Come on Ref... No, but we have as of today, 4,185 Americans who will never come home. We've poured almost $1,000,000,000,000.00 into the sand to make that happen just so the leadership of the Republican Party could have what they thought would be (and at the time definitely was) an electoral advantage. Say what you want about Carter, but he would have never lied about things of this magnitude and he would have never corrupted the intelligence arms of the government and forced them to reach conclusions that fit his politics. Some parts of the country have had lines... but that is not the true measure. The price of gasoline is really hurting a bunch of people and exacerbates the housing prices because nobody wants to buy houses that have 30 minute to an hour commutes to the only jobs that can afford said houses. Do you really want to make an economic argument now? Ha! I'll take stagflation over a depression and absolutely crushing debt any day. I should note that Carter never nationalized anything and managed the debt much better than the subsequent Republican presidents. Carter was certainly no Lincoln or FDR, but to compare him with the worst president ever is a huge stretch. As flawed as he was, he stood up for the best in America and tried to make it clear to the world that we were on the side of humanity. Carter didn't subvert the will of Congress with signing statements. Carter would not have ignored a report that America might be attacked. Carter would not have sat idly by while a major American city literally drown before our eyes. Carter did not approve torture. Carter did not forfeit a century of good will across the globe. Carter did not lie to people about the environmental dangers they faced. Carter did not and would not have capped science at the knees and only pushed through ridiculous conclusions that buttressed his political positions. Carter did not smear his political opponents. I could go on, but you already know all this and more. Carter may have been bad, but his failures were not intentional, they were not from omission... and to equate him with Bush is an incredibly absurd comparison.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/wlrf32JI708&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/wlrf32JI708&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> check mate!
The "plus" part of that you just threw in was cute. Nice try. You do realize that the President sets the agenda for the party, right? Of course McCain has voted for Bush policies 90% of the time. To do otherwise would be to handcuff the President's ability to lead. When Dems are in office, the Dem members of Congress vote for the President's agenda. Repubs are no different. To extrapolate that to say that McCain would have an agenda that is 90% the same is disingenuous at best.
It took 20 years for Jimmy Carter to escape the scorn and ridicule that his Presidency and legacy richly deserved. It is absurd to compare the two. We have had 28 years to judge Carter's term and to forget exactly how awful he was as a leader. Meanwhile, Bush is still in office. Loss of perspective much?
Sorry for the extra post, but I need to respond to this. The housing crisis had NOTHING to do with housing prices. It had to do with interest rate adjustments that made the mortgages unaffordable to the "what is my payment now...I will deal with the increase later" crowd. While some may want to blame it on the poor or certain groups within our population, it was EVERYBODY. People found "innovative" mortgage products to buy houses they largely cannot afford. You substitute all those ARMs with fixed rate notes, and there is no crisis. I saw it as a debtor's attorney and as an attorney representing default servicers. You realize that we are not in a depression, right? Yes, unemployment is on the rise, but in this economic downturn that is a fairly new happening. If this continues over 4 consecutive quarters, it will be a depression. Under Carter, we had double digit inflation and double digit unemployment. We are nowhere near those numbers right now. It is odd that you would accept that at this point.
Uh, no, this statement is breathtakingly wrong. The collapse in home values is the absolute story as to why there is a crisis at all.
I see the mortgage companies as giving out risking ARMS and subprime loans, because of rising house prices would bail them out. They kept giving out more and more loans to people with less and less ability to pay. They wanted to avoid local conditions making a crap loan worse, so they packaged a whole bunch of crap loans from all over the country. They turned a sow's ear into a silk purse, and sold it to wall street. It "looked" safe, because they were backed by houses with rising prices, and they got higher interest rates. It didn't look so bad 3 years ago, because the companies got their money back in a rising market. It was amazing the loans that my old company was giving out. We were an Alt-A shop, and would sell large pools of Alt-A loans. Lehman, Countrywide and WAMU were the biggest customers.
Let me clarify a little. I don't the the housing price collapse started it. I think the believe that housing price appreciation would continue, lead companies to originate loans that had little chance of performing long term. Then, the huge number defaulting of those loans leading to the price collapse. I fully believe they only gave those loans out, to recoup their money on the foreclosure side.
Uh, no. You may be influenced too much by the Houston market and your local clients. Nationally, housing prices going up was a huge contributor to the crisis and that rise is inseparable from the number and variety of exotic mortgage products developed and used to deal with those prices... they fed on each other... and they fed the mindset that created not only the "what's my payment" crowd, but also the "I can make money in real estate by flipping" crowd and the "I can justify this because I'll sell it in two years for an enormous profit" crowd... you cannot say prices had nothing to do with our current state. I'm also amazed at people who use the official definition of recession and depression. It's nonsensical to me. If you look at the news and talk to people, the mentality is already evident... housing, finance, gas prices, credit cards, construction, automobiles, bailouts, debt and more... this is absolutely anecdotal, but we went to Applebee's last night at 6:30 after one of my kid's bball games (leading rebounder, one awesome blocked shot that started a fast break ). Where normally there would have been a 15 minute wait, there were empty tables. You can also pick up slightly used SUVs for spare change on every used car lot. And really, when was the last time you heard anyone with a semblance of economic understanding offer commentary that "Hey, at least we're not in the Carter years?" No, even on FOX they say it has the makings of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. I started college in 1980... there was nobody talking about parallels with the Great Depression. Nobody.
Perhaps you missed the past tense "had" rather than the present tense "has." Perhaps you mistake cause with effect. Perhaps you respond to stuff without really reading it. While a decline in home values has made things worse, the argument can certainly be made that an increasing risk of default drove the crisis (due to the risk of loss to the bondholders). As default increases, foreclosures increase. Noteholders have seldom broken even in a foreclosure, even before the crisis.
No - I didn't miss anything. You're just flat wrong. The collapse in home values is the first domino that drives everything here. ARMs and all the secondary crap you are talking about were all premised on home values increasing exponentially forever. Once that stopped happening...etc.
I respectfully dissent from your entire premise. I reject the notion that a decrease in home values caused defaults to rise at the time that the rates adjusted on all these mortgages. It was the rise in defaults that caused the investment banks to be unable to pay the bondholders, which in turn caused the investment banks to need a bailout. The subprime (largely ARM) lending placed a timebomb into the economy. It really is no coincidence that the crisis came to a head at the same time that a large volume of ARM notes reached their first or second rate hike. These are the people I represented in bankruptcy court. These are the people that I see in courts now that I represent the default servicers. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "things were going just fine until my monthly payment went up," I could retire. Not once have I heard "things were just fine until my house decreased in value." If you can explain how a decrease in home values caused a larger default rate, then perhaps there can be a useful discourse here. Since you cannot, because such a link does not exist, you just keep believing your flawed premise.
I have a cup full of change on my dresser and I could use a newer vehicle. Where is the spare change car lot?
Refman is sort of right also. I think it is all circular. "Innovative" mortgages such as no doc loans helped bid up the price of real estate to unsustainable levels, which now collapses partly because these types of mortgages are no longer available because home values are falling. A key question is what has caused home values to collapse. Perhaps it is just that even with creative mortgages people just could not afford to buy.
Does McCain vote with Bush 90% of the time? <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PluoMotgl2w&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PluoMotgl2w&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
