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Agreed. I talked to a person who is working with the FDIC on bank closings. He said the same thing, more banks are going under.
Just so people who are following this thread are aware, I'm all for good news and definitely want to see us get out of this mess, but I don't think the big players are being completely honest with us and are telling us what we WANT to hear rather than what is actually going on. That being said, it is a scary situation with more banks going down while we are being lead to believe that there is a real recovery under way. Most people following this thread will most likely not agree with me, but I will not be convinced that there is a recovery under way until banks and other big financial firms can stand on their own and our citizens start going back to work. I am no economist, but I just don't see a lasting recovery taking shape until these things happen, our citizens need to get back to work so they can help the economy recover by being our natural American selves and start spending again. I'm not very optimistic about this if Cap and Trade gets passed because more jobs will be lost and we will have less money to put into the economy by spending.
Getting everyone into homes via ludicrously loose lending standards has been, unfortunately, a practice of many administrations dating back decades. It's such an easy and popular platform, promoting the "American Dream" of home ownership. So tons of people that couldn't afford a home were able to buy one anyway, and here we are.
I agree with you - but I also think it's true that this time around the whole business of giving mortgages and then selling them (or more to the point - the campanies that performed this job) is the REAL culprit.
The problem is, as lax as those standards were, many lenders weren't even following THEM. Income numbers were fudged - not just by the buyers, but by the lenders themselves - to ensure that a sale would go through. This happened because the lenders DIDN'T CARE if the buyers could really afford the home. They didn't care because they had no intention of keeping the loan. They made the loan with the intention of quickly selling it to someone else (who assumed "foolishly" that the lender had actually verified that the buyer could actually afford the payments). It's those initial lenders who are most to blame in my opinion. I know the rules were pretty lax, but often they didn't even bother to follow what little lender rules there were - so what did it matter whether or not the rules were too loose - they weren't following them anyway?
In addition, these lenders pushed appraisers to ensure that whatever the price was, they house would meet appraise at that price. Appraisers who failed to do that were simply given any more work. Consequently appraises tended to "meet" whatever the price was. This resulted in house prices being artificially inflated higher and higher.
To me, the whole process of making loans with sole intention of selling them right away to someone else (ie a "sucker") is the REAL problem. Yes - the legal lending standards were too loose. Yes - lenders were encouraged to make loans. But they were NOT told to IGNORE the rules. Those folks did that to make a quick and easy buck at someone else's expense. The fact is - the lender NEEDS to have some "skin in the game" to insure that the loans they are making will be GOOD loans - not some trash loan to immediately palm off on someone else.
If Obama found a cure for cancer, the right wing would be jumping up and down asking how on earth are we going to pay for all of these cancer survivors or they will say that it is just a temporary cure and they will all suddenly die in the next 6 months. This bash the President, no matter what he does, is now getting beyond dumb and decrying this piece of good news just proves how nothing is going to please the right wing nuts.
I seem to remember that was true with a certain former president, the one from 2001-2009. All he had to do was sneeze "wrong," and the attacks came.
He was bashed everyday, and for stupid things like how he pronounced the word "nuclear."
And even when the recession ended (in Nov., 2001) and the GDP was growing well, many people still thought the economy was in "poor" condition.
This just proved that nothing pleased the left wing nuts during Bush's presidency.
Just for the record, subprime lending has been permitted since state usury laws were thrown out and replaced by federal law in 1980. There is nothing sinister about subprime lending. In fact, it is restricting credit to prime markets that is destructive. What was highly problematic between 2002 and 2006 in particular was ABUSE of subprime and other markets by unregulated private mortgage brokers and so-called bank affiliates in cooperation with Wall Street investment banks for the purpose of stripping all the short-term profit off of real estate deals and then dumping all of the risk off into secondary mortgage markets, all while laissez-faire regulators sat on their hands and watched it all happen, secure in their pathetic knowledge that markets were wise enough to regulate themselves. We have not seen those kinds of old tricks again.
Yup - that was the REAL problem - abusing and ignoring the rules, laws and regulations.
I seem to remember that was true with a certain former president, the one from 2001-2009. All he had to do was sneeze "wrong," and the attacks came.
He was bashed everyday, and for stupid things like how he pronounced the word "nuclear."
And even when the recession ended (in Nov., 2001) and the GDP was growing well, many people still thought the economy was in "poor" condition.
This just proved that nothing pleased the left wing nuts during Bush's presidency.
That is quite true.
As for Obama, I did not blame him for economic malaise, so why would I praise him for the recovery?
Presidents do not control the economy. Can anyone get a grip on that simple fact? If they could, they would give us boom times year in and year out. Boom and bust cycles are a fact of life.
And the stimulus was anything but. It was a huge slab of pork spending bought on a Chinese credit card and added to an already strained fiscal regime (yes, by Bush).
I will give Obama credit for not messing with the Fed and for agreeing to emergency unemployment benefits (no, I was not a recipient. Yet at least). And that is really all he could or should do.
I seem to remember that was true with a certain former president, the one from 2001-2009. All he had to do was sneeze "wrong," and the attacks came.
He was bashed everyday, and for stupid things like how he pronounced the word "nuclear."
And even when the recession ended (in Nov., 2001) and the GDP was growing well, many people still thought the economy was in "poor" condition.
This just proved that nothing pleased the left wing nuts during Bush's presidency.
Well, Bush certainly took a beating and, let's be honest, when your finger's on the button capable of wiping out human civilization, it would be reassuring if you at least knew how to pronounce the word.
The difference is that people gave Bush a chance. He had a pretty successful first year getting legislation through, then 9/11 hit and we all rallied together.
But, over time, Bush's early legislation victories (such as No Child) proved to be catastrophes. The way he mishandled post-9/11 and Katrina and everything else made people realize the value of having a true leader.
None of you ever gave Obama a chance. You have been attacking him since before he was even president and tried to foist this economy on him the first day he took office to purge yourselves of past failures and create a scapegoat.
It's his now, and he has readily accepted that, but at least give him a chance to screw up before calling him the worst president in history. Historians at least waited until Bush was almost finished to rank him in the bottom tier.
Yes we did have that growth - largely built upon the housing bubble - which occured (in your words) 'mainly under the "guidance" of Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd').
So in other words - the 5-6 years of very good economic growth under Bush should apparently be credited to the "guidance" of Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd. I mean it WAS a bubble that pushed up the entire economy - and it WAS (according to you) Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd that created that situation (the bubble).
Ken
No, because the two tax cuts played a large part in the end of the recession and the good economy we had from 2002-2007.
Well, Bush certainly took a beating and, let's be honest, when your finger's on the button capable of wiping out human civilization, it would be reassuring if you at least knew how to pronounce the word.
The difference is that people gave Bush a chance. He had a pretty successful first year getting legislation through, then 9/11 hit and we all rallied together.
But, over time, Bush's early legislation victories (such as No Child) proved to be catastrophes. The way he mishandled post-9/11 and Katrina and everything else made people realize the value of having a true leader.
None of you ever gave Obama a chance. You have been attacking him since before he was even president and tried to foist this economy on him the first day he took office to purge yourselves of past failures and create a scapegoat.
It's his now, and he has readily accepted that, but at least give him a chance to screw up before calling him the worst president in history. Historians at least waited until Bush was almost finished to rank him in the bottom tier.
No, because the two tax cuts played a large part in the end of the recession and the good economy we had from 2002-2007.
That must be why those tax cuts kept the economy humming along when the housing bubble burst eh?
Face it - it was all built on a bubble - and when that bubble popped, it all came tumbling down.
Ken
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