Democrats are just as bad as Republicans

[werepossum]

Another point, a lot of what you described the private sector doing was and is black letter law fraud. You start throwing rich assholes in jail for doing shit like this and you will see other rich assholes be much more hesitant to do it. If instead you not only don't throw them in jail but you allow them to keep their ill-gotten gains, you are giving them incentive to do it again.

Maybe, but problem is the regulators didn't think so at the time. Nor did the Democrats; even when Bush finally caught on and tried to change things, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd kept things shut down. It's also hard to indict someone for fraud when the GSAs are doing the same thing. I do however think the least we could have done was to let the investment houses go into bankruptcy; a structured bankruptcy could have avoided them taking taxpayer money and also paying huge bonuses. But I can accept that Obama had his reasons, and since the Pubbies weren't raking him over the coals, I assume they agreed the reasons were valid.

Unfair advantage lies in the fact that they can play House money against the rubes' money, aka "clients". They can sell bunk investments based on shady loans out the front door while betting against the whole class of such investments out the back door. It maximizes asymmetrical information. You seem to think that the guys in the back don't know what the guys in the front are selling.

The GSE's became "clients", buying paper from the banks, not just individual mortgages to bundle into securities. See above.

Proprietary trading is one of the aspects of it all that prompted them to create greater risk- for the rubes.

There are a LOT of things which went on and probably still go on in investment banking which in most businesses would be outright fraud. It's difficult to see how it continues to operate like that except that they generate enough wealth to keep buying enough in both parties to ensure their practices never really go under the microscope.

I did, I just wasn't going to indulge your supposition. You submit Gore sent in the crack troops to every county and was responsible of voter suppression, making specific mention of the postmark issue but not making any mention about the 5 counties it involved.
Election workers were getting grief from both sides, and it was US District Judge Lacey Collier who wanted a state wide recount of military absentee ballots to vet them for required dates and signatures. Gore did not sue over the military absentee ballots. One more time: Gore did not sue over the military absentee ballots.

You're incensed about the legality of the non-postmarked ballots being tossed, I get it, are you also irked by illegal ballots being accepted for Bush days prior? I was going to ask you if you thought it was odd that the repubs never really contested the Dems on the legality of previously accepted ballots in their favor, but then I remembered your

"not least because he had no legal grounds to prevail."

Clearly you have your own idea of what's legal, dozens of Floridian lawyers say you're wrong, and were trying to get Gore to seize on it. They wanted nothing more than the GOP to have to explain their illegal ballots being accepted. But given how loose I've already seen you play with details, arguing the merits of multiple lawsuits sounds like another great waste of time.

Regardless, 'a hell of a lot of voter suppression' not found.

Please don't make me laugh, this beverage is hot! Given all the vitriol and made up shit I've heard you Bush fans say about that other vet gone political, John Kerry, that is fucking gold. The false equivalency with your hero Cheney is duly noted, but really I don't blame a conscientious objector for getting a deferment. I can and do hold anyone who advocates elective war accountable when they exhaust their allowable student deferments, then frantically knock up the wife in time so they can claim an expectant father deferment. That kind of person isn't fit to dust off a grunts boots, let alone send him off to combat. Ditto for assholes who just disappear from the job for 2 years! I don't respect nepotism, sorry. You can carry all the water you want for the chicken hawks and the privileged, I'll save my admiration for enlisted who have generals, admirals, senior politicians, etc for dads but somehow carry on without preferential treatment.

Whatever. I'll take the long winded and needlessly elaborate opinion on Gore's military career to mean you realize I'm not a card carrying member of his fan club. I would have preferred reading about something more applicable, more analogous to the real actions taken by the GOP that prevent people from voting or remove election integrity safeguards, but oh well.

Dude, learn to read AND comprehend. The RECOUNT was in five counties; the effort to disqualify absentee ballots was in EVERY Florida county. Yes, some were legitimate. The military ballots were NOT legitimate; there was pre-existing law addressing that very thing. And Gore most certainly did challenge them; the article specifically mentions Lieberman asking for reconsideration, and the counties were throwing out military ballots ONLY because Gore's team of lawyers were challenging them.

While I dislike Gore a LOT more than I dislike Kerry, Kerry spent years attacking his brothers in arms. Remember "all American soldiers are rapists"? Remember "I threw my medals over the fence"? I sure as hell do. Kerry served and then attacked everyone else who served; he deserves zero credit. Gore served quietly and honored those who also served. Whatever else one thinks of him, that is worth honoring. Much as I can honor Rangel, an authentic American war hero, without ignoring the many bad things he has done.

 

[Jhhnn]

Maybe, but problem is the regulators didn't think so at the time. Nor did the Democrats; even when Bush finally caught on and tried to change things, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd kept things shut down.

Nice spin, but it's Pure fantasy.

Link that up with a pertinent timeline, OK?

Take into account the fact that the pooch was already screwed at the time of the 2006 election. Both Dodd & Frank were members of the minority party until 2007.

 

[1prophet]

"Democrats are just as bad as Republicans"

The only people that I have ever known to make such a statement have always turned out to be Republicans or conservative "Independents".

Not republican or conservative "Independents"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q

stop drinking the corporate Koolaid, the Democrats today are not the Democrats of 30-40 years ago that gave it damn about the middle class, unions, the very foundation of this country,

most of them are nothing but corporate-light republicans in democrat robes.

 

[werepossum]

Nice spin, but it's Pure fantasy.

Link that up with a pertinent timeline, OK?

Take into account the fact that the pooch was already screwed at the time of the 2006 election. Both Dodd & Frank were members of the minority party until 2007.

This was 2004. Dodd & Frank were members of the minority party, but they led the charge against fixing the problem and were certainly the faces of the movement insisting there was no problem.

 

[Jhhnn]

This was 2004. Dodd & Frank were members of the minority party, but they led the charge against fixing the problem and were certainly the faces of the movement insisting there was no problem.

In other words, they were powerless to affect the will of the Repub majority.

You're also talking about hearings where the issue was GSE accounting practices rather than banking practices at all. None of the actors questioned the integrity of the bankers or the loans they sold to the GSE's in the slightest.

Bush didn't figure out anything until his Treasury Secretary explained it to him in late 2008, explained that the whole house of deregulated free market finance cards was collapsing around them. Prior to that, the Bush Admin enabled Wall St entirely, catering to their every whim.

Imagine where we might be had they not executed a complete 180 to bail out Wall St. Feeble as it is, Dodd-Frank attempts to address the causes of the meltdown, prevent recurrence. Repubs have locked stepped w/ Wall St in opposition every inch of the way. At no point have Repub leaders made any effort to do anything other than re-establish disastrous Bush era policy.

 

[werepossum]

In other words, they were powerless to affect the will of the Repub majority.

You're also talking about hearings where the issue was GSE accounting practices rather than banking practices at all. None of the actors questioned the integrity of the bankers or the loans they sold to the GSE's in the slightest.

Bush didn't figure out anything until his Treasury Secretary explained it to him in late 2008, explained that the whole house of deregulated free market finance cards was collapsing around them. Prior to that, the Bush Admin enabled Wall St entirely, catering to their every whim.

Imagine where we might be had they not executed a complete 180 to bail out Wall St. Feeble as it is, Dodd-Frank attempts to address the causes of the meltdown, prevent recurrence. Repubs have locked stepped w/ Wall St in opposition every inch of the way. At no point have Repub leaders made any effort to do anything other than re-establish disastrous Bush era policy.

That simply isn't true. Bus was trying to take action on the GSEs as early as 2001, but very strongly starting in 2004. This culminated in the 2004 GAO report recommending a new regulatory entity establishing stronger capitalization for the GSEs and Chuck Hagel's S. 190 (109th) Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005. Democrats uniformly opposed it, and it drew only three Republicans cosponsors (Dole and Sununu first, then later McCain in 2006 when it was blatantly obvious to everyone that housing prices were headed for a crash) so it went nowhere, but it was exactly what was needed. And it's worth pointing out (and is noted in the Youtube video) that every Republican voted it out of committee and every Democrat voted against it's leaving committee. With zero Democrat support and lukewarm Republican support, the bill never got brought up for debate, dying with nothing more than head counts. This was 2005, when prompt and effective action might still have avoided the crash and recession. (Though not without a lot of the pain and expense.)
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081009-10.html
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s190#
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM
It's worth pointing out that Franks especially led the fight to keep the GSEs unregulated all the way back into the Clinton administration, and Dodd guaranteed a filibuster in the Senate. (Being in the minority, Harry Reid had not yet discovered the impropriety of the filibuster.) It's also worth pointing out that McCain's "leading the fight" clip is from May 2006; he discovered the problem only two months before housing prices began to plummet. Aggressive action in 2005 might have stopped the recession and banking crisis; aggressive action in 2006 probably could only have lessened it. Of course, we did neither.

I don't exclusively blame the Democrats; the Republicans were almost as willfully blind, and had the Dems supported S.190 to the same extent as did the Pubbies it still might have failed. I don't excuse Bush; he pushed unsuccessfully for what was needed, but neglected what he could have done unilaterally which is put every single bank and GSE transaction under a microscope. This was all of us, left to right, low to high.

The Economist said it best: There's enough blame to go around. We're all responsible, homeowners up to billionaires. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2008/09/the_bailout_and_the_elite

Factcheck.org did a good job acknowledging this as well: Here’s a partial list of those alleged to be at fault, with my comments in bold:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap. Not an unreasonable in and of itself.
Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.Again, hardly an unreasonable action, even though the result helped create the problem.
Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.I don't even agree with this one.
Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.Again, not unreasonable if self-serving, and it's ultimately the buyer's and creditor's responsibility.
The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.A worthy goal in existence since at least the Carter Presidency.
Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.Dispicable - but totally following the GSEs' lead.
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.Insane by 2004.
Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.The fault of the firms AND their regulators.
The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.He tried to get the big fix, but neglected what he could do unilaterally.
An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.A well-intentioned rule that solved one problem but created another.
Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.Mass delusion considering previous corrections.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.
–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson