Well ya know what, Cyclop? I prefer to discuss concepts, ideas, and explore what really happened and the probable effects of proposed remedies instead of engaging in trash talk. If that makes me the fool, then so be it.
I have a very difficult time thinking anybody who graduated Magna Cum Laude from anywhere to be a fool especially when that person went on to acquire some impressive additional credentials. I would more likely think somebody to be foolish who would draw that conclusion on no more evidence than you have so far presented and/or based on the fact that a person might take a MAC perspective.
I agree with Ruddy and numerous other responsible educated people that the President and Congress are not focusing on the right causes of the current recession, and they are serving us poorly in how they are addressing it and they are being either ignorant or dishonest in where they are placing the blame.
Ruddy serves on the Board of Directors of the Financial Publishers Association, an industry trade group representing the nation's financial media.
Using information from numerous sources, all provided by people who know their business, including our local real estate people here:
1) The housing crisis started when Congress and groups like ACORN began pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into backing mortgages to high risk individuals with little track record or ability to repay them. (This was before and during the GWB administration.)
2) These high risk loans were then bundled and sold en masse to other lending institutions and the banks, knowingly or unknowingly wound up with mega billions in high risk debt. Because everybody was prospering, and who wants to throw cold water on that, those who should have been the watchdogs either didn't do their jobs at all or they looked the other way.
3) As more and more such debt flooded into the market, the law of supply and demand kicked in. Housing prices soared making housing an extremely attractive investment. On paper, the value of my house, for instance, more than doubled in value from 1999 to 2007. Millions of Americans, taking advantage of low ARMS and easy credit bought property as investment and this added to both the inflation in housing and questionable debt going onto the books.
4) The demand for new construction was high, that industry and all business that supported it was booming, and that was pushing the market up, up, and up making that also a lucrative investment vehicle. It wasn't the big fat cats doing all this speculation either. It was as much the moms and pops and gamblers who saw a way to increase their modest fortunes as it was the big investors. Day traders were making small fortunes and more than a few found ways to manipulate the market to sell short while putting out rumors that generated profit taking (selling) with resulting wild fluctuations in the market.
5) President Bush and responsible members of Congress were growing increasingly concerned about the trends and sounded the alarm, but they were drowned out by those who were enjoying the gravy train and by the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who kept assuring us that all was just fine and dandy while they kept greasing the wheels of their pet constituencies. They refused to see and/or acknowledge the false economy that was developing and failed to do anything to let the air out of the bubble slowly.
And so it burst. The easy money had finally run out and there was no more credit available to anybody, risky or legitimate.
6) As house values plummeted because there was no more credit available to buy them, a whole bunch of those risky loans were now more than the properties were worth. Banks and lending institutions teetered on the brink of collapse, the construction industry and all industry supporting it ground to a near halt, and people couldn't sell the assets for what they owed against them. With good paying jobs becoming hard to get and especially when the automatic rate increases on the ARMs kicked in, they couldn't pay their loans. Lending institutions were foreclosing on properties worth less than the amount they had loaned on them with mega billions of such toxic debt still on the books.
All this of course affected the market as all American commerce and industry has been affected. But Wall Street is the barometer of the economy more than a catalyst for it. That does not mean that there were not inappropriate excesses and corruption there too, but it was not the cause of the current economic crisis.
In my opinion, Ruddy is right.
1) The housing crisis started when Congress and groups like ACORN began pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into backing mortgages to high risk individuals with little track record or ability to repay them. (This was before and during the GWB administration.)
2) These high risk loans were then bundled and sold en masse to other lending institutions and the banks, knowingly or unknowingly wound up with mega billions in high risk debt. Because everybody was prospering, and who wants to throw cold water on that, those who should have been the watchdogs either didn't do their jobs at all or they looked the other way.
3) As more and more such debt flooded into the market, the law of supply and demand kicked in. Housing prices soared making housing an extremely attractive investment. On paper, the value of my house, for instance, more than doubled in value from 1999 to 2007. Millions of Americans, taking advantage of low ARMS and easy credit bought property as investment and this added to both the inflation in housing and questionable debt going onto the books.
4) The demand for new construction was high, that industry and all business that supported it was booming, and that was pushing the market up, up, and up making that also a lucrative investment vehicle. It wasn't the big fat cats doing all this speculation either. It was as much the moms and pops and gamblers who saw a way to increase their modest fortunes as it was the big investors. Day traders were making small fortunes and more than a few found ways to manipulate the market to sell short while putting out rumors that generated profit taking (selling) with resulting wild fluctuations in the market.
5) President Bush and responsible members of Congress were growing increasingly concerned about the trends and sounded the alarm, but they were drowned out by those who were enjoying the gravy train and by the likes of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd who kept assuring us that all was just fine and dandy while they kept greasing the wheels of their pet constituencies. They refused to see and/or acknowledge the false economy that was developing and failed to do anything to let the air out of the bubble slowly.
And so it burst. The easy money had finally run out and there was no more credit available to anybody, risky or legitimate.
6) As house values plummeted because there was no more credit available to buy them, a whole bunch of those risky loans were now more than the properties were worth. Banks and lending institutions teetered on the brink of collapse, the construction industry and all industry supporting it ground to a near halt, and people couldn't sell the assets for what they owed against them. With good paying jobs becoming hard to get and especially when the automatic rate increases on the ARMs kicked in, they couldn't pay their loans. Lending institutions were foreclosing on properties worth less than the amount they had loaned on them with mega billions of such toxic debt still on the books.
This is ridiculous. Bush slashed the number of employees at the SEC dramatically when he came into office and he doesn't rely upon Congress to run an Executive branch department.
I'll just address one point you made Cyclop to illustrate how you are parroting the party line and have nothing else to back up your opinion:
Re your assertion that Bush reduced personnel in the SEC:
You said
Quote:This is ridiculous. Bush slashed the number of employees at the SEC dramatically when he came into office and he doesn't rely upon Congress to run an Executive branch department.
Initial Presidential request for increase for budget/personnel for the SEC 2002
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy03/pdf/17budamend.pdf
Bush Tries to Shrink S.E.C. Raise Intended for Corporate Cleanup
By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: October 19, 2002
Less than three months ago, President Bush signed with great fanfare sweeping corporate antifraud legislation that called for a huge increase in the budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission to police corporate America and clean up Wall Street.
Now the White House is backing off the budget provision and urging Congress to provide the agency with 27 percent less money than the new law authorized.
President Bush requests big increase for 2003
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9401E6DB1731F931A25752C0A9659C8B63
President requests increase in funding for 2007
http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/ts042706cc.htm
Bush S.E.C. Pick Is Seen as Friend to Corporations
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By STEPHEN LABATON
Published: June 3, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 2 - In Republican and business circles, William H. Donaldson has been viewed as the David Souter of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a disappointingly independent choice who sided too frequently with the Democrats.
President Bush, hearing complaints about Mr. Donaldson's record from across the business spectrum, responded on Thursday by nominating Representative Christopher Cox, a conservative Republican from California, as a successor whose loyalties seem clear. And unlike the Supreme Court, where Justice Souter has a lifetime appointment, the S.E.C. provides the White House with an immediate opportunity to tip the balance of the five-person commission in a more favorable direction.
Mr. Cox - a devoted student of Ayn Rand, the high priestess of unfettered capitalism - has a long record in the House of promoting the agenda of business interests that are a cornerstone of the Republican Party's political and financial support.
Under the corporate clean-up legislation, the commission's budget -- which for years has barely kept up with inflation, let alone the steep rise in stock ownership -- was authorized to increase by 77 percent, to $776 million. But as Congress wrestles with the spending measures that actually appropriate money to federal agencies, the White House is requesting $568 million for the S.E.C., officials said, or an increase of about 30 percent over last year's budget of $438 million.
Maybe you should read the Ruddy article again, Fox. He says it's all the government's fault because they didn't regulate institutions enough, that among other things they let them get away with reduced asset requirements for loans and vastly increased leveraging. Which is of course exactly what the Bush administration did, in caving in to the financial sector and hugely reducing oversight. Does he realize, and do you, that that's what liberals, and most economists have been saying all along? So, are you going to support the badly-needed expanded govermental re-regulation of banks, mortgage companies, and Wall Street, now that it has become the conservative position, Fox?
(1) The Constitution of the United States, unalienable rights, human rights, civil liberties, equal justice, equality of opportunity, and liberty under law;
(2) Public leadership in guaranteeing a strong social safety net, including support for Medicare, unemployment benefits, health insurance, and the preservation of Social Security as well as programs to assist low-income working American families, such as food stamps;
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, and from dependency back to bondage.
Cyclop we should ALL be responsible to live with the choices we make and that includes the poor ones as well as the better ones. Yes, those at the helm of ANYTHING are responsible for their ship. And it is a MAC principle that the best way to deal with poor choices is usually to allow people who make them suffer the consequences for them.
Now when you are willing to address any of the points I have made with something other than ad hominem and/or trash talking, perhaps you will have something more substantive than that with which to address Ruddy and my 'line of crap'. So far all we are accomplishing is you ignoring each time your opinion is called into question and you throwing out more trash talk.
I don't enjoy that kind of exchange and will probably choose not to engage in it further.
And I am sure he would have been selected to be chairman if Obama hadn't been elected, right???
No where in the Constitution of the USA is the federal government granted the power to steal from any private Americans or private American organizations. Additionally, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the USA clearly states that powers not delegated by it to the federal government or denied by it to the states, do not belong to the federal government, but belong instead to the states or to the people.
Ican wrote
Quote:
No where in the Constitution of the USA is the federal government granted the power to steal from any private Americans or private American organizations. Additionally, the 10th Amendment to the Constitution of the USA clearly states that powers not delegated by it to the federal government or denied by it to the states, do not belong to the federal government, but belong instead to the states or to the people.
Better clarify this one Ican or they'll be accusing you--again--of opposing all taxes. I do think a good discussion of the 10th Amendment is in order.
