeen. That’s how many times, according to this White House statement (hat tip Gateway Pundit), that the Bush administration has called for tighter regulation of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

That’s right.  George Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform and regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the agencies at the epicenter of the economic crisis.

When did this thing start?  Under Bush?  Not according to The New York Times, as I have pointed out before in a previous article.

From the New York Times, September 30, 1999:

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

More.  Again from the New York Times, September 30, 1999:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

What do we have, even in the pages of the New York Times?  A prediction that as soon as the economy cooled off, the mortgage market would explode like a depth charge and the government would have to step in to prevent a catastrophe.  And from a Clinton program, at that.

The same man – Peter Wallison – who had predicted the disaster from 1999 wrote a September 23, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.”

So this disaster began under Bill Clinton.  Specifically, it began in the very final years of the Clinton administration.  Interestingly, at the same time that the Dot-com bubble was getting ready to explode on Clinton’s watch.  Clinton got all the credit for a great economy, and Bush got to watch 78% of the value of Nasdaq destroyed just as he was taking office.  $7.1 TRILLION in wealth was vaporized (43% of the the Market Capitalization of the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Full Cap between 2000 Q1 and Q1 2003).  Bill Clinton handed George Bush a massive economic disaster (made even worse by the shocking 9/11 attacks), and Bush turned economic calamity into the longest consecutive period of job growth (52 straight months) in history.  In diametrical contradiction to all the lies that you have  heard from Democrats and from a mainstream media propaganda machine that often puts Joseph Goebbels to shame

What did George W. Bush do to deal with the necessary regulation and reform of these government-subsidized behemoths Fannie and Freddie?

Read what the New York Times said back in September 11, 2003:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10— The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

So Bush WANTED to regulate and reform the industry that would destroy the economy five years later, again, in contradiction to a blatantly dishonest and ideologically liberal and biased media.  Bush didn’t “refuse to regulate.”  Bush TRIED to provide the necessary regulatory steps that could have averted disaster.

And who blocked those regulations and reforms that Bush tried to provide?  None other than Barney Frank and his Democrat buddies:

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Democrats blocked reform and regulation of Fannie and Freddie.  They threatened to filibuster any attempt at regulation and reform.  Meanwhile John McCain wrote a letter in 2006 urging reform and regulation of the GSEs.  He said:

Congress chartered Fannie and Freddie to provide access to home financing by maintaining liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. Today, almost half of all mortgages in the U.S. are owned or guaranteed by these GSEs. They are mammoth financial institutions with almost $1.5 Trillion of debt outstanding between them. With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would actually pay this debt if Fannie or Freddie could not?

And it came to pass exactly as John McCain warned.

Because of Democrats.  Who were virtually entirely to blame for the disaster that ensued as a result of their blocking of reform and regulation.

What did Democrats do with the mainstream media’s culpability?  They falsely dropped the crisis at the feet of “greedy” Wall Street.  But while examples of Wall Street greed abound, the liberal intelligentsia deliberately overlooked the central and preceding role of Democrat-dominated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Here’s how the mess actually happened:

The New York Times acknowledged that Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios.”

And the Los Angeles Times on May 31, 1999 describes how this process turned into a bubble, as more begat more, and then more and more begat more and more and more:

Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more. . . .

In a nutshell, Fannie and Freddie, in their role as Government Sponsored Enterprises, bought tens of millions of mortgages, and then repackaged them into huge mortgage-backed securities that giant private entities such as Bear Stearns, AIG and Lehman Brothers purchased.  What made these securities particularly attractive to the private banking entities was that these securities were essentially being sold – and had the backing – of the United States government.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, again, are Government Sponsored Enterprises.

Here’s the process:

The Role of the GSEs is to provide liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. Step 1 Banks lend money to Households to purchase and refinance home mortgages Step 2 The GSEs purchase these mortgage from the banks Step 3 GSEs bundle the mortgages into mortgage-backed securities Step 4 GSEs sell mortgage-backed and debt securities to domestic and international capital investors Step 5 Investors pay GSEs for purchase of debt and securities Step 6 GSEs return funds to banks to lend out again for the issuance of new mortgage loans.

Now, any intelligent observer should note a primary conflict that amounts to a fundamental hypocritical contradiction: the GSE’s role was to “provide stability,” and yet at the same time they were taking on “significantly more risk” in the final year of the Clinton presidency.  What’s wrong with this picture?

The GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were designed to bundle up the mortgages into mortgage backed securities and then sell them to the private market.

Fannie Mae is exempt from SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] regulation. Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them.  This allowed Fannie Mae to bundle up mortgages, which were then rated AAA with no requirement to make clear what is in the bundle.  Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them.

This is what allowed the toxic instruments that have been sold across the world to proliferate.  And then to explode.  It also created a situation where money institutions did not know and could not find out whether potential inter-bank business partners were holding these “boiled babies on their books, complete with a golden stamp on the wrapping,” rather than safe instruments.  This then inclined banks to a natural caution, to be wary of lending good money to other banks against these ‘assets’.  And thus banks refused to lend to one another.

And it was Democrats, not Bush, and not Republicans, who were all over this disaster that destroyed our economy in 2008.

We were led by a pathologically dishonest media to believe that Republicans had created this mess, when it fact it had been Democrats.  And so we gave the very fools who destroyed our economy total power.

And what have they done in the two years since?

They made bad far, far worse.

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Posted in Conservative Issues, Democrats, Economy, George Bush, John McCain, McCain, Media, Politics, President Bush, Republicans | 17 Comments »

Why Did Our Economy Melt Down In 2008? (Email This To Your Friends)

October 25, 2010

Note: I did not write the following; I am only passing it along.  I hope you read it and then pass it along as well.

Remember the LONG-TERM Causes of the Financial Sector Meltdown (an email pre-formatted for sending)
FreedomKeys.com ^ | 20101010 | various
Posted on 10/23/2010 12:49:32 PM PDT by FreeKeys

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
by novelist Orson Scott Card, a Democrat
_________
.. This [financial crisis] was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.  One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules.  The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
..
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans.  (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me.  It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.) …
..
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
..
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis. …
..
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?
..
[Was] getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? …
..
… tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
..
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
..
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
– Novelist Orson Scott Card, a Democrat, on October 5, 2008,HERE
..
.. The Financial Sector Meltdown ..
1.  Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending.  That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn’t qualify for a loan.
..
2.  The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the “Community Reinvestment Act” [first foisted upon the country under Jimmy Carter].  This law was then used by “activists” and “community organizers” …  to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans … millions of them.
..
3.  Now we see what happens when political “wisdom” supplants good loan underwriting.  When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history … this is what you get.  Enjoy it. — Neal Boortz, here ..

.
Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.
..
Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street’s efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.
..
In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t make the market, they became the market.
.. — Kevin Hassett, Bloomberg News, here ..

 

.. Obama choice helped Fannie block oversight
National security adviser tied to discrediting of probe ..
By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times,October 13, 2010 here
..
UNDER SCRUTINY: Thomas E. Donilon worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005.
..
Years before Fannie Mae foundered amid a massive accounting scandal, President Obama’s choice for national security adviser oversaw an office inside the mortgage giant that orchestrated a negative publicity blitz to fight attempts by Congress to increase government oversight, records show.
..
Thomas E. Donilon, who won the job as national security adviser this month, worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005 at a time the company’s officials insisted finances were sound. He also earned more than $1.8 million in bonuses [from Frannie Mae] before the government took over the troubled company in the wake of an accounting scandal.
..
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Obama, who railed against lobbyists on the campaign trail, hailed Mr. Donilon’s appointment last week, but made no mention of his time as a registered lobbyist.st wee
..

 

..
Democrats and some [big-government] Republicans opposed reform in part because Fannie and Freddie were very good at greasing palms. Fannie has spent $170 million on lobbying since 1998 and $19.3 million on political contributions since 1990.
..
The principal recipient of Fannie Mae’s largesse was a Democrat, Sen. Chris Dodd (D, CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. No. 2 was another Democrat, Sen. Barack Obama (D, IL).
..
Mr. Dodd was also the second largest recipient in the Senate of contributions from Countrywide’s political action committee and its employees, and the recipient of a home loan from Countrywide at well below market rates.  The No. 1 senator on Countrywide’s list? Barack Obama. Check it out here:  http://tinyurl.com/4h9955
..

 

..
“Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.
..
“The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.” — Dr. Thomas Sowell, Professor Emeritus, Economics, Stanford University, HERE
..

 

..
When the Bush administration tried to rein in Freddie and Fannie from continuing to engage in risky practices, guess who stepped in to block their efforts? Democratic senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and — are you ready? — Barack Obama.
..
Meanwhile, guess who were the top four recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie between 1988 and 2008?
..
Senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and — still ready? — Barack Obama.
..
A coincidence, I tell you — just a coincidence.
..
More mere coincidences: Franklin Raines — a former Carter- and Clinton-administration official and former head of Fannie Mae, now under investigation for cooking its books — had a lot of powerful people in Congress beholden to his agency. Here is a list of his campaign-contribution recipients. Meanwhile, Democratic honcho Jim Johnson, another former Fannie Mae CEO, has been an economic adviser to and major fundraiser for Barack Obama, and even ran his vice-presidential search committee until growing scandals over his Fannie management forced him to step down in July. – Robert Bidinotto, here ..

 

..
On May 25, 2006, Sen. John McCain spoke forcefully on behalf of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.  He said on the floor of the Senate:
..
“Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
..
“The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
..
” The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
..
“For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
..
“I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
..
“I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.”
..
It died at the hands of the DEMOCRATS —
HERE’s a video clip showing their anger.
..

 

..
“Many politicians and pundits claim that the credit crunch and high mortgage foreclosure rate is an example of market failure and want government to step in to bail out creditors and borrowers at the expense of taxpayers who prudently managed their affairs. These financial problems are not market failures but government failure. … The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy.” — Dr. Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, HERE
..

 

..
“Barack Obama wasn’t just the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political contributions. He was also the senator from ACORN, the activist leader for risky ‘affirmative action’ loans. … [The CRA] gave groups such as ACORN a license and a means to intimidate banks … ACORN employed its tactics in 1991 by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. … Obama represented ACORN in a 1994 suit against redlining.  ACORN was also a driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and helped spawn the current financial crisis. Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort.” — IBD Editorials
..
“The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott in her pioneering [“community organizer”] efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding [via CAC and Woods Fund] for her efforts.” — Stanley Kurtz, “BARACK’S ‘ORGAANIZER’ BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES”HERE
.

 

.
Bloomberg News has an excellent recap of
the history of the financial meltdown:.HERE.
.

 

 

Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama
not shown: Bill Clinton

..

 

“Scratch the surface of an endemic problem — famine, illness, poverty —  and you invariably find a politician at the source.” —  Simon Carr

 

“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.” — Ayn Rand

 

“I think that we all need to consider the possibility … just the possibility … that Obama is engaged in a conscious effort to destroy our free market economy so that he can build a government-controlled socialist party on the rubble.” — Neal Boortz, here
[Conscious effort or not, we have an emergency on our hands.]

 

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Posted in Barack Obama, Conservative Issues, Democrats, Economy, fascism, George Bush, John McCain, Politics, socialism | Leave a Comment »

69% Of Independents Say Obama’s Policies Have Made Economy Worse

October 12, 2010

Democrats have been telling anyone who will listen that Republicans destroyed the economy.  And that letting Republicans take over is giving power back to the very people who drove the economy into the ditch to begin with.

But here’s the thing – only Democrats believe that load of hooey now.

People have moved on.  What they understand is that Democrats have made a bad situation far, far worse:

Sixty-nine percent of independents say Obama has made the economy worse and 80 percent of those also say they will definitely vote this year. More than 6 out of 10 also disapprove of the job Obama is doing, are angry with government and oppose the health care reform plan he advocated and signed into law.

Things were really bad the last time Republicans ran Congress.  In January of 2006 – the last time Republicans were in control – unemployment was a terrible 4.6%.  And the last time Republicans submitted a budget (for FY2007), the budget deficit was $161 billion.

Just so you know, unemployment under Obama and the Democrat-owned Congress has been more than twice what Republicans left for seventeen straight months.  The VERY NEXT YEAR after Republicans lost control of Congress, Democrats wrote a budget (FY2008) that was nearly THREE TIMES HIGHER IN DEFICIT SPENDING, with a $459 billion deficit.

Annual deficits under the last Republican Congress have become monthly deficits under the Democrats.

In 2008, during Bush’s final year in office, 40 banks closed.  Compared to 140 banks closing in Obama’s first year in office, and 125 more banks have closed in Obama’s second year, as of September 21, 2010.

Under Obama, we are now seeing the highest poverty rate in fifty years.  And more Americans are now on food stamps than ever before.

Which all goes to say that independents are right: Obama and the Democrats HAVE made the economy far worse.

Democrats tell the myth that it was Bush and Republican policies that destroyed the economy in 2008.  But Democrats were crawling all over the policies that led to our economic implosion.  It was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies that destroyed our economy – and Democrats owned Fannie and Freddie.  Democrats also claim that Bush and Republicans refused to implement regulations that would have prevented the crisis – but Bush tried MORE THAN SEVENTEEN TIMES to regulate Fannie and Freddie.  And Democrats marched in goose-step to block every single one of those attempts.

Which is to say that Democrats have been far worse than voters believed they would be, while Republicans were nowhere near as bad as a profoundly dishonest and partisan media said they were.

 

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Posted in Barack Obama, Congress, Conservative Issues, Democrats, Economy, George Bush, Media, Politics, Republicans | 2 Comments »

Fearmongering Demagogue Obama Demonizes Prosperity

August 14, 2010

Here’s a story that presents Obama as he really is – a fearmongering, demonizing, demagoguing divider.  There’s no hope, there’s no change, there’s only Obama the Chicago thug.

And what is this evil man who is president of “God damn America” damning here?  Prosperity.  Because how dare you keep Obama’s money.  And the fact that you earned it does nothing to dispel the fact that you are greedy and selfish for wanting to keep more of it.

Obama: An American Against Prosperity
By Lonely Conservative

At a recent fundraising event, not only did President Obama state that prosperous Americans don’t “need” to keep so much of the money they earn, he also attacked the group Americans for Prosperity. It wasn’t just an off the cuff remark, either. He devoted several paragraphs of his speech to disparaging the group, trying to make them sound like the arm of shady foreign corporations out to destroy the American dream. He even threw in another dig at the Supreme Court.

Right now all around this country there are groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity, who are running millions of dollars of ads against Democratic candidates all across the country. And they don’t have to say who exactly the Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s a big oil company, or a big bank. You don’t know if it’s a insurance company that wants to see some of the provisions in health reform repealed because it’s good for their bottom line, even if it’s not good for the American people.

A Supreme Court decision allowed this to happen. And we tried to fix it, just by saying disclose what’s going on, and making sure that foreign companies can’t influence our elections. Seemed pretty straightforward. The other side said no.

They don’t want you to know who the Americans for Prosperity are, because they’re thinking about the next election. But we’ve got to think about future generations. We’ve got to make sure that we’re fighting for reform. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t have a corporate takeover of our democracy.

Hmmm. No mention by Dear Leader of the groups that helped get him elected, like Moveon.org, Center for American Progress, or Media Matters, to name just a few. He also never talks about the shady, anti-capitalism, exploiter-of-capitalism George Soros. He’s also full of BS, as it’s quite easy to find out who the Americans for Prosperity are – it’s all right there on their website, and there’s more at the website of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. But I’m sure whoever wrote Obama’s speech knows all that.

The President of Americans for Prosperity, Tim Phillips responded to the attack on its members:

“With his poll numbers dropping rapidly because of his big government agenda, the President is now making shrill, desperate attacks on Americans for Prosperity and our 1,200,000 AFP grassroots activists across the nation.

Expect to hear more of this rhetoric in the coming months and years. This administration loves calling out anyone who stands up for American traditions and capitalism. Judging from the way they’ve been governing, one could easily surmise that President Obama and members of his party and administration are Americans Against Prosperity. They should start a new group, maybe Soros can fund it. Even if you give them the benefit of the doubt and chalk it off to incompetence, there’s no doubt about the results of the policies they’ve implemented. So whether it’s intentional or not, they certainly are against prosperity for Americans. (Unless, of course, you happen to be a union boss or part of the ruling class. Then they’re all for it, they just don’t want the rest of us to prosper.)

Obama, the ugly liar and hateful demagogue that he is, incites his audience against Americans for Prosperity by saying, “We don’t know who these people are!  They might be foreigners!  Or worse, in the vein of Marxist rhetoric; they might be the bourgeoisie who hire you and give you jobs just so they can exploit you!”

Well, we CAN know who they are, if we set aside Obama’s naked hatred and Marxist class warfare rhetoric.

As an example, we most certainly CAN know Americans For Prosperity isn’t “a foreign-controlled corporation,” with all due respect regarding Obama’s vile lies:

From their legal section:

Americans For Prosperity legally describes itself as an organization that does not accept money from “any foreign source.”  Which would be hard to claim if they were themselves a foreign-owned corporation.

Obama is a liar and a slanderer.  He couldn’t care less about the truth, or about being honest.

What does AFP want?  It is an evil organization (well, it is if you’re a class-warfare-inciting Marxist) who want to “engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels.”

What could be more un-American than an organization that does not want a giant, controlling, fascist, freedom-sucking, totalitarian, nanny state government?

You can’t know who they are.  Unless you spend about 2 minutes looking into them.

Barack Obama – the Big Brother of our time – wanted to keep you from having that terrible responsibility of being able to investigate the truth for yourself.  He wanted his lies to become your truth.  But the evil U.S. Supreme Court prevented him from doing so.  So he demonized them in a speech the same way – and with the same lies – with which he demonized the Americans For Prosperity.

Let me tell you something.  Obama has some pretty giant resources.  The Department of Justice.  The Secret Service.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation, just for starters.  He knows who Americans For Prosperity are.  If there were a single illegitimate thing to say about them, he would have had and used that ammunition.  If Americans For Prosperity were a “foreign-controlled corporation, or a bank, or an insurance company, or whatever Obama falsely and maliciously accuses them of being, if he had any proof whatsoever, this liar and fraud could have and would have produced it.

The Americans For Prosperity is clean.  It is Obama who is just plain dirty.  He is a dirty slandering liar.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Conservative Issues, Economy, fascism, Politics, socialism | 4 Comments »

Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

August 10, 2010

I don’t want to ridicule Barney Frank on account of his weight.  Suffice it to say he is easily able to pull off the two faces he routinely wears, and the two sides he routinely takes.

Here’s the recent side of Barney Frank:

Frank: “well one of my biggest differences with the Bush administration, even with the Clinton administration, was that they overdid that. I have always been critical of this effort to equate a decent home with home ownership. I think we should have been doing more to provide rental housing, my efforts have been to try and get affordable rental housing I was very much in disagreement with this push into home ownership and I think the federal government should not be artificially doing that. The goal is for people to have decent housing and I think beginning in the Clinton administration, exacerbated by Bush, we pushed people too much into home ownership…”
– Barney Frank, May 20, ‘2010 on CNBC.

And here’s Frank from 2005 documenting the fact that Barney Frank in 2010 is a rank liar:

“This is a very important resolution, particularly at this time, because we have, I think, an excessive degree of concern right now about home ownership and its role in the economy.
Obviously, speculation is never a good thing. But those who argue that housing prices are now at the point of a bubble seem to be missing a very important point. Unlike previous examples, where substantial excessive inflation of prices later caused some problems, we are talking here about an entity, home ownership, homes, where there is not the degree of leverage that we have seen elsewhere.

This is not the dot-com situation. We had problems with people having invested in business plans for which there was no reality and people building fiber-optic cable for which there was no need. Homes that are occupied may see an ebb and flow in the price at a certain percentage level, but you will not see the collapse that you see when people talk about a bubble.

So those of us on our committee in particular will continue to push for home ownership.
– Barney Frank, 2005

link
Video Link

[I found these quotes at US Politics Online].

You’re right, Barney.  It wasn’t the Dot-com situation.  It was a hundred times WORSE than the Dot-com situation, even given as bad as the Dot-com bubble was.  And yeah, you sure were right when you said there wouldn’t be a collapse, weren’t you?

So first of all, we have Barney Frank – liberal Democrat par excellence – acknowledging that the bad policy that led to the mortgage market meltdown was actually a CLINTON policy that Bush merely continued (most likely because he knew he’d be called a “racist” the moment he ended a program that gave billions of dollars to minorities to buy homes they couldn’t afford).

From the New York Times, September 30, 1999:

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

It’s beyond asinine that Democrats blame Bush for ruining the economy, and praise Clinton as having the mostest wonderfulest economy ever, when it was a Clinton program that ruined the Bush economy.  But that’s the mainstream media narrative for you.

It’s ironic that Frank in hindsight so laughably compared the housing mortgage bubble that brought down the economy in 2008 to the Dot-com bubble that brought down the economy just as Clinton was leaving office.  Because that’s TWO giant economy-killers that “Mister Wonderful Clinton” inflicted on George Bush.  The Clinton-era Dot-com crash ultimately destroyed 78% of the Nasdaq composite.  Clinton benefited with a huge market surge, and Bush paid with a huge market collapse that began taking place while the handprint on the Bible from Bush’s oath of office was still warm.

So Barney Frank reminds us that the destruction of the Bush economy was bookended by massive Clinton failures – the Dot-com bubble collapse in 2001 and the housing market bubble collapse in 2008.  And Clinton was never blamed for either of them by the propagandist mainstream media.

The second thing you can notice is that Democrats like Barney Frank – who were so quick to pounce all over the mortgage meltdown and blame Bush for it – were not only the ones who created the problem, but were the ones who defended the problem.

What’s the Democrat-mainstream media-created narrative for why we had the 2008 collapse?  Republicans refusing to regulate?  Read what the New York Times said back in September 11, 2003:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10— The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

So Bush WANTED to regulate, in contradiction to all the lies that you heard.

And who blocked those regulations?  Omigosh, it was Barney Frank and his Democrats.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

You would find if you bothered to look at the facts that Bush demanded reform and regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac SEVENTEEN TIMES during his presidency.  And that Democrats refused to regulate the GSEs and even threatened filibusters against regulation.  Not that the mainstream media is honest enough to report the truth.

You would find if you bothered to look at the facts that financial experts literally predicted that the Clinton-birthed Fannie and Freddie expansion would ultimately explode.

Again from the New York Times, September 30, 1999:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

What do we have, even in the pages of the New York Slimes?  A prediction that as soon as the economy cooled off, the mortgage market wold explode like a depth charge and the government would have to step in to prevent a catastrophe?  From a Clinton program?

The same man – Peter Wallison – who had predicted the disaster from 1999 wrote a September 23, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.”

The New York Times acknowledged that Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “buy mortgages from lenders and repackage them as securities or hold them in their own portfolios.”

And the Los Angeles Times on May 31, 1999 describes how this process turned into a bubble, as more begat more, and then more and more begat more and more and more:

Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more. . . .

In a nutshell, Fannie and Freddie, acting as Government sponsored enterprises, bought tens of millions of mortgages, and then repackaged them into huge mortgage-backed securities that giant private entities such as Bear Stearns, AIG and Lehman Brothers purchased.  What made these securities particularly attractive to the private banking entities was that these securities were essentially being sold – and had the backing – of the United States government.

Here’s the process:

The Role of the GSEs is to provide liquidity and stability to the U.S. housing and mortgage markets. Step 1 Banks lend money to Households to purchase and refinance home mortgages Step 2 The GSEs purchase these mortgage from the banks Step 3 GSEs bundle the mortgages into mortgage-backed securities Step 4 GSEs sell mortgage-backed and debt securities to domestic and international capital investors Step 5 Investors pay GSEs for purchase of debt and securities Step 6 GSEs return funds to banks to lend out again for the issuance of new mortgage loans.

Now, an intelligent observer would note a conflict: the GSE’s role was to “provide stability,” and yet they were taking on “significantly more risk” in the final year of the Clinton presidency.  What’s wrong with this picture?

The GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were designed to bundle up the mortgages into mortgage backed securities and then sell them to the private market.

Fannie Mae is exempt from SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] regulation. Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them.  This allowed Fannie Mae to bundle up mortgages, which were then rated AAA with no requirement to make clear what is in the bundle.  Which screams why Bush wanted to regulate them.

This is what has allowed toxic instruments that have been sold across the world.  It also created a situation where money institutions did not know and could not find out whether potential inter-bank business partners were holding these “boiled babies on their books, complete with a golden stamp on the wrapping,” rather than safe instruments.  This then inclined banks to a natural caution, to be wary of lending good money to other banks against these ‘assets’.  And thus banks refused to lend to one another.

John McCain wrote a letter in 2006 urging reform and regulation of the GSEs.  He said:

Congress chartered Fannie and Freddie to provide access to home financing by maintaining liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. Today, almost half of all mortgages in the U.S. are owned or guaranteed by these GSEs. They are mammoth financial institutions with almost $1.5 Trillion of debt outstanding between them. With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would actually pay this debt if Fannie or Freddie could not?

An of course, they could not pay their debts.  Fannie and Freddie basically went bankrupt and were taken over.  And they took a whopping share of the biggest financial institutions down with them.  Fannie is in the process of devouring nearly 400 billion dollars of bailout money from the American taxpayer.  And now – GREAT GOOGLEY MOOGLEY – Obama is planning to funnel yet another $800 BILLION through the same Fannie and Freddie who already destroyed us once.

And thus you had a financial disaster created by one William Jefferson Clinton and one Democrat Party.  And now a second act of economic destruction is being planned by Barack Obama.

The 2008 economic collapse that Democrats were elected to fix was itself created by Democrats who will now continue the very policies that created the disaster in the first place.

Democrats then demonized Bush for merely being there when the disaster happened.  When they had created the mess, and when they had refused to allow Bush to do anything to prevent a Democrat-created disaster that he and other Republicans saw coming, but ultimately lacked the courage to stop.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Congress, Conservative Issues, Democrats, George Bush, John McCain, Media, Politics, race | 4 Comments »

Financial Reform ALREADY Injuring Economy

July 22, 2010

This is something else.

From Business Insider:

Financial Reform Meets First Huge Unintended Consequence As Ford Halts Bond Offering
Joe Weisenthal | Jul. 22, 2010, 8:57 AM

Whenever you get new laws and “reform,” unintended consequences are sure to follow.

Usually they take awhile.

Not so with Dodd-Frank.

WSJ reports that Ford has already yanked a bond deal, because the ratings agencies, fearing legal liability, won’t let the automaker puts their ratings in the prospectus, making a sale impossible.

So did Dodd-Frank just kill the bond market? Well, probably not.. Regulators will likely find some way around this impasse, but it’s still amusing to see the bill INSTANTLY slow down the gears of capitalism (or at least capital raising) as its fiercest critics might have suggested.

Click here to see 15 signs the economy is rolling over

Here’s the Wall Street Journal piece cited above:

JULY 21, 2010
Ford Scuttles Debt Deal as Overhaul Chills Market
BY ANUSHA SHRIVASTAVA

Ford Motor Co.’s financing arm pulled plans to issue new debt, the first casualty of a bond market thrown into turmoil by the financial overhaul signed into law Wednesday.

Market participants said the auto maker pulled a recent deal, backed by packages of auto loans, because it was unable to use credit ratings in its offering documents, a legal requirement for such sales. The company declined to comment.

The nation’s dominant ratings firms have in recent days refused to allow their ratings to be used in bond registration statements. The firms, including Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch …

Oh, well. Nobody needs those stupid jobs that Ford would have financed through an expansion, anyway.  And who really cares if numerous deals that would have happened don’t now because of “finance reform”?  Surely we’re all fine with scraping our own feces to heat our homes as in the other socialist Utopia in North Korea?  Who isn’t willing to personally suffer to punish those greedy businesses?

Analyst David Rosenberg, in agreement with other market experts such as Bob Farrell, said on CNBC that the Dow could challenge the terrifying lows of March 2009 and drop below 5,000.

Well, surely the Chairman of the Federal Reserve would bring confidence to the market.

Not so much:

Bernanke says economic outlook is ‘unusually uncertain’
In congressional testimony, the Fed chairman predicts that unemployment will remain stubbornly high for years. His comments send stocks down sharply.

By Don Lee and Walter Hamilton, Los Angeles Times
July 22, 2010

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles —

Saying the economic outlook was “unusually uncertain,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke predicted that unemployment was likely to remain stubbornly high for several years, straining families and endangering the nation’s economic stability and competitiveness.

“Long-term unemployment not only imposes exceptional near-term hardships on workers and their families; it also erodes skills and may have long-lasting effects on workers’ employment and earnings prospects,” he said Wednesday in his semiannual testimony to Congress.

“This is the worst labor market, the worst episode, since the Great Depression,” Bernanke said of long-term unemployment. “Not only for the sake of the unemployed and for the short-term strength of the economy but also for a long-term viability in international competitiveness, I think we need to be very seriously concerned.”

We look at the financial reform imposed by the Democrats and realize that it will cost banks billions and make them even more reluctant to lend than they already are even as they pass the increased costs to their customers in the form of a tax from Obama to you.

Business leaders are flat-out stating that Obama’s economic policies are stifling growth.

And I go back to the prediction of chief executive officers made prior to the worst decision America ever made:

In October 2008 I wrote an article which quoted Chief Executive Magazine as follows:

In expressing their rejection of Senator Obama, some CEOs who responded to the survey went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.” In fact, the poll highlights that Obama’s tax policies, which scored the lowest grade in the poll, are particularly unpopular among CEOs.

Barry Hussein is preaching about his “summer of economic recovery.”  But he’s a liar without shame or principle.

On the flip side of the “summer of economic recovery,” there’s actual reality.

From CNN Money, July 22, 2010:

Jobless claims jump in latest week
By Blake Ellis, staff reporterJuly 22, 2010: 9:28 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The number of Americans filing for initial unemployment insurance climbed last week, the government said Thursday.

There were 464,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended July 17, up 37,000 from a revised 427,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said.

The number of claims was much higher than expected. A consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Briefing.com expected new claims to rise to 445,000.

“It’s very disappointing to have this leading indicator of economic conditions jump higher,” said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “This is the latest reminder of a weak labor market, and the jump preserves worries regarding the adequacy of economic growth.”

The Democrats passed a 2,300 page bill that is essentially mystery meat, which creates more than 20 new agencies that will write hundreds of as-yet unwritten regulations.

And even the author of the bill doesn’t have a clue how the massive Rube Goldberg Machine boondoggle will work:

“It’s a great moment. I’m proud to have been here,” said a teary-eyed Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate. “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.”

Never let a crisis go to waste.

If you are a Democrat, I suggest you burn your testicles off with a blowtorch.  Because that would be change.  And of course change is good.  And who really cares about the irrelevant details of “change,” anyway?

Analyst Meredith Whitney, famous for being one of the very, very few who predicted the economic disaster in 2008, has made another prediction that no one listened to:

“Financial Reform Will Cause ‘Tragic’ Unemployment Levels For An Extended Period Of Time“

So, as the economy descends into the hell of unintended consequences, please comfort yourselves with my assuring you that I told you so.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Conservative Issues, Economy, Politics | 4 Comments »

Obama, How Have You Failed America? Let Me Count The Ways

June 2, 2010

I can’t get away from Obama’s arrogant boast from last year.  It has just been thoroughly destroyed too many times, in too many ways:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”

Let’s examine this on a clause-by-clause basis and see how Obama has fared:

This was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick? Another way to put it is “This was the moment companies dropped their health care coverage so every sick person could one day lay helplessly in their own filth on Medicaid.”

(Fortune) — The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans — coverage they know and prize — will react to the new law’s radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we’re getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.

Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill’s critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.

That to go along with ObamaCare now acknowledged to cost FAR more than Democrats falsely said, and along with the fact that this boondoggle has forced businesses to write down billions of profits that could have been used to create jobs.

Good jobs for the jobless? How about any jobs whatsoever for the jobless?  Unemployment was 7.6% when Bush left office.  Obama promised it wouldn’t get over 8% because of his stimulus, but he lied.  And now it’s 9.9% and unlikely to get much lower for a long time to come.

When the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal? Let me just say three words: Gulf of Mexico.  The oceans are rising due to millions and millions of gallons of oil that Obama has done nothing to even slow down.  I mean, my God: it took him like six weeks to even tell us that he was responsible.

This was the moment when we ended a war? How about this was the moment when we tried to take credit for George Bush ending a war? Just what war has Obama ended?  The general in command in Afghanistan says its a “bleeding ulcer” over there, and that “nobody’s winning.”  So it’s probably not that war.  And it’s hard to imagine he’s talking about North and South Korea, given the fact that those countries are on the verge of total war in a situation that has gone to hell during his misrule.  Nor is it likely he’s talking about Iran, given the fact that his fool policy that even his own Secretary of State once openly mocked as “irresponsible and frankly naive” has completely fallen apart, and now Iran can build nuclear weapons any time it wants to.

And secured our nation? Oh, yeah.  You’ve done a hell of a good job on that one, Barry Hussein:

Washington (CNN) — For the first time in nearly four years, a majority of Americans think that a terrorist attack is likely to occur somewhere in the United States in the next few weeks, according to a new national poll. . . .

Fifty-five percent of people questioned say an act of terrorism in the U.S. over the next few weeks is likely, up 21 points from last August. Forty-three percent said such an attack is not likely, down 21 points from August. . . .

The survey’s release comes one day after the Obama administration released its first National Security Strategy, a 52-page outline of the president’s strategic approach and priorities on battling terrorism.

And now here’s the very last one, tumbling into the toilet like the turd-in-chief is tumbling in the polls:

And restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.  Here’s what Obama’s “restoration of America’s image” actually looks like:

Japan’s prime minister resigns over Okinawa base
By Mari Yamaguchi The Associated Press
Posted: 06/01/2010 07:52:12 PM PDT

TOKYO – Embattled Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Wednesday he was resigning over his broken campaign promise to move a U.S. Marine base off the southern island of Okinawa.

The prime minister had faced growing pressure from within his own party to resign ahead of July’s upper house elections. His approval ratings had plummeted over his bungled handling of the relocation of the Marine Air Station Futenma, reinforcing his public image as an indecisive leader.

Or let me put it this way: “You have restored America’s image, Mister President Obama-san.  We now revere your country as never before due to your most wonderful greatness.  Now will you please take all your American crap and your American prestige and get the hell out of our country?  It is only because we honor YOU so much, Obama-san, that we want America the hell out of Okinawa after being here for 65 years.”

“We had so much contempt for Bush – you see, we don’t even call him Bush-san – that we allowed America to remain during his presidency.  It is only because of our profound and deep admiration of you that we are kicking your ass to the curb now, Obama-san.  You are last, best, greatest hope on earth, Obama-san.  Now please not to let door hit your skinny ass on way out.”

So let’s tally up: fail until we die of socialist health care, fail big time until our unemployment benefits run out, fail all over the Gulf of Mexico and likely all over Florida and then the East Coast, fail until we cut and run, fail while getting ready for the next massive terrorist attack, and, finally, fail ingloriously all over the world.

I know, I know: I didn’t tell the truth.  I’m nowhere NEAR through with the list of all the ways that Obama has completely failed America.  Obama has failed to control spending as our deficit soars like a rocket ship.  Obama has failed to secure our financial system as our banks have closed at MORE THAN DOUBLE THE RATE OF LAST YEAR.  Obama has failed to act on illegal immigration.  Etcetera.  Etcetera.  Obama has failed his own rhetoric.  Obama has just failed, period.  Obama has even failed to kick his smoking habit.

Let me try to paraphrase Obama’s speech above in a way that properly corrects the record:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to realize that we had the absolute suckiest president in our nation’s entire history at the very time we needed a good one the most.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Conservative Issues, defense, Economy, health care, illegal immigration, Iran, military, oil, Politics, terrorism, War | 4 Comments »

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