McCain the great Economist

Obama just needs to keep playing this ad over and over again. Flood the networks with it.

We're living in dire times, and 4 more years of this madness and we'll be in another Great Depression. Someone's got to get the sheep out there to wake up.

 

So.. definitively tell me exactly how the POTUS is/was responsible for banks loaning out money to too many risky-at-best customers.

I'd like to hear this one.

 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051024-2.html

Bernake in turn, lowered interest to the near bottom and created one of the biggest housing booms/real estate speculations in the past century.

 

just admit that you adhere to a failed economic philosophy and stop being a p*ssy.

or just admit that the POTUS has no real powers at all and that the only reason you're voting for mccain is:

a. he has an (R) beside his name
b. he's a black man with a muslim-sounding name and that scares the **** out of you

 

What are you talking about?


I asked a question, and I got a decent response.



I can see where the Fed guy messed it up... but banks are responsible too, they didn't help... and selling people an ARM loan should be illegal.

The scapegoat mentality just doesn't work for me.

 

This is completely tangential, and is indicative of the cognitive dissonance that permeates the right these days. The issue isn't whether the president was responsible for the credit crisis. The issue is that McCain apparently doesn't have a clue about what is actually wrong with the economy, let alone understand how to help fix it.

 

mccain is a black man?

 

oh boy... the obama smear campaign is in another gear

 

McCain- There's nothing wrong with the economy.

Says the guy with 7 houses, while the rest of america struggles paying for their damn mortgages. Of course he can't see eye-to-eye with the rest of America.

People getting laid off left and right, Job market sucks shiit.

The people of America need to WAKE UP! Stop acting like SHEEP!

 

This is Bernanke's fault? What??

When did the credit markets seize up? When did the housing downturn begin? When did Bernanke drop interest rates?

Alternatively, when did housing prices start to inflate? When did mortgages become ridiculously easy to get? When did corporate loans start coming out with stupid spreads and no protections? When did our ratings agencies start deciding that repackaging risk eliminated risk?

 

Here's a great debate, 9-16 McCain, opposes AIG Bailout, thinks it should fail:

9-17 McCain - for the bailout! You can't let that company fail, too many people are at risk!

 

Eliot Spitzer- Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime

...Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

 

being too ignorant, lazy or flat out stupid doesnt automatically make one "innocent".

Homeowners were careless and lenders were too aggressive. Neither takes full blame and neither gets a free pass.

 

Um - as far as passing it up the chain and securitizing it - which is the real cause of the collapse of the financial system as we know it - homeowners had basically less than zero to do with that.

Originators & Securitizers were the ones who did this, the ones in a better position to know, and the ones who should have known better.

If you offer somebody with no job and no assets a loan - what do you expect them to do? NOT take it? That would be silly not to and make no economic sense for them, because at worst you're in the same position you were before.

 

loan officers are in the business of protecting assets. they are there to advise a potential buyer on what they are getting into. they got greedy with up front profits on loans that would be sold off and they would not have to worry about when the borrowers could not pay.

these guys make six figure salaries to make good loans. they are there because of their knowlege and expertise. in the past five years, car dealers were probably more conservative than these guys.

 

Find me a homeowner who bundled a bunch of bad mortgages.

 

On the contrary... he could see it before anyone else did...
and was very vocal about it.

If you are going to blame someone or something for this “crisis” place it accordingly… you might be very surprised where that blame belongs.

McCain Proposed Solutions to Fannie/Freddie Years Ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2083931/posts

He never made such a claim. Define "fundamentals." Now define "surface indicators."

 

Actually no, when he made that speech in mid-2006 the housing bubble was way the f-k out of the barn.

Second, I'd like to know how, in a Republican controlled congress on a Republican chaired committee "the Democrats killed the bill!" as the urban legend that is floating around wingnut forums like the one you posted to all day is going. The bill died in committee in 2005.

 

The McCain vocalization was in 2005. Three years ago.