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

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
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.. 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.
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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.) …
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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.
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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. …
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So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?
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[Was] getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? …
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… 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.
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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.
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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
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.. 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.
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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.
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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 ..

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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.
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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.
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In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t make the market, they became the market.
.. — Kevin Hassett, Bloomberg News, here ..

 

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.. Obama choice helped Fannie block oversight
National security adviser tied to discrediting of probe ..
By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times,October 13, 2010 here
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UNDER SCRUTINY: Thomas E. Donilon worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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).
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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
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“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.
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“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
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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.
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Meanwhile, guess who were the top four recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie between 1988 and 2008?
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Senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and — still ready? — Barack Obama.
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A coincidence, I tell you — just a coincidence.
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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 ..

 

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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:
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“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.
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“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.
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” 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.
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“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.
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“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.
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“I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.”
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It died at the hands of the DEMOCRATS —
HERE’s a video clip showing their anger.
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“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
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“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
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“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
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Bloomberg News has an excellent recap of
the history of the financial meltdown:.HERE.
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Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama
not shown: Bill Clinton

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

 

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“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

 

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“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.]

 

It Was DEMOCRATS Who Blew Up Our Economy In 2008

I’ve been saying this for months: It was DEMOCRATS who destroyed our economy in 2008.

First of all, given all the times that you’ve heard the line, “The Republicans created this mess,” ask yourself a question: when was the last time you heard an explanation as to just precisely what the Republicans did to cause the disaster?

Don’t be a lemming and a tool; read up on how Democrats loaded up GSEs Fannie and Freddie with liberals, massively increased the government ownership of the mortgage industry, engaged in incredibly risky policies even as our housing market was beginning a cyclical downturn, and then refused to allow any regulations or reform whatsoever:

With Eyes Finally Wide-Open, Reconsider Why The Economy Collapsed In The First Place

Who REALLY Exploded Your Economy, Liberals Or Conservatives?

Biden: We Misread The Economy – And It’s All The Republicans’ Fault

Want To Know Why Your Economy Blew Up?

Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

This Blame Bush Crap Has Just GOT To End

And here’s the latest fact and the latest explanation as to just how Democrats blew up our economy:

The quotes that explain the entire financial meltdown
posted at 12:10 pm on October 12, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

For those who want a smoking gun to show the genesis of the financial collapse, this short sequence from a longer video I posted this week will do it. Clinton HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo announced a settlement of a lending discrimination complaint with Accubanc, a Texas lender whose prerequisites for mortgages came under attack from “community organizers” at the Fort Worth Human Relations Commission and the city of Dallas. I clipped out this sequence to underscore its importance:

Watch the video.

CUOMO: To take a greater risk on these mortgages, yes. To give families mortgages that they would not have given otherwise, yes.

Q: [unintellible] … that they would not have given the loans at all?

CUOMO: They would not have qualified but for this affirmative action on the part of the bank, yes.

Q: Are minorities represented in that low and moderate income group?

CUOMO: It is by income, and is it also by minorities? Yes.

CUOMO: With the 2.1 billion, lending that amount in mortgages — which will be a higher risk, and I’m sure there will be a higher default rate on those mortgages than on the rest of the portfolio …

Here, in fact, is the genesis of the problem, the ideology that created the monster.  Cuomo, the Clinton administration, and Congress believed they had the right and the power to determine acceptable risk for the lenders, rather than lenders determining it for themselves in a free market.  Even while imposing risk standards on lenders, Cuomo admits that he expects a higher default rate on the new loans — which is why the lenders didn’t want to write them in the first place.

In other words, the CRA didn’t get used to fight discrimination, but to force lenders to give money to high-risk borrowers for political purposes.  And Cuomo knew it.

That was the political arrogance at the heart of the collapse.  However, the CRA was more a sideshow than the actual problem.  When Congress decided that enforcement alone wouldn’t generate enough mortgages to boost their political fortunes, they had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac eliminate the risk entirely for lenders through the purchase of the subprime loans.  Without that risk and with almost-guaranteed short-term profits of subprime loans, lenders went wild while Fannie and Freddie repackaged them as quasi-government bonds for investors.

While Democrats like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi keep blaming “greed” for the collapse, it was Democrats like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd building that “greed” into the system in order to drive the subprime lending market.  And it was Democrats like Frank, Dodd, Maxine Waters, and Lacy Clay who suggested that regulators like Armando Falcon were racists for blowing the whistle on the Ponzi scheme they created.

The Democrats decided, as Michelle says, that mortgages were a civil right, and wouldn’t cost the American taxpayers a dime.  How well is that working out, America?  And now, the question you have to ask yourselves is this: Do you want the nation’s economic policies run by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, and Frank for the next two years?

John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The problem is that we aren’t a moral or religious people anymore.

We’ve become a bad people.  And bad people allow a climate in which lies dominate, and then they believe the lies they are told.

And that is why we allowed a mainstream media to fabricate an entire culture of lies, and then we believed their narrative that Republicans (who hadn’t been in power for two years in the Congress) were the party to blame.  We blamed Bush – who tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform and regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the economic meltdown just in 2008 alone.  And Bush had called for reform and regulation of the GSEs 34 times since 2001.  And we put the very Democrats who blew up our economy by refusing to allow those reforms or regulations until after it was too late in charge of the economy that they ruined.

It was Democrats and the Government Sponsored Enterprise system Democrats created (i.e., GSEs Fannie and Freddie) that created the financial disaster; just as it is Democrats who are in total control of our government who are CONTINUING to undermine our economy now.

We gave Democrats total power.  And in just two years they have so destroyed our economy and our health care system that we may never be able to recover.

Liberals Say Recession Behind Us While Small Businesses Go Belly Up

This is from the Liberal Angle Times, a.ka. the Los Angeles Times.  Hence, one needs to have a constant angle-straightener as one reads.

Small-business bankruptcies rise 81% in California
With credit tight and consumers still pinching their pennies, many business owners find they can’t go on. More prime mortgages default in 3rd quarter

By Nathan Olivarez-Giles
December 22, 2009

The Obama administration’s new plan to give a boost to small businesses reflects continued trouble in that sector, which is facing new failures even as much of the nation’s economy is stabilizing. [If you want to tak about a new failure, talk about Barack Obama, then everything else pretty much falls into place.  The problem with the “much of the economy is stabilizing” thesis is that 3/4ths of all jobs in this country come from small businesses, which are obviously getting hammered.  The liberal rationale that we are recovering is part of the reason that we will have a double-dip recession and a jobless recovery.  You can’t fix a problem if you don’t first acknowledge you genuinely have one].

As credit lines have shrunk and consumers have cut back on spending, thousands of small businesses have closed their doors over the last year. The plight of struggling firms has been aggravated by the reluctance of banks to lend money, said Brian Headd, an economist at the Small Business Administration’s office of advocacy. [Obama demonizes banks even as he claims they have a responsibility.  Well, which is it?  Are they demons selfishly doing their own thing, or are they legitimate and important institutions that have performed an important role in society?  Furthermore, banks say they aren’t lending because Obama has tightened up on them way too much, such that they CAN’T lend.  Bottom line: Obama – through demonizing and regulating – has done nothing but make a bad situation far worse].

“While bankruptcies are up, overall, small-business closures are up even more,” Headd said. [Small businesses have been crying out in agony about everything Obama has done.  ObamaCare will punish them; raising taxes “on the rich” will punish them; cap-and-trade and various other energy taxes and measures will punish them; card check will punish them; hiking up the inheritance tax in 2011 will punish them.  Obama has done nothing to help these businesses and everything to hurt them.  And then we wonder why they’re going extinct].

California has been particularly hard hit. The latest data show small-business bankruptcies up 81% in the state for the 12 months ended Sept. 30, compared with the previous year. Filings nationwide were up 44%, according to the credit analysis firm Equifax Inc. [We were told last year by Obama that this was the worst economy since the Great Depression.  And now small businesses bankruptcies have nearly DOUBLED under his management?  If we were facing the Great Depression last year when small business bankruptcies were up 44%, what are we facing now, when they are 81%].

The actual number of small businesses in trouble is probably higher, experts said, because many owners file for personal bankruptcy rather than seek protection for the business. [Well, that’s just great.  The actual numbers are even worse than twice as bad as they were last year.  Sounds to me like the economy must be doing fine].

Dennis McGoldrick, a bankruptcy lawyer in Torrance, said his clients are all stuck in similar situations — capital is hard to come by, customers are tough to attract and debt is piling up.  [Clearly, Obama’s first full year in office has been a rousing success.  But least these small businesses owners are becoming more like the federal government, with massive debt piling up.  It’s good to be more like the wonderful and marvelous Barack Obama, isn’t it?].

“We can’t keep up,” McGoldrick said. “There’s more people that want to come in every day than I can see.” [Bankruptcy lawyers: jobs Obama has “created or saved.”].

Cecily McAlpine, who filed for bankruptcy protection for her Cold Stone Creamery franchise this spring, said the experience was humiliating but she had no choice.  [Plan to come back in 2012, Cecily.  Someone who isn’t just a clueless community organizer, and who has an actual idea how a functioning economy works, will be president then].

Receipts at the fledgling Compton ice cream shop plunged dramatically during the recession, and by late 2008 she was paying her employees out of her pocket.

“When the refrigerator died, that was it; I’d just had it,” McAlpine said. “That was the day I broke. I just started throwing stuff away.”

McAlpine recently withdrew her bankruptcy filing after selling all the store equipment and paying off her creditors. She is slowly paying off some back-rent and utility debt, and will officially dissolve her business in the next couple of weeks, she said.

“I still feel scarred and like a loser,” she said. “Even though I’m not in it anymore, it’s still there.” [Yes, but the liquidation companies have jobs that Obama “created or saved.”  And that’s the important thing].

Recognizing the problems of business owners like McAlpine, the Obama administration has proposed using federal stimulus money to help funnel more loans to small businesses. The White House has also asked Congress to eliminate capital gains taxes for one year on new investments in small-business stock, and called for a new tax incentive to encourage small businesses to hire more employees.  [I don’t know if Obama recognizes the problem or not.  What I do know is that funneling more money to the federal government in the form of the Small Business Administration is far from a solution to the problem.  Most small businesses avoid the SBA like a plague, due the political correctness, red tape, byzantine regulations, and DMV atmosphere of the place].

On Dec. 14, Obama called a meeting of executives of Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and nine other large banks, and told them that they owed it to the nation to make more loans to small businesses and help rebuild the economy.  [Obama owes it to the nation to resign and allow the economy to recover by itself.    Aside from that, a) calling in executives to stand hat-in-hand while Obama partly demonizes and partly lectures them is not going to solve anything, particularly when b)  it’s the small community banks that do most of the loaning to small business].

In California, the need is great.  [But the other 49 states are doing just dandy].

Over the last year, the Los Angeles, Riverside/San Bernardino and Sacramento metropolitan areas have led the nation in small-business bankruptcy filings, said Tim Klein, a spokesman for Equifax.  [And what’s really scary about that is that California generally leads the nation as the trendsetter.  And this isn’t a very good trend, is it?].

About 19,000 small businesses filed for bankruptcy in California during the 12 months ended Sept. 2009, up from 10,500 the previous year.  [Like I said, pretty much double under Obama.  I remember Obama promising that unemployment wouldn’t go over 8% if we passed his stimulus that had all these “shovel ready projects.”  But that’s done and gone; now I’m ready to buy Obama’s next lie].

During September alone, 2,229 small businesses filed for protection, up from 1,503 filings in September 2008, the firm reported.  [Well, that’s good.  At least the trend is getting worse.  You can look at the upward sloping bankruptcy graph and convince yourself that it means progress.  Or maybe you can look at it and pretend you’re a mountain climber].

Kathleen March, a bankruptcy lawyer in Los Angeles, said she often pushes her clients to file for personal bankruptcy instead of a business filing because it’s easier.  [Oh, yeah.  I’d forgot that earlier part about, “The actual number of small businesses in trouble is probably higher, experts said, because many owners file for personal bankruptcy rather than seek protection for the business.”  Scratch that part about “pretty much double.”  It’s actually far worse than “pretty much double,” but we just don’t know how much worse it actually is.

Many people also close down their businesses thinking that will solve their problems, only to find their companies’ debt lives on, March said. [Obamanomics: the gift that keeps on giving and giving].

“The norm is if you’re running a small business, you will have to either cosign or personally guarantee the significant debts,” she said. “The business itself can shut down, but the people cosigned all the debts. So, the individuals are then saddled with these huge debts.” [Yes, but loan collectors count as jobs that have been “saved or created.”].

A client who owned a surf shop was paying for business expenses from the client’s own funds long before filing for personal bankruptcy, she said.

“In this economy, anything that isn’t a necessity is a tough business to be in,” March said. “And the majority of my clients have waited too long to file for bankruptcy and in the process made things worse on themselves financially as a result.” [Well, that’s just great, because we can count on a whole lot more small businesses going belly up as all those other clients who’ve waited start floating with their bellies up.  That’s change you can believe in].

What these business owners really need is a nice sharp tax increase to make them even more profitable.

There.  If the LA Times article comes preset with a sharp leftward angle, a good hard pull to the right ought to straighten it out.