Ah, Michelle Bachmann. Always good to see she never fails to make a complete idiot of herself.

As they've been lying down with dogs the past 8 years, these Bushstyle Congressional Republicans now know the only way to divert the atttention/acountability moment from their ranks is to smear others and cast suspicion against government sponsored privatization they themselves worked to effect.

What cowardly bastards the Bush/Cheney/McCain Republicans are! -Kevo

Are these people f'ing insane ? Do they not realize that white people are actually going to be a minority themselves in this country in the next 40 years ? Good luck getting anyone other than whitey to vote for you after this slash and burn idiocy.

Of course it's low income minorities, look around. All of our neighborhoods are being infiltrated. The minority homeownership rate is climbing into (rather falling) the high twenty percents.

This is an appeal to those whites who think any black employed took some white mans job - ie, can't vote for Barack.

This is the triumph of fascism over socialism.

The bubble arrives at the destination of least resistance. There is no specific blame, government provides trickle paths, the market goes there in spades. If not housing, then something else.

The essential problem is the desire of the economy to restructure to accommodate the huge debt over load. Restructuring the government sector is an eight to sixteen year process, we have to go through a very long dry spell to get it done.

The fact that Pelosi is proud to have invested your SS funds in the stock market does not help one bit.

TOM: fascism IS A FORM socialism.

READ MUSSOLINI JERK.

the alt-a and subprime mortages casued the whole probl;em: too many were made and then bundled into a derivative which banks bpught in good faith.

the greed & corruption was at fannie mae and freddie mac and among the democrats in congress.

bush, greenspan, snow and mccain argued for more oversight and this was blocked by frank and dodd and other dems.

i have been a registered dem since 1974.

but i am no blind partisan and no socialists and i call it like i see it.

be an adult; accept the truth: the lib dems - and their utopianist social engineering (without oversight) - caused this.

Leave the other "isms" out of this. This is the triumph of racism over reality.

The world is going to hell and the far right wing right wing has to blame somebody. That's what happened in NAZI Germany. Since many of the right wingers who are looking for a scapegoat are Jews they can't blame Jews this time. Blacks and "other minorities" have to take the hit.

I am sorry but Bachmann and Krauthammer should be ashamed of themselves.

The dishonesty by Republicans and conservative free market fundamentalists of blaming this crisis on the a provision to assist minorities become homeowners was entirely predictable. First, since we are talking about a huge government rescue of the private sector gone mad it is an easy matter for Republicans to keep the focus on this being a problem with "big government," no matter that it's really big business which has failed.

Also at stake is 30 years of Ronald Reagan slogans about the superiority of the free market. Conservatives know we are at a 1929-New Deal crossroad, where unregulated capitalism could be discredited for a generation unless they invent a competing narrative that this is all really the fault of Great Society-like liberal compassion for the poor run amok.

It is hard to say how much this will succeed when the George Bush White House is behind this "big government" solution, but conservatives know the whole foundation for their political movement is in jeopardy of crumbling around them unless they push blame off on an innocent bystander like liberalism.

At its core this was not about poor people not paying their mortgages but cunning rich guys who thought they could get richer by faking out the markets with junk mortgages and letting someone else take the risk they would someday explode. That's where the focus needs to be. There were lots of responsible ways to get poor people mortgages, they just didn't pay as well as this disceptive way that is now threatening the economy.

In this comment is some what of a back track a grouping of my combined idea and perceptions from the two topics, the gambler, and Rick Davis stuff, hope you don’t mind.

Both McCain and Palin are surfacing to be so obnoxious in social philosophy that these comedy shows and late night features are beginning to reveal truths of poor social identification or connection for lack of improved development for everyone. More of the big five first line Journalist seem to have no trouble in impromptu political analysis that inevitably slides into a laughing stock way about McCain and Palin. McCain and Palin are the jokes in this political card game.

Regularly, with easily busts of laughter, in obvious contradictions political analysis was made of McCain not being able to even look at Obama during some the exclamations made to and directed at Obama of not understanding the issues. That is one of the most generous forms of body language you will “never� see O’Reilly take apart in detail. For heaven sakes it has the effect like a little kid talking to his mommy staring at the floor talking, McCain here talking his way out of entirely everything he and Bush have been doing wrong. The real kicker is admitting to torture. Sheesh, What a jerk goof move. Now the networks are telling us Condi Rice has admitted to talking about torture. All bets are on the Condi knows there is an International Tribunal forming in the future and Condi Rice will very well seek a deal and if she blows the whistle there goes the legacy of Bush and the Republican Party. There goes Condi, gone in a road side bombing.

The one comment Palin made about trade missions with Russia is not talked about but would be very interesting to know what they are. Or this stuff all tangled with Rick Davis reveals a management style for everyone to be concerned for a future with a McCain type government which looks as solidly the same as Bush and Company, and perhaps worse.

In a surprise guest appearance on the Savage Hate Radio Show this guy Rick Davis I think was talking about what American’s want in this bail out. The comment he made was very striking with the direct statement that these financial entities will figure a way out of this mess with out tax money if they had to. All this gives way to Bush and Company along with Bernekie or Greenspan as perpetrators in the most horrible mismanaged money and power gab in the history of American politics.

No, they don’t need our tax money, and the American electorate should call the bluff of this card game, and let’s see the cards. Mainstream Media is complicit in this game by not aiding in the oversight necessary in their own basic mission.

The government license states that they the media has a responsibility in inform and educate “We the People� in this public electromagnetic domain. Not happening folks, the funny thing I watch as MSNBC close their daily broadcast with Joe in the Morning what did you learn today. Well America is learning more about the basic corruption in the Federal Reserve System that is appearing to be the core of the swindling and corruption in our banking System that has been going on for almost a century is alarming.

Especially when America has Andrea Mitchell wife of former Allen Greenspan who got us to this mess is a huge biased political commentary’s likely privy to huge trillion dollars banking schemes. Very likely privy to this new Bush Bailout game. Absolutely one of the biggest contradictions in any true economic feedback always on MSNBC giving opinions that is questionably honest in the electorate dimension.

Wouldn’t it be funny if Olbermann really honestly looked inside his own network take a hard look at MSNBC and say, Oh my gosh, the Bush family, the Bin Laden family, and Greenspan family are all close friends for the last several decades likely screwing the American electorate out of tax money and they want another trillion. Here, the card game is a political fix with Olbermann counting down, or should we say counting up to a trillion and Chris Mathews switching the deals in his political fix show to confuse to hell out of the electorate.

These are sharks Obama has to deal with and we the electorate should get our selves together and help Obama with all spires and Shark spears he needs.

I lived in Saint Paul (just up the street from Governor Ventura) when Coleman was mayor (elected as a Democrat - turned to Republican afterwards).

Hey, now doncha know that Bachmann and Norm are a pair of numbnuts. You're darn tootin' we know it out here then.

Seriously, most people in Minnesota are progressive and aware. You even have to be a social progressive to win as a Republican for the most part.

That said, where the heck did Michelle Bachmann come from? My friends from up there are cringing. This is infinitely more embarrassin' than Jesse.

Franken would win easily if he didn't have a reputation (well exploited by Coleman) for being mean. Minnesotans don't like mean.

But again, that said - What's the deal here with Bachman now?

These are sharks Obama has to deal with and we the electorate should get our selves together and help Obama with all spires and Shark spears he needs.

McCain's solution is to jump as many sharks as he can.

Blame the victims.

It's also time to ask McCain if he believes this argument too--

I heard this same basic argument on Friday while talking politics with another professor I work with who blamed the entire economic crisis on Bill Clinton. To her credit, she stayed on message and sounded exactly like Rep. Bachmann. Of course when I asked her if the last eight years of Bush had anything to do with it she was a bit constipated on coming up with a rational answer.

On a side note, she did admit that she was having a philosophical migraine trying to figure out how to balance a government bailout, i.e., socialism, with her faith in the free market, i.e., capitalism. She didn't seem to like my smartass answer that you can't have it both ways if you persist in keeping profits private but losses public.

the greed & corruption was at fannie mae and freddie mac and among the democrats in congress.

Provide examples, please.

bush, greenspan, snow and mccain argued for more oversight and this was blocked by frank and dodd and other dems.

Again, provide examples. With links. In fact, it was McCain's economic advisor, who he would like to make head of Treasury, Phil Gramm, who authored and slipped in the provisions most responsible for the collapse.

i have been a registered dem since 1974.

And a foolish tool for your entire life.

but i am no blind partisan and no socialists and i call it like i see it.

"I see," said the blind man.

be an adult; accept the truth: the lib dems - and their utopianist social engineering (without oversight) - caused this.

Posted by: reliapundit

Elaborate for us then, if you will, why it is that the great bulk of foreclosures are in McMansionville rather than the inner city or poorer neighborhoods. Perhaps you can link to some statistics showing that foreclosure rates in predominately minority neighborhoods are higher than elsewhere? No, I didn't think that you could.

I'm sure the same thing has been going on all over the country as we have seen here. For the past 7 or 8 years, NO ONE was building basic starter homes. EVERYONE was building McMansions. I was seeing couples (white) in their mid-20s buying houses costing $350K (starting price for a McMansion here) and up and wondering, "how in the world can they afford that at their age?" Well, they couldn't afford it. They were taking out ridiculous mortgages. More to the point, they were being qualified for mortgages with ridiculous terms by unscrupulous lenders. These were people that probably could have afforded the basic 1200 sf starter home; instead, they were buying the 3,000 sf + McMansion with all the cliches - granite countertops, 10 ft ceilings, etc etc.

Do a survey in YOUR area, numbnuts, and then come back and tell us how many of those McMansion dwellers are black or minority. And where the greatest number of empty foreclosed homes are located.

This was a problem of overbuilding - and overbuying of - high-end housing. That accounts for over half of the mortgage defaults - people signing up to buy more house than they could afford. By the time the market catches up to the supply of housing in this high price range, many of those homes will have sat empty for 10 or 15 years and will be a total loss. Most of them won't survive the first few months of vacancy without being stripped of their copper plumbing and wiring by your friendly local meth/crackheads.

Instead of letting your racism lead you into believing what isn't true, do your damned homework. Tool.

Do the math.

As I understand it, the TOTAL amount sunk into bad mortgages of various sorts is about $250 billion. But the 'value' of derivatives banging around the world is around $45 TRILLION -- and while it's all webbed into the mortgage-backed securities crash, ya gotta be able to tell the loose doorknob from the house that's on fire.

Even if the residential real estate crash all evaporated to nothing (which it can't, cuz millions of houses are still worth something -- a house sold for $100,000 when it was bought for $300,000 is still worth 100 grand, and in five years, it might be worth 300k again), that's nowhere near enough to bring down the world's economy.

No, what's happening is very different: essentially, the mortgages themselves were a flimsy excuse for the securities. In a rising market, derivatives pretty much cannot lose money, so smart guys pooled thousands of mortgages and created trillions of dollars from a few hundred billion in home sales.

Since this whole structure is essential to the flow of credit for, well, everything -- buying a house, buying a car, the cards in your wallet, E-Bay, seed and inventory and mergers and you name it: it's important to know SCALE. This isn't about helping marginal homebuyers, it's about margins.

The thing is -- credit default swaps work out as the kind of scam that would have thrilled Meyer Lansky, especially cuz they're LEGAL. Essentially, a credit default swap is a bet somebody makes with an insurance company (like AIG) that, f'r instance, out of those thousands of mortgages in a mortgage-backed security pool, no more than a small, predictable # will go bad. In a rising market, it's a safe bet.

But once the housing bubble burst, credit default swaps became essentially like me buying theft insurance from you, on a car that I neither own nor drive. When I bought the insurance, we both agreed the car was worth, say, 50 grand. That's how you priced the policy: you figured out of a pool of 2,000 mortgages, no more than 50 would go bad. But now, the way I file the claim (the current market), you might have to pay me a million dollars for the stolen car -- and obviously I couldn't care less what happens to the car itself, since I only bought insurance on it: I don't own it nor drive it.

I'd have made money if 51 mortgages went bad. But if 300, or 1,000 of those mortgages go bad: I MAKE MORE MONEY OFF YOU. And, naturally, nobody wants to buy THAT contract from you -- and thus, you can't sell any more securities (if you're Lehman), write more insurance (if you're AIG), or make more loans (if you're Washington Mutual).

That's the essence of the imbalance here -- it wasn't the subprime market that caused the crash. If all we have to do is bail out the $250 billion in bad mortgages, we'd have done it by now.

It's the way trillions of dollars in derivatives, swaps and the like are now starting to cascade through commercial mortgages, mergers and acquisitions, lines of credit for inventory and car loans, etc., that makes this a crisis.

There was (and is) so much money to be made from the predictable collapse of the subprime market, that a more suspicious person than I might think that was why it was set up as the foundation of this extremely profitable house of cards in the first place.

Do the math.

Thanks, well said, Jennifer.

And where else, PA folks, could you find the term "numbnuts" used twice (by two different people) in the same thread?

Are you from Minnesota too then Jennifer?

"This sucker is going down.." says George Bush referring to Wall Street. Previously he referred to our economy as a "house of cards." Like a dead clock that's right two times a day, Bush scored gold with these observations.

Time to regroup, become a multipolar player on the world stage and start being a caring Scandinavian type country.

Dr Wu, the last of the big-time thinkers

colonpowwow - nope, I'm in Arkansas.

"What's the deal with Bachmann here?"

I wish I knew. My brother and his fiancee live in Minneapolis and they can't understand what's the deal with that woman and how she got elected (they are fortunate to live in Keith Ellison's district - I was very pleased to see he laid the smackdown on Bachmann over these asinine comments of hers). She's an absolute nutcase and a walking joke (and frankly, after the way she practically groped Bush after last year's SOTU, I'm amazed she wasn't arrested for assaulting the President).

I can tell you this, though, my brother and his fiancee HATE Norm Coleman. Just hate him. When I showed them Coleman's infamous comment that he was a "99% improvement over Paul Wellstone" (mere months after Paul died), they said, "Yep, that sounds like him." They'll be voting for Franken come November.

CBC needs to put the letter into full-page display ads in the NYT and WaPo, just the way PNAC used to do with its nonsense.

fascism IS A FORM socialism.

No, national socialism rejected marxist socialism and embraced the free market, repeatedly. Mussolini rejected his early Marxism and pushed for what he called "totalitarianism," which was never a coherent philosophy at all, beyond authoritarianism.

Then again, if you're stupid enough to fall for Jonah Goldberg's book, it's easy to see why you'd be dumb enough to think that the bubble that sank these two GSE's (not to mention MANY OTHER BANKS) was actually caused by said GSE's.

"Good faith"? Good grief! Bush used the OCC to keep the states from stopping predatory lending, and here we are.
.

I live smack in the middle of ground zero, Riverside/San Bernardino counties in CA. For years, I've watched the endless construction of tract homes out here. Each weekend we would see dueling sign-twirlers on every corner directing you to a new development. They built everywhere, old riverbeds, fault lines, fire zones. But people were happy and the houses were filled.

However in my dozen years in CA, I heard the same refrain, "It's going to burst - soon."

Everyone knew it. No one stopped it.

You may have heard of the Santa Ana winds. Sometimes they blow for days. Your lips chap, your skin feels mummified and simple breathing becomes difficult. 70 - 80mph howling like a hurricane, but eerily the sun still shines. That is, if you can see it through the dirt.

Last October, the winds came as usual but this time it was different. No rain for years (the driest season on record) meant the wind would have less resistance coming over the hills. We could see it coming from our porch: a monstrous dirt tornado. We battened down the hatches and waited for the hit.

It blew like this for days. Every pin-hole crevice in the window sills had inch-high dirt mounds. We couldn't contain the dirt and to this very day, I'm still cleaning up from it. Trees blew down, my pool filled with mud, and a fine layer of dirt covered everything in our house and garage. My son's school closed for a week to recover their computers, all damaged by dirt.

Curiously, near his school another development was ready to go up (on an active alluvial plain AND fault line, mind you) and the cinder block wall surrounding it, at least a mile in length, was in place. The Santa Anas took out that wall, block by block. For weeks we drove by and the blocks remained but not too long afterward, they reclaimed the blocks and left, never to return. It also literally blew down a brand new Chevron station. It too was demolished and trucked away and the station was not rebuilt.

I sensed it was over then.

These days, riding through the inland towns, you see so many houses boarded up. Beautiful homes covered in plywood reminiscent of old ghost towns left to rot after the gold rush, and you know each one of them stand in silent testament of insufferable pain for those who had to leave, and malignant greed of those who perpetrated it.

The market collapse had absolutely nothing to do with helping poor people. But it had everything to do with making people poorer.

Powerful stuff, MissMudd - you can WRITE.

John McCain and his Traveling Freak Show have decided the black demographic is lost to them, and that it makes more political sense to stoke the coals of racism than to present an alternative to Barack Obama. Watch for even more jaw-dropping effort to suppress the black vote this time around, because they know they're getting none of it. Cynicism so pure you could bottle it, and use it to kill aphids on your roses.

As a Minnesotan I'm embarrassed about Bachmann. Coleman as well, but Bachmann takes it to a whole new level. She's an absolute joke here. Her district is largely a semi-rural/exurban area where a lot of loonies are living. I hope enough people there have become embarrassed enough over the past four years that they'll boot her ass out. Her opponent is a smart and credible guy. Unfortunately when she was elected the Democrats here ran an inexperienced and largely untested candidate against her and she flopped, but they're not making the same mistake again.

I too live in Minnesota.

If you average out the whole state, it generally tilts left, but that doesn't mean that all congressional districts are left leaning. Bachmanm represents a swath across the middle of the state from St. Cloud to Stillwater. This is a very conservative district by Minnesota standards. Lots of prolife social conservatives and anti-government types.

And while she is totally loony, Bachmann has somethings going for her. 1) She looks good. 2) She can speak well. 3) She has a small army of super dedicated social conservative followers who work hard for her.

Her last opponent was a well-known public advocate on child safety issues (Patty Wetterling). A good person, but frankly a person who really wasn't willing to do all the things that a politician has to do. However, even given that Bachmann only won by a single digit margin.

Her current opponent doesn't look to be any stronger than Wetterling was, but I haven't seen any polling data.

The bottom line is she couldn't win a statewide office, but she can still win in the 5th district.

I saw Eric Cantor arguing about this on Late Edition this AM. Idiot was talking about Jimmy Carter and CRA. Umm, Jimmy Carter was in power in 1980. That's 28 yrs ago. So you're saying that people who got loans 20 to 30 years ago are the cause of the subprime crisis? Most loans back then were 30 year loans that would almost be paid off now. Yes, I know about refis etc. but refis aren't going to be just done by minorities. And furthermore, what have the republicans done in the 12 years that they held the house and Senate? I hate these people.

Cavuto of Fox News started the minorities caused the meltdown mantra and I guess its easier to blame inner city blacks and Hispanics rather than take a hard look at all those ARM and balloon mortgages written by banks. Its a lot like Hurricane Katrina, it became a black folks problem to disguise the fact that there was a wholesale breakdown in the functions of state and local government. No one saw all those white citizens who lost everything just like no one sees all those white homeowners being foreclosed on and loosing their homes or dozens of suburban subdivisions that are vacant. If you keep saying its a black thing you don't have to look in the mirror.

The proper response to this is, "GOP, STFU." These people support discrimination that a white person could only experience vicariously via hidden camera.

A person with wrong-color skin shows up to view a house or apartment and they're informed, "We're sorry. It just sold." They go back a month later with video entourage in tow, and the sign's still there. The salesman hides his face behind his forearm and slams the door on the cameraman.

It has nothing to do with community reinvestment or predatory lending terms or any of that because for years, only white people were handed applications. That's the kind of discrimination these conservative freaks want to being back.

This latest tactic by Republicans is just racist claptrap. I actually talked to a friend of the family that works in the mortgage processing division at HSBC this evening. I asked her point blank about the CRA and what type of mortgages and payment performance do they see. She said:

1) Mortgages that are given per the CRA requirements are not given to those that would not otherwise qualify. They still must qualify under traditional requirements. It's just that usually the houses are a lot less expensive, and so those taking out the mortgages are in a much lower income bracket.

2) People that take out mortgages under the CRA are given explicit instructions and counseling regarding what the terms of the mortgage are, what the payment will be, how the downpayment must work, and basically a complete rundown and education on the entire process. This is *not* the case for traditional mortgages, which are just "sign here" affairs and if the borrower doesn't know what they're doing, well, that could be a problem for them.

3) The CRA mortgages have a default rate that is about the same as any other traditional mortgage. Furthermore, if there's an issue with payment, the bank sends out a representative to sit down with the borrower find out what the problem is and to work out a more amenable payment plan if there's been a job loss, etc.

So, as you can see, the mortgages covered by the CRA are actually processed in a *more* diligent manner than what would be considered a "normal" mortgage. Of course, good luck explaining this to one of these right-wing numbskulls.

Mark, thanks. Your Dana and The Cuke line upthread knocked me out.

And aatos, this is so true. I'm white, but I'll never forget the words of a woman I encountered while trying to buy a house in the early 90s in NC.

All seemed lovely but as soon as we signed the papers, she pulled me aside and said, "I'm so glad you got it because we didn't want to sell it to any blacks." It was then I found the realtor was collaborating in her desire.

This the biggest sham in the history of our country and probably the planet. Of proportions you or I can not even begin to imagine. That Congress believes it has solved the problem in a week's time, tells me that ultimately they have no clue what they're really doing. Or why.

The levee may hold for a time. But when the next breach happens, we're all going to drown.

"... it's easy to see why you'd be dumb enough to think that the bubble that sank these two GSE's (not to mention MANY OTHER BANKS) was actually caused by said GSE's. ..."

Posted by: Grand Moff Texan on September 28, 2008
-------------------

In a recent House committee hearing the current heads of Fannie & Freddie were asked about former practices and the balance sheets. They said both were run very well, pretty much stuck to AAA assets and had written down far less on toxic assets than had commercial banks. In short, they said F&F had been very well run and were in no danger. When asked how much taxpayer money they had used after the government took them over they said ZERO.

So, neither was run badly or was in danger of failure. They were simply confiscated by Bush.

Did stockholders lose money because of that? Where do they go to get it back?

sjrsm, while I derive a special giggle from riling pedantic pricks like you, there's no merit in pursuing it further.

Your thoughts are simply not that interesting.

Now go knock back another shot and annoy your wife or kick the dog or whatever you crusty old fucks do at this hour.