Colorado’s Senate race is critical to the balance of power. Should I strategically vote for @BuckForColorado, even though I disagree with him about most things, because I think a GOP majority would be good for Obama and the Dems, and quite possibly the country — not because of, but in spite of, what Buck & the GOP stand for? Hmm. Probably not, eh?
“Hmm. Probably not, eh?”
Hmm, Schmm. Definitely not! :0
It’s more of a thought experiment than a serious consideration — of course I’m not actually going to vote for some Tea Party guy I can’t stand. Buck would need to convince me that he’s at least palatable on the substance of the issues, and although I haven’t started really paying attention to the race yet, that seems vanishingly unlikely.
But it does raise an interesting question. If I really feel that Obama has a better chance in 2012 if he’s governing with a GOP majority for the next two years rather than a just-barely-clinging-to-power Dem majority (which I do really feel), and if I think Obama is very likely the better choice than any of his possible GOP challengers in 2012 (I do), and if I think the presidential election of 2012 is far more important to the country’s future, in terms of substantive policy, than who holds the congressional majority starting in January 2011 (I do) — and if I also think there’s a good chance, maybe even a better-than-50% chance, that a GOP majority in the short term will be good for the country on its own merits because (a) Obama, like Clinton, will be a better president working with a GOP Congress, and (b) power will force the GOP to be more responsible, whereas gaining a bunch of seats but staying in the minority would merely embolden them in their oppositional stance without actually giving them a stake in governance and forcing them to be more constructive (I’m less certain of all that, but I think it’s very plausible) — if I believe all that, then why wouldn’t I vote for Buck?
And the answer, I think, is that ultimately, I’m just not going to vote for a candidate I fundamentally disagree with, even if I can talk myself into the notion that the second-order effects of his election would be beneficial to the country. Which puts me in the odd position of maybe….. voting for Bennet, and then rooting for Buck??
Hard to take this kind of internalized philosophical dilemma seriously from a guy who did his best to pile on Bush in 2004 while supposedly knowing just how putrid of a candidate John Kerry was.
John Kerry was personally putrid, but much more in line than Bush with my ideological beliefs, which, as you yourself have recently made a point of emphasizing, are solidly left of center. There’s a big difference between holding your nose and voting for a disagreeable candidate with whom you generally agree on substance (at least as compared to the other guy), and voting for a candidate who, personal traits aside, is basically anathema to your ideological beliefs, on the basis of a strategic belief/guess about the global direction of the Congress and the country. Really, this is a distinction you, of all people, should understand without even trying.
By the way, as a member of Kerry Haters For Kerry, I think I’m going to start a USC fan support group called Kiffin Haters For Kiffin. 🙂
John Kerry is actually generally a very nice guy, having met the man in a completely non political setting.
The 2004 election was about one issue: The GWOT and Iraq wars. Bush was on the right side of the issue, Kerry was not. Nothing else mattered. If somehow the positions were reversed, I would have held my nose and voted for Kerry. We would not be in the successful position we are in today in Iraq if Kerry had won that election. The Democrats are exceedingly lucky that Kerry’s electoral failure has redounded to Obama’s personal gain.
Since you were not a rabid anti-war protester, you should have supported Bush as well. In effect, your position was muddled: “I support the war, but because of Abu Ghraib and Halliburton, Bush most go, even if it means putting in Kerry, who promises to leave Iraq even as it will surely implode and smolder — and who knows what other Middle East disasters will follow.” Yuck! Come to think of it, I think even Kerry’s position on Iraq was more ideologically respectable than that.
That being said, if I was in your shoes, I’d vote for the Democrat. Senators are in office for six years, so it makes little sense to cast your vote solely on the gamble that it might affect which party controls the Senate heading into the 2012 election. Not to mention, electing Buck in 2010 likely means Buck being reelected in 2016 and who knows how long after that.
Since you were not a rabid anti-war protester, you should have supported Bush as well.
Huh?
Double-huh. I thought Republicans wanted to forget that they said supporting the Iraq war was being on the right-side of history. Most Americans admit that the wars were a mistake.
I’ve had a dilema going into November. I want to get rid of crusty old career politicians, but I don’t think I can vote for Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman either. What a terrible election year. I want the government to be made up of real people with non-political backgrounds, but I don’t want rich people to buy power. Why is being governor worth spending $200 million of your own money? That’s a serious question.
AMLTrojan – let me break it down for you LOLCat style: You Has Delusions
Me has delusions about what specifically?
“The 2004 election was about one issue: The GWOT and Iraq wars. Bush was on the right side of the issue, Kerry was not. Nothing else mattered.”
Pope AMLTrojan of the Church of the Right Wing has given his infallible proclomation and therefore his statements, rather than being opinion are absolute fact. Don’t you guys realize that??
I mean come on, its not as if someone could hold a different position on the issues and believe in different priorities. Or even holding the same priorities feel that one candidate might operate on them in a different more effective fashion. No way, that would be too messy and complicated and require FAR too much independent thought and reasoning.
Instead we should all live our lives in absolutes, accepting only what we decide to be true as valid and casting out all other options as folly. I mean Andrew spells that out quite clearly right here:
“Since you were not a rabid anti-war protester, you should have supported Bush as well.”
Clearly there is no third option, where someone who wasn’t rabidly anti-war could believe that Kerry better than Bush would lead our country in the right direction. Or that the war was not the single most important issue. I mean who would be crazy enough to believe that as horrible as 9/11 was that it didn’t represent a historical equivalent of the invasion of the Sudetenland or of Manchuria, or the secessetion of South Carolina et al.
It should be obvious to all of us that there is One Truth and AMLTrojan is its prophet.
Heh. Well played. Except, I am not proclaiming Iraq / GWOT as the most important issue of 2004 — the voters did. 34% said terrorism or Iraq was the top issue (Kerry voters said “Iraq”, Bush voters said “terrorism”); next issue was “moral values” at 22% (Bush supporters), then “economy / jobs” at 20% (Kerry supporters). So yeah, if Iraq and terrorism was secondary to you to things like the economy and jobs (FYI unemployment in November 2004 was 5.4%, and the DJIA was about where it is today), that makes about as much sense as those moral majority-types who put issues like abortion, gay marriage, and stem cells at the top of their list of issues.
“…Which puts me in the odd position of maybe….. voting for Bennet, and then rooting for Buck??”
Sort of reminds me of the first Presidential election in which I voted Democratic (following three in which I’d voted Republican) – 1984. It wasn’t due to a comparable internalized philosophical dilemma; it was just that I had Startled myself by suddenly realizing, after the 2nd Debate, that Walter Mondale was vastly more knowledgeable of foreign & domestic policy issues than President Reagan, and wasn’t showing scary signs of senility, and certainly didn’t Deserve the landslide defeat that all the Prognosticators said was impending.
So I voted for Mondale. / But not until about 15 minutes before the polls closed. I first needed to watch the early returns & exit-polling reportage on TV, just to be Reassured that Reagan was indeed going to Win. 🙂 He was; so my Betrayal was OK y’see. :> [Look, it was a Conservative Separation Anxiety thing. Recovery from Republicanism is a lifelong Process and that First step is always the hardest. ;]
“…as a member of Kerry Haters For Kerry, I think I’m going to start a USC fan support group called Kiffin Haters For Kiffin. :)”
Now That reminds me, much more Directly, of our “Connecticut For Lieberman” minor party, which is altogether Against the sainted Senator Joe. ;}
PS – Brendan, I think you should Buck the Trend & Pass the Buck.
Andrew #3 – it is, however, consistent with a posture of not feeling/seeing any need to learn from history … fortunately, as in this upcoming November, enoguh people who *do* learn from history will throw out the bums, thus permitting the current Brendans of this world to vote how they feel without having to worry that their vote has consequences for their children …
I am encouaging folk to vote so that our children don’t have to be growing up in a US where a significant market downturn is turned into an actual Great Depression … the current leaders of Congress and in the White House are happily following the same path as was followed by Hoover and FDR, indeed they are proudly doing so while doubling down on it … and we are *already* seeing the result with the recent increase in the rate of unemployment, for example …
In #7, you again, quixotically, are trying to have a rational discussion based upon facts – and responses #8, #9, #10, and #12 demonstrate the classic futility of trying to do so … the effort was worthy, yet fated not to succeed …
God, it’s like you people are from another planet or something…
our children don’t have to be growing up in a US where a significant market downturn is turned into an actual Great Depression … the current leaders of Congress and in the White House are happily following the same path as was followed by Hoover and FDR, indeed they are proudly doing so while doubling down on it … and we are *already* seeing the result with the recent increase in the rate of unemployment, for example …
Weren’t you just babbling some nonsense about knowing history? If there’s any analog to the Great Depression it’s that fiscal stimulus was applied and then taken away too early, just like now.
Does Alisdair just choose to believe things that aren’t true because it makes Republicans look good in his eyes? And if what he’s said was true, it would make Republicans look better for everyone. The US isn’t suffering a “market downturn”. Republicans systematically de-regulated the lending industry and allowed oversight to cease, so we had an entire industry lending HUGE amounts of money to people and companies that would not otherwise be qualified for such loans, along with the invention of 5 year Adjustable Rate Mortgages so that when you get in at the low-rate the loan adjusts to a crazy rate (or a fair rate) that the person or company could not pay.
Democrats became the majority in the House and Senate in 2007. The Hedge-funds collapsed in August 2007. Bush vetoed every piece of legislature that they put in front of him, so it wasn’t the Democrats that created this disaster, and Obama didn’t go into a time-machine and get millions of Americans to default on 5-year ARM’s at such a massive rate that it cratered the economy.
Bush and Republicans were in power during a prosperous time in the economy, and I said anyone can look rich with somebody elses credit card, until you can’t pay the bill anymore, and that’s where we collectively are today. In collections. And it’s not even as bad as it’s going to get, no matter who is in power. At least if we keep a Republican out of office we can stay out of stupid-ass wars, which are much worse than just being a waste of money.
Venerable Loy #14 – it is one of the nicer aspects of this country that so many folk can afford, most of the time, to vote with their hearts and feelings rather than with rational thought …
Those of us who work with systems for a living, who have to integrate disparate systems and keep them functioning, we have learned the value of knowing the history and evolution of systems … it takes a Creationist to conceive something like Obamacare, blithely ignoring history and human factors …
The health of the average US resident is remarkably good when compared with most of the rest of the planet – and the statistics for the US are dragged down by the high numbers of folk killed in criminal ways in US cities … England *and* Wales – 648 homicides in 2008/2009 … in the US, in 2006, Detroit had 418, Baltimore 276 – so just those two cities beat the entirety of England and Wales …
Somehow, however, in spite of the relatively high success of the US Healthcare system for the average US resident, the current US Ruling Elite decided that we would be better to ape a system like that of the UK, even though various cancer survival rates are significantly worse there … even though rationing is explicit and arbitrary … even though hospital districts can and do get fined for giving too good a service to the patients in their ‘catchment area’ … even though the UK Government is working to move away from the currently-abysmal NHS …
Jim Kelly #17 – in earlier posts, I cited URLs about the similatities between Obama/Reid/Pelosi and Hoover policies carried out … where is your cite to support your contention ?
The 1929 Crash was turned into the Great Depression by increased taxation and increased Government spending … sound familiar ?
Obedient to the lines charted by Mellon and Hoover, Congress passed, in the Revenue Act of 1932, one of the greatest increases in taxation ever enacted in the United States in peacetime …
Five Myths About the Great Depression …
From 1929 to 1933, under President Hoover’s administration, real per capita federal expenditures (graphed in Figure 1), increased by 88 percent. [In 1929 real per capita federal expenditures in 1990 dollars were $195.41. They increased to $367.84 by 1933, an 82 percent increase. By 1937, an equal number of years into the Roosevelt administration, per capita federal expenditures were $545.23, only a 48 percent increase, and they had gone up to $638.78 by 1940.] … I don’t know why the article has 88% while the related footnote has 82% – in either case, it is over 80% … that’s quite a cut in federal spending aka stimulus, now, isn’t it ? A mere 80%+ increase …
Dontcha just hate those similatities ? (blush)
Would you believe it’s just a nuanced version of “similarities” ?
Alaisdair: Uh, how do any of those links support your claim? From the very link you provide, the chart shoes that government spending did not ramp up at all until 1932.
Which is, gee, precisely when we finally saw a reversal of our fortunes. (see for instance Romer, 92, Figure 1) And when does the chart of Real GNP in Romer cut back down? Precisely when the rug was pulled out of recovery prematurely because indicators besides employment had picked up, just like now: 1936.
I’m not sure whether you are being disingenuous here or are just uninformed, but please, read Romer, and learn yerself something.
”. Republicans systematically de-regulated the lending industry and allowed oversight to cease, so we had an entire industry lending HUGE amounts of money to people and companies that would not otherwise be qualified for such loans,
What?
It was Dodds, Frank and the CBC that forced Fannie and Freddie and other big lending houses to make millions of risky loans to people who couldn’t afford them.
False. Or at least misleading, at best.
More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that’s being lambasted by conservative critics.
Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards
And if you want to blame the Community Reinvestment Act:
In a book on the sub-prime lending collapse published in June 2007, the late Federal Reserve Governor Ed Gramlich wrote that only one-third of all CRA loans had interest rates high enough to be considered sub-prime and that to the pleasant surprise of commercial banks there were low default rates. Banks that participated in CRA lending had found, he wrote, “that this new lending is good business.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fannie.html
riiight,……so Fannie is blameless, Freddie is blameless and all the risky loans private companies were forced to make had nothing to do with the collapse of the housing market………….
I have no idea how the hell this careened off into a discussion of the subprime bubble, but the first mistake is to treat what happened as a partisan issue. The bubble didn’t inflate and then pop because one party or another was in power. The bubble inflated because of a confluence of bad policies and decisions that had little to do with partisan or ideological interests. Sure, there’s the CRA, but that only opened the door to the subprime market and riskier lending. The real problem was the Fed holding interest rates low for so long; the punch bowl kept getting drained, and they kept refilling it faster and faster. The brokers who were supposed to take away the car keys? They were also being paid based on the number of attendees. Everyone was happy to get wasted on the punch because everybody liked the idea of their houses being worth more and more. The lone voice in the wilderness I recall was the WSJ, chastising the Fed for not raising interest rates fast enough to rein in the real estate and commodity bubbles (the Fed said that was outside of core inflation, which remained low), and calling on Congress to reel in Fannie and Freddie. Everyone else on both sides of the aisle was conspicuously silent.
While you can’t lay blame on a partisan basis, you can ascribe culpability to certain major players. Dodds and Frank, certainly, were huge in the scandal, especially regarding CRA and Fannie and Freddie. They were also complicit in looking the other way in how Wall Street was running up deals based on CDOs and MBS’s, as was Bush and most of the Republican leadership. But the biggest fall guy has to be Greenspan, undoubtedly. His decision to not take non-core inflation seriously (his actions said that asset bubbles didn’t matter, and global markets reacted accordingly) in an effort to appease policymakers’ desire for easy monetary policy to fuel economic growth is the main reason we landed in this mess. You take away the punch bowl in 2003 and 2004 instead of 2006 and 2007, and the collapse would’ve been only a quarter as bad as it was.
AML is right at #26. However I would add the Republican policy of look the other way oversight really didn’t help matters.
The current economy is the result of multiple mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculations and errors not just one. That said, it seems disingenuous to argue that, in terms of policy, that those errors were not made by Republicans, considering their control of the Presidency and both houses of congress. So it does seem foolish to me to put those yahoos back in power. However, it would be unfair to characterize the meltdown as primarily a policy failure. Though to say there was not a major failure of oversight would be ridiculous. And there was a direct failure of the Bush administration to fully staff and fund the oversight structures of the Government. So in as much as the current economic situation is politically caused, the main causal factor is Bush (Who also re-apointed Greenspan). However (yet another proviso and parenthetical modifier, so at this point I’m not even quite sure what the inference to make from this statement is) I think it is fair to argue that the primary causal factor of the meltdown was not caused in Washington, but in New York.
In other words, in as much as the meltdown is to be blamed politically that blame rests squarely on Bush. But to think that the meltdown is primarily a political failure would be a mistake.
dcl, BZZZT, wrong.
You can look at who was making the rules about access to the punch bowl, and you can look at who was continually refilling and mixing the punch bowl. Clearly if you solve the latter problem, the former ceases to be an issue — or at least it’s a well-contained problem.
Furthermore, it’s not so simple to blame Bush for Greenspan’s misjudgment. Democrats and Republicans alike were more than happy with Greenspan’s performance during the Clinton era, so tabbing him to continue in that vein made complete sense to the political class. You can no more lay the blame for Greenspan at the foot of Bush than you can blame some of Justice Kennedy’s left-leaning decisions on Ronald Reagan. Those roles are intended to be independent of the president who appoints them.
Finally, it’s not about Republicans “looking the other way”. Bush pushed to reform Fannie and Freddie, CRA, FHA, and HUD; he was rebuffed by both the Republican AND Democratic leadership on the relevant Senate and House subcommittees. Again, these sorts of policy issues didn’t line up left to right. It’s not dissimilar to the bailouts, which saw Bush and Paulson teaming up with Congressional Dems against Congressional Republicans. We are not a parliamentary system, where the Prime Minister makes the decisions and everyone on his side follows, and the opposition all vote Nay in unison — that’s not how the American legislative process works. You simply can’t make it a black-and-white partisan issue because it never was such.
I’m not blaming Bush for Greenspan’s judgment. Everyone liked Greenspan because he told them what they wanted to hear. But in terms of re-apoinintg Greenspan, if Bush thought he was acting with bad judgment he should have appointed someone else.
What I am blaming Bush for is a lack of institutional control. In as much as the Government was / is responsible for the economic meltdown the buck stops at Bush’s desk. In as much as the Government is responsible for the recovery or lack thereof or deepening of the situation the buck stops at Obama’s desk.
That’s what being the chief executive officer of anything means. You are responsible. Period, full stop.
Of course you are right, the US government is a hornets nest of fiefdoms. It’s part of what makes being president a damn shitty job and damn near impossible–the President is ultimately the one responsible for getting something done or not getting something done.
There are, of course other issues, questions, opinions, and philosophies attendant to the over all economic situation. However, in so much as where the buck stops, it stops with the president.That is a fact not an opinion.
There are, of course, other reasons to vote or not to vote for someone. Basically are they trying to get stuff done you want done or are they trying to do things you disagree with. And beyond that it gets massively more complex. It’s not nearly as simple as Bush got us into this mess I’ll vote him out or Obama hasn’t gotten us out yet I’ll vote him out. Many voters seem to want to think that way, but it’s foolish and short sighted. But that it is foolish and short sighted does not absolve responsibility.
And lastly, the issue isn’t Fannie and Freddie et al. It is irresponsible lending practice. Which is not the government’s responsibility. And the packing of those loans into highly volatile securities that were sold it what is basically a fraudulent manner. Which is due to lack of oversight.
dcl – #29 – I sit astonished !
That is the hardest I have *ever* seen you come down on Mr Obama ! Kudos to you !
“And lastly, the issue isn’t Fannie and Freddie et al. It is irresponsible lending practice. Which is not the government’s responsibility.” – ummm, were lenders required or were lenders not required (by governmental pressure) to give loans to buy a house to people who, absent governmental pressure, would not have been granted loans to buy a house ?
The pressure loan meme is responsible for a very limited number of loans that ultimately went bad. The government did not say don’t do your due diligence in issuing a loan.
I find it very interesting how these discussion threads drift. What began as Brendan’s philosophical musings about strategeric voting morphed into a blame game over the subprime debacle.
Sandy Underpants, how did the Republicans systematically de-regulate the lending industry?
dcl – would you agree that it is fair to say that Rep Frnak and Sen Dodd and their ilk applied pressure to banks to issue loans to low-income folk ? Pressure that included requiring such banks to show that they had indeed issued such loans ?
Cartman, since you’re voting Republican, I find it hard to believe that you aren’t aware that the Republicans have been for deregulation and “less government” interference in banking and Wall Street, for at least the last 30 years (probably more), and when in office they work towards that goal, and quite frankly, succeeded. Why do you think I was able to borrow 2 million bucks and say I made $36,000 per month without any proof to do it? Good ol’ GWB.
My ice cream melted in my car on the way home from the store because of Bush………
Alasdair: Apparently you missed me at #24 (you seem to certainly missed me at #22 but oh well), but the idea that the CRA or Fannie and Freddie or anything like that is responsible for the subprime crisis simply does not jive with the facts.
So Jim…what caused the recession? Why did the housing bubble burst?
(Bonus points if the answer fails to include the phrases “evil Republicans”.)
@AMLTrojan
“Except, I am not proclaiming Iraq / GWOT as the most important issue of 2004 — the voters did. 34% said terrorism or Iraq was the top issue ”
It may have been the issue that was considered most important by 34% but that means that 66% thought other issues were more important. Further, that doesn’t mean that any given individual felt that that was the most important issue. Adding to that, its entirely possible to think that Iraq and the GWOT were the most single important issue but believe that George W. Bush was the wrong person to lead our country through it.
Certainly those who supported him would present arguments that he was the right choice at the time, and thats why some people voted for him surely. But I don’t think Kerry was so terrible of an alternative that it goes without saying that he was the wrong choice no matter what. I found him to be a very mediocre candidate, but not an awful one.
Its complete bullshit to claim that the CRA was responsible for the housing crisis.
CRA regulated banks were LESS likely to make sup-prime loans, substantially less likely in fact. They weren’t involved at ALL in commercial real estate loans which were also a factor in the economic downturn. The CRA didn’t mandate riskier loans, in fact with more oversight and regulations the loans were LESS risky than those by private mortgage groups.
gahrie, #37: I don’t know, and in fact I doubt we’ll know for sure until we’re well out of it. My current sense of what went wrong was that cheap credit for incredibly long periods of time combined with less stringent lending standards combined with securitization gimmicks were to blame.
Certainly if an institution feels it isn’t going to left holding the bag because it’s just going to sell off the loans I doubt they have much of an incentive to make sure that loan recipients are of the highest caliber.
So where does that allow us to assign blame? Pretty much everywhere. Government, banks, ratings agencies, wall st, loan recipients.
I’m sure the list goes on. Shit’s complicated.
Or to sum it up, it’s hard to say what caused it but easier to say that what you claimed above is false.
So, you admit you have no idea what the causes were, but you’re sure I’m wrong…….
I could argue with your characterization that I have “no idea” but it doesn’t matter. You needn’t have to know the answer to know an answer is wrong.
Unless you are wrong and the answer is right.
I really don’t get why you are so insistent about letting Frank and Dodds off the hook.
Unless you are wrong and the answer is right.
Oh man, that’s so deep! You mean if you are wrong, you are wrong? Wow! Now that you put it that way, gee, it all makes sense.
Back on planet earth, you’ve presented no coherent argument to imply that Dodd and Frank are uniquely culpable.
I’ve made no claim that they are “off the hook.” But I can confidently say, based on the statistics referenced above, that their role, at least as you lay it out, is not a large one. Certainly it’s not where I’d be looking first when looking to assign blame.
So you are saying the two most powerful Democratic bulls on financial matters ( the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee), both with a documented record of pushing lenders to make more loans to high risk borrowers, both on the record resisting Pres. Bush’s efforts to reform Fannie and Freddie, both on the record as vocal defenders of Fannie and Freddie right up until the point we began pouring taxpayer money into them, had nothing to do with the banking and home mortgage crisis, but somehow Pres. Bush and the Republicans did……
Jim Kelly #22 – if you intended folk to read your Romer reference, it needs to be a link …
#24 – let me ask you the same question I asked dcl ({crickets chirping}) … Would you agree that it is fair to say that Rep Frnak and Sen Dodd and their ilk applied pressure to banks to issue loans to low-income folk ? Pressure that included requiring such banks to show that they had indeed issued such loans ?
gahrie #46 – you’re finally starting to sound like a democrat …
Sorry Al, long night had stuff in the real word to do. But your question at 47 and 33 is irrelevant.
Poor does not mean high risk it depends on what they are trying to buy. Micro loans in the third world are remarkably secure. Again, Fannie and Freddie are not the issue here. That you and gahrie want to blame “big government socialism” for everything and anything is sad predictable and useless.
What’s higher risk, someone that makes 200k a year trying to buy a 10 million dollar house or someone that makes 25k a year trying to buy a 75k house? Yeah, poor does not mean bad loan. Poor does mean you probably get ignored by major lenders. You are basically blaming oranges for apple blight. A loan doesn’t need to be to someone that is poor to be a bad loan and it doesn’t need to be to someone rich to be a good loan. But the poor are disproportionally underserved by the lending industry, which is what Frank and Dodd were considered with. Again, nobody told the banks not to do due diligence on a loan. But for a while they thought chocolate tasted way better than green beans. And then they got a tummy ache and wretched all over the place.
Your blame government first mentality is farcically stupid and short sighted.
Re: blaming Dodd and Frank.
Dodd is 1 out of 100 in the Senate. Frank is 1 out of 435. To single them out for blame would suggest that those 2 had the power to usurp the President of the United States and 99 Senators and 434 members of the House.
The GOP should replace their red elephant log with a red herring. It’s much more appropriate.
Sandy, you clearly have no idea how committee assignments work.
Alasdair, #47: Here’s a link:
http://www.fcs.edu.uy/multi/phes/Romer%201992.pdf
Not that a reference is *really* required. I thought it was common knowledge that the recovery started in ’32 and stalled in ’36, which corresponds very nicely to when heavy government spending started and stopped.
As far as Dodd and Frank’s “pressure”, I’m assuming we mean through legislation? Surely you aren’t suggesting that Dodd and Frank individually urged lenders to cast a wider net and that was what caused the private sector to do so. Because if you are, regardless of whether this were true or not I’d wonder why you think it more appropriate to blame the person suggesting such a foolish thing or the one who took such stupid advice. As individuals Dodd and Frank do not have the ability to force banks to do anything, so if they simply applied pressure (by asking, since that’s all they can do) that’s pretty amazing that the banks, in your world, simply rolled over and did it.
If, as is more likely, you are asserting that it was legislation that they are largely responsible for, you have yet to get specific about what legislation you felt it was. Certainly it is likely that you are just parroting a tired and debunked right-wing talking point that it was Fannie and Freddie, under the instruction of Dodd and Frank proposed/championed/co-sponsored/cheerleaded legislation (which, according to the right-wing talking points also affected private banks) that forced Fannie and Freddie and banks to get into the business of making piss-poor loans.
Unfortunately for your position, and I’ll say this for the millionth time in this one thread, in both the case of Fannie and Freddie and the CRA, the numbers just don’t add up. See #24.
If you have a specific piece of legislation you’d like to criticize, please do.
gahrie, #46: I didn’t claim that President Bush and the Republicans caused anything.
I admit, that I honestly don’t know how committee assignments work. Is that when the majority party in both houses gives up their power and cedes the entire legislative branch of government to 2 people? Because that’s what would have to happen for anyone to blame a minority party congressman and a minority party senator for the problems we have today.
It’s difficult for Republicans to take responsibility for anything after 12 years in the majority and 8 years in the presidency. But if you think that it doesn’t matter who’s running the country to the extent that you’re comfortable blaming 2 members of the minority party who control everything from the Senate and House, then don’t friggin vote, you’re too stupid for the responsibility, and don’t complain about the government, because it’s just Chris Dodd and Barney Frank wrecking everything. There’s really nothing we can do because they had so much power all while being in the minority party, imagine how much damage they’ve done while being in the majority now for the past 3 years!!! The terror.
As individuals Dodd and Frank do not have the ability to force banks to do anything, so if they simply applied pressure (by asking, since that’s all they can do) that’s pretty amazing that the banks, in your world, simply rolled over and did it.
This is a joke right?
Or are you simply completely clueless as to how things are done in Washington D.C.?
gahrie #55 – do you really have to ask either question ?
Jim #52 – I can take a look at a graph/pattern like here and note that, while the Dems have been the definitive majority in both House and Senate in the past 3 years, the annual federal deficit has gone from a pattern of steady shrinking to a pattern of going out of control … and the graph is based upon CBO numbers …
Similarly, I can look at the type of influence politicians like Frank or Dodd or such as Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had and happily wielded, and the results of their interventions follow their own patterns … for the latter 3 names, see “Keating”, if you are not able to acknowledge such patterns of corruption …
gahrie, #55: I guess I’m clueless, please explain to me the mechanism by which Dodd and Frank can somehow strong-arm private institutions into doing something at a remarkably higher rate than those institutions directly affected by legislation. You know, like how I’ve been asking you repeatedly to do? You know, explain your position?
Alasdair, #57: So… are you conceding the point about the Great Depression? I’d guess you are, since you seem to be dodging it.
As to your second paragraph, were you trying to make a point? If so, could you do it? You are starting to sound like Gahrie with vague disparaging references. If you’d like to make a substantive point please do. It’s especially puzzling that you bring up the Keating incident considering that the only person still serving who was involved with that scandal is a Republican.