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Palin Nude Photos Surface on the Web
Read full article here.Oct. 11, 2008
David Goldstein and Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy NewspapersAs the economy worsens and Election Day approaches, a conservative campaign that blames the global financial crisis on a government push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans has taken off on talk radio and e-mail.
Commentators say that's what triggered the stock market meltdown and the freeze on credit. They've specifically targeted the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the federal government seized on Sept. 6, contending that lending to poor and minority Americans caused Fannie's and Freddie's financial problems.
Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis.
Let's not get totally distracted by Palin; this kind of ideological subterfuge will have long term consequences if it goes unchallenged. This is the first campaign in recent memory in which fundamental conservative economic gospel-- free (when convenient) markets, trickle down theory, privatization of public goods (social security, health care, etc.)-- has been a part of the political debate, and much of this has to do with the financial crisis. Acquiescing to these false, partisan, racially-tinged attacks on legislation designed to end documented institutional racism also means ceding important ground about the fundamental role of government in preserving our national economic interests.
gkp
Comments (29)
"More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions", (see McClatchy link in post).
How convenient for the social conservatives to be able to off load the financial meltdown on those irresponsible poor people who got in over their heads on a financial deal they were destined to get the worst of. Better not to have included them in the housing feast in the first place. Perfect cover for abandoning programs designed to help the underprivileged, after transferring some more wealth up the ladder.
October 12, 2008 5:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Everybody!!!
WARNING: If you receive an e-mail with an attachment claiming to have nude photos of me - DO NOT OPEN the attachment. It may contain a computer virus.
October 12, 2008 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
(I), Hillary Clinton, your future president, would also like to issue the following WARNING:
If you receive an e-mail with an attachment claiming to have nude photos of me - DO NOT OPEN the attachment. It may contain nude photos of me.
Leading you All,
Much Love,
Hillary (2012).
October 12, 2008 5:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excuse me - but WHY would I want to see nude pictures of you?
I can't think of a more effective way of ensuring that i do NOT open an e-mail attachment!
October 12, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yuck. Ditto.
October 12, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not nude...
Naked.... ambition. ;-)
October 12, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
So it was poor people in East St. Louis that cooked-up Credit Default Swaps ?
October 12, 2008 7:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is the same old Fascist tactic that was used in Germany in the thirties, when their economy was in shambles. Find an oppressed group, and scapegoat them for all the problems.
October 12, 2008 8:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Don't worry too much. It's just not working. Everyone knows people bitten by the housing bubble, people who tried to flip homes or got over-leveraged. That's why Obama's critique of Reaganomics is winning him the debates, while McCain's reputation as a deregulator is hurting him.
Laissez faire is dead. Let the wingnuts gnash their teeth. Nobody will listen -- the financial pain EVERYONE is experience is far too real to spin away.
October 12, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Everyone may know them but how many are sympathetic? I know people who bought an extra house or houses as an "investment" with no money down variable rate mortgages so they could get their piece of the pie. Well they ended up getting burned for over extending themselves. They made promises they knew they could never keep and that they never intended to keep because they knew they could flip the house and make a bundle before they had to make good on those promises.
Friends you know, so I won't go out of my way to rub their noses in it but they wanted to be players and get something for nothing cause the price was always going to go up. I have no sympathy.
October 12, 2008 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
EXACTLY! We are already paying for their greediness with inflated prices of homes.
October 12, 2008 4:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
observer2 - i hope you're right. but don't underestimate the strength of the pissed off, self-righteous minority. Great book by Gert Mak called 'In Euroupe' talks, in part, about how scapegoating and indifference in Germany led to the Nazi regime. When the sane majority is simply worried about surviving, they tend to ignore the brownshirts until it's too late.
October 12, 2008 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just because F&F didn't issue the mortgages doesn't mean they're not to blame.
Those private institutions (like Countrywide) would have never issued so many sub-prime mortgages unless they knew they had someone (ie F&F) who they could sell them to.
October 12, 2008 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
yes yes... just because those guys are drug dealers they are not to blame. they never would have distributed the drugs unless they new people would buy the drugs. i mean, somebody has to do it.
come on man, you can do better than that. this is classic moral hazard. private investment firms whose primary business was not mortgages saw an opportunity to capitalize on loose regs and a built-in safety net (F&F); they created a scheme and rode it out the housing bubble too long. they approved the loans-- they are the drug dealers my friend.
gkp
October 12, 2008 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The difference between Ethics and Morals.
These "drug dealers" were 'ethical'... they had a set of rules the stuck to...
Their 'morality'... well... that's very debatable.
October 12, 2008 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
But the reality is, Fannie & Freddie were bit players in the crisis. The volume of private mortgage securities soared during the peak bubble years. So it was Wall Street that was going around to lenders and whispering in their ear, "We've got buckets of money. We'll buy any mortgage you write."
From the article:
October 12, 2008 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I recently moved to an apartment because the 91 and a half year old with whom I lived for six years passed away. During the six years she remortgaged her house perhaps six times. That means at least once per year. She was on a fixed income, which never should have qualified her for the last mortgage, but received one from country wide and the monthly payment was more that three quarters of her monthly income. Perhaps that is why she passed away, she must have felt it coming.
October 12, 2008 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
If she were 91 years old, she would have known the adage:
If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.
October 12, 2008 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
link plz k thx
October 12, 2008 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes Ken - you said it correctly. The "built-in safety net" of Fannie and Freddie allowed the banks to make so much money. If F&F were not there buying so many sub-prime and Alt-A mortgages than the banks wouldn't have been issuing those risky mortgages.
F&F were the largest buyers of these loans from 2004 thru 2007. If Congress had tried to rein in how much toxic paper F&F were buying, this mortgage bubble wouldn't have grown as big as it did.
F&F are just as blameworthy as the banks. I like to think that the banks were making the crack cocaine and F&F were dealing it.
October 12, 2008 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maxine Waters made this point on Bill Mahrer this week. She "defended" F&F by saying that they were doing exactly what their competitors were to keep up with them.
Not much of a defense, but does speak to the need that people can't be trusted to do the right thing. It's especially bad for corporations where "no one" is responsible for the actions taken and no one person can be held accountable.
If you believe in deregulation, then you must believe in market corrections -- that is true laissez-faire.
October 12, 2008 4:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
"F&F were the largest buyers of these loans."
Wrong wrong wrong. Please read the McClatchy article.
Wall Street was going nuts buying mortgages in the peak bubble years. Fannie & Freddie'a market share plunged during those years while Wall Street's volume of private securities soared.
October 12, 2008 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Also from the article: In 2005 and 2006, the two most bubblicious years, the private sector securitized almost two-thirds of all mortgages, up from 18% in 1999.
Tell me how that squares with blaming Fannie & Freddie for the mess.
October 12, 2008 4:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's make this simple.
1. CDS market deregulated
2. Banks think they can insure their way out of anything.
3. Banks loan to people who aren't good for repaying a loan on a McDonald's Happy Meal, much less a house, and "insure" them with CDS policies.
4. Meanwhile, federally backed loans (e.g. Community Reinvestment Act etc.) still have lending standards, risk standards etc.
5. Unfortunately, Fannie and Freddie go and buy up crappy private mortgages from other banks.
6. CRA loans still OK. All-private loans falling like dominos.
7. All-private loan crisis gets completely out of hand.
8. CDS derivatives to insure private loans go into default.
9. The mother of all financial collapses. Nobody can get a loan at all.
10. See how the unregulated stuff fell apart, while the government stuff limited the damage?
October 12, 2008 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
ABove remark is reply to "Dutton Peabody". Unfortunately TPM site barfed up again on the reply feature.
October 12, 2008 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
someone needs to clue in the right wing that, for the most part, it's the 2006-vintage mortgage pool that is defaulting at an alarming rate.
i saw rick davis this morning trying to say that it's clinton's fault, and obama's fault, because it was in 1999 that fannie and freddie started loaning to -- and i'm paraphrasing here -- the negrahs and the other rabble. then he hurled something about about 2003 and 2005.
well, as i said, IT'S THE 2006-VINTAGE MORTGAGES THAT ARE THE PROBLEM. not the 1999, or 2000, or 2001, or 2002, or 2003, or 2004, or 2005 morgtgages.
it's the loans that were made at the tail-end of the housing price bubble, that didn't have the time to refinance out of the ARMs before the bubble burst on them, and deflated their loans to below an 80% loan-to-value ratio (meaning they weren't going to be able to get a new loan, and were locked into the adjusted rate, which was like LIBOR plus a million).
was the housing bubble caused by sub-prime lending? sure. but just as much, it was caused by PRIME loans extended to people who ALSO wanted to live beyond their means. i should know, because i was one of them.
i got an 80-10-10, and both the first and second were ARMs. because i was a lawyer at a firm, and we knew what i'd be making in a few years. we had stellar credit scores, our income was good, but we didn't want to be strapped for the first few years with at fixed jumbo, so we ARM-ed. rates were still on the way down in 2003, as well, so we figured we could refi when rates started to rebound. we refinanced in 2006. if we had waited two years, we'd have been FUCKED. and we weren't subprime by any stretch.
as for blaming the economic woes on the defaults, like someone else pointed out, i suppose it was the "negrahs and other rabble" who underwrote the cash and synthetic CDOs? the credit default swaps that populated the synthetic CDOs? give me a fucking break.
these institutions purported to have done due diligence on the quality of the loans underlying the residential mortgage backed securities from which the CDOs were created, and to which the swaps referred. and when there started to be defaults, everything crumbled. because the fat cats acted just like rick davis would have you believe the negrahs and other rabble behaved. THEY IGNORED RISK. or they didn't even consider it.
why were they able to ignore or not even consider the risks in their portfolios? BECAUSE GEORGE FUCKING BUSH AND JOHN FUCKING MCCAIN MADE SURE NO ONE WAS WATCHING WHAT THESE FAT CATS DID.
fuck rick davis. fucking liar.
October 12, 2008 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a chart showing how private mortgage securities -- which Fannie and Freddie had nothing to do with -- exploded in volume during the bubble years. The figures show private securities as a percentage of all outstanding home mortgages (not just mortgages issues in a given year) and as a percentage of GDP.
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/07/abs_to_gdp_jul_08.gif
Again, tell me how this squares with blaming Fannie & Freddie for the mess.
(The full article the chart is taken from is at http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/07/did_fannie_and.html.)
October 12, 2008 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
well, who knows how to make a snappy video...? that drudge-hyped nonsense that promotes the democrats/freddie & fannie/cra/ and oh that gay guy barney did it crap is approaching 2 million hits.
October 12, 2008 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
This blog post is a total fraud... where are the photos?!
October 12, 2008 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
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