The Nobel committee can stop looking for next year winner of the Nobel prize in economics and hand the thing right now to Harold Myerson. The WaPo columnist's effort of today, Gods That Failed, is Krugmanesque, reading like an extended gloat at the expense of believers in free markets. Ha-ha, mocks Myerson, your god of unregulated capitalism is dead. Just like Communism failed, so has your system. You half expect Myerson to end with a self-satisfied "nah nah nah nah nah!"
From Myerson's opening paras [emphasis added]:
In 1949, a number of famous writers, among them Arthur Koestler, André Gide, Richard Wright, Stephen Spender and Ignazio Silone, wrote essays explaining why they were no longer communists. The essays were collected in a volume entitled "The God That Failed."Today, conservative intellectuals might want to consider writing a tome on the failure of their own beloved deity, unregulated capitalism.
There's just one small problem with Harold's hypothesis: it's based on an entirely false premise, one that I'm sure NB readers will quickly spot. The current mess was caused not by too little government regulation, but too much.
Surely not even Myerson can deny that it was government meddling with Freddie and Fannie--by far the biggest players in the mortgage markets--that is a root cause of the financial crisis. It was the implicit federal guarantee of Freddie/Fannie's obligations that permitted them to borrow at lower rates. And it was government pressure on them to lend to non-creditworthy borrowers that largely underlies the sub-prime mess. Similarly, it was the mandate of the Community Reinvestment Act, as well as more informal government pressures, that distorted the private credit sector and led to more sub-prime lending.
Asks Myerson, a sneer in his cyber-pen:
What exactly do economic conservatives believe now that their god is dead? What's become of the glories of privatized Social Security?
Myerson might think he's making a brilliant rhetorical point. But which would you rather have: a government-guaranteed 1% return on your Social Security contributions, or the right--with attendant risk--to make your own decisions in the market over a lifetime of work?
So what does Myerson propose as an alternative to the dead god of capitalism? A good inkling comes from this proposal he floats [emphasis added]:
Now liberals must turn their attention to the kind of financial nationalization on which we're about to embark. Paulson wants to shore up the banks with public funds but also to continue entrusting our banking system to the same bankers who got us into this fix, albeit with more regulation. But why shouldn't banks that take public money be compelled to seat a public member or two on their boards, as a check against their repeating old follies or committing new ones? Economic Policy Institute founder Jeff Faux says the government should control one major bank to use as a yardstick in the financial sector, just as public utilities constrain the misconduct of private ones.
Sounds like a giant step down the slope to socialism. With a President Obama, strong Dem congressional majorities, and the Myersons of the media to cheer them on, could it become an avalanche?
Note: Was Myerson getting his talking points from the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad, or vice versa? See AFP story, Iran hails world financial crisis as 'end of capitalism'"
"The school of Marxism has collapsed and the sound of the West's cracking liberal democracy is now being heard," supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday, recalling the fate of the Soviet Union.
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is backed by Khamenei, said on Tuesday that "it is the end of capitalism."
—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.
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Just more truth to the rumor
October 15, 2008 - 09:34 ET by expatriotAn Obamamania presidency coupled with the very scary scenario of Nan and Dingy with unbreakable majorities equals the United Socialist States of America. Or a Western European nation just below Canada. It would be a total catastrophe and this moron proves it.
absolutely
October 15, 2008 - 14:05 ET by mbuelAnd we have marxist anti- free trade economists SUPPORTING this switch to soviet style government.
http://afp.google.co...
The fact is the GOVERNMENT caused this disaster and is making it worse by interferring with the market!
But that is the WHOLE point. They have been trying to make our system collapse since the sixties. Look at all the marxist BS in the news headlines:
http://news.google.com/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&tab=wn&q=banks+reject+bailout&scoring=n
The reason Australian banks are not in trouble, is because they weren't forced to make disastrous affirmative action loans. Bush and his party of Liberal conservatives are at fault for not completely shutting that crap down. But, THEY DID try to regulate the new market that the marxist liberals created in Fannie and Freddie and were shut down at every turn in the last eight years.
I heard on Rush earlier that several US banks are upset about the $250 Billion bank bailout as well and are rejecting it.
thanks to this crash -
October 15, 2008 - 14:37 ET by TruthMongerthanks to this crash - Socialism and Communism are dead
US libs are simply the last gasp - mainly U profs with one foot in the grave
RIP commie scum
Journalism is the opium of the liberals
God calls people like this
October 15, 2008 - 09:39 ET by mattmGod calls people like this "the blind leading the blind." It was the REGULATIONS that CAUSED the FAILURE, you friggin' idiot!
Leave the markets alone and NO WAY will a bank give a loan to a borrower who can't prove his ability to pay it back.
These people are absolute morons. Here we have an obvious failure of government tampering in the free-market and these jackasses portray it as a failure of capitalism.
Sadly, most people are too ignorant and stupid and will buy this crap because they have been brainwashed by the schools and the media.
You can't kill capitalism because the economic principles of the free market work regardless of what governments do. Supply and Demand work like gravity and aging...you can defy them for so long, but they will eventually win out.
Mattm
October 15, 2008 - 09:45 ET by EireNuaI'm afraid there was no single cause. I think the reason people are jumping to blame sides is because we are in the middle of an election cycle. Frannie and Freddie were not sole players in this downturn. What about Lehman? Or Bear Stearns mortgage backed securities debacle? Or AIG? Overspeculation and greed played a much bigger role than governmental regulation....these CEOs deserve to be shot like dogs...people have been put to death for much less than what these idiots have done to our country. And check out the statistics about Goldman...they're rapidly selling EVERYTHING to China. Makes me angry.
EireNua
October 15, 2008 - 10:04 ET by expatriotYou are right about there being many causes but the government regulation and intrusive government acts are at the heart of the problem. You want to exterminate the CEO's of the companies mentioned but what about Raines and Gorelick? Under their Tutelage they cooked the books, enriched themselves to the tune of 100Mil and are walking around scott free. And don't forget the actions of Barney and Dodd. Without the pols interfering and meddling there might have been a correction like we get every 10-20 years or so but not to this extent.
What say you?
"....these CEOs deserve to
October 15, 2008 - 10:06 ET by robert108"....these CEOs deserve to be shot like dogs..."
Commies killed at least 100 million in the Twentieth Century, inspired by that kind of thinking.
Without the bad paper mandated by the Dem social engineering in the home loan business, none of the rest of it would have happened.
The companies that dealt in that govt-mandated bad paper are going down, as they should. The morality of the free market is that good investments succeed, and bad investments fail. When govt interferes with that, to enforce some social quotas, bad things result. When the govt protects those who make the bad investments, like with Fannie and Freddie, the problem is made worse. Basic econ.
False, there was a single
October 15, 2008 - 11:10 ET by dscottFalse, there was a single common thread/cause in all of this, meddling in the economy by Democrats. Claiming that Fannie and Freddie the primary cause would be an over simplification of the situation, however. Who was it who advocated the CRA requiring banks to make bad loans under the guise of helping the poor? Who was it who refused to reform the abuses at Fannie and Freddie? Whose cronies was it who ran Fannie and Freddie into the ground? Who misrepresented by cooking the books the credit worthiness of mortgage backed securities to Lehman and Bears Stears? Who was it that refused to lift the domestic drilling ban which pushed up energy prices thus slowing the economy putting people out of work? The answer to every question I posed is: DEMOCRATS
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village.
Not entirely true
October 15, 2008 - 13:33 ET by mvfreemanThe subprime mortgage explosion started with private entities, not Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. they jumped on the bandwagon after they started losing market share.
http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2008/09/updated-summary-of-real-estate-boom.html
Blaming the CRA seems to be popular but they only accounted for a small percentage of bad loans. Most subprime loans were given to middle class folks in the suburbs.
"Some legal and financial experts note that CRA regulated loans tend to be safe and profitable, and that subprime excesses came mainly from institutions not regulated by the CRA. In the February 2008 House hearing, law professor Michael S. Barr, a Treasury Department official under President Clinton,[63][32] stated that a Federal Reserve survey showed that affected institutions considered CRA loans profitable and not overly risky. He noted that approximately 50% of the subprime loans were made by independent mortgage companies that were not regulated by the CRA. Another 25% to 30% came from only partially CRA regulated bank subsidiaries and affiliates. He stated that institutions fully regulated by CRA made "perhaps" one in four sub-prime loans. Referring to CRA and abuses in the subprime market, Michael Barr stated that in his judgment "the worst and most widespread abuses occurred in the institutions with the least federal oversight".[64] According to Janet L. Yellen, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, independent mortgage companies made "high-priced loans" at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts; most CRA loans were responsibly made, and were not the higher-priced loans that have contributed to the current crisis.[65] A 2008 study by Traiger & Hinckley LLP, a law firm that counsels financial institutions on CRA compliance, found that CRA regulated institutions were less likely to make subprime loans, and when they did the interest rates were lower. CRA banks were also half as likely to resell the loans.[66]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
It also mentions that the mortgage backed securities that were bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not a part of CRA.
As some one astutely mentioned on this blog but in another thread, people were trying to cheat risk and got greedy. When the bubble inevitably burst they got burned. Remember tech stocks?
Getting answers from Wiki
October 15, 2008 - 13:49 ET by dscottGetting answers from Wiki are we? You might as well believe Barney Frank then the very guy who claimed Bush was creating a false issue when he brought up the need of reform. The only institutions exempt from CRA rules were the S&Ls and Credit Unions surprise, surprise they aren't the ones in trouble. On the other hand Fannie, Freddie and the Banks were and they are the ones who failed. Subprimes were expressly created in response to the CRA, banks were REQUIRED BY LAW under the CRA to issue a certain percentage of mortgages to subprime borrowers, i.e. the poor. What made the situation even worse was the the deliberate misleading by Fannie and Freddie by the Dem crony Franklin Raines through cooking of the books. Where did the banks get the idea that Fannie and Freddie based mortgage securities had the full faith and credit of the US government? Go ask the lying Democrat cronies.
Go ahead and believe the lib Dem propaganda, pay no attention to Frank, Dodd, Obama and rest of the Dems walking in lock step AGAINST reforms, AGAINST CHANGE repeatedly, demanding the STATUS QUO. They even claimed Bush was raising a false issue every time reforms were brought up in 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2006. Obama was there for 2005 and 2006, he did what he was told to do as the order taking underling he is.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village.
Care to show your references?
October 15, 2008 - 14:30 ET by mvfreemanI realize that Wiki isnt a definitive authority but at least what I relayed has a ton of references.
"The only institutions exempt from CRA rules were the S&Ls and Credit Unions surprise, surprise they aren't the ones in trouble. On the other hand Fannie, Freddie and the Banks were and they are the ones who failed. Subprimes were expressly created in response to the CRA, banks were REQUIRED BY LAW under the CRA to issue a certain percentage of mortgages to subprime borrowers, i.e. the poor"
The CRA has been around long before the explosion in suprime loans.
"changes in the structure of the financial industry have resulted in many financial transactions that fell under the CRA umbrella in 1977 having become increasingly the province of nondepositories not subject to CRA, including companies owned by banks or bank holding companies. Holding companies' nonbank affiliates, for instance, can be included in the CRA assessment of the banking institution at the discretion of the bank but need not be. Most mortgages are now packaged by brokers, and nearly two in three mortgages are originated by nondepositories not covered by the CRA."
http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/Bernanke20070330a.htm
Here is another article:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/buggs/6052705.html
The truth is that most subprime loans were given by private lenders not subject to the CRA.
...when the Clinton
October 15, 2008 - 16:11 ET by dscott...when the Clinton administration ruled that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could satisfy their affordable housing obligations by purchasing subprime mortgages. This ultimately made it possible for Fannie and Freddie to add a trillion dollars in junk loans to their balance sheets. This led to their own collapse, and to the development of a market in these mortgages that is the source of the financial crisis we are wrestling with today.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/weired_nyt_editorial_ignores_i.html
Of course don't believe the AT, believe the NYT from 1999:
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. ...
...''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9c0de7db153ef933a0575ac0a96f958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village.
Ok
October 15, 2008 - 16:42 ET by mvfreemanExcept that I didnt argue that Fannie Mae wasn't into subprime loans. In fact I said: "they jumped on the bandwagon after they started losing market share.
Also the huge expansion of subprime loans happened between 2003 and 2005, which eclipsed the rise in the '90s.
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p14/mvfreeman/sumbprimemarketgraph.jpg
The point I was making was that private lenders such as Argent and Countrywide were giving away far more subprime loans than Fannie Mae. And that those entities were not doing it under pressure from CRA.
Fannie Mae did not agressively pursue subprime loans until 2006, when it wanted to increase it's market share.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081802111.html
"Internal documents show that even late in the housing bubble, Fannie Mae was drawn to risky loans by a variety of temptations, including the desire to increase its market share and fulfill government quotas for the support of low-income borrowers."
But as I said, by the time they did this the market explosion in subprime loans had already been in full swing with private lenders.
I'm afraid there was no
October 15, 2008 - 14:13 ET by mbuelYes there is. The Government. A majority of democrats.
BS. Bush has been trying to reign in ONE part of the Democrat created problem for the last eight years.
Bush was also trying to increase our energy supply for the last eight years which would've helped with that part of the economic equation that helped cause the collapse of the last year.
Lehman and other private banks were FORCED to make loans by ACORN (and other marxist groups) and the CRA, affirmative action loans. Fannie and Freddie were nearly completely at fault because the new marxist bank wasn't regulated and the democrats shut down ALL talks of regulating them.
This is the second key in the governmental pie. The reason that speculation of these securities continued so far out of control was two fold:
1) They were forced to make these HORRIBLE loan products available to unqualified buyers.
2) No bank wanted to hold onto them so they packaged them as securities with solid mortgages and sold them to Lehman bros. Groups like ACORN and La Raza did this regularly.
3) The Federal Reserve (a non-elected body) kept the market interest rates TOO LOW for TOO LONG. Just like in the twenties the government CAUSED the calamity, then the marxists came riding in and blamed the market!
Now you show your true communist blood komrade.
Then save money and buy a stake in them. Punish the democrats for their idiocy.
Interesting
October 15, 2008 - 15:06 ET by mvfreemanJust curious as to your take on this...
http://time-blog.com/curious_capitalist/2008/10/dan_gross_on_the_blame_fannie.html
Agree with you completely on #3 but private lenders such as Argent and Countrywide and Ameriquest weren't force to make their subprime loan products. They weren't regulated by CRA.
I'd find it hard
October 15, 2008 - 16:24 ET by mbuelI don't know... I think that all lending institutions were under pressure by groups like ACORN and La Raza if they weren't under direct pressure by the CRA changes in 1994. Those changes from what I understand not only affect "regulated banks" (which I believe Countrywide could easily fall under) but any "bank" that wanted to operate across state lines, or merger with other banks.
Groups like Countrywide popped up largely due to sub market interest rates.
Let's proposition that the fed didn't exist and the market set the rate. Under this more restrictive lending environment, Clinton still passes the more pressuring CRA that gives groups like ACORN more power to force bad loans. Would they have as much power with higher interest rates?
It's hard to say. I think with the increasing capital acquisition the market would've responded by raising interest rates. That would've slowed down the capital acquisition, and there would've been a smaller artificial government created bubble that popped.
Is there any clear proof that Countrywide was only affected by too low interest rates?
I.E., Do you know for certain that groups like Countrywide weren't influenced by the CRA directly, or indirectly through groups like ACORN?
check the links
October 15, 2008 - 17:02 ET by mvfreemanThis summary I posted earlier blames the whole fiacso on ridiculously low interest rates going back to around 2000.
http://theeprovocateur.blogspot.com/2008/09/updated-summary-of-real-estate-boom.html
Also, the link to the federal reserve I posted earlier says that they weren't under the regulations of CRA because they were nondepository lenders.
Argent and the like were targeting the middle class with their subprime loans. Not all subprime borrowers were poor. There is a huge segment of the middle class that has spotty credit. They make a decent amount of money but just weren't the best at paying their bills. The you have to factor in credit card debt too.
And yes I agree that these companies were able to initiate the boom because rates were so low.
mattm,
October 15, 2008 - 10:08 ET by R D HelmHere we have an obvious failure of government tampering in the
free-market and these jackasses portray it as a failure of capitalism.
Why is it I think this was no accident?
-Dave
>>> Dee saves Dave from approaching insanity! <<<
Because it was not an
October 15, 2008 - 13:48 ET by liberal_bug_zapperBecause it was not an accident. There are some very smart economists in the Democrat party who knew that interfering with how markets work, like demanding the market make loans that, if left alone, it would never make, would collapse the economy. The free market tried desparately to deal with the bad paper forced on it by the non-free market rules created by Democrats, and when it reached a tipping point... the whole house of cards came crashing down.
____________________________________________________
"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." ~ Ayn Rand
Is capitalism dead?
October 15, 2008 - 09:52 ET by CapitalismRulesIn a word, no. Mr. Myerson may feel as if he has won the day and in some respects he may have his moment to glory in the failures of certain capitalistic principles. But have you noticed that whenever a liberal system fails, the media's first instinct is to try to "fix" it, they ask the question, 'what do we have to do to make socialism work?" in this nation. True, it was government intervention that started this whole mess, but you rarely hear the MSMs asking, what do we as citizens, as Americans, as teachers and doctors and investers and entreprenuers need to do to make the capitalistic market work for us? They are quick to declare it dead when in reality it is they themselves that try to dig up the corpse of communism whenever they can.
Capitalism dead... Nope,
October 15, 2008 - 09:57 ET by Clear thinkerCapitalism dead...
Nope, not yet at least. I have a hot tip for everyone... invest in firearms! Do it now before the left tries to take them away.
Obama Already In Textbooks?
Making Fun of AGW http://giovanniworld.wordpress.com/
Obama is Everywhere
October 15, 2008 - 10:06 ET by CapitalismRulesOmnipresent Obama. He is in newspapers, magazines, text books, television, internet. Now I have no problem with that, but it is this God-like elevation and treatment that he gets at every turn that has me worried. Firearms? You can bet his first act as president will be to get them out of your hands.
I would call this more the
October 15, 2008 - 11:17 ET by dscottI would call this more the standard lib tactic of Projection. The real issue is the failure of liberal principles, the CRA and cronies brought down Fannie and Freddie just as they crippled the economy with their domestic drilling ban. This is like blaming a man in a wheelchair for not walking when someone else broke his legs and then proclaiming bipedal motion is a deadend form of movement.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, starving the poor one gallon of ethanol at a time. Fill your tank with E85 and cull a village.
Capitalism will never die
October 15, 2008 - 14:30 ET by szampThe libs may force us to go underground but capitalism is the natural order. It will happen one way or another. Probably through an informal economy.
What will happen for sure if Obama wins is that all those people who are supposed to support the rest of the country will move away and take their businesses and jobs with them, give up on their businesses or die. At the end there will be just a bunch of people sitting around waiting for someone else to do things for them. They may protest every now and them but they will always think that someone else will have to provide them something. That's what you see after you have socialism for a long time in one place.
Yes, as a conservative I am
October 15, 2008 - 10:02 ET by bpjamYes, as a conservative I am completely done with the type of unregulated 'capitalism' that was proposed, defended and still being covered up by the likes of Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson and Jamie Gorelick.
I am in favor of capitalism that is based upon rules, fairness, morality (as it was in its original description) and the notion of rewarding risk and allowing failure of risks which were too great.
I am in favor of capitalism which is not based in government spending or 'stimulus' payments akin to dropping money from a cargo plane flying over our largest cities. I am in favor of allowing maximum freedom for individuals to create new business opportunities and invent new services, products and instruments which provide interest, value and exchange for others.
But with Republicans in Congress who tried to keep their majority by outspending Democrats and Democrats who want to fix every citizens failure to achieve happiness with another stimulus payment or welfare program, I haven't seen all that much capitalism going on recently.
Well said
October 15, 2008 - 10:13 ET by CapitalismRulesCapitalism is a game or risks, rewards, successes and failures based on ground rules.....that's exactly right. It's like a football game, the problem is that the government is trying to be the head coach when they are the referees who need to enforce the rules, not make up new ones as the game goes and certainly not tell each team what to do and how to do it. The government should not encourage or discourage players, but allow equal opportunity to make a play, not make every play into an automatic do-over when it suits them.
Capitalism has rules.
October 15, 2008 - 11:38 ET by mattmCapitalism has rules. Socialism is Anarchy.
This was the theme of a recent local talk show (a host who sometimes subs for Rush).
His point was that Capitalism has rules built into it which regulate itself. Making it impossible for someone to rip you off (as long as the government does its only legitimate job of protecting freedom). The only way someone can get your property is by way of a voluntary exchange in which each party benefits.
Not so with socialism. In socialism, the mob (i.e. 50% + 1) can decide to forcibly take the property of anyone they choose and distribute it among those who will do their bidding. That's mob -rule, which is anarchy.
This is why the anti-capitalists always resort to force, violence, intimidation, and finally tyranny, then eventual societal collapse and barbarism.
»→ Donate $400 to ACORN
October 15, 2008 - 10:10 ET by Cool ArrowHas anybody heard the buzz about a $400 donation to ACORN built in to every new mortgage over $100,000?
It was brought up on FOX yesterday, but I forgot which show. There are several references to it in Google search, but I can't pin down the source.
Any help here?
Underdog & Pitbull 08
$400 ACORN correction
October 15, 2008 - 10:23 ET by Cool ArrowCorrection:
I remember now. It was Tx. Rep John Culberson (R) on Glen Beck last night who brought up the $400 donation to ACORN on every new $100,000 mortgage.
Underdog & Pitbull 08
Causes
October 15, 2008 - 10:13 ET by Mulligan22So what about Lehman and AIG? Well if Fan and Fred hadn't packaged worthless MBS's that these institutions were selling to places like Lehman and MS then we wouldn't be in this problem would we? MS and Lehman believed these were good because of the statements Fan and Fred were publishing, which were bogus. It was an Enron like mess. All in the name of getting low income and minorities into houses. AIG fell because they were an insurer of mortgages (pmi) and couldn't pay when large numbers defaulted. Again it all goes back to Fan and Fred and pushing banks and mortgage companies to lend to people who weren't going to pay. Which came directly from the Clinton folks. The Fan and Fred failures are bigger than Enron, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom and Adelphia combined. Yet we see no hearings at all on Capital Hill into this matter. They have time to have hearings for ball players who stick needles full of steriods in their backsides but no time for this. The Dems control this process and thats why we get no hearing, their hands are all over this.
For those who think this was deregulation I have two questions. What specifically did GWB deregulate that caused this? Why are European banks failing as well? They are much more regulated than US banks.
Great concept: A 'control' bank
October 15, 2008 - 10:40 ET by SickofLibs"The government should control one major bank to use as a yardstick..."
Oh yeah, that would be a bank I'd really like to do business with. Just imagine the fabulous customer service.
Why not a major oil company, too? Maxine 'Shallow' Waters has already proposed that.
Come February, we'll all be receiving notices to report for our new government-issued tunics, apartment and job reassignments.
And so we have another
October 15, 2008 - 11:37 ET by ConservativeRexAnd so we have another lemming to tell us that capitalism just may be dead at this point. Right. In fact, the dead ones should be flosting up to the surface shortly. Dead, like Russia and Hugo Chavez with all their petro-dollars, that have sunk with oil below $80 a barrel.
There is an excellent article in yesterday's WSJ sub-titled "when the tide laps at Gulliver's waistline, it usually means the Lilliputains are under ten feet of water".
Capitalism is alive and well. Our stock market dropped 25% in three months. This just means that we have outperformed nearly every other market in the world. Germany's XETRADAX (down 28%), China's Shanghai exchange (down 30%), Japan's NIKK225 (down 37%), Brazil's BOVESPA (down 41%), and Russia's RTSI (down 61%).
In otherwords, don't panic. There are some great buys out there now, just look at Ford Motor Co. for one.
Interesting survey from 2000 about CRA loans
October 15, 2008 - 13:52 ET by mvfreemanFrom Fed:
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2000/1100.htm
At the time CRA loans accounted for approx. 10% of housing loans.
"At the time CRA loans
October 15, 2008 - 16:27 ET by ckc1227"At the time CRA loans accounted for approx. 10% of housing loans."
And that doesn't take into account CRA-type loans that were made by banks who weren't forced to in order to avoid being forced to make them and worse by the feds. Just a guess, but I bet that's probably another 10% at least.
Obama's Economic plan: more taxes, more spending, more regulation. Prosperity here we come.
Where the hell is all
October 15, 2008 - 16:23 ET by ckc1227Where the hell is all this unregulated capitalism happening? These companies can't even install a new bathroom or a new door without having to comply with a few thousnad pages of regulations.
Obama's Economic plan: more taxes, more spending, more regulation. Prosperity here we come.