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Seeing that my husband has come to this country through the lengthy US Immigration process and is studying for his driving test (written and road-test), I don't think it's quite fair to give driver's licenses to illegals. My husband arrived in January and then applied(=sent money and lots of documentation) to the government to get his green card which entitles him to permanent residency. Until then he wsn't even allowed to work!
He received his green card last week. That's how it is when you follow the law and do things the right way -- I'm liberal on most things but I don't go as far as breaking the law. Those illegals are, well, ILLEGAL. Then shouldn't even be here in the first place so why should they be driving?
I like Gov. Patrick a lot and I think he, as well as Pres. Obama, are being scapegoated and blamed for the bad economy when we all KNOW who got us into this mess. They're doing their best to clean up what was left to them. I do disagree with anyone who wants to let illegals drive -- these people are law breakers and no one has checked their backgrounds to see who they are or what they are like. They have never been checked for communicable diseases either and have not received the vaccinations that are required of all immigrants. Our Immigration office exists for the purpose of checking and enforcing these issues and verifying identity (and more) and it's not right for some people to circumvent the entire process and sneak in.
I heard on BZ tonight that he wants to give illegal immigrants Mass. driver's licenses!!! He said we need to "intergrate". My fanny!!!!! Wonder how much the President had to do with this, with his illegal auntie in So. Boston??? BS!!!!!!
Actually,it's "Deval" not "Duvall", the word is "integrate" not "intergrate" ,and Obama's aunt lives in the South End, not South Boston.
in_newengland, please let your husband know that there are many of us who appreciate and respect him for coming to this country in the correct manner. I understand that it's a long wait, and there are many obstacles to overcome. Congratulations to him on receiving his green card, he deserves it!
I agree that the present administration is not 100% responsible for the economic mess that we're in. That goes back MUCH further, back to the Community Reinvestment Act of the 70's. The introduction of subprime mortgages, and Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements to make loans available to under-qualified buyers... CONGRESS regulates the banks, both the Senate Banking Committee (headed by Democrat Chris Dodd) and the House Banking Committee (headed by Democrat Barney Frank). The Bush administration began warning of problems with Fannie and Freddie just three months into its first term, and continued doing so for years. It's well documented that Bush tried at least a dozen times to get Congress to fix the problems with Fannie and Freddie. John McCain co-sponsored a bill in 2005 and pled with the Senate to regulate them, but they refused to even vote on it. Follow the money--One of the architects who helped create the problem, Fannie CEO, Franklin Raines, earned over $90 million dollars in compensation in six years. The biggest money recipients from Lehman, Fannie and Freddie were Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry.
Last edited by Valerie C; 11-19-2009 at 11:01 PM..
Reason: Interesting that the OP is belittled, and his or her concerns are dismissed with sarcasm...
in_newengland, please let your husband know that there are many of us who appreciate and respect him for coming to this country in the correct manner. I understand that it's a long wait, and there are many obstacles to overcome. Congratulations to him on receiving his green card, he deserves it!
I agree that the present administration is not 100% responsible for the economic mess that we're in. That goes back MUCH further, back to the Community Reinvestment Act of the 70's. The introduction of subprime mortgages, and Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements to make loans available to under-qualified buyers... CONGRESS regulates the banks, both the Senate Banking Committee (headed by Democrat Chris Dodd) and the House Banking Committee (headed by Democrat Barney Frank). The Bush administration began warning of problems with Fannie and Freddie just three months into its first term, and continued doing so for years. It's well documented that Bush tried at least a dozen times to get Congress to fix the problems with Fannie and Freddie. John McCain co-sponsored a bill in 2005 and pled with the Senate to regulate them, but they refused to even vote on it. Follow the money--One of the architects who helped create the problem, Fannie CEO, Franklin Raines, earned over $90 million dollars in compensation in six years. The biggest money recipients from Lehman, Fannie and Freddie were Chris Dodd, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry.
Good points, but your missing one more problem. The Federal Reserve is a huge problem which creates bubbles, which then has to pop. They print money without oversight and adjust interest rates to where they "feel" they should be...not where the free market would set them. They also provided an environment of easy money. Greenspan whom everyone thought was great back in the day, devalued the $ and kept interest rates at historically low levels.
Agreed... Interest rates have been kept artificially low to keep the economy afloat for quite some time. Amazing that back in the day of my 1st mortgage, rates were around 10%. However, this was pre-NAFTA, WTO, and other programs that resulted in manufacturing/textile job migration, first 'south of the border', then later, tech and white collar overseas...
Like cutting open an onion, there are multiple layers in current economic mess. Devaluation of the dollar, jobs outsourcing, mortgage/housing collapse, health care 'crisis', illegal immigration, and more. Sounds like America's perfect storm...
Quote:
Originally Posted by LeavingMA
Good points, but your missing one more problem. The Federal Reserve is a huge problem which creates bubbles, which then has to pop. They print money without oversight and adjust interest rates to where they "feel" they should be...not where the free market would set them. They also provided an environment of easy money. Greenspan whom everyone thought was great back in the day, devalued the $ and kept interest rates at historically low levels.
What? You mean Obama didn't do all of this in the past year? Say it ain't so! You mean the current state of the economy has been a long time coming and evolving?!
I agree that the present administration is not 100% responsible for the economic mess that we're in. That goes back MUCH further, back to the Community Reinvestment Act of the 70's. The introduction of subprime mortgages, and Fannie and Freddie easing credit requirements to make loans available to under-qualified buyers... CONGRESS regulates the banks, both the Senate Banking Committee (headed by Democrat Chris Dodd) and the House Banking Committee (headed by Democrat Barney Frank). The Bush administration began warning of problems with Fannie and Freddie just three months into its first term, and continued doing so for years. It's well documented that Bush tried at least a dozen times to get Congress to fix the problems with Fannie and Freddie.
I don't even know where to begin with this.
First, it's not CRA. The lenders most prominently associated with sub-prime mortgage lending abuses and high rates of foreclosure are not even subject to CRA. CRA only applies to banks and subsidiaries owned by banks (NOT those owned by bank holding companies, which is important). The subprime lenders were mostly independent "storefront" mortgage companies and subsidiaries of bank holding companies, but not banks. The CRA-covered institutions have shown a much lower rate of foreclosure than the non-covered institutions.
Fannie and Freddie. Technically, Fannie and Freddie don't ease credit requirements since they don't make loans. They do buy almost half of the loans that are made by lenders nationwide, so they have a significant (if indirect) affect on credit standards: lenders are likely to ease credit requirements if they know Fannie and Freddie will buy those loans.
Historically, Fannie and Freddie had pretty strict standards for purchasing loans. The evidence indicates that President Bush's HUD pushed Fannie and Freddie to increase homeownership in heavily minority areas by raising that from 34% to 39% of its new business. To do so, Fannie and Freddie bought loans that were higher credit risks, including subprime. They were actually late to that game; this started in about 2005. Indeed, when President Clinton left office subprime lending was still a very small part of the mortgage industry.
The bigger problem for Fannie and Freddie was not the loans they were buying. It was the securities they were buying. In a sense many companies today make money two ways: (1) whatever their general business is; (2) investing in securities. Fannie and Freddie were dangerous because they were privately owned by shareholders, but basically with a guarantee that the government would save the day if things went bad. That is a formula for risk-taking. Unfortunately, in practice today the same seems to be true of many private businesses. Too big to fail, I think, should mean too big to exist.
Under pressure from shareholders, Fannie and Freddie started to buy securities that ultimately were backed by subprime mortgages. This is the same thing many other businesses, including a lot of investment banks, hedge funds, etc. were doing, and again Fannie and Freddie were, if anything, quite late to the game.
And the mortgage-backed securities were the reason the subprime mortgage mess became a full-blown financial crisis. Lenders were fine with making risky mortgage loans because they sold bonds that were backed by those loans, and passed the risk on to someone else. Then new bonds were created, backed by the first bonds. All these bonds were bundled and people were buying them without knowing that, if you trace it back all the way, the securities they bought rest on bad mortgages. For a while the profits were rolling in, then it became clear it was a house of cards.
There were problems throughout the system. The ratings agencies, with little regulation and many conflicts of interest, were telling everyone these were safe investments: AAA. There was no regulation of the risks investment banks could take. When it all went bad, commercial banks were affected since in 1999 the wall of separation erected in the 30's between commercial banks and investment banks was removed. So all the banks took big losses, and they don't want to lend at all. Without access to credit, businesses can't expand and lay people off. Laid off people don't buy things as much, so more businesses lay people off. The bailout process was supposed to restore them to a good cash position, so they'd be comfortable lending again. Stupidly nobody thought to require that the money actually be used for lending. They dropped the ball.
Senator McCain's call for reform at Fannie and Freddie concerned the reporting of its financial results. He felt, with some reason, that they were cooking the books to inflate their results and trigger bonus payments to executives, including Frank Raines. McCain was concerned that the federal government would be on the hook if it turned out they were broke after saying they were flush, and he wanted to eliminate the ability to report results inaccurately. That is a serious matter, but it has nothing to do with prohibiting the purchase of (1) subprime loans or (2) lousy securities ultimately backed by subprime loans.
Bush did warn that the capital requirements for Fannie and Freddie should be increased, and there should be regulations about the risks they could take. That may well have been correct. But his own HUD pushed them into some of those risks, and Bush certainly did not want to apply the same restrictions on risk-taking to private banks or businesses. There's plenty of blame to go around, since too many Democrats (who often represent financial centers like NYC, Boston, Connecticut) are too tight with the industry, including Fannie and Freddie. But it's not accurate to blame it all on CRA and Barney Frank.
Seeing that my husband has come to this country through the lengthy US Immigration process and is studying for his driving test (written and road-test), I don't think it's quite fair to give driver's licenses to illegals. My husband arrived in January and then applied(=sent money and lots of documentation) to the government to get his green card which entitles him to permanent residency. Until then he wsn't even allowed to work!
He received his green card last week. That's how it is when you follow the law and do things the right way -- I'm liberal on most things but I don't go as far as breaking the law. Those illegals are, well, ILLEGAL. Then shouldn't even be here in the first place so why should they be driving?
I like Gov. Patrick a lot and I think he, as well as Pres. Obama, are being scapegoated and blamed for the bad economy when we all KNOW who got us into this mess. They're doing their best to clean up what was left to them. I do disagree with anyone who wants to let illegals drive -- these people are law breakers and no one has checked their backgrounds to see who they are or what they are like. They have never been checked for communicable diseases either and have not received the vaccinations that are required of all immigrants. Our Immigration office exists for the purpose of checking and enforcing these issues and verifying identity (and more) and it's not right for some people to circumvent the entire process and sneak in.
Well, I for one know ALL about the process of getting a green card, having gone through it myself. I think it would be wonderful if everyone was here legally, but the fact is, they are NOT and won't be in the foreseeable future. Until people/companies stop employing illegals and using them as cheap labor, they will keep coming here because they can make money to support their families. SO, knowing that they will be here anyway, I would rather have them on the road with a drivers license, at least they have to pass a test, proving that they are more or less fit to drive. Doesn't mean I support entering this country or any other country illegally.
__________________
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. ~Henry David Thoreau
Well, you can still blame Barney Frank because even up until 2006 he was saying everything was fine and the loans would be absorbed by Frannie and Freddie.
Another contributing factor is fractional reserve lending. This is basically when the banks can lend out money they really don't have and only need to keep a fraction on hand. If there was a "run" on the banks they would be screwed (somewhat like the Great Depression when people couldn't get their money). Banks like this because they can make more profit and take greater risks. This was part of the reason the Federal Reserve was created and this helps protect those big banks.
This has been a long time coming and isn't solely for either Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, or even Nixon to blame. The government has helped create and back (by us taxpayers) a horrible economic system that created this disaster. And now the same fools who helped fuel it are trying to fix it....which they won't. They will just create another problem further down the line.
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