Certainly the people that took out mortgages on houses they couldn't afford are in this too. But banks are in the business of making money, and this loophole allowed them to transfer the risky paper into an investment vehicle that the people investing in them had limited transparency into their investments. Good businesses do not make bad loans...or many of them.....the rules in place were put there after the great depression to protect consumers and the banks. When the walls came down, Gordan Gecko stepped in..... DD
It so happened I know a woman who worked for ACORN in her first year or two out of college for minimum wage at best and my sister did a free semester internship here in Houston while in the graduate school of social work. That was about 20 years ago. I have seen them mentioned in the paper a couple of times throughout the years. It wouldn't surprise me if the people on this thread railing about them had never heard of them before. Contrary to the mainstream media and the business press (until this WSJ article) the current financial mess had a lot to do with deregulation. It was not due to ACORN and a misguided effort to put poor people in houses. I guess those whose theological beliefs in markets , which do have their uses, are so disturbed by this failure of deregulation that they can believe ACORN put all those hundreds of thousands of people in half million to million dollar houses in the West Coast, Las Vegas and Florida. ACORN must be doing some incredible and threatening voter registration work to warrant being the scape goat of the whole financial crisis.
I'm glad there's a thread here blaming poor n-words for the financial crisis - without it I wouldn't feel complete, and the WSJ would have nothing to write about. So basso, my answer is yes - I absolutely support it. Your depth of understanding of the financial meltdown is incredibly shallow, but hopefully that fits in your neat little box and we can all be happy. PS Nice use of the phrase "ACORN slush fund" - quite an original thought. ANd by original I mean talking parrot like. Don't forget to lump in "La Raza" into this nice little package of right wing race wars like some Republicans have. Will really help you come November
well, the latest word is the ACORN provision is out of the pending deal. and in any case, you miss why ACORN is so objectionable. it's not for their role in providing affordable housing fro minorities, but for their role in providing fictional voters for the democratic party, an effort you apparently want the taxpayer to subsidize.
LOL - I'm aware of what blogs you read basso. It is indeed true that ACORN self-reported some voter registration violations a few years ago, after discovering them it fired the employees and called the police. (I like how in your link, it runs multiple Fox News blurbs about the same incident in order to create an illusion of there being more....very smart!) Wingnuts used this to conjure up a vast conspiracy theory of voter fraud, when in reality there was nothing of the kind - that was what the US Attorney firing scandal ended up being about. Of course a cynical view is that the fruitless witchhunt for voter fraud was actually just an example of more right wing "Caging" - as lifelong Republican David Iglesias described it. You must have missed it - probably because you were busy being completely ignorant and in denial about it. Anyway I know that you are socially moderate non racist individual, so that's why I find it amusing that, like a wind up doll, you copy paste anything you read on a right wing blog (ACORN really pisses off righties, maybe 10% of them know what it actually is, nothing like a bunch of negros getting together and actually VOTING - scary thought to Republicans) without realizing what the f-k you are talking about.
acorn has been around for twenty years, but they are the cause of the mess. unbelievable, khan's railing on the poor continues.
This simply was not necessary. Race baiting is not needed here. There is plenty of blame to go around. Part of the blame has to fall on the borrower. In 2005, I bought a house. I was offered several mortgage products. One of them was an interest only ARM. Another was a simple ARM. I knew that if interest rates went up, my mortgage payment would go up, possibly to a level I could not afford. People took these loans to get a cheap payment now and deal with the interest rate change in 3 years when it becomes an issue. I opted for the fixed rate loan. Special interest groups were clammoring for deregulation and innovative loan products designed to get more low income people into homes. Watch out what you wish for. The market responded, and now a good many of those loans are not performing. Of course the banks should have had better credit decision making, but to blame just the banks ignores the political and economic realities of the time.
Quoted for truth. Sure everyone should exercise meticulous self-control in financial matters cradle to grave. But these people hit folks who are just now getting on their own. Then go to absurd lengths to entice them. Who among us at 19 can resist the impulse to buy some electronics or go for pizza a couple extra times with our friends and pay for it later. Even at a high interest rate. Cept you miss one payment and the interest rate goes from high to usurious. Yes, its their own fault. But then the giant financial companies also make **** decisions, for short term gratification. Only instead of an extra pizza or two they are doing it to rake in profits by the billions. The big difference is...when a college kid buries himself under a mountain of debt. He is stuck with it the rest of his life. When some massive financial institution does it. We (and by we I mean everyone who pays taxes) bail them out. Cool how it works huh!
The BANKS are the one's needing BAIL out..... They are the businesses that took unecessary risk, you can't blame people for trying to get a house.......the rules were in place to make sure that banks used sound judgement....when they were taken away.....it allowed them to make poor business decisions..... Predatory lending... DD
if your bank fails, are you going to blame the bank, or the people paid to protect your assets. this is a distraction and khan is always railing on poor people so its par for the course
The whole voter registration system in the Unitd States is a disgrace designed to suppress the vote as much as possible. An incumbent protection scheme. So you have ACORN a relatively poor organization hiring minimum wage workers or perhaps even worse poor folks paid by the vote to register voters that in virtually any other democracy are registered by neutral public servants. Then when some of the poor folks fake like they worked more than they did, so they can get more money. it is a fiendish leftist plot. As Sam points out you have voter suppression tactics such as "caging' by the GOP. It is time to have neutral civil service voter registration. The GOP who fear the participation will fight it and many Dem incuimbents won't be wildly in support of it, but it should be done if we value democracy.
As Oski pointed out, groups like Acorn and legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act are there to help low income individuals make good decisions on buying homes. There couldn't be a bigger red herring.
Refman, though I disagree with you strongly on a political level, I think you're probably a pretty good guy. What you're missing here is that this whole ridiculous diversion about ACORN is total race baiting. I think you attribute your own lack of guile and ulterior motives to people on who do not deserve it.
Maybe you can't divide, but I can. You must be one of the Pollyannas who thinks we're going to make a profit and that money will somehow make it back into the hands of every day Americans. Talk about naive, what country do you live in?
Pollyanna. Good one I live in the United States of America, dimwit. And you are WRONG because the only way it's going to cost every person in the U.S. $2,300 is if every single one of those assets defaults. Maybe you can't subtract, but I can.
excuse me, acorn is over thirty years, almost forty years old, but they are the cause of this mess. again, khan, you and the rest of the people promoting this idea that programs that helped get low income people into home ownership need to start backing up these claims with actual numbers.
An asset defaulting? In this country? The hell you say! Right, this is a pay as you go bailout plan. Those funds from this bailout will be placed right back in the Treasury marked payback from the bailout. You have not been paying attention to how government works in this country if you think the American public is going to get a return on this joke of a blank check.
