US Politics Mega-thread - Page 183

On April 04 2013 06:58 aksfjh wrote:

Again.

What happened between 2007 and 2009? Collapse of the economy like we haven't seen in 80 years. Up until 2010, we had much higher hopes for the economic recovery, including incomes and job prospects for those taking out riskier loans.

The large chunk of the loans that weren't rated or weren't rated properly broke the game we had been playing. It inflates the effect, making loans that were rated properly suddenly worse. It's not a red herring, it's a large part of the entire problem that faces the WORLD economy, which I know you've been keeping up with. I doubt you'd blame the FHA for the real estate bubble in the Netherlands, Spain, Cyprus, France, etc.

On April 04 2013 08:43 aksfjh wrote:
There was a major fraud aspect of it. Lenders weren't asking for any real credentials for loans, and would give out loans with no down payment or any sort of guarantee whatsoever. They could do this because they could package them with AAA loans on the top of the pile, and the buyers/investors in the packaged mortgages trusted the lenders when they told them, "Yea, these are good loans!" Obviously, there were people handling each of these mortgage requests individually, and they were allowed to turn in and approve requests without any kind of real oversight, which ended up as fraud. This was what started the whole damn thing, the spark that ignited the fire if you will.

The inaccuracy comes in when too many of these bogus mortgages crash and burn and take other things out with them, like property value and jobs. Many of these people that rightfully had A, B, and C ratings suddenly found themselves either grossly underwater on their homes or unemployed, which makes them less likely to pay their mortgages at expected rates. However, it's not like everybody dropped 1-3 ratings over night, and sub-prime was obviously at greater risk. It was a time of uncertainty until recently, which is why a lot of credit has been frozen for small businesses and new home buyers. You couldn't guarantee, as a bank, what to rate somebody when there's so much job and property volatility.

On April 04 2013 09:10 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

You'd need to convince me that the fraud aspect was so big as to ignite the housing bubble and subsequent collapse. I would think that the rise of sub-prime and alt-a (among other things) would have had a bigger impact.

The central Arkansas spill caused by Exxon’s aging Pegasus pipeline has reportedly unleashed 10,000 barrels of Canadian heavy crude - but a technicality says it's not oil, letting the energy giant off the hook from paying into a national cleanup fund.

Legally speaking, diluted bitumen like the heavy crude that's overrun Mayflower, Arkansas, is not classified as 'oil'. And it's that very distinction that exempts Exxon from contributing to the government's oil spillage cleanup fund.

ExxonMobil has already confirmed that the compromised pipeline was transporting “low-quality Wabasca Heavy crude” from Canada’s Alberta region. That particular form of crude contains large quantities of bitumen - a "thick, sticky, black semi-solid form of petroleum which is transported in a diluted form (dilbit) as it makes its way from Canada to US refineries," explains Oil Change International, which has brought attention on the strange legal exemption.

Companies that transport oil are required to pay $.08 per barrel into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF). The cash is used by the US government to respond to oil spills. But there's a catch - Exxon is exempt from paying into the fund for its Pegasus pipeline, because it carries tar sands oil, not "conventional oil."

"The IRS has classified tar sands as different from conventional oil, and thus the tax levied to fill the liability trust fund is not levied on tar sands crude. It's a loophole that should be closed, as it doesn't line up with the actual intent of the tax or the fund," campaigns director for Oil Change International, David Turnbull, told RT.

The office of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said Wednesday that their petition asking for review of a case throwing out the state's sodomy statute is "not about sexual orientation." Cuccinelli, who is the Republican nominee for governor, asked the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to review a decision declaring the state's sodomy law unconstitutional.

"This case is not about sexual orientation, but using current law to protect a 17 year-old girl from a 47 year-old sexual predator," Caroline Gibson, deputy communications director in Cuccinelli's office, told TPM in a statement. "We agree with the dissenting opinion that the petitioner was not entitled to federal habeas corpus relief and the full court should have the opportunity to decide this matter. The attorney general is committed to protecting Virginia's children from predators who attempt to exploit them and rob them of their childhood."

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have introduced a bill declaring that the state has the power to establish an official religion — a direct challenge to the First Amendment.

One professor of politics called the measure “the verge of being neo-secessionist,” and another said it was reminiscent of how Southern states objected to the Supreme Court’s 1954 integration of public schools.

The bill says that federal courts do not have the power to decide what is constitutional, and says the state does not recognize federal court rulings that prohibit North Carolina and its schools from favoring a religion.

The bill was introduced Monday by two Republican representatives from Rowan County, north of Charlotte, and sponsored by seven other Republicans. The party controls both chambers of the North Carolina Legislature.

The two lawmakers who filed the bill, state Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, did not immediately return calls Wednesday from NBC News.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued last month to stop the Rowan County Commission from opening meetings with Christian prayers. One of those prayers declared that “there is only one way to salvation, and that is Jesus Christ,” the ACLU said.

The bill does not specify a religion.

The North Carolina ACLU chapter said in a statement Tuesday that the sponsors of the bill “fundamentally misunderstand constitutional law and the principle of the separation of powers that dates back to the founding of this country.”

North Carolina scholars also cast doubt on the bill.

“It has elements of not being American,” Gary Freeze, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, told The Salisbury Post. “I think it goes far beyond religion and frankly doesn’t have a lot to do with North Carolina or tradition.”

Another professor at the college, Michael Bitzer, told the newspaper that the bill is based on discredited legal theory that the states can declare themselves exempt from federal law.

“We saw this in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education,” he said, referencing the integration ruling. “The belief is that the states hold more power than the federal government. If the federal government does something, the states can simply ignore it.”

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/03/17584491-first-amendment-doesnt-apply-here-nc-lawmakers-push-bill-for-state-religion?lite

(Reuters) - The Bank of Japan unleashed the world's most intense burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years, a radical gamble that sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows.

New Governor Haruhiko Kuroda committed the BOJ to open-ended asset buying and said the monetary base would nearly double to 270 trillion yen ($2.9 trillion) by the end of 2014 in a shock therapy to end two decades of stagnation.

The U.S. Federal Reserve may buy more debt under its quantitative easing, but with the Japanese economy about one-third of the size of the United States, the scope of Kuroda's "Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing" is unmatched.

"This is an unprecedented degree of monetary easing," a smiling Kuroda told a news conference after his first policy meeting at the helm of the central bank.

"We took all available steps we can think of. I'm confident that all necessary measures to achieve 2 percent inflation in two years were taken today," he said.

One of those steps was to abandon interest rates as a target and become the only major central bank to primarily target the monetary base -- the amount of cash it pumps out to the economy. It adopted a similar policy in 2001-2006, but not on this scale.

"The result is nothing short of regime change," HSBC's Japan economist Izumi Devalier said in a report.

On April 04 2013 08:13 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by "weren't rated properly" - are you talking fraud or inaccuracy? My understanding is that inaccuracy was the majority of the issue, not fraud.

I'm not blaming the FHA for the entire bubble. Nor would I say that the FHA is the sole provider of government support to the housing market.

On April 04 2013 23:45 Madkipz wrote:


Ofcourse it was never labeled fraud. You think the public would have accepted that they were bailing out fraudulent banks?

Alright. Here's a nice movie documentary for you. That explains how things transpired and why no wall street executive went to jail.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/untouchables/

http://www.usloanauditors.com/blog/how-fraud-fueled-the-mortgage-crisis.html

This wouldn't be up for discussion if you'd actually searched for what he was claiming on google rather than dismiss people as random conspiracy poster theorists with no credibility.

On April 05 2013 01:06 Sermokala wrote:
Roflmao So the government had milk as an oil but they don't have "tar sands oil" as oil? What a world we live in.

In House Report 96-1016(II) to CERCLA (H.R. Rep. 96-1016(II), 1980 U.S.C.C.A.N. 6151, 6154), the House Ways and Means Committee explains that the term “crude oil,” as used in §§4611 and 4612, does not include synthetic petroleum. Thus, the Committee explains, “crude oil” does not include shale oil, liquids from coal, tar sands, or biomass, or refined oil.

Ultimately, many of these mortgages turned out to be toxic. In their paper, Tomasz Piskorski and James Witkin of Columbia University and Amit Seru of the University of Chicago found that the pool of misrepresented mortgages they studied were 60 to 70 percent more likely to default than other loans.

"Investors want to understand what kind of securities they're buying, and during the housing boom years, from about 2005 to 2007, they potentially were misled by information that was given to them regarding the quality of these securities," Piskorski said. "This materially impacts the risk of these loans."

This wasn't a few cases of fraud, either. According to the study, 27 percent of loans obtained by non-owner occupants misreported their true purpose, and 15 percent of loans with second liens incorrectly reported that such loans were not present.

It is important to realize that the SARa are typically only filed by federally chartered or federally insured institutions. Since the majority of the subprime mortgage loans are originated by entities that are not federally chartered or insured, the number of potential fraud instances could easily be multiplied two to three times.

Fast-food restaurants were a little bit slower Thursday in New York City. Hundreds of workers staged a one-day strike in what organizers are calling the biggest job action ever in that industry. It's a growing segment of the economy, but workers complain that fast-food jobs don't pay enough to survive in New York City.

The current minimum wage in New York is $7.25. That's what many fast-food workers in the city earn, including Joseph Barrera, who works at a KFC restaurant in Brooklyn. He thinks fast-food companies can afford to treat their employees better.

"We help them earn those billions of dollars that give them the lifestyle that the CEOs get. They earn million-dollar paychecks, so why can't they give us something that we can live on?" says Barrera.

This is the second time workers at fast-food restaurants around the city have walked off the job in the past six months.

Jonathan Westin is a campaign manager for Fast Food Forward, the group that organized both strikes. It's calling for fast food restaurants to pay a so-called living wage of $15 an hour.

"It's not teenagers working after-school jobs," says Westin. "It's adults with families that are trying to take care of their kids and can't put food on the table. They can work here for 10, 15 years and still be making the same wages as when they started."

On April 05 2013 10:16 Stratos_speAr wrote:


Can someone remind me again why I should have a general sense of respect or even community with southern states? The sad part is that this shit isn't uncommon.