January 3rd, 2007

[dbair1967]

(Note, I have not fact checked this, it was emailed to me)


Do You Remember January 3, 2007( 5 years ago )?



Excellent history lesson on the economy for all to understand...will be hard for some to swallow, but then the truth sometimes hurts! We still have a chance to fix it, but if we blow this upcoming opportunity, I'm afraid it will be too late!



This is just a History lesson. I am sending it to all regardless of party. It is history and nothing can change it. All Americans should pass this on to everyone in their database. Both parties need to cut expenses, both parties have some blame, but this is truly what happened and Americans need to wake up and take our country back in 2012!!



The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007�the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress.


The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.

For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is "Bush's Fault", think about this:


January 3rd, 2007, the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress:
The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77
The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%
The Unemployment rate was 4.6%
George Bush's Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION!



Remember that day...
January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.
The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy?


BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!
THANK YOU DEMOCRATS (especially Barney) for taking us from 13,000 DOW, 3.5 GDP and 4.6% Unemployment...to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!
(BTW: Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie -starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy). Barney blocked it and called it a "Chicken Little Philosophy" (and the sky did fall!)
And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA!
And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie?
OBAMA and the Democrat Congress, especially BARNEY!!!!



So when someone tries to blame Bush...
REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007.... THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!"
Bush may have been in the car but the Democrats were in charge of the gas pedal and steering wheel they were driving the economy into the ditch.
Budgets do not come from the White House.. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.
Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 & 2011.


In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. Bush should have vetoed every bill that came in front of his desk!!


For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budget.


And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.


If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is "I inherited a deficit that I voted for, and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th."

 

[Sheik]

I'm going to read this when I have time.

Thanks for posting it.

 

[dbair1967]

I'm going to read this when I have time.

Thanks for posting it.

Yes you do that. We are all awaiting your analysis on it.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

The point of the majority was a filibuster proof majority.

Further Lieberman was not a Democrat. He left the party and his voting record showed as to why. Do you get all of your political takes from email?

If you want to blame anyone for the meltdown in the financial sector look to 1996 and Clinton and Gramm.

And lol at blaming Frank and Dodd. It's not as if there attempts at re-regulation have not been emasculated. It's shit like this that is the problem. They name politicians and then lay blame but at no point is policy every brought up. I mean for fucks sake there hasn't even been an approved budget in 4 years but they are trying to blame the president for that?

gmfb and stop being spoonfed your politics of spin and names and instead try to look at policy.

 

[dbair1967]

Further Lieberman was not a Democrat. He left the party and his voting record showed as to why. Do you get all of your political takes from email?

He's more of a democrat than he is anything else. Just because he isnt as liberal as a turd like Reid or Obama, doesnt mean he wasnt a democrat.

If you want to blame anyone for the meltdown in the financial sector look to 1996 and Clinton and Gramm.

They desere some blame, but there's no question Frank and Dodd had a huge hand in this mortgage industry disaster.

I mean for fucks sake there hasn't even been an approved budget in 4 years but they are trying to blame the president for that?

He had control of the house and senate for his first two years. Its a disgrace there's been no budget approved, and yeah, your hero deserves some shit for that. Its further proof that he cant lead.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

He's more of a democrat than he is anything else. Just because he isnt as liberal as a turd like Reid or Obama, doesnt mean he wasnt a democrat.



They desere some blame, but there's no question Frank and Dodd had a huge hand in this mortgage industry disaster.



He had control of the house and senate for his first two years. Its a disgrace there's been no budget approved, and yeah, your hero deserves some shit for that. Its further proof that he cant lead.

I don't like Obama. You are going to have to try harder than that.

I can point to specifically to the Gramm Leach Biley Act. What policy specifics of Dodd and Frank can you point to? I mean specifics too.

 

[dbair1967]

Architect of the Housing Bubble, Barney Frank, Bows Out
Posted about 220 days ago | 0 comment
Whenever members of Congress retire, there tends to be an atmosphere of goodwill towards them as if the damage they’ve done to the economy and the country has come to an end. That may actually be the case when it comes to the vast majority of the politicians who leave office, but the actions of some politicians will have a lasting effect on the nation. Now that Barney Frank, a 16 term Congressman from Massachusetts, has announced his retirement, news outlets are quickly forgetting the damage the man did to the US economy in the past decade.

What Barney Frank should be remembered for is not the easy to digest, gossip-like trash the media will feed you; it’s the fact that he was the chief architect of the subprime mortgage crisis / the housing bubble that left hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless and millions more in destitution. The repercussions of Frank’s actions, chiefly pushing the Community Reinvestment Act, and his strong-arming of Fannie Mae to lend to people who obviously couldn’t repay large loans, will outlast his his terms in office.

During his early to mid 2000s push of the idea that everyone should own a home including his less fortunate constituents, who couldn’t obtain loans based on their semblant inability to repay them, Frank convinced then Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, to artificially lower interest rates. This would in turn encourage banks to make more loans, which it ofcourse did. That wasn’t enough, however, so Barney Frank coerced Fannie Mae into making risky subprime loans (loans to borrowers with poor credit or borrowers who will likely default).

Frank’s actions pumped the housing bubble and inflated the prices of homes far beyond market value. The number of home owners, especially in poorer congressional districts, grew and voters repaid Democrats for helping them secure loans by reelecting them.

As expected, subprime borrowers defaulted starting in 2007. Then came the market crash and again came Barney Frank and his ragtag crew of central economic planners to the rescue. This time they blamed Wall Street for gambling with subprime mortgages, which is true, but were it not for Congress those unstable mortgages would not have existed in the first place. Senator Chris Dodd, another bad actor in the collapse of the housing bubble, allied once more with Barney Frank and together they passed the Dodd-Frank Reform bill in 2010 in order to further regulate the “free market” which they charged for causing the crisis.

Barney Frank’s lack of understanding of basic economics was questioned by many throughout the decade and was becoming more and more pronounced the more he spoke. During a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee on September 10th, 2003, Frank dismissed the idea of a housing bubble,

I worry, frankly, that there’s 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 disaster scenarios. . . .
In 2005, on the House floor, Barney Frank essentially asked, “What housing bubble?” after free market economists had warned Congress countless times about a looming housing crisis. Whether Barney Frank willfully misguided Americans or whether he is as incompetent as he appears at face value remains to be known, but what is painfully apparent and what should never be forgotten is the devastation this man caused to the US economy.

 

[superpunk]

lol

 

[Cythim]

This is dumb. The housing bubble issue was a conspiracy by most everyone in D.C. to cover up the huge mistakes they made in signing off on Free Trade Agreements.

The United States has 12 FTAs in force with 18 countries. In addition, the United States has negotiated an FTA withPanama, but this agreement has not yet entered into force. The United States is also in the process of negotiating a regional FTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.U.S. FTA Partner Countries

• 
  [*=left]Australia
  [*=left]Bahrain
  [*=left]Chile
  [*=left]Colombia
  [*=left]DR-CAFTA: Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, & Nicaragua
  [*=left]Israel
  [*=left]Jordan
  [*=left]Korea
  [*=left]Morocco
  [*=left]NAFTA: Canada & Mexico
  [*=left]Oman
  [*=left]Peru
  [*=left]Singapore
  [*=left]Panama - Pending

​

These FTAs murdered America's manufacturing capability. Since WW2 through the '90s manufacturing employment held steady at around 17 million jobs. In the early 2000s these FTAs started going into effect and manufacturing took huge hits, and now sits at about 11 million jobs. The gov't tried to push construction, specifically new home construction, to offset the job losses and pushed banks to create buyers for these homes. Now we are fucked. Manufacturing is not going to increase and construction is nearly dead.

So why did we do these FTAs? So companies like Apple, GM, Ford, GE, Levi etc. could make more money and pay bigger dividends through the stock market.

We are fucked. Get used to it.

 

[dbair1967]

lol

ok Cy

 

[Cythim]

lol

ok Cy

Yeah, losing 6 million manufacturing jobs is hilarious.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Architect of the Housing Bubble, Barney Frank, Bows Out
Posted about 220 days ago | 0 comment
Whenever members of Congress retire, there tends to be an atmosphere of goodwill towards them as if the damage they’ve done to the economy and the country has come to an end. That may actually be the case when it comes to the vast majority of the politicians who leave office, but the actions of some politicians will have a lasting effect on the nation. Now that Barney Frank, a 16 term Congressman from Massachusetts, has announced his retirement, news outlets are quickly forgetting the damage the man did to the US economy in the past decade.

What Barney Frank should be remembered for is not the easy to digest, gossip-like trash the media will feed you; it’s the fact that he was the chief architect of the subprime mortgage crisis / the housing bubble that left hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless and millions more in destitution. The repercussions of Frank’s actions, chiefly pushing the Community Reinvestment Act, and his strong-arming of Fannie Mae to lend to people who obviously couldn’t repay large loans, will outlast his his terms in office.

During his early to mid 2000s push of the idea that everyone should own a home including his less fortunate constituents, who couldn’t obtain loans based on their semblant inability to repay them, Frank convinced then Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, to artificially lower interest rates. This would in turn encourage banks to make more loans, which it ofcourse did. That wasn’t enough, however, so Barney Frank coerced Fannie Mae into making risky subprime loans (loans to borrowers with poor credit or borrowers who will likely default).

Frank’s actions pumped the housing bubble and inflated the prices of homes far beyond market value. The number of home owners, especially in poorer congressional districts, grew and voters repaid Democrats for helping them secure loans by reelecting them.

As expected, subprime borrowers defaulted starting in 2007. Then came the market crash and again came Barney Frank and his ragtag crew of central economic planners to the rescue. This time they blamed Wall Street for gambling with subprime mortgages, which is true, but were it not for Congress those unstable mortgages would not have existed in the first place. Senator Chris Dodd, another bad actor in the collapse of the housing bubble, allied once more with Barney Frank and together they passed the Dodd-Frank Reform bill in 2010 in order to further regulate the “free market” which they charged for causing the crisis.

Barney Frank’s lack of understanding of basic economics was questioned by many throughout the decade and was becoming more and more pronounced the more he spoke. During a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee on September 10th, 2003, Frank dismissed the idea of a housing bubble,

I worry, frankly, that there’s 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 disaster scenarios. . . .
In 2005, on the House floor, Barney Frank essentially asked, “What housing bubble?” after free market economists had warned Congress countless times about a looming housing crisis. Whether Barney Frank willfully misguided Americans or whether he is as incompetent as he appears at face value remains to be known, but what is painfully apparent and what should never be forgotten is the devastation this man caused to the US economy.

Kk lets do some critical thinking here.

There are two total policies mentioned in this article.

1) Greenspan and the fed setting of interest rates
2) the Dodd Frank Act

Now as for the first I do not buy that bullshit for a minute. Greenspan did not have to listen to anyone and he made a point for decades pointing to the fact that the fed was independent. Dodd may or may not have encouraged the fed to do something but the fed was set up independently. The above is like saying that Boehner encouraged the Supreme Court to reject the ACA: it's besides the point.

As for the Frank-Dodd Act causing the crash or in any way being related other than to eliminate or try to eliminate some of the institutions that caused the problems, well thats bullshit.

Here is how I see how it went down. Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac championed the cause. It's not congress that controls them but instead at that time it was an entity called the Federeal Housing Finance Board. They were the ones that 'allowed' those two GSE's to give out half a trillion dollars of subprime mortgages.

So you have that board which is 5 members. 1 is the head of HUD, appointed by the president and approved by congress, and the other 4 are just straight up appointed by the president. That was the regulatory agency and they came from Bush, Jr. for the most part. Then you have the two chairman's of the GSE's: two men named Stephen Ashley and Richard Syron. TBH, I am not sure where they came from and it's very difficult to figure out. They both came in during the mid to late 1990s which was the Clinton-Gramm years.

Whats important about those two though is that they are/were entrenched big banking Wall St. types. That is not just a spin job either. Syron was the chairman of the NYSE before he got his post at Freddie Mac. Ashley's resume is just a list of large investment banking consortiums. So anyway the Bush appointed board allowed those two to give out ~$500b in loans to people that had no idea what they were and had no business getting them in the first place. The two GSE's dominated the housing market so when they started giving those shit loans everyone else jumped into the stupidity. That was bad enough and would have destroyed countless people with marginal incomes lives and glutted the market with foreclosures etc but it would not have threatened the entire financing industry as well.

That takes us back to Clinton-Gramm and 1996 where they repealed Glass-Steagall. FDR's act forced banks to either be an investment bank or a lending bank or an insurance bank. Now that it was gone they didn't have to do that anymore and we got all kinds of 'innovations.' You have heard of them: credit default swaps, mortgage backed securities, and the like. Well they went hogwild and took that bad debt and sold it to investment banks who sold it to other banks and back and forth until they were all leveraged with most of their assets --which was another regulation that was repealed from Glass Steagall-- but it made it appear as if their holding were greater. They had all of these wonderful innovative assets to borrow against and they did which just compunded the problem even more. Well what happened?

Those variable interest rate loans went up and those people that had already committed too much of their income couldn't pay anymore so they started defaulting by the thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. The underpinning of all those innovations and loans went *poof*. The NYSE is dominated by those investment banks and their contribution to the demand went away so the market took a steaming dump. The lenders had no capital which meant that there was no credit to be had and the entire economy ground to a halt and started to dive. You lived it you know what happened.

Now to be fair while the FHFB was appointed by Bush the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs which Dodd chaired at the time pressured the FHFB to relax lending requirements. In the 1990s when Clinton and Gramm were so obviously beholden to banking interests a GOP effort led by John McCain, who himself got burned by this same type shit with the S&L collapse of the 1980s, tried to change the regulatory structure of the GSE's even if it failed.

FWIW, I like McCain. I think despite all of his mistakes and asinine campaign gimmicks that he is the closest thing to a good man as you will find in Washington.

Trying to point to an individual or a couple of individuals to try and scapegoat is itself asinine. It's a systemic failure in how we are represented as a people and how those that have access to our representatives are chosen. While Syron has moved onto greener pastures Stephen Ashley still has his job. Dodd-Frank was delayed and a board was set up to finish it. That board was filled with banking industry types and Cato Institute types and has been emasculated. Glass Steagall has not been reinstated other than partially restoring reserve requirements and we saw another round of banks go under because of Credit Default Swaps within the last 6 months.

And all the while we have people such as yourself doing the DERP OBAMA SUCKS DERP DERP routine as if its even remotely that simple. Is he part of the problem as he tries to get campaign funding from these very banking interests? You bet he is. He only gives it lip service for that reason. At the same time he is not the one that appoints the reregulation board. That would be congress and they have stood by and done nothing but deregulate for 20 years. The Bush Administrations did it, the Clinton Administration did it and for all of the deification of Saint Reagan he was the one that really started the deregulation trend. LBJ, Nixon or Carter sure as hell didn't.

I do not like the Democratic Party. I do not like the GOP. I think the political system that gives those two a bilateral hegemony over us is despotism. We do not have a choice instead we have an illusion of choice and my hope is that as the baby boomers die off and the new generations that do not share the party ties as their forebearers do step to the fore that things may finally change. The outgoing generation just seems to vote for anything that keeps their health care and their IRAs and everything else be damned so we get to be beholden to that 1/4 of the voting block.

Lucky us.

 

[Bob Sacamano]

So who is dumber?

dbair?
fuzzydumpface?
or me for having to read their dumbness?

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

So who is dumber?

dbair?
fuzzydumpface?
or me for having to read their dumbness?

Summer you have yet to bring anything substantive to any of these discussions. All I hear from you is a keening whine. If you are going to call me dumb then give examples otherwise you just sound petulant.

 

[Bob Sacamano]

Summer you have yet to bring anything substantive to any of these discussions. All I hear from you is a keening whine. If you are going to call me dumb then give examples otherwise you just sound petulant.

You're a homer.
You stick up for Hostile.
You keep calling me summer. What does that even mean?

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You're a homer.
You stick up for Hostile.
You keep calling me summer. What does that even mean?

Hostile is my friend. Sorry that I do not share your butthurtness about him. I certainly can understand how he could rub such as yourself and many others the wrong way and I think its a little funny the emotional angst he causes but that's about it. I certainly did not stick up for him last offseason about the labor dispute but on many things I do agree with him. That's just life.

As for being a homer when in doubt I am going to be optimistic. If you want to glorify cynicism then you go right ahead. I will continue to be militantly optimistic. That's just how I roll.

I do find it important to not stick my head in the sand though. I have hopes for Carter and Conner but neither has really played in Ryan's 3-4. I, after watching him, do not feel that Costa is physically capable of playing the position. Livings was inconsistent and Bernadeau cannot seem to stay of the field here or in Carolina. I wasn't blind early last year when Romo reverted to 2007 Buffalo and despite pff gushing I watched Coleman Spears and Hatcher get blown off the ball on counters and traps all year long. Newman and James were a disgrace as they both ducked Jacobs over the past 5 years. I even worry that Jerry Jones is going to go PT Barnum and create a counterproductive spectacle or go Madden and try to make the big splash for the sake of the big splash.

At that same time, i watched Romo pull his head out of his ass, Smith and Murray develop, Witten and Ware play like HoFers. I think that Spencer gets a grossly unfair rap, and i think that with Carr, Claiborne, Carter, Conner, Livings, Bernadeau, Wilber, and Crawford they have at least tried to put significant assets to try and address positions of concern. I am very impressed with Jerome Henderson and I like how Garrett swallowed his pride to an extent bringing in a guy like Callahan that he can lean on. I like the determination and passion that the team has shown since they came in after the lockout under Garrett. And I like the way that Stephen Jones and Garrett approach things a hell of a lot better than Jerry Jones.

I try to take the good with the bad. if you want to just eat shit sandwiches all day and call yourself a realist then go right ahead.

And i call you summer because thats your name. Its funner right?

 

[dbair1967]

So who is dumber?

dbair?
fuzzydumpface?
or me for having to read their dumbness?

you are by far the dumbest poster in the forum...props

 

[Bob Sacamano]

you are by far the dumbest poster in the forum...props

Right, says the man who posts his political views with the help of a Fox News teleprompter.

 

[Bob Sacamano]

Hostile is my friend. Sorry that I do not share your butthurtness about him. I certainly can understand how he could rub such as yourself and many others the wrong way and I think its a little funny the emotional angst he causes but that's about it. I certainly did not stick up for him last offseason about the labor dispute but on many things I do agree with him. That's just life.

As for being a homer when in doubt I am going to be optimistic. If you want to glorify cynicism then you go right ahead. I will continue to be militantly optimistic. That's just how I roll.

I do find it important to not stick my head in the sand though. I have hopes for Carter and Conner but neither has really played in Ryan's 3-4. I, after watching him, do not feel that Costa is physically capable of playing the position. Livings was inconsistent and Bernadeau cannot seem to stay of the field here or in Carolina. I wasn't blind early last year when Romo reverted to 2007 Buffalo and despite pff gushing I watched Coleman Spears and Hatcher get blown off the ball on counters and traps all year long. Newman and James were a disgrace as they both ducked Jacobs over the past 5 years. I even worry that Jerry Jones is going to go PT Barnum and create a counterproductive spectacle or go Madden and try to make the big splash for the sake of the big splash.

At that same time, i watched Romo pull his head out of his ass, Smith and Murray develop, Witten and Ware play like HoFers. I think that Spencer gets a grossly unfair rap, and i think that with Carr, Claiborne, Carter, Conner, Livings, Bernadeau, Wilber, and Crawford they have at least tried to put significant assets to try and address positions of concern. I am very impressed with Jerome Henderson and I like how Garrett swallowed his pride to an extent bringing in a guy like Callahan that he can lean on. I like the determination and passion that the team has shown since they came in after the lockout under Garrett. And I like the way that Stephen Jones and Garrett approach things a hell of a lot better than Jerry Jones.

I try to take the good with the bad. if you want to just eat shit sandwiches all day and call yourself a realist then go right ahead.

And i call you summer because thats your name. Its funner right?

That is quite possibly, the gayest thing I ever read.

 

[dbair1967]

Right, says the man who posts his political views with the help of a Fox News teleprompter.

At least I do see the news.