OT: 2009 layoffs [Archive] - The Paceline Forum

Ray

02-05-2009, 06:22 PM

If that's the case the economy (the entire economy, not just the stock market) should have been growing like gangbusters for the past several years, no?
I think that stat's a bunch of hogwash. The economy did poorly under Carter and he was none too popular. It did well under Reagan when he was VERY popular. It did poorly under Bush 1 in the latter part of his term while his popularity was tanking, and it did increasingly well under Clinton as he got increasingly popular. I think the relationship is much simpler than this. When the economy is good, the President IS popular, almost by definition. Things have to be going horribly wrong elsewhere for this not to be the case (like the first half of Bush's second term when the economy was still pretty good but the war was looking really bad, Katrina, the Justice Dept stuff, etc). When the economy is bad, the president gets the blame for it and isn't popular. The current economy is on Bush's head right now, but if it still sucks in two years, Obama's gonna have terrible ratings and the Dems will lose a lot of seats in 2010. If it starts turning around, whether by his doing or not, he'll still be popular and his party will probably do well in 2010. For all of our ideological arguments and debates, it ends up being pretty simple, eh?

-Ray

Viper

02-05-2009, 06:50 PM

I think that stat's a bunch of hogwash. The economy did poorly under Carter and he was none too popular. It did well under Reagan when he was VERY popular. It did poorly under Bush 1 in the latter part of his term while his popularity was tanking, and it did increasingly well under Clinton as he got increasingly popular. I think the relationship is much simpler than this. When the economy is good, the President IS popular, almost by definition.
-Ray

White House Oval office escapades, wars and acts of Mother Nature are subjective.

The one objective element for every Presidency is are you better off than you were four years ago? The DOW/Nasdaq/unemployment numbers are the power meter for this administration. We need more watts, we need more power, Scotty. The north star for then-Senator, Barack Obama during the primaries was Iraq. Amazing how the entire universe shifted a mere ten weeks before the Presidential election with the banking black hole. I believe the right man is at the helm and the USS America will be just fine.

atmo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wXAFio-LLw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puXPozd-kuc&NR=1

mike p

02-05-2009, 07:07 PM

"I believe the right man is at the helm and the USS America will be just fine."

Yeah, now if he can manage to appoint a few cabinet members who haven't cheated on there taxes we'll be all set.

Mike

majorpat

02-05-2009, 07:34 PM

I think the lease ran out a long time ago.

Interesting to punish capitalist by sending them to a communist nation. ;)

Nope...I think we send Castro a buck every year!

Ahneida Ride

02-05-2009, 11:25 PM

Banks use "fractional reserve" to create $ outa thin air and then
have the audacity to charge us interest on nothing.

Then can be leveraged 10 to 1 or more. Any wonder they failed?

Interest on nothing is infinite interest. Morality? :crap: Ha !

DukeHorn

02-06-2009, 02:01 AM

Yeah, now if he can manage to appoint a few cabinet members who haven't cheated on there taxes we'll be all set.

And if Bush had appointed a Secretary of Defense that listened to his military commanders maybe we'd be out of Iraq by now.........

Or if he appointed an Attorney General that actually followed the Geneva Convention we wouldn't have to close Guatanamo.

Or if he didn't appoint an attorney from a 4th tier Christian law school to the DOJ, the honors program at the Department of Justice wouldn't be in such disarray.

see how all of us can play this game?

ti_boi

02-06-2009, 04:00 AM

We have a couple of very alarming trends with layoffs....wage reductions...and deflation....I have been following this unwinding for years now...partly because of some innate sense of injustice based on the corporate greed and entitlement that seems to permeate every elite society and partly because I do not trust the government reporting on issues like unemployment. My guess is that 'real' unemployment is upwards of 14%.

No folks what we are seeing is the covers being pulled back on a system that never was too forgiving and always weighted toward the rich and powerful. Yet now, as the tables turn and the workers begin to talk....on forums like this...across our great nation...one thing is clear.

We have been taken. And no one trusts anyone anymore. With good reason. Yet we still work together, because we know that is the only way. We might beat this thing....we might not.

But know this...in a global economy we are all expendable and will be thrown under the bus for a few pesos by the very people we have helped make rich.

At some point in a system as corrupt as ours you will see a backlash. You will see anger and perhaps even revolution. The haves and have nots...the thinkers and the feelers. The believers and non-believers.The haters and the lovers all share one common bond. They need to eat. Once that becomes an issue and they cannot look to the government or corporations to provide any sort of security, look for security to evaporate.

William

02-06-2009, 04:10 AM

I say we bring back the good old days when something like this would happen, a mob would form, grab the SOB and tar and feather the bejeezers out of them. Then run them out of town on a rail.

And that's just being nice about it.

Enough is enough. The resurrection of the Robber-Barons needs to end.

Just sayin'

William

Viper

02-06-2009, 08:25 AM

RPS

02-06-2009, 09:46 AM

see how all of us can play this game?We could�..but most of us won�t. Besides, whatever happened to �two wrongs don�t make a right�?

The real problem IMO is not Bush or Obama, but us. If we don�t become enraged at stupid decisions because the previous guy was even dumber then we�ve lost the war.

I�d like to think most Americans are above that; and although there are many exceptions here, they don�t represent �all of us�. Excusing failures on a comparative basis is counterproductive.

RPS

02-06-2009, 10:10 AM

My guess is that 'real' unemployment is upwards of 14%.I heard recently that the numbers are skewed by many giving up. More importantly, the data don�t include the millions who are �underemployed�.

We have millions who are working part time, or are working at jobs much below what they are trained and qualified to do because those jobs no longer exist. This trend should be of concern because it may suggest we are moving towards a two tier society at a faster rate.

dsteady

02-06-2009, 10:14 AM

You got out of the real world, remember? You left the Tech Industry and became a teacher. Where it's like being a cop, a blue wall surrounds you and your union. You don't arrest peeps, but rather assist arrested development. :D

Your little smiley face doesn't make that any less insulting.

In all seriousness, I know many teachers, but I don't know any that truly have their finger on the pulse of economic realities. Oh, they have their hands around the social issues of the day, but it's as if their tv's can't dial in CNBC and if it did, it would be merely a cartoon. . . .

Oh Bull$h*t. There are many teachers who do. Here is but one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html

I'll take the Nobel Laureate over the Lucasian (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=George%20Lucasian) Polemicist any day.

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/thumb/2/2b/Yoda1.jpg/625px-Yoda1.jpg

ti_boi

02-06-2009, 10:21 AM

Your little smiley face doesn't make that any less insulting.

Oh Bull$h*t. There are many teachers who do. Here is but one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/opinion/06krugman.html

I'll take the Nobel Laureate over the Lucasian (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=George%20Lucasian) Polemicist any day.

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/thumb/2/2b/Yoda1.jpg/625px-Yoda1.jpg

Thanks man...I typed a response and decided not to post --

The 25 People Who Screwed Up the World
January 27, 2009 11:02 AM ET | James Pethokoukis | Permanent Link | Print

Who are the 25 people most responsible for screwing up the global economy? The Guardian takes a (somewhat U.K.-centric) shot at identifying them:

1) Alan Greenspan, chairman of US Federal Reserve 1987- 2006

2) Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England

3) Bill Clinton, former US president

4) Gordon Brown, prime minister

5) George W Bush, former US president

6) Senator Phil Gramm

7) Abby Cohen, Goldman Sachs chief US strategist

8) Kathleen Corbet, former CEO, Standard & Poor's

9) "Hank" Greenberg, AIG insurance group

10) Andy Hornby, former HBOS boss

11) Sir Fred Goodwin, former RBS boss

12) Steve Crawshaw, former B&B boss

13) Adam Applegarth, former Northern Rock boss

14) Dick Fuld, Lehman Brothers chief executive

15) Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, Bear Stearns

16) Lewis Ranieri, mortgage finance guru

17) Joseph Cassano, AIG Financial Products

18) Chuck Prince, former Citi boss

19) Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial

20) Stan O'Neal, former boss of Merrill Lynch

21) Jimmy Cayne, former Bear Stearns boss

22) Christopher Dodd, chairman, Senate banking committee (Democrat)

23) Geir Haarde, Icelandic prime minister

24) The American public

25) John Tiner, FSA chief executive, 2003-07

Honorable Mention: Robert Rubin Barney Frank Franklin Raines

Climb01742

02-06-2009, 10:42 AM

i buy that list. and just add #26: the public.

Ray

02-06-2009, 10:59 AM

i buy that list. and just add #26: the public.
You're demoting us from 24th? I'd move us up to top 10, easy.

-Ray

Pete Serotta

02-06-2009, 11:03 AM

You got out of the real world, remember? You left the Tech Industry and became a teacher. Where it's like being a cop, a blue wall surrounds you and your union. You don't arrest peeps, but rather assist arrested development. :D

In all seriousness, I know many teachers, but I don't know any that truly have their finger on the pulse of economic realities. Oh, they have their hands around the social issues of the day, but it's as if their tv's can't dial in CNBC and if it did, it would be merely a cartoon.

Tenure is the night:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7NBT2uURmU

I realize it is cabin fever February but this type of personal attack needs to stop...... now!!!! :no: :no:

fierte_poser

02-06-2009, 11:12 AM

Layoffs are a painful symptom of a much bigger problem -- we seem to be in the middle of an unfortunate yet unavoidable correction to our way of life that goes beyond our financial world.

+1

Its called regression to the mean, and the people of this country have been living beyond their means for a long time. The biggest mistake we will make as a country is to assume that our current standard of living is something we are entitled to.

RPS

02-06-2009, 11:17 AM

You're demoting us from 24th? I'd move us up to top 10, easy.

-RayYes, but we are only as dumb as we are allowed to be. :rolleyes:

RPS

02-06-2009, 11:34 AM

Its called regression to the mean, and the people of this country have been living beyond their means for a long time. The biggest mistake we will make as a country is to assume that our current standard of living is something we are entitled to.Many Americans are starting to pay off their debt which is a good sign of awareness and personal responsibility. Unfortunately during that process they must spend less which will drive unemployment up in the short term. I just hope our government has the intestinal fortitude to accept that the correction will take time regardless of what they do, and that they don�t make things worse for fear of appearing inept by doing nothing or too little.

IMHO we�ll all be better off in five years if we don�t pass a stimulus plan. Just let the problem work through the system as it must anyway. However, I don�t think that will be the case because the political opportunities are way too high, and ultimately they care more about themselves and getting reelected than about us.

1centaur

02-06-2009, 11:40 AM

There were housing bubbles in England, Spain and China, among others, but let's blame the American public. People are people - they all head for obesity under the same conditions, they tend to congregate a little closer to the self-indulgent end of the Larry Flynt-Mother Teresa continuum, they like to point fingers and decry greed in others no matter what glass house they live in, and they don't know how to fix new problems right away but love to blame others for the same inability.

If only that list had been made a little later so it could have included corporate CEOs, because 2,000 people who were paid a lot by the people who owned their companies clearly screwed everybody else and now deserve credit for undermining the failed theories of capitalism, just as the undereducated masses have always suspected.

Climb01742

02-06-2009, 11:59 AM

You're demoting us from 24th? I'd move us up to top 10, easy.

-Ray

i missed us @ 24th.

there is plenty of guilt to go around. but as individuals, who did the most damage? it would be hard to argue that any individual member of the american public did more harm than any and every executive on the list. but i'm a pinko tree hugger. :p

fierte_poser

02-06-2009, 12:25 PM

I just hope our government has the intestinal fortitude to accept that the correction will take time regardless of what they do, and that they don�t make things worse for fear of appearing inept by doing nothing or too little.

IMHO we�ll all be better off in five years if we don�t pass a stimulus plan. Just let the problem work through the system as it must anyway. However, I don�t think that will be the case because the political opportunities are way too high, and ultimately they care more about themselves and getting reelected than about us.

Japan is a case study for goverment involvement going wrong:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/117618-turning-japanese-the-audacity-of-reality-part-1-of-3

Sometimes you have to pay the piper.

You know how when you are sick you can do a lot of things to avoid barfing your guts out, but at the end of the day you are better off if you would just get it over with.

Sort of like the economy. The Fed, the Treasury, the White House (old and new), Congress, Wall Street, etc. all want to shove tablespoon after tablespoon of Pepto Bismol down the throat of the US economy to try to keep things 'going' for as long as possible. A better solution with more short term pain, but a faster turnaround to growth, would be to let the US economy barf its guts out now.

You can regress to the mean slowly, or you can regress to the mean quickly.

Would you prefer your band-aid to be pulled off slowly, feeling each and every hair pulled out by its root, or would you prefer the band-aid to be ripped off so you can get on with the rest of your life?

Viper

02-06-2009, 12:25 PM

I realize it is cabin fever February but this type of personal attack needs to stop...... now!!!! :no: :no:

It's not cabin fever nor a personal attack. What it is...is oversensitivity on behalf of some, perhaps teachers who seem to be above reproach.

Ridiculous on your part or anyone's to interpret a personal attack. I have a consistent message towards public schools in America, tenure, lame-duck teachers and the wasted cost of tax payer's money towards perhaps the second largest failure in America, our public school system. First largest failure being the Federal Reserve or Ben Affleck's career.

Ask Dsteady if he's a teacher or married to one and if he's oversensitive to any remark towards the profession and work off that.

When Doctors, lawyers, Indian Chiefs or any profession thinks it's above comment, it ought to clean and look into it's own mirror. And funny tis' the notion that a teacher can't debate the point or accept comment.

"I did 12 years in the tech bubble...right in the heart of it.

Took a wonderful fallback (actually dream job) in a local school district 6 years ago...and never looked back. Now I watch with amazement as people rant about how they are being robbed....by public employees...but it seems like sour grapes....as private industry guts their ranks. Typical"

This was Ti boi on 2/01/09, just a few days ago. Sour grapes is what he refers to those Americans who HAVE AN OPINION. An opinion which has a tremendous amount of facts on it's side. One could, they could research the amount of money spent on public education since JFK's time in office and compare our student's scores globally in science and math.

Our kids are idiots. I'm not. And I have an opinion.

There's an episode of The West Wing which touches this very subject. Jeez, I guess we need to delete a few Emmy's from that show's history.

Ti Boi can have an opinion on the public, but the public can't have an opinion on teachers? :rolleyes:

johnnymossville

02-06-2009, 12:30 PM

Japan is a case study for goverment involvement going wrong:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/117618-turning-japanese-the-audacity-of-reality-part-1-of-3

Sometimes you have to pay the piper.

You know how when you are sick you can do a lot of things to avoid barfing your guts out, but at the end of the day you are better off if you would just get it over with.

Sort of like the economy. The Fed, the Treasury, the White House (old and new), Congress, Wall Street, etc. all want to shove tablespoon after tablespoon of Pepto Bismol down the throat of the US economy to try to keep things 'going' for as long as possible. A better solution with more short term pain, but a faster turnaround to growth, would be to let the US economy barf its guts out now.

You can regress to the mean slowly, or you can regress to the mean quickly.

Would you prefer your band-aid to be pulled off slowly, feeling each and every hair pulled out by its root, or would you prefer the band-aid to be ripped off so you can get on with the rest of your life?

+1!!!!!!!

dsteady

02-06-2009, 12:53 PM

. . . .
Ask Dsteady if he's a teacher or married to one and if he's oversensitive to any remark towards the profession and work off that. . . .

I am not, in either case.

But I am tired of seeing teachers take the blame for the problems of public education. I agree that some teacher's unions do not always act in the best interest of the students, particularly in some cases where it is nearly impossible to fire lame-duck teachers.

But I also think that if we want education (any education) to succeed in this country then we need to respect teachers as essential members of the community. One function of a teacher's union is to help sustain salaries that allow teachers to live in the same communities in which they teach. It's not too much to ask.

Daniel

1centaur

02-06-2009, 01:20 PM

IOne function of a teacher's union is to help sustain salaries that allow teachers to live in the same communities in which they teach. It's not too much to ask.

Daniel

Yes it is. Beverly Hills? The supply and demand for teachers does not match up to the supply and demand for housing in any given community, and no amount of union posturing on that topic will change that fact.

Pete Serotta

02-06-2009, 02:06 PM

Well, here goes.....In NC the teachers make VERY little. My daughter is in her 5 year of teaching and makes 33K/Year (yes year round school)

In regard to teachers, and I can only speak for the county i live in- the teachers are not the problem - it is the administration. Everything today is politically correctness, quite often at the cost of doing better for the child and the community.

Viper, you do need to chill......Opinions are fine and we all have them BUT sometimes it is best to keep them to yourself. Respect for the individual is key. Additionally, I can assure you, thru many of my mistakes, that NO ONE has all the answers and that EVERYONE has something to contribute.

Hell, I read in the WSJ this week that Correction officers in CA can make up to 300K per year with all the overtime in the last few years prior to retirement - AND that is what the retirement is based on. (I am sure there is more to this story and it is sure not a job that many of us would think about taking)

There are exceptions to everything and the news can find them and inflame them. :D :D

dsteady

02-06-2009, 02:51 PM

Yes it is. Beverly Hills? The supply and demand for teachers does not match up to the supply and demand for housing in any given community, and no amount of union posturing on that topic will change that fact.

I'm not saying they have to live in Beverly Hills, but they shouldn't have to live an hour away from Beverly Hills either. When I lived in SF I had many friends who were teachers. It seemed to me that a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District (by the way Viper, a very successful public school district) ought to be able to live somewhere in San Francisco as well. Not Pacific Heights necessarily, or Russian Hill, but they ought to be able to live in the greater community in which they teach.

Daniel

Pete Serotta

02-06-2009, 02:54 PM

EARD ON THE STREET, by Liam Denning :cool: :) :confused:
from The Wall Street Journal.

When squabbling politicians are setting the economic agenda, investors beware. In theory, the stimulus package should lift all boats. But politics is a slippery asset class.

ti_boi

02-06-2009, 03:28 PM

It's not cabin fever nor a personal attack. What it is...is oversensitivity on behalf of some, perhaps teachers who seem to be above reproach.

Ridiculous on your part or anyone's to interpret a personal attack. I have a consistent message towards public schools in America, tenure, lame-duck teachers and the wasted cost of tax payer's money towards perhaps the second largest failure in America, our public school system. First largest failure being the Federal Reserve or Ben Affleck's career.

Ask Dsteady if he's a teacher or married to one and if he's oversensitive to any remark towards the profession and work off that.

When Doctors, lawyers, Indian Chiefs or any profession thinks it's above comment, it ought to clean and look into it's own mirror. And funny tis' the notion that a teacher can't debate the point or accept comment.

"I did 12 years in the tech bubble...right in the heart of it.

Took a wonderful fallback (actually dream job) in a local school district 6 years ago...and never looked back. Now I watch with amazement as people rant about how they are being robbed....by public employees...but it seems like sour grapes....as private industry guts their ranks. Typical"

This was Ti boi on 2/01/09, just a few days ago. Sour grapes is what he refers to those Americans who HAVE AN OPINION. An opinion which has a tremendous amount of facts on it's side. One could, they could research the amount of money spent on public education since JFK's time in office and compare our student's scores globally in science and math.

Our kids are idiots. I'm not. And I have an opinion.

There's an episode of The West Wing which touches this very subject. Jeez, I guess we need to delete a few Emmy's from that show's history.

Ti Boi can have an opinion on the public, but the public can't have an opinion on teachers? :rolleyes:

actually the kids are smarter than you think....and your opinion like a stinky asshole is something everyone has....in fact in good times teachers do not begrudge the private sector their rewards...but in bad times do not expect teachers to give up the meager gains they make. Union? Damn right. Proud of it. Collective bargaining helped create a middle class in this country as the elite would have long since decimated that group. Out of their own self interest and whims....or the fact that they 'feel' a certain way that is in fact not backed up by reality.

goonster

02-06-2009, 04:21 PM

http://seekingalpha.com/article/117618-turning-japanese-the-audacity-of-reality-part-1-of-3

That's a good article, but now I'm scared. :(

Can anyone cite a stimulus that worked?

What did they do in Sweden, besides nationalize the banks? I imagine their banking crisis did not coincide with a housing bubble, negative savings rates, ballooning unemployment, etc. . . .

Ray

02-06-2009, 04:35 PM

That's a good article, but now I'm scared. :(

Can anyone cite a stimulus that worked?

I think the stimulus of the 1930s followed by the hyper-stimulus provided by WWII did the American economy a touch of good. That seems to be the historically agreed to opinion anyway.

-Ray

fierte_poser

02-06-2009, 04:44 PM

I think the main problem with stimulus at this point in time is that it requires deficit spending, which we have already been doing out the wazoo for the last 8 years.

Deficit spending by the federal goverment to limit the depth of a recession is reasonable. But...the problem with our current state is that we just went through a 5 year bull market/economic expansion that was aided and abetted by the following:

1. Record federal government deficits. Mostly post-9/11.
2. Record indebtedness by the American populace.

And now we are supposed to believe that more federal government deficit spending and more stimulus to consumers is going to pull us out of this one? Isn't that how we got here in the first place?

This thing is at its core credit bubble, folks, and its called a bubble for one reason and one reason only: when it ends, it ends with a pop.

fierte_poser

02-06-2009, 04:47 PM

Good articles you owe it to yourself to read. Fair and balanced, imho:

The End of the Financial World as We Know It
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhorn.html

How to Repair a Broken Financial World
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhornb.html

1centaur

02-06-2009, 06:59 PM

And now we are supposed to believe that more federal government deficit spending and more stimulus to consumers is going to pull us out of this one? Isn't that how we got here in the first place?

Reduced to simple terms, joe consumer buys a house and takes out a big mortgage. His circumstances change and he has trouble making his payments. He manages to borrow more money so he keeps his house, but he's going to have to pay back all that debt someday or he will lose his house and all his stuff. How does he pay back the debt?

He makes more money, or he spends less money.

If he's Donald Trump, he makes more money. The saving thing just isn't going to happen.

The government has a third choice: it can print money.

Do we see the current administration as knowing how to generate growth (via lower taxes, less regulation)? I would say no.

Do we see the current administration (or any lately, or the non-tax-paying entitlement receivers who vote) as being willing to cut spending a lot? I would say no.

Can you hear the printing presses warming up? Our only hope is if the growth comes from elsewhere and they buy our unique stuff. Makes you want to buy into the Chinese century (or Petrobras) and avoid the dollar at the same time. Milton Friedman's view on money and inflation will be popular again by 2020.

ti_boi

02-06-2009, 07:32 PM

See link below...... :beer:

ti_boi

02-06-2009, 07:33 PM

http://tinyurl.com/b2auyu

zap

02-07-2009, 07:48 AM

snipped

Union? Damn right. Proud of it. Collective bargaining helped create a middle class in this country as the elite would have long since decimated that group. Out of their own self interest and whims....or the fact that they 'feel' a certain way that is in fact not backed up by reality.

OT

Whats your thought on this card check proposal.

ti_boi

02-07-2009, 08:47 AM

snipped

OT

Whats your thought on this card check proposal.

I just read up on it a little bit...since you asked...I am pro union. Simple.
All in all I am just a working man...no delusions...and I happen to love my work. I honestly feel that the brothers and sisters with me in the movement are just that....family. I think together we can provide a stable future for one another and hopefully offer a valuable service. I happen to work in an excellent school and that excellence comes from old fashioned sweat and honest effort. I think our country and the workers in it, would benefit from less top heavy reward structures and a more equitable distribution of wealth.

93legendti

02-07-2009, 08:54 AM

snipped

OT

Whats your thought on this card check proposal.
Anything that not only keeps people in the "middle class", but also enlarges it, is good in the eyes of my democrat friends--I am still waiting to hear how they justify coercion in the voting process.

Ray

02-07-2009, 09:03 AM

Anything that not only keeps people in the "middle class", but also enlarges it, is good in the eyes of my democrat friends--I am still waiting to hear how they justify coercion in the voting process.
There's plenty of opportunity for coercion either way. Without card check, the company management has an easier time of coercing. With it, the union does. Pick your poison.

-Ray

93legendti

02-07-2009, 09:19 AM

There's plenty of opportunity for coercion either way. Without card check, the company management has an easier time of coercing. With it, the union does. Pick your poison.

-Ray
Coercion with secret ballots? Amazing.

ti_boi

02-07-2009, 09:28 AM

Anything that not only keeps people in the "middle class", but also enlarges it, is good in the eyes of my democrat friends--I am still waiting to hear how they justify coercion in the voting process.

the thing is...legend...I am not in the middle class....household income here is much higher...I simply have a point of view and set of beliefs that are consistent with the union movement.

I believe that public companies have an obligation to not let one man (or woman--Carly!) at the top simply walk in and raid funds at the expense of the jobs and livelihood of thousands who helped build the firm through hard work. There is no way to justify the salaries of these individuals.

I think all kids need to be treated equally...little Carly....big Carly....both have needs and those needs should be met equitably.

Ray

02-07-2009, 10:16 AM

Coercion with secret ballots? Amazing.
If you can get to the ballot. Good luck with that if you're trying to organize in a right-to-work state. I'm not saying card check is right - I'm just saying that it, as usual, isn't black and white, good vs evil. Both options help someone and hurt someone else. So, like I said, you pick your poison.

-Ray

ti_boi

02-07-2009, 12:28 PM

The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".

EastCoastRoadie

02-07-2009, 05:04 PM

There are two realities about the current stimulus package:

1) less than 20% of the money (and that is being generous) is going to areas which actually could stimulate the economy

2) Only 37% of Americans support it according to the latest surveys, but that won't stop "our" representatives from pushing it through. This bill is about giving more power to our government, and less control to the people.

If you really dig into the detail of this bill, it is more of a 30% increase in the annual federal budget than a stimulus bill. The Federal budget is around $3 trillion a year. This money will go mostly to general budget items effectively increasing the federal budget 30%. And we are already being told this may have to be done at least once and maybe twice more. We have never gotten out of a recession with increased government spending. We have gotten out of several recessions with tax cuts encouraging business and individuals to work harder. We the people are what make this country go, not the government. If we grant them the power to change that, then we are doomed.

gemship

02-07-2009, 05:23 PM

Ray

02-07-2009, 05:45 PM

+1 While I appreciate the post of some on this thread for their great understanding of how the economy works this is the simple truth. ;)
The simple truth is that there is no simple truth.

Attempting to reduce complex subjects to simple truths was a very popular strategy over the last eight years. You might like the results. I don't.

-Ray

93legendti

02-07-2009, 07:17 PM

If you can get to the ballot. Good luck with that if you're trying to organize in a right-to-work state. I'm not saying card check is right - I'm just saying that it, as usual, isn't black and white, good vs evil. Both options help someone and hurt someone else. So, like I said, you pick your poison.

-Ray
A ballot where only the person who cast it knows its contents hurts someone? Amazing.

Ray

02-07-2009, 07:25 PM

A ballot where only the person who cast it knows its contents hurts someone? Amazing.
We'll no doubt continue to amaze each other Adam.

-Ray

RPS

02-07-2009, 10:01 PM

We'll no doubt continue to amaze each other Adam.

-RayYou amaze me on this too. I support the right to form a union, but see no downside to voting in private. You said there are downsides, but didn't say what they are. :confused:

Ray

02-08-2009, 03:57 AM

You amaze me on this too. I support the right to form a union, but see no downside to voting in private. You said there are downsides, but didn't say what they are. :confused:
My understanding of the issue is that under current rules, its all too easy for people who are trying to form a union, or even hold preliminary discussions about interest in one, can pretty easily be harassed, reprimanded, even fired from their jobs for doing so. That might not be the stated reason for the action, but it happens ALL the time. I've even seen it in the public sector where there are much stronger safeguards in place. So there are plenty of institutional impediments to union organizing to begin with. Card Check shifts that balance back towards the unions somewhat. I think you can legitimately argue that its not a very good way to do it in that it doesn't really make it easier on the front end, but if you get to a vote, it stacks the deck pretty heavily in the union's favor.

I'm not saying I'm for it. Unions have been a great thing for labor and the middle class in this country, but like everything else that gains power, some of them have gotten big, bloated, inefficient, and they too are capable of knocking heads. They've helped workers but have often hurt the businesses, which ultimately didn't do the workers a lot of good, at least past a certain point. I think a lot of places are better off when unions can be avoided through good labor / management relations. Hell, my brother spent a good chunk of his career working for management trying to help them on that front so that their employees wouldn't feel the need to unionize. I've seen it from the inside a couple of times and personally never voted to unionize. But some places just flat need them.

My whole point wasn't that card check is a good thing. Its that its never as simple as some folks try to make it. Its often about WHO's ox gets gored, not whether someone's does.

-Ray

EastCoastRoadie

02-08-2009, 07:41 AM

The simple truth is that there is no simple truth.

Attempting to reduce complex subjects to simple truths was a very popular strategy over the last eight years. You might like the results. I don't.

-Ray

Ray,
I think your point is fair, but just remember who has had full control of the Congress and Senate over the past 4 years. The same party that now has full control of the Congress, Senate, and whitehouse today. The President has no power to pass legislation, budgets, etc. He/she can only sign legislation passed by the legislative branch and be a cheerleader for their causes.

I actually liked the economy very much for 6 of the last 7 years as did most Americans and the Government who was taking in more and more money each year (but could not control their spending). In 2008 we got burned for legislation (CRA) that was passed in the 70's and given more teeth in the 90's. And the clowns who pushed this legislation ruining basic free market principles for lenders (yes again "our" representatives) now claim to have no knowledge of how this happened and blame the very companies they knowingly handicapped for being greedy. The auditors for Fannie and Freddie had been screaming for years about accounting issues, but members of congress and the senate said that these were only politically motivated attacks. Guess not.

Our government is no longer for the people by the people. It is becoming by the elite for those they think too stupid to choose for themselves. This is not what made our country great.

gemship

02-08-2009, 08:12 AM

The simple truth is that there is no simple truth.

Attempting to reduce complex subjects to simple truths was a very popular strategy over the last eight years. You might like the results. I don't.

-Ray

Thanks for acknowledging my post but I really don't have much to input except I supported the post of Eastcoastroadie. I thing the politicians pat each other on the but with high fives taking the working class's economy right down the gutter. Not to mention they make all kinds of double standards. The biggest mistake on the part of Bush in the last eight years was going to Iraq. Despite being a supposed oil man I do believe that he believes in freedom for all unfortunately America can't keep borrowing to be the protector of freedom for all forever. No matter which party you support they both seem to be okay with out sourcing manufacturing. American people need jobs and immigrants should stay in their own homeland. You're right it's not simple because this isn't the same country of the founding fathers.

long live Bill Braskey :beer:

Ray

02-08-2009, 08:19 AM

Ray,
I think your point is fair, but just remember who has had full control of the Congress and Senate over the past 4 years. The same party that now has full control of the Congress, Senate, and whitehouse today. The President has no power to pass legislation, budgets, etc. He/she can only sign legislation passed by the legislative branch and be a cheerleader for their causes.

I actually liked the economy very much for 6 of the last 7 years as did most Americans and the Government who was taking in more and more money each year (but could not control their spending). In 2008 we got burned for legislation (CRA) that was passed in the 70's and given more teeth in the 90's. And the clowns who pushed this legislation ruining basic free market principles for lenders (yes again "our" representatives) now claim to have no knowledge of how this happened and blame the very companies they knowingly handicapped for being greedy. The auditors for Fannie and Freddie had been screaming for years about accounting issues, but members of congress and the senate said that these were only politically motivated attacks. Guess not.

Our government is no longer for the people by the people. It is becoming by the elite for those they think too stupid to choose for themselves. This is not what made our country great.
I don't think the government is run by special interests and elites today any more than it has been for 30-40 years. Probably longer - I was just less aware of it then. And we're all members of one or two of those interests, so I think we tend to object more when our interests are losing. But we're still democratic enough that we're able to change which special interests we want to support from time to time, and we still do.

Who DIDN'T like the economy for several of the past eight years? That's the nature of a bubble. EVERYONE's happy while its expanding and bummed when it pops. But they do pop. My preference would have been for the executive and the legislative branches to have been MUCH tougher regulators (or perhaps just more effective regulators) so that the financial sector would not have been able to create these securitized credit instruments out of thin air that drove housing prices, equity lending, and everything else about the economy into thin air along with it. I also realize that this is not a D vs R issue - the Clinton administration took a lot of the first steps in loosening regulations and allowing that to happen and there were plenty of enablers on both sides in Congress. Although for the sake of historical accuracy, the Democratic congress took control at the beginning of 2007 - I count that as about a month over two years - not four.

I realize there will be business cycles and that government could and should never be the primary driver of those. I see government's role as more of a leveler so that perhaps the high's aren't quite so high (as the recent high clearly shouldn't have been, given its artificial basis) and the lows are not so low. Or at least the lows are cushioned for those at the bottom who are threatened far beyond a STANDARD of living down to the level of basic survival. The private sector has always been the prime mover and should be, but government has an important role to play as well.

As noted earlier, totally free markets don't work. They ultimately concentrate way too much wealth at the top and result in too much poverty at the bottom. And usually result in some sort of really nasty upheaval that results in TOTAL government control, which is clearly worse. Market based economies with variable levels of democratic regulation are what's worked historically. That's what we have and have had since at least the 1930s. I just get tired of folks screaming about socialism when the pendulum swings back towards more regulation just as I'm sure you don't like the noises that liberals make when it swings toward less intervention.

For all of the changes to our democracy, we're still able to throw the bums out when they go too far in one direction. We do it pretty regularly. We just did it and we'll do it again when these bums go too far. That counts for a lot. And, frankly, I think that's about as "by the people, for the people" as its ever been in our representative democracy.

-Ray

dsteady

02-08-2009, 08:48 AM

. . . . We have never gotten out of a recession with increased government spending. We have gotten out of several recessions with tax cuts encouraging business and individuals to work harder. We the people are what make this country go, not the government. If we grant them the power to change that, then we are doomed.

This ignores the Depression and subsequent public works programs of the New Deal.

Forget the OPEC, the S&L Crisis, the Tech bubble and all those little recessions: the Depression is the last precedent, and what we are now trying to avoid.

93legendti

02-08-2009, 08:54 AM

Ray,
...And the clowns who pushed this legislation ruining basic free market principles for lenders (yes again "our" representatives) now claim to have no knowledge of how this happened and blame the very companies they knowingly handicapped for being greedy. The auditors for Fannie and Freddie had been screaming for years about accounting issues, but members of congress and the senate said that these were only politically motivated attacks. Guess not.
...
Probably the ones who got the most money from Fredde and Fannie.
iirc, Sen. Dodd, Rep. Frank and our President are in the top 3. I think Sen. Kerry is up there as well.

dsteady

02-08-2009, 09:12 AM

Probably the ones who got the most money from Fredde and Fannie.
iirc, Sen. Dodd, Rep. Frank and our President are in the top 3. I think Sen. Kerry is up there as well.

This probably wont matter to you -- you truly seem more inclined to inflame divisiveness than to seek common cause -- but Rep. Frank actually pushed for more regulation of Freddie and Fannie and wanted to get people into rental housing that they could afford, and away from "owning" houses that they could not afford.

93legendti

02-08-2009, 09:23 AM

This probably wont matter to you -- you truly seem more inclined to inflame divisiveness than to seek common cause -- but Rep. Frank actually pushed for more regulation of Freddie and Fannie and wanted to get people into rental housing that they could afford, and away from "owning" houses that they could not afford.
You can find his statements during public hearings on the net. In '05 he saw no reason to change Freddie or Fannie.

I think I am less inclined to inflame divisiveness than our new President (see Pres. Obama's recent comments on Republicans), but, I am not a messianic, transformational, post-partisan figure.

See Congressman Barney Frank's opening statement, which begins at 4:40. It's rather amusing. Here's an excerpt of his opening statement:

I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury.

I must say we have an interesting example of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of the critics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that the problem is that the Federal Government is obligated to bail out people who might lose money in connection with them. I do not believe that we have any such obligation. And as I said, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy by some people.

So let me make it clear, I am a strong supporter of the role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play in housing, but nobody who invests in them should come looking to me for a nickel--nor anybody else in the Federal Government. And if investors take some comfort and want to lend them a little money and less interest rates, because they like this set of affiliations, good, because housing will benefit. But there is no guarantee, there is no explicit guarantee, there is no implicit guarantee, there is no wink-and-nod guarantee. Invest, and you are on your own.

Now, we have got a system that I think has worked very well to help
housing. The high cost of housing is one of the great social bombs of this country. I would rank it second to the inadequacy of our health delivery system as a problem that afflicts many, many Americans. We have gotten recent reports about the difficulty here.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping make housing more affordable, both in general through leveraging the mortgage market, and in particular, they have a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing, and that is what I am concerned about here. I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals. I worry frankly that there is a tension here.

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23617.html

RPS

02-08-2009, 09:36 AM

I think you can legitimately argue that its not a very good way to do it in that it doesn't really make it easier on the front end, but if you get to a vote, it stacks the deck pretty heavily in the union's favor.
-RayOn that we agree. ;)
Sorry, but the arguments still make absolutely no sense to me.

93legendti

02-08-2009, 10:03 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs&eurl=http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/video/shocking_video_unearthed_democrats_in_their_own_wo rds/

Rep. Frank opines at 4:51 and 6:00

I'll dig up the 2005 Roll Call vote, where Rep. Frank voted against regulating Freddie and Fannie.

RPS

02-08-2009, 10:04 AM

I just get tired of folks screaming about socialism when the pendulum swings back towards more regulation just as I'm sure you don't like the noises that liberals make when it swings toward less intervention.
-RayI try hard to be as neutral as possible on most things except on forced socialism and communism because it goes against human nature � not to mention that I hated it when it happened to me.

Having admitted that bias, I�m puzzled why you seem to relate government regulation and lack of intervention with socialism and/or capitalism. Be honest, can�t these be two different issues?

IMO what most conservatives fear at a fundamental level is that regulation designed primarily to spread and/or distribute wealth � hence a move towards socialism � will have the unintended and undesirable effect of making society less efficient, and that it will ultimately drag everyone down to a lower level.

Regulation and/or intervention, however, don�t necessarily have to be designed to spread wealth, do they? No doubt is seems that way most of the time, but isn�t that only because those in power choose to do so?

I can think of many cases where regulations have nothing to do with promoting socialism. IMHO if you don�t see this distinction maybe you are more of a socialist than you think � not that there is anything wrong with that. ;)

Ray

02-08-2009, 10:26 AM

I try hard to be as neutral as possible on most things except on forced socialism and communism because it goes against human nature � not to mention that I hated it when it happened to me.

Having admitted that bias, I�m puzzled why you seem to relate government regulation and lack of intervention with socialism and/or capitalism. Be honest, can�t these be two different issues?

IMO what most conservatives fear at a fundamental level is that regulation designed primarily to spread and/or distribute wealth � hence a move towards socialism � will have the unintended and undesirable effect of making society less efficient, and that it will ultimately drag everyone down to a lower level.

Regulation and/or intervention, however, don�t necessarily have to be designed to spread wealth, do they? No doubt is seems that way most of the time, but isn�t that only because those in power choose to do so?

I agree that when you get far enough left, it starts turning into something you can call socialism. I don't blame you for hating it when it happened to you, but don't forget the prevailing conditions that brought that rebellion about through the 1950s and well before. Very free markets but ultimately totally under control of the wealthy who leveraged it against the poor. Arguably as bad, and for those suffering under it at the time, intolerable enough to be willing to fight. So neither extreme is desirable or sustainable.

What I'm talking about is an always shifting balance. And I'd defy you to find me more than a handful of regulations of any type that don't shift wealth or power one direction or another. Sometimes between income groups (and often enough from poor to rich as well as the opposite) and sometimes across income levels between different users of resources and different policy preferences. There are winners and losers in every governmental action and in most business transactions. In the best possible world, a few of them are truly 'win-win', but most of them have winners and losers. And when enough people feel like they're on the losing side of what government is doing, government gets changed. As it just did and will again.

But the goal, to me, is to keep the shifts frequent enough and limited enough that pretty much everyone gets through it whole. Yeah, the rich don't get quite as rich as they might but they do damn well, and the poor get by adequately (and, as importantly to the rich, they don't bring out the guns and knives). And when there's a middle class, everyone seems to stay calmer and more civilized. When the government was seen to be on the side of the underclass against the middle class in the 70's, there was a big switch toward less government. Recently, the prevailing mood clearly got to the point that most people thought government wasn't doing enough to rein in free enterprise and the abuses of the wealthy, and its changed again. For how long and how effectively we'll see. The only thing we know for sure is it'll swing back someday.

By your definition of a socialist, I'm clearly more of one than I realize. By mine, I'm not even close. It ain't a secret that we don't think alike. :cool:

-Ray

EastCoastRoadie

02-08-2009, 11:36 AM

By your definition of a socialist, I'm clearly more of one than I realize. By mine, I'm not even close. It ain't a secret that we don't think alike. :cool:

-Ray

Ray,
This is the best part of being an American. We can completely disagree, and both of us can express our individual opinions.

As to your clarification on 2 years of d control and not 4, I believe you are correct.

The reality throughout history has always been the rich will always be rich whether you have a capitalist, socialist, communist, or totalitarian run country. The evidence on socialist countries is that every time it has been tried, the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and the middle class moves downward. I don't want to punish the wealthy, rather I want everyone to have more wealth who is willing to work for it. I don't think we will ever solve our problems as a country while we have career politicians running the country instead of economic experts, infrastructure experts, energy experts, etc. running the show. We have people on both sides of the aisle making very important decisions on things they know little to nothing about. If 60% of the people are against something in a representative democracy, then it should never have chance of passing. Those in Washington will push this through anyway. That to me fits the definition of elitist thought.

dsteady

02-08-2009, 12:08 PM

You can find his statements during public hearings on the net. In '05 he saw no reason to change Freddie or Fannie.

I think I am less inclined to inflame divisiveness than our new President (see Pres. Obama's recent comments on Republicans), but, I am not a messianic, transformational, post-partisan figure.

See Congressman Barney Frank's opening statement, which begins at 4:40. It's rather amusing. Here's an excerpt of his opening statement:

I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury.

I must say we have an interesting example of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of the critics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that the problem is that the Federal Government is obligated to bail out people who might lose money in connection with them. I do not believe that we have any such obligation. And as I said, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy by some people.

So let me make it clear, I am a strong supporter of the role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play in housing, but nobody who invests in them should come looking to me for a nickel--nor anybody else in the Federal Government. And if investors take some comfort and want to lend them a little money and less interest rates, because they like this set of affiliations, good, because housing will benefit. But there is no guarantee, there is no explicit guarantee, there is no implicit guarantee, there is no wink-and-nod guarantee. Invest, and you are on your own.

Now, we have got a system that I think has worked very well to help
housing. The high cost of housing is one of the great social bombs of this country. I would rank it second to the inadequacy of our health delivery system as a problem that afflicts many, many Americans. We have gotten recent reports about the difficulty here.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping make housing more affordable, both in general through leveraging the mortgage market, and in particular, they have a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing, and that is what I am concerned about here. I believe that we, as the Federal Government, have probably done too little rather than too much to push them to meet the goals of affordable housing and to set reasonable goals. I worry frankly that there is a tension here.

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disastrous scenarios. And even if there were a problem, the Federal Government doesn't bail them out. But the more pressure there is there, then the less I think we see in terms of affordable housing.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/blog/show/23617.html

If you ask me Adam, that quotation speaks much more in favor of Frank than against. In the 3rd paragraph, which I've boldfaced, he warns explicitly against the danger of backing low interest, high leveraged loans and then expecting a bailout from the government when/if those investments go south.

And remember, when Frank talks about affordable housing he is talking abut affordable rental housing, a long time cause of his public service.

daniel

dsteady

02-08-2009, 12:11 PM

Adam, this is from a piece in the 1/12/09 New Yorker written by Jeffery Toobin. In it you will find confirmation of Frank's position from both Michael Oxley (Republican, Ohio) former Chair of the Financial Services Committee and Lawrence B. Lindsey, a former economic advisor to George Bush.

From The New Yorker article, 1/12/09 by Jeffery Toobin:

"Frank�s experience in city hall in Boston led to an impatience with abstractions. He recalled a comment by Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, who will be the director of the National Economic Council in the Obama Administration: �Larry said, �Oh, well, in the history of the world, nobody ever washed a rented car.� Well, people wash leased cars all the time. And, secondly, poor people don�t rent cars. It�s just one of those irrelevant things.� Frank went on, �In 2004, it was Bush who started to push Fannie and Freddie into subprime mortgages, because they were boasting about how they were expanding homeownership for low-income people. And I said at the time, �Hey�(a) this is going to jeopardize their profitability, but (b) it�s going to put people in homes they can�t afford, and they�re gonna lose them.� � (In a recent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Lawrence B. Lindsey, a former economic adviser to President Bush, wrote that Frank �is the only politician I know who has argued that we needed tighter rules that intentionally produce fewer homeowners and more renters.�) Frank recalled with disdain a Bush Administration proposal to allow time limits on rental vouchers for poor people. �They said, �Well, don�t you agree that we should limit the amount of time people have a voucher?� I said, �Yes, if you limit the amount of time they can be poor��I�m sorry, you can only be poor for four years.� � �
In 2005, while the Democrats were still in the minority, Frank contributed to a bipartisan effort to put his objectives�tighter regulation of Fannie and Freddie and new funds for rental housing�into law. At the time, Fannie and Freddie were regulated by a small agency within the Department of Housing and Urban Development; the bill proposed to create an independent agency to monitor their operations. Frank and Michael Oxley, who was then chairman of the Financial Services Committee, achieved broad bipartisan support for the bill in the committee, and it passed the House. But the Senate never voted on the measure, in part because President Bush was likely to veto it. �If it had passed, that would have been one of the ways we could have reined in the bowling ball going downhill called housing,� Oxley told me. �Barney, to some extent, is misunderstood�with this image of him as a fierce partisan. He is an institutionalist. He believes in the House and in the process. He eschews the grandstanding style that so many members use and prefers to work behind the scenes and get something done.�

Here is the New Yorker article (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/12/090112fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=4) in full -- all 10,000 fact-checked words of it. ;)

daniel

Climb01742

02-08-2009, 12:15 PM

there certainly seem to be no shortage of moronic career politicians. but judging by the recent financial history, there is equally no shortage of moronic CEOs and executives. as but one example, who's the bigger idiot? john thain's tenure at ML, or ken lewis' last 6 months at BofA? together, they oversaw the combined firms' market cap go from $176b to $39b. or any of those clowns running citigroup? or any of those "savvy" business types who invested with bernie madoff. i have very little faith in politicians, but i'm perplexed by anyone's faith in the clowns running some of america's largest financial institutions. stupidity goes by many names: liberal and conservative, democrat and republican, working stiff and CEO. sadly no one has a corner on ineptitude, contrary to some opinions expressed in some recent threads. it's too simplistic to always find fault with the other side.

and just to eat my own dog food i'll say this: president obama has gotten off to a pretty lousy start. he isn't acting like the change i voted for. dude, get your shiite together.

93legendti

02-08-2009, 12:50 PM

If you ask me Adam, that quotation speaks much more in favor of Frank than against. In the 3rd paragraph, which I've boldfaced, he warns explicitly against the danger of backing low interest, high leveraged loans and then expecting a bailout from the government when/if those investments go south.

And remember, when Frank talks about affordable housing he is talking abut affordable rental housing, a long time cause of his public service.

daniel
D, he seems to be talking out sides of his, ummm, mouth. I don't agree he is talking about rentals because that seems out of place in a discussion of mortgage standards and "affordable housing". Further, how would rental prices be within his purview?

"...Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have played a very useful role in helping make housing more affordable, both in general through leveraging the mortgage market, and in particular, they have a mission that this Congress has given them in return for some of the arrangements which are of some benefit to them to focus on affordable housing, and that is what I am concerned about here..."

Ray

02-08-2009, 01:05 PM

The reality throughout history has always been the rich will always be rich whether you have a capitalist, socialist, communist, or totalitarian run country. The evidence on socialist countries is that every time it has been tried, the rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and the middle class moves downward. I don't want to punish the wealthy, rather I want everyone to have more wealth who is willing to work for it. I don't think we will ever solve our problems as a country while we have career politicians running the country instead of economic experts, infrastructure experts, energy experts, etc. running the show. We have people on both sides of the aisle making very important decisions on things they know little to nothing about. If 60% of the people are against something in a representative democracy, then it should never have chance of passing. Those in Washington will push this through anyway. That to me fits the definition of elitist thought.
I'm with you that the rich will always be rich and I don't have any problem with that. But I think there are limits to how poor we should let the poor get. I understand that will never lead to 100% efficiency, but its a strongly held philosophical position anyway. 100% economic efficiency is not the only standard that we live by. Every successful economy/society has moved away from the extreme of either pure market control or pure government control. The great western powers have been capitalist for a long time, but generally with a good dose of governmental regulation. The communist countries that have succeeded have moved to allow freer and freer markets. The balance / tension / push and pull, is what works. We're just moving toward a slightly different balance that's nowhere near socialism. Except it might be, at least temporarily, as far as banking, but the strongest free-market administration in ages pulled that one off.

Public opinion changes at a mile per minute. If we changed major policies every time there was a quick shift in public opinion, we'd have a case of whiplash you wouldn't believe. That's why we have checks and balances, a Senate that responds to public opinion more slowly than the House, and a Supreme Court that's not supposed to listen to public opinion at all. If the Congress does something and it works, 60% disapproval right now won't mean a damn thing by the next election. If they do something and it doesn't work (or probably even if it doesn't work quickly enough), they'll be tossed out on their butts in the next election.

My prediction has been and continues to be that our standard of living is gonna be dropping for a while and will hopefully settle at a reasonable level, but nothing like its been. I think it will take a long time for the American voter to accept this likely reality, and I think we're likely to get some pretty wild swings in the next few elections as a result. I don't think there's a conservative set of principles or liberal set of principals that will return us to the false prosperity we've known for the last several years. On one level, I hope I'm wrong, on another I think its inevitable and the quicker we accept it the better. But I'd bet on a lot of political instability for the next few elections.

This is very old ground. Sorry to rehash it again.

-Ray

dsteady

02-08-2009, 01:23 PM

D, he seems to be talking out sides of his, ummm, mouth. I don't agree he is talking about rentals because that seems out of place in a discussion of mortgage standards and "affordable housing". Further, how would rental prices be within his purview?

It's in the New Yorker article.

zap

02-08-2009, 01:48 PM

snipped

there certainly seem to be no shortage of moronic career politicians. but judging by the recent financial history, there is equally no shortage of moronic CEOs and executives. as but one example, who's the bigger idiot? john thain's tenure at ML, or ken lewis' last 6 months at BofA? together, they oversaw the combined firms' market cap go from $176b to $39b.

Ken Lewis wanted to pull out of the ML merger last December (after shareholder approval) when they found more skeletons, details over at WSJ, but was strong armed (as reported by the media) by the Fed and Treasury to continue.

Later Ken was quoted as saying that he went ahead with the merger to help the country. Ken Lewis typically is the anti wall streeter and far from an idiot but I have to say, as a fan of Ayn Rand, I thought long and hard about selling my shares in BofA when I read that.

I didn't (it's a complex world) and plan on purchasing more shares.

MadRocketSci

02-08-2009, 02:08 PM

I heard recently that the numbers are skewed by many giving up. More importantly, the data don�t include the millions who are �underemployed�.

We have millions who are working part time, or are working at jobs much below what they are trained and qualified to do because those jobs no longer exist. This trend should be of concern because it may suggest we are moving towards a two tier society at a faster rate.

Here is the official BLS number for

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers..

Jan. Dec. Jan.
2008 2008 2009
9.9 13.5 15.4

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

15.4% Wawaweewa!

Ray

02-08-2009, 02:18 PM

Here is the official BLS number for

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers..

Jan. Dec. Jan.
2008 2008 2009
9.9 13.5 15.4

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

15.4% Wawaweewa!
Unemployment compared to recent recessions. Not a pretty picture:

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh252/ramboorider/jobsrecessionssm_2.jpg

-Ray

Viper

02-08-2009, 02:52 PM

I'm with you that the rich will always be rich and I don't have any problem with that. But I think there are limits to how poor we should let the poor get. -Ray

I can't get behind this notion of how we create limits to how poor we should let the poor get. I play no role in anyone's individual poverty or success financially. Just like I can't put Neutrogena SPF 30 every summer morning onto the skin of those who we suspect are fair-skinned and prone to cancer. Darwin must be allowed to exist in many ways, financial as well. Some bike racers have more wattage than others, we can't limit anyone's ability to fail or succeed.

The entire peleton cannot stand on the podium. This is a fundamental difference between the liberal mindset and the rest, ruling economics with the heart. Words matter and while the rich will indeed lose money somedays and the poor can strike gold, the American dream is never more alive than when the chase to survive, strive or succeed is palpable. There is no asterisk next to the American Dream; show up early, work hard, go home and repeat. Financial wealth doesn't have anything to do with a rich life and our President is an example of what any human being, of any race, in any nation can do if they believe in themselves. Government doesn't have to believe in me, I don't have to believe in it.

If more folks applied the Jonathon Livingston Seagull Two Step Guide to Success: always strive for self-perfection and learn what love is...this world would be a much better place. There's no pricetag on either of these guidelines and while some might argue that Livingston Seagull was a radical, liberal, the goal of self-perfection is, I believe, a key ingredient to life, the American Dream and an ingredient that's too important to have been forgotten.

Jimmy Buffett isn't a Republican, but he gets it too. :cool:

http://www.amazon.com/Coconut-Telegraph-Jimmy-Buffett/dp/B000002PBY

It's My Job

By: Mac McAnally
1970

For Mac who reminds me of me seven years ago
In the middle of late last night I was sittin' on a curb
I didn't know what about, but I was feelin' quite disturbed
A street sweeper came whistlin' by, he was bouncin' every step
It seemed strange how good he felt, so I asked him while he swept

Chorus:
He said, "It's my job to be cleaning up this mess
And that's enough reason to go for me
It's my job to be better than the rest
And that makes a day for me."

I got an uncle who owns a bank, he's a self-made millionaire
He never had anyone to love, never had no one to care
He always seemed kinda sad to me and I asked him why that was
And he told me it's because in my contract there's this clause

Chorus:
That says, "It's my job to be worried half to death
And that's the thing people respect in me
It's my job but without it I'd be less
Than what I expect from me."

Now I've been lazy most all my life writin' songs and sleepin' late
And any manual labor I've done was purely by mistake
If street sweepers can smile then I've got no right to feel upset
But sometimes I still forget
'Til the lights go on and the stage is set
And the song hits home and you feel that sweat

Chorus:
It's my job to be different than the rest
And that's enough reason to go for me
It's my job to be better than the rest
And that's a rough break for me

Chorus:
It's my job to be cleaning up this mess
And that's enough reason to go for me
It's my job to be better than the rest
And that makes the day for me

93legendti

02-08-2009, 02:52 PM

It's in the New Yorker article.
It's a wonderful puff piece.

Here's a dose of reality, without the fawning:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122091796187012529.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Or how Rep. Frank voted against his own legislation in 2005 that would have reformed Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae:

Mr. Sholley refers to my having voted against a version of the reform bill in 2003 � it actually happened in 2005, but it�s not his fault when he is fed the wrong information. It is true that I worked with Congressman Mike Oxley, the Republican who chaired the committee at that time, to adopt a reform bill. And I voted for it when it was in committee. Unfortunately, when it got to the House floor, right-wing Republicans added language that would have prevented the Affordable Housing Trust Fund from working, by excluding organizations that they distrusted, such as the arm of the Catholic Church that builds affordable housing. I voted against the bill in protest of those restrictions, while making it clear that I was for the reforms it otherwise contained.

http://www.barneyfrank.net/node/208

Frank's former partner, Herb Moses, was an executive at Fannie from 1991 to 1998, where Moses helped develop many of Fannie�s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. In 1991, Frank pushed for reduced restrictions on two- and three-family home mortgages.[43] Frank and Moses' relationship ended around the same time Moses left the company; Frank's support of Fannie and Freddie predated and continued past that relationship.[44]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Frank#cite_note-45

While the relationship reportedly ended 10 years ago, Frank was serving on the House Banking Committee the entire 10 years they were together. The committee is the primary House body which along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) has jurisdiction over the government-sponsored enterprises.

He has served on the committee since becoming a congressman in 1981 and became the ranking Democrat on the committee in 2003. He became chairman of the committee, now called the House Financial Services Committee, in 2007.

Moses was the assistant director for product initiatives at Fannie Mae and had been at the forefront of relaxing lending restrictions at the company for rural customers, according to the Feb. 23, 1998, issue of National Mortgage News (NMN).

�Herb Moses, who helped develop many of Fannie Mae�s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs, has left the mortgage industry,� Darryl Hicks wrote for NMN. �Mr. Moses - whose last day was Feb. 13 - spent the past seven years at Fannie Mae, most recently as director of housing initiatives. Over the course of time, he played an instrumental role in developing the company�s Title One and 203(k) home improvement lending programs.�

Hicks explained in his story how Moses orchestrated a collaborative effort between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture.

�The Dartmouth grad also played a crucial role in brokering a relationship between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture,� Hicks wrote. �This led to the creation of Fannie Mae�s rural housing program where the secondary marketing agency agreed to purchase small farm loans insured through the department.�

While Moses served at Fannie Mae and was Frank�s partner, Frank was actively working to support GSEs, according to several news outlets.

In 1991, Frank and former Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., lobbied for Fannie to soften rules on multi-family home mortgages although those dwellings showed a default rate twice that of single-family homes, according to the Nov. 22, 1991, Boston Globe.

BusinessWeek reported in its Nov. 14, 1994, issue that Fannie Mae called on Frank to exert his influence against a Housing & Urban Development proposal that would force the GSE to focus on minority and low-income buyers and police bias by lenders regardless of their location. Fannie Mae opposed HUD on the issue because it claimed doing so would �ignore the urban middle class.�

Moses left Fannie in 1998 to start his own pottery business. National Mortgage News called Moses a �mortgage guru� and said he developed �many of Fannie Mae's affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. Moses ended his relationship with Frank just months after he left Fannie.

Even after the relationship ended, however, Frank was a staunch defender of Fannie Mae even as other experts suggested there were serious problems building in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

According to an article by Kathleen Day in the Oct. 8, 2003, Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that �could pose risk to the taxpayers.� He told the Post he worried the Treasury Department �would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies� market risks.�

Just a month before, Frank had aggressively thwarted reform efforts by the Bush administration. He told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac�s problems were �exaggerated,� a gross miscalculation some five years later with costs estimated to be in the hundreds of billions.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080924145932.aspx

Ray

02-08-2009, 03:06 PM

This is a fundamental difference between the liberal mindset and the rest, ruling economics with the heart. Words matter and while the rich will indeed lose money somedays and the poor can strike gold, the American dream is never more alive than when the chase to survive, strive or succeed is palpable. There is no asterisk next to the American Dream; show up early, work hard, go home and repeat.
That's nice and pure and good up to a point Vipe. But the poor don't cause 15% unemployment or 25% unemployment by not working hard enough. Generally the rich and powerful (both political and business elites) make the decisions that cause those effects. Anyone who's willing to work but can't find a job needs at least a subsistence level of income to continue to survive while we ride out whatever we have to ride out. Best case its through private sector employment. Next best case when there simply is no private sector employment, its through government employment (as in the Depression). Worst case its through welfare, which we definitely went too far with in the 60's-'80s.

Rags to riches stories like Obama's are amazing and truly inspirational and important for people to have out there to aspire to, but they're also about one in a million or even one in a thousand or one in a hundred. Generally, its rags to rags and riches to riches and I believe we have an obligation to make sure the rags can at least keep people warm and fed.

Call me a commie. Its pretty frickin' easy for those of us who've been born with a few advantages and a sense of possibility and good role models along that road to judge those who were born into vastly harder circumstances. I've worked with and tried raising kids born into some very tough environments and if you think you can show them how to raise themselves up on the glory of the American Dream, I urge you to try and hope to hell you have better results than I've seen.

-Ray

Viper

02-08-2009, 03:27 PM

That's nice and pure and good up to a point Vipe. But the poor don't cause 15% unemployment or 25% unemployment by not working hard enough. Generally the rich and powerful (both political and business elites) make the decisions that cause those effects. Anyone who's willing to work but can't find a job needs at least a subsistence level of income to continue to survive while we ride out whatever we have to ride out. Best case its through private sector employment. Next best case when there simply is no private sector employment, its through government employment (as in the Depression). Worst case its through welfare, which we definitely went too far with in the 60's-'80s.

Rags to riches stories like Obama's are amazing and truly inspirational and important for people to have out there to aspire to, but they're also about one in a million or even one in a thousand or one in a hundred. Generally, its rags to rags and riches to riches and I believe we have an obligation to make sure the rags can at least keep people warm and fed.

Call me a commie. Its pretty frickin' easy for those of us who've been born with a few advantages and a sense of possibility and good role models along that road to judge those who were born into vastly harder circumstances. I've worked with and tried raising kids born into some very tough environments and if you think you can show them how to raise themselves up on the glory of the American Dream, I urge you to try and hope to hell you have better results than I've seen.

-Ray

You're not a Commie, Pinko or even from Vermont! :) And I ain't wearin' v-neck sweater vests to bed either. I feel your sentiment and I mean this as a compliment: we, the world, we must have people who think about the poor a helluva lot more differently than I do. I'm no grinch, I joined the food drive at the High School way back when, I think I was the only Republican. I'm going to be a lot poorer financially in 2009, heck 2008 sucked for me. But I don't want anyone's help, just their Campy parts. :)

The poor did play a role in the Recession. They thought they could be middle class with a credit card, a three bedroom house and two cars. We are all to blame.

I believe America's foreign policy is at least 50% to blame for the mess we're in. We talk about Wall Street, Main Street and the numbers. Of equal importance is pulling our nose back into it's own place on our own face. Tired I am of fighting, spending cash, tax payer's money towards a game that we cannot win and only makes us resemble Charlie Brown trying to kick a football in the Middle East. Ron Paul should be invited over to the White House for a beer, President Obama is smart enough to know the crazy cat makes some sense.

Ray

02-08-2009, 03:35 PM

You're not a Commie, Pinko or even from Vermont! :) And I ain't wearin' v-neck sweater vests to bed either. I feel your sentiment and I mean this as a compliment: we, the world, we must have people who think about the poor a helluva lot more differently than I do. I'm no grinch, I joined the food drive at the High School way back when, I think I was the only Republican. I'm going to be a lot poorer financially in 2009, heck 2008 sucked for me. But I don't want anyone's help, just their Campy parts. :)

The poor did play a role in the Recession. They thought they could be middle class with a credit card, a three bedroom house and two cars. We are all to blame.

I believe America's foreign policy is at least 50% to blame for the mess we're in. We talk about Wall Street, Main Street and the numbers. Of equal importance is pulling our nose back into it's own place on our own face. Tired I am of fighting, spending cash, tax payer's money towards a game that we cannot win and only makes us resemble Charlie Brown trying to kick a football in the Middle East. Ron Paul should be invited over to the White House for a beer, President Obama is smart enough to know the crazy cat makes some sense.
Well, we agree on most of that. I'm bleeding equity these days too and I'm not asking for a bailout either. But if I should ever manage to make it all the way to the poor house, I think I'd appreciate at least the offer. BTW, I'm not saying that people that over-extended should be entitled to the standard of living they over-extended to (predatory lenders or not). But there's got to be a stop short of total homelessness, joblessness, and going hungry. Which I'm afraid a lot of unemployed Americans may well face in the not too distant future.

Take 'er easy Vipe. Sorry to go off a bit.

-Ray

Climb01742

02-08-2009, 03:56 PM

snipped

Ken Lewis wanted to pull out of the ML merger last December (after shareholder approval) when they found more skeletons, details over at WSJ, but was strong armed (as reported by the media) by the Fed and Treasury to continue.

Later Ken was quoted as saying that he went ahead with the merger to help the country. Ken Lewis typically is the anti wall streeter and far from an idiot but I have to say, as a fan of Ayn Rand, I thought long and hard about selling my shares in BofA when I read that.

I didn't (it's a complex world) and plan on purchasing more shares.

i very much agree it's a complex world. which is my point. ken lewis bought ML for many reasons. he's had his eye on them for quite a while. it does not appear he really did due diligence on the deal. he wanted out when he saw he f'ed up. he was bribed by the fed with future bailout money to go through with the deal. it's good PR for him now to say he did it for the country's benefit vs admitting the feds bought him off or that he f'ed up. is any of this POV true? who knows? i say it to show that most situations can be framed to grind a political or philosophical ax, as it true for most posts in our political+economic threads.

i go back to your point: it's a complex world. but reading 99% of posts in these threads, you'd never guess it. it's simple: it's the fault of whoever disagrees with my (liberal/conservative/republican/democrat/free-market/government-intervention) beliefs. see, simple? :beer:

happycampyer

02-08-2009, 04:35 PM

i very much agree it's a complex world. which is my point. ken lewis bought ML for many reasons. he's had his eye on them for quite a while. it does not appear he really did due diligence on the deal. he wanted out when he saw he f'ed up. he was bribed by the fed with future bailout money to go through with the deal. it's good PR for him now to say he did it for the country's benefit vs admitting the feds bought him off or that he f'ed up. is any of this POV true? who knows? i say it to show that most situations can be framed to grind a political or philosophical ax, as it true for most posts in our political+economic threads.

i go back to your point: it's a complex world. but reading 99% of posts in these threads, you'd never guess it. it's simple: it's the fault of whoever disagrees with my (liberal/conservative/republican/democrat/free-market/government-intervention) beliefs. see, simple? :beer:Bear in mind that many of the banks that bought investment banks are discovering that securities that the banks are holding on their books at say, 80% or par whereas the investment banks are/were holding them at say, 50% of par,because the IB's were marking them to market and the banks aren't. The insurance companies are worse. They continue to write certain policies because they need the income, but those policies are unhedgeable and are a disaster waiting to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if the govt has to bail out at least one more major ins co this year.

Re Lewis and ML, Lewis has never been a big fan of investment banking. I think that the parts of ML he really likes are the private wealth and retail brokerage operations. My suspicion is that he would love to get rid of most of the rest, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job of it so far.

Climb01742

02-08-2009, 04:47 PM

I think that the parts of ML he really likes are the private wealth and retail brokerage operations. My suspicion is that he would love to get rid of most of the rest, and he seems to be doing a pretty good job of it so far.

i think you're dead on. but here's the rub: merrill's thundering herd of 16k FAs can take their books and walk. retention bonuses have been paid. now it's all about culture. ML's wealth management was humming. it's the jewel. can an environment be created that will make the FAs and their books want to stay?

but back to my larger point: thain and stan o'neill before him ran ML into the ground, costing shareholders billions, and ultimately because of bailout money that will need to go to BofA, costing taxpayers billions. these are dudes who wear cufflinks and have million dollar bathrooms and fly on G5s, not all the usual suspects of rightwing talk radio. just saying there's plenty of guilt to go around. a more balanced perspective is perhaps closer to reality.

norman neville

02-08-2009, 05:07 PM

snip'd

IMO what most conservatives fear at a fundamental level is that regulation designed primarily to spread and/or distribute wealth � hence a move towards socialism

why is it that conservatives only go bat shi'ite over rules, regulations, laws, policies or spending that may spread and/or distribute wealth throughout much of the society but get all wet and sticky over rules, regulations, laws, policies or spending that they believe will concentrate and/or distribute wealth to the very richest citizens? funny, that.

norman neville

02-08-2009, 05:09 PM

why is it that conservatives only go bat shi'ite over rules, regulations, laws, policies or spending that may spread and/or distribute wealth throughout much of the society but get all wet and sticky over rules, regulations, laws, policies or spending that they believe will concentrate and/or distribute wealth to the very richest citizens? funny, that.

i forgot.

RPS

02-08-2009, 05:38 PM

RPS

02-08-2009, 05:49 PM

By your definition of a socialist, I'm clearly more of one than I realize. By mine, I'm not even close. It ain't a secret that we don't think alike. :cool:

-RayYou�d be surprised that we have much in common; like believing a strong middle class is vital to our society�s existence. We mostly disagree on how to get there.

I�m not at all against establishing a level playing field for all, but what I don�t support is the idea of playing any game � including the game of life � by changing the rules during the game in order to intentionally keep the losing team in the game. Most of all, I�ll never support changing the rules to apply retroactive, which is what our government often does and is doing again.

That�s what we are talking about here, right? We�re not just changing the rules that will apply from this point forward so that each of us can have a game plan based on the new rules, but rather have Uncle Sam �retroactively� take what some of us have already earned and saved and give it to others. And that�s why IMHO this mess is going to get very ugly.

RPS

02-08-2009, 06:00 PM

I agree that when you get far enough left, it starts turning into something you can call socialism. I don't blame you for hating it when it happened to you, but don't forget the prevailing conditions that brought that rebellion about through the 1950s and well before. Very free markets but ultimately totally under control of the wealthy who leveraged it against the poor. Arguably as bad, and for those suffering under it at the time, intolerable enough to be willing to fight. So neither extreme is desirable or sustainable.Your comparison of Cuba pre- to post-socialism is not very accurate IMHO. Pre-Castro Cuba had the second highest standard of living in the Americas. Although we had a dictator that abused his power he allowed businesses to run efficiently through capitalism (except for bribes etc�). After forced socialism and communism the economy tanked to levels far below that which can be explained by simply blaming the US embargo.

The wealthy did not control Cuban government � it was a corrupt dictator who took from the rich and poor alike. In any case the standard of living in Cuba was and is far worse than it was prior to socialism and communism.

Socialism discourages personal achievement and encourages horrendous personal decisions. Just look at the single woman in California who had octuplets after already having six kids she can�t afford to support. Who is going to support her 14 kids? That we have social regulations that allow this to happen is appalling.

Social safety nets need a safety net of their own IMHO.

1centaur

02-08-2009, 06:05 PM

it's a complex world. but reading 99% of posts in these threads, you'd never guess it. it's simple: it's the fault of whoever disagrees with my (liberal/conservative/republican/democrat/free-market/government-intervention) beliefs. see, simple? :beer:

I think there's more nuance here than in most political commentary I have read on the Web. That's one of the things I appreciate. I think it's bikeforums that has a political subfolder, and that stuff is like having the left (mostly) and right talking head sound bite talking points from CNN typed out, again and again and again. Ick.

I will say that it is just the human way to simplify the complex, because to bring complexity to all arguments is to have no chance at a resolution - our brains only track so much at one time. So passionate advocates hit their main points and then defend the edges, and over time consensus is reached, which may be completely wrong but it's all we've got. Think of these conversations like a flock of birds, each one a low-IQ rat with wings but together a whole that moves the ball in an evolutionary way.

Ray

02-08-2009, 06:05 PM

That�s what we are talking about here, right? We�re not just changing the rules that will apply from this point forward so that each of us can have a game plan based on the new rules, but rather have Uncle Sam �retroactively� take what some of us have already earned and saved and give it to others. And that�s why IMHO this mess is going to get very ugly.
I hope I'm wrong, but I'm afraid this mess is gonna get very ugly almost regardless of the governmental response. If we borrow heavily to finance some sort of soft landing, our money will be worth less, maybe a lot less. And it may or may not work. If we do nothing and the whole thing goes in to the toilet, the whole concept of money might be next to meaningless. And certainly anything your or I have saved up might be worth next to nothing. So prior plans and existing rules and expectations probably don't count for a lot in this climate in either case. I'm for trying something because I think there's at least a chance to limit the damage. Probably not enough to satisfy people, though, so I'd expect a big swing in the next election and probably the one after that.

A good panel on ABC this morning with Newt, George Will, Robert Reich, and Claire Shipman and there was pretty wide agreement across that ideological spectrum that the best the stimulus (any stimulus you care to dream up) will do is keep things from getting all that much worse over the next couple of years. And that without it, they will. But you can't sell "hey, it didn't get as bad as we feared it might" to voters, so the Republicans are not gonna own this so they can run against it then. I suspect they'll do pretty well.

We may agree on more than I realized. We're both pessimists. That's a core character trait. :cool:

-Ray

ti_boi

02-08-2009, 06:19 PM

I think there's more nuance here than in most political commentary I have read on the Web. That's one of the things I appreciate. I think it's bikeforums that has a political subfolder, and that stuff is like having the left (mostly) and right talking head sound bite talking points from CNN typed out, again and again and again. Ick.

I will say that it is just the human way to simplify the complex, because to bring complexity to all arguments is to have no chance at a resolution - our brains only track so much at one time. So passionate advocates hit their main points and then defend the edges, and over time consensus is reached, which may be completely wrong but it's all we've got. Think of these conversations like a flock of birds, each one a low-IQ rat with wings but together a whole that moves the ball in an evolutionary way.

Simplifying gave us a conundrum however.

Mies Van Der Rohe who always thought that "God is in the details"

93legendti

02-08-2009, 06:23 PM

Simplifying gave us a conundrum however.

Mies Van Der Rohe who always thought that "God is in the details"
That's simple! Glass and steel! :)

Gorgeous stuff.

93legendti

02-08-2009, 06:25 PM

...and just to eat my own dog food i'll say this: president obama has gotten off to a pretty lousy start. he isn't acting like the change i voted for. dude, get your shiite together.

I'm curious why you think this way.

norman neville

02-08-2009, 06:46 PM

Originally Posted by Climb01742
it's a complex world. but reading 99% of posts in these threads, you'd never guess it. it's simple: it's the fault of whoever disagrees with my (liberal/conservative/republican/democrat/free-market/government-intervention) beliefs. see, simple?

I think there's more nuance here than in most political commentary I have read on the Web. That's one of the things I appreciate. I think it's bikeforums that has a political subfolder, and that stuff is like having the left (mostly) and right talking head sound bite talking points from CNN typed out, again and again and again. Ick.

i certainly don't agree with this little round tug. (by the way, where the heck is there a left-leaning talking head on tv besides the 2 barely left of center hosts on msnbc? that's idiotic. seriously. left (mostly) talking head? jeebus...)

climb-oh, i think you're intentions are good, but imho you've fallen into the trap of much of the arguement over this sort of crap in general laid by those who are actually pretty cool with the status quo, which is to kick up all the sand off the bottom of the puddle in order to make otherwise clear, simple points impossible to see. then the folks who muddied the waters with nonsense, mistakes or outright lies in the first place come along and agree that the problem is too complex and the situation too complicated for our poor little rat brains, after all the we're not capable of figuring this out unless we happen to be anointed by the masters of the universe and then we just happen to agree with our most wise masters. imagine that! next they bless the well-intentioned for their nuance and willingness to not think too too hard about it lest they see something they don't like, and go on to build an empty consensus based on the same old crap they were slinging yesterday and the day before that.

i believe that is basic to human nature. simplistic notions and bull shi'ite slopped together for eager and happy mass comsumption, while the fundamenal truths, the failures, the possible solutions and the history get obfuscated into oblivion. of course, our wonderful country was founded as a special interest; sure they attracted lots of the fellows who were willing to fight for higher ideals and encouraged flowery prose in praise of those non-existent ideals, but that was merely the facade on the desire by the founders to build a more perfect union to suit their own needs and secure their own wealth and control over the resources they saw all around them (sorry, redskins). if anybody else wanted to follow along and gather the crumbs, well, come on in true belivers and lovers of nuance and rat-brained toadies! oh, and cheap labor. really, really cheap labor. no cheaper than that. i guess all men weren't quite equally created...

as a society, we're killed by the lack of understanding of the most basic methods of investigation, theorizing, testing, repeat. we don't know history and we're too willing to believe everybody's position has value despite the fact that they might be an idiot or a liar. for the most part, we're not even capable of figuring that much out. where's the scientific method when you need it?

oh, yeah.

i forgot.

RPS

02-08-2009, 07:25 PM

and just to eat my own dog food i'll say this: president obama has gotten off to a pretty lousy start. he isn't acting like the change i voted for. dude, get your shiite together.In fairness to Obama, he�s caught between a rock and a hard place -- extreme liberals like Pelosi and Reid who want to use his political success to achieve their own agendas which they can�t get on their own and the more conservative Republicans who are content to sit back and watch the inevitable train wreck.

IMO Obama�s biggest enemy right now is his own party who is unknowingly sacrificing his future influence for short-term goals. Or maybe they know and just don�t care. Having said that, he's also made unnecessary mistakes.

Climb01742

02-08-2009, 07:42 PM

I'm curious why you think this way.

long answer but short version:

1. not enough true fresh faces and ideas. too many recycled clintinistas and reubenites.

2. no true middle. the way to defeat right wing republicans is not to embrace the dem left of pelosi+reid but to create a true middle. the republicans that are left in congress are doctrinaire nutjobs without an original thought in their heads. a true middle path would give them no easy targets. pelosi+reid do.

norman neville

02-08-2009, 07:52 PM

extreme liberals like Pelosi and Reid

do you actually believe this? on what objective scale could pelosi or reid be considered extreme liberals? do either of them promote even one left-of-center policy? good gods, we are so frakked.

or is it fraked?

no, i think it's frakked.

norman neville

02-08-2009, 07:57 PM

long answer but short version:

1. not enough true fresh faces and ideas. too many recycled clintinistas and reubenites.

2. no true middle. the way to defeat right wing republicans is not to embrace the dem left of pelosi+reid but to create a true middle. the republicans that are left in congress are doctrinaire nutjobs without an original thought in their heads. a true middle path would give them no easy targets. pelosi+reid do.

for the sincere obama supporters to see in the cold light of day.

in a country where all (both) of the political parties and all the sanctioned political thought and commentary is right-of-cener, where is this true middle? are pelosi and reid the left in america?

see frakked above.

Viper

02-08-2009, 08:12 PM

i guess all men weren't quite equally created...

Truth. No two snowflakes are alike. Same is true for (wo)man. There's no such thing as equal creation. The very notion contradicts the fact that we're created individually, uniquely with gifts, flaws and everything inbetween GTAC chains.

Before the US Constitution, it was about freedom. Man sought freedom. We should be born free, with the equal rights for all the freedoms as any other man, but the phrase, "All mean are created equal" is untrue. All men should be viewed and treated equally by a government, yes, but my shower-singing will never equal the stage voice of Robert Palmer. For a short time in the 80's, Palmer was unequalled.

We are created through a mystery of nature and science, or by a God, faith for some, trying to comprehend our origin, which will never be understood. Equality and freedom are goals for organized society and we learn from the nature which surrounds us as it will always seek harmony, balance. While there is no such thing as created equally, there is the hope for the creation of equality.

Amen. Star Wars IV - A New Hope.

93legendti

02-08-2009, 08:27 PM

long answer but short version:

1. not enough true fresh faces and ideas. too many recycled clintinistas and reubenites.

2...not to embrace the dem left of pelosi+reid...

I snipped your comment, but I agree 100% with this.
I have been dissapointed that he seems to be delegating rather than leading.

RPS

02-08-2009, 08:54 PM

93legendti

02-08-2009, 09:05 PM

Lending up, but bailout not reason

"Only a handful of Texas banks have accepted federal bailout money, but among those that have, lending has grown more slowly than among those that didn�t."

Should make us pause for a second or two. ;)
All that money that had to be lent yesterday or doom would follow. Glad we only fell for that once....

happycampyer

02-08-2009, 09:49 PM

All that money that had to be lent yesterday or doom would follow. Glad we only fell for that once....The credit markets that froze after Lehman's failure weren't the residential mortgage credit markets, but the commercial paper markets, bond markets, interbank markets, etc. The infusion of capital into the banks has worked considerably to bring these markets back from the dead, but they are still nowhere as liquid as they normally are. Without these markets, huge chunks of the economy would grind to a halt�large corporations, and not just banks, depend on these markets for funding. Bernanke saw and understood this. Mortgage lending will pick up, especially where rates are, but it can't and shouldn't pick up to previous levels, since that's one of the mistakes that created this mess in the first place.

Ray

02-08-2009, 10:01 PM

Lending up, but bailout not reason

"Only a handful of Texas banks have accepted federal bailout money, but among those that have, lending has grown more slowly than among those that didn�t."

Should make us pause for a second or two. ;)
Total amateur wild ass guess here, but maybe the banks that TOOK the money were the ones in the deepest trouble and needed it to shore up their balance sheets before they COULD start lending? I could be wrong, but this doesn't necessarily strike me as a reason for pause. Its encouraging that lending has grown at all, frankly.

-Ray

Climb01742

02-09-2009, 04:13 AM

for the sincere obama supporters to see in the cold light of day.

in a country where all (both) of the political parties and all the sanctioned political thought and commentary is right-of-cener, where is this true middle? are pelosi and reid the left in america?

see frakked above.

no, i don't see pelosi+reid as true leftist or socialists, and not that that might be bad if they were. what they are, IMO, is outdated, or still too steeped in politics as usual.

an example: one thing obama preached was transparency and "honesty" in gov't. personally, i don't see larding the stimulus package with a christmas tree of other spending as honest or transparent. some of that spending, like for education, is smart. but bring it up on its own, and argue the merits of education investment. don't use the economic crisis as an opportunity to get pet spending passed. pass it (or not) on its merits, in the light of day and debate.

the america society of civil engineers just released a study saying we need about 2 trillion i think in real infrastructure spending. rebuilding our grid, roads, bridges, water system, etc is doubly good: jobs + foundation for future growth and industries.

aid to states for unemployment and retraining is good. i'd want a more pure, focused stimulus package. THEN let's debate social policy. i don't argue with much of the social spending in the package now. it's not what but how the old school pols have done this that bugs me...and gives the rightwing nutjobs their easy targets.

i agree with your basic point: there are few if any truly leftist pols in america. it's a convenient buzz word for brain-challenged radio talk shows.

1centaur

02-09-2009, 05:03 AM

gives the rightwing nutjobs their easy targets.

and the rightwing intellectuals as well.

Climb01742

02-09-2009, 05:10 AM

and the rightwing intellectuals as well.

there's a difference? :beer:

a question, sir: i think most banks are playing chicken with the government. they're not being transparent or forthcoming about the crap on their book, which is making any bailout harder. why not pick one or two banks, nationalize them, then say to the rest: come clean or you're next. without the stick of nationalization, what incentive to banks have for being honest about their exposure, particularly when, up until now, they've been given bailout money with no strings attached?

1centaur

02-09-2009, 05:24 AM

Thomas Sowell and George Will are to farm boy cracker as John Kerry is to...I'll let you fill that in :)

As to the banking question, government I believe has complete access to bank books. The comptroller of the currency has bank examiners that plow through the records all the time. I don't think it's possible to hide losses from the government, but I do think it likely that there are so many and so many types of assets that it's difficult for the combination of intellect and manpower available to the government to understand the asset situation as completely as we would like. Having been through a few audits at a financial services company, my recollection is that people with an accounting mentality interview investment types with a list of low-priced assets sitting between them about the reasons for the valuation of each. Being accountants, they may not fully grasp the nuances, so the investors, who may truly believe their justifications, are unlikely to be overruled on the merits. Both sides may be surprised as mortgage performance continues to deteriorate, or loans in general, since the economy really spiked down in Q4 2008.

Nationalize a bank, particularly Citi or B of A, and you drive another nail in the prospect of private capital being ready to shore up capital bases. It's a last resort kind of move, after you have tried whatever will get announced today to eliminate the risk of loss for those interested in funding the bottom of a bank's capital structure. Think about the re-privitization process in a few years as being much like the situation now: sooner or later private capital has to believe that the problems are gone or fully accounted for. Might as well do it sooner to avoid the specter of nationalization (i.e., confiscation) in the first place.

happycampyer

02-09-2009, 06:48 AM

I agree with 1centaur�I think that the government sees the positions, and there are at least a few that really understand the implications of what they see, like Bernanke, Paulson and Geithner did and Summers (and Geithner) now do.

And Ray is right, at least some of the banks that took the money needed it to shore up their balance sheets before they could lend, but it's more fundamental than that�they needed it so that they could borrow themselves, in the CP market, etc., and so that people wouldn't close out repo positions, unwind derivatives positions, etc. All of the banks were forced to take it by the govt so as not to signal to the market "who's next?"

Climb01742

02-09-2009, 06:56 AM

93legendti

02-09-2009, 08:17 AM

The Age of Obama

Feb. 8, 2009
Charles Krauthammer , THE JERUSALEM POST
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe." - President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040.

Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.

AND YET more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus - and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress' own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Not just to abolish but to create something new - a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports The Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell - and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

The Washington Post Writers Group

Climb01742

02-09-2009, 08:33 AM

adam, i actually don't find much to argue about in this piece. but what i would hope all of us would be equally disappointed in -- and if only charlie had a bit of outrage left to spare -- is the equally knee-jerk republican push to lard every tax cut possible into the bill. on both sides, it's business and politics as usual in D.C. charlie's outrage would be more meaningful if he aimed it at both sides. instead, he's just a more literate rush limbaugh (which admittedly isn't hard.) while much he rails against is true, because it's so one-sided, how useful is it really to changing anything? he is just being, for him, business as usual. he isn't the change he professes to want. he's adding fire but no light.

Viper

02-09-2009, 08:42 AM

[I]The Age of Obama

Feb. 8, 2009
Charles Krauthammer , THE JERUSALEM POST

You won't find much pro-Obama stuff in the Jerusalem Post. Over there, they wanted McCain, another Neo-con Hawk who'd side with Bibi Netahyahu. Oh well, Netanyahu can come over to the White House when he wins in a few weeks time and try to play ball. Obama has a good twelve foot jumper, Netanyahu not so much.

93legendti

02-09-2009, 08:51 AM

Jim, if the R's had an opportunity to provide true input into the bill at the time of drafting, I might agree with you. As it stands, this is a D bill (or Pelosi bill, if you like). I think the R's are just tying to "polish a turd", which makes their culpability less and the process different. Plus, Pres. Obama did say, iirc, that he wanted 40% of the package to be tax cuts and think the R's are trying to get back to that point.

zap

02-09-2009, 09:41 AM

we'll see if private capital is a realistic option now, or for the next six to twelve months. seems like a bit of wishful thinking unless the assets are priced very low, like the valuation of what ML sold to lone star.

from my admittedly peanut gallery viewpoint, i keep wondering: why isn't the swedish model a model for our banking situation now?

Seven thousand plus banks, six plus thousand Credit Unions and I don't know how many S&L's in the USA.

Sweden had less than 200 banks. Not sure how many credit unions, etc.

Regarding "stimulus" spending

http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/alternate_version.html

But back to layoffs. It's tough. I've seen people crumble under the weight of fear, disappointment and confusion. What do you do when jobs are scarce?

I went through it twice in Canada before my 19th birthday. I was fortunate after the last one as I had an opportunity to move to the United States to work and finish college.

93legendti

02-09-2009, 10:30 AM

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090208/ts_alt_afp/uspoliticsobamaeconomyfinancebanking_2009020820575 2/print

US Treasury to prop up housing under revamped bank bailout
by Jitendra Joshi Jitendra Joshi
Sun Feb 8, 3:56 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) � President Barack Obama's administration will Tuesday unveil a new plan for the frozen banking sector including at least 50 billion dollars to shore up the housing market, officials said Sunday.

National Economic Council director Larry Summers said the plan to be announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would help stabilize banks and encourage them to resume lending.

"There will be support for the credit markets more generally," he told ABC's "This Week" program.

"And absolutely critically, there will be support and pressure that assures that these needless foreclosures are avoided and that government is acting aggressively to contain the damage in the housing markets."

Geithner was initially planning to roll out his new measures, revamping the second half of a 700-billion-dollar financial bailout called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), on Monday.

But the Treasury Department said the announcement had been deferred to Tuesday as the Senate prepares to vote on a huge stimulus plan and Obama lobbies for the bill in Indiana before giving an evening news conference.

...The stimulus bill was not enough by itself, it said in promoting Geithner's "Financial Stability and Recovery Plan."

"We need to stabilize and repair our financial system to maintain the flow of credit that families and businesses depend on to keep our economy strong. The plan that Secretary Geithner lays out on Tuesday will achieve that goal."

Summers declined to get into details of the new TARP relief, but said a large chunk of it would go to housing.

"The president's made clear that he's very committed to (preventing) foreclosures. I expect that it will be 50 billion dollars or more that will be directed at providing support for the housing sector of our economy," he said.

The top White House adviser said also the refashioned program would assist banks dispose of bad assets while promoting new lines of credit in a climate of greater transparency.

...The Wall Street Journal said the plan would provide capital to financial firms but with tougher rules this time, after complaints that the first round of TARP money was pocketed by the banks with no revival of credit.

The plan will also insure banks against extreme losses on mortgages and the expansion of a Federal Reserve program to directly prop up lending, according to the Washington Post.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers said they wanted to see more details but were emphatic that any new government help must entail a revival in bank lending.

Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the Obama administration would "probably" have to return to Congress for more bank bailout funds.

"But if they haven't been able to get the banks to lend more, restrict excessive compensation and help deal with foreclosure in a reasonable way, they're not going to get it," he warned on NBC's "Meet the Press."

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/february_2009/62_want_stimulus_plan_to_have_more_tax_cuts_less_s pending
62% Want Stimulus Plan to Have More Tax Cuts, Less Spending
Monday, February 09, 2009

With the Senate poised to vote Tuesday on an $827-billion version of the economic recovery plan, 62% of U.S. voters want the plan to include more tax cuts and less government spending.

Just 14% would like to move in the opposite direction with more government spending and fewer tax cuts, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Twenty percent (20%) would be happy to pass it pretty much as is, and five percent (5%) are not sure.

fiamme red

02-09-2009, 12:57 PM

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/fashion/08halfmill.html?_r=2&em

"As hard as it is to believe, bankers who are living on the Upper East Side making $2 or $3 million a year have set up a life for themselves in which they are also at zero at the end of the year with credit cards and mortgage bills that are inescapable," said Holly Peterson, the author of an Upper East Side novel of manners, "The Manny," and the daughter of Peter G. Peterson, a founder of the equity firm the Blackstone Group. "Five hundred thousand dollars means taking their kids out of private school and selling their home in a fire sale."

dsteady

02-09-2009, 01:58 PM

It's a wonderful puff piece.

Here's a dose of reality, without the fawning:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122091796187012529.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Or how Rep. Frank voted against his own legislation in 2005 that would have reformed Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae:

Mr. Sholley refers to my having voted against a version of the reform bill in 2003 � it actually happened in 2005, but it�s not his fault when he is fed the wrong information. It is true that I worked with Congressman Mike Oxley, the Republican who chaired the committee at that time, to adopt a reform bill. And I voted for it when it was in committee. Unfortunately, when it got to the House floor, right-wing Republicans added language that would have prevented the Affordable Housing Trust Fund from working, by excluding organizations that they distrusted, such as the arm of the Catholic Church that builds affordable housing. I voted against the bill in protest of those restrictions, while making it clear that I was for the reforms it otherwise contained.

http://www.barneyfrank.net/node/208

Frank's former partner, Herb Moses, was an executive at Fannie from 1991 to 1998, where Moses helped develop many of Fannie�s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. In 1991, Frank pushed for reduced restrictions on two- and three-family home mortgages.[43] Frank and Moses' relationship ended around the same time Moses left the company; Frank's support of Fannie and Freddie predated and continued past that relationship.[44]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Frank#cite_note-45

While the relationship reportedly ended 10 years ago, Frank was serving on the House Banking Committee the entire 10 years they were together. The committee is the primary House body which along with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) has jurisdiction over the government-sponsored enterprises.

He has served on the committee since becoming a congressman in 1981 and became the ranking Democrat on the committee in 2003. He became chairman of the committee, now called the House Financial Services Committee, in 2007.

Moses was the assistant director for product initiatives at Fannie Mae and had been at the forefront of relaxing lending restrictions at the company for rural customers, according to the Feb. 23, 1998, issue of National Mortgage News (NMN).

�Herb Moses, who helped develop many of Fannie Mae�s affordable housing and home improvement lending programs, has left the mortgage industry,� Darryl Hicks wrote for NMN. �Mr. Moses - whose last day was Feb. 13 - spent the past seven years at Fannie Mae, most recently as director of housing initiatives. Over the course of time, he played an instrumental role in developing the company�s Title One and 203(k) home improvement lending programs.�

Hicks explained in his story how Moses orchestrated a collaborative effort between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture.

�The Dartmouth grad also played a crucial role in brokering a relationship between Fannie Mae and the Department of Agriculture,� Hicks wrote. �This led to the creation of Fannie Mae�s rural housing program where the secondary marketing agency agreed to purchase small farm loans insured through the department.�

While Moses served at Fannie Mae and was Frank�s partner, Frank was actively working to support GSEs, according to several news outlets.

In 1991, Frank and former Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., lobbied for Fannie to soften rules on multi-family home mortgages although those dwellings showed a default rate twice that of single-family homes, according to the Nov. 22, 1991, Boston Globe.

BusinessWeek reported in its Nov. 14, 1994, issue that Fannie Mae called on Frank to exert his influence against a Housing & Urban Development proposal that would force the GSE to focus on minority and low-income buyers and police bias by lenders regardless of their location. Fannie Mae opposed HUD on the issue because it claimed doing so would �ignore the urban middle class.�

Moses left Fannie in 1998 to start his own pottery business. National Mortgage News called Moses a �mortgage guru� and said he developed �many of Fannie Mae's affordable housing and home improvement lending programs. Moses ended his relationship with Frank just months after he left Fannie.

Even after the relationship ended, however, Frank was a staunch defender of Fannie Mae even as other experts suggested there were serious problems building in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

According to an article by Kathleen Day in the Oct. 8, 2003, Washington Post, Frank opposed giving the Bush administration the right to approve or disapprove business activities that �could pose risk to the taxpayers.� He told the Post he worried the Treasury Department �would sacrifice activities that are good for consumers in the name of lowering the companies� market risks.�

Just a month before, Frank had aggressively thwarted reform efforts by the Bush administration. He told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac�s problems were �exaggerated,� a gross miscalculation some five years later with costs estimated to be in the hundreds of billions.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080924145932.aspx

As for the first two quotes, I really don't see how they shed a negative light on Frank. In fact, the first quote, from the WSJ no less, serves only to reaffirm points Frank made in the New Yorker piece -- which is not a puff piece, btw.

I began to read the longer third quote until I realized it was from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not reliable source for accurate information. I'll go there to look up a musician's discography or something, but certainly not to settle matters of record and personal integrity.

Adam, I think its fair to say we will continue to disagree on Barney Frank, and most other things as well. Respectfully, I am going to stop responding to this debate as it is taking too much of my time and I don't see it accomplishing much.

Daniel