Now we get to hear the Republicans defend Bankers (illegal, Pelosi, health care)

[kovert]

Originally Posted by whatyousay

As is reading comprehension.

I suppose you also believe the Dems had nothing to do with it?


YouTube - Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis

And in case you're too lazy to actually watch the video to the end, here is Clinton, in his own words blaming democrats for blocking proposed republican regulations of F & F.

YouTube - John McCain And Bill Clinton - Democrats Blocked Regulation Of Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac

You really need to do your homework because the man who was at the center of it all, The Maestro himself, Alan Greenspan admitted it was his ideology that was wrong. Broaden your mind and realize reality is not everything Glen Beck tells you.

Originally Posted by kovert

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And the Man Himself, Mr. Alan:
"The tough talk reflected a widening sense that some of Greenspan's apparent successes in managing the economy from 1987 to 2006 were in fact illusory, that they came at the cost of building the biggest credit bubble in world history."
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"He noted that the immense and largely unregulated business of spreading financial risk widely, through the use of exotic financial instruments called derivatives, had gotten out of control and had added to the havoc of today’s crisis. As far back as 1994, Mr. Greenspan staunchly and successfully opposed tougher regulation on derivatives.

Many Republican lawmakers on the oversight committee tried to blame the mortgage meltdown on the unchecked growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies that were placed in a government conservatorship last month. Republicans have argued that Democratic lawmakers blocked measures to reform the companies.

But Mr. Greenspan, who was first appointed by President Ronald Reagan, placed far more blame on the Wall Street companies that bundled subprime mortgages into pools and sold them as mortgage-backed securities. Global demand for the securities was so high, he said, that Wall Street companies pressured lenders to lower their standards and produce more “paper.”"

Greenspan in his own words.

I am already well aware of the cult of Beck's flagrant disregard for facts, but in this non-Fox based reality:

"The subprime boom was led by investment banks and mortgage brokers, not by government-sponsored enterprises."

[workingclasshero]

Originally Posted by kovert

And who gave them that blank check?

that would be the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED CONGRESS of 1992, and then clinton on 1995by hud chief Henry Cisneros, and again in 1998 under the second Hud chief andrew Coumo

In 1992, Congress ordered the two Federally chartered lending companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to increase their loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers. In 1995, seeking to save his department from elimination by the newly elected Republican-led Congress, Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros adopted a ''national homeownership strategy'' that eased requirements to qualify for Federal Housing Administration-insured loans and reduced closing costs by as much as $1,200 on those loans for first-time buyers.

Homeowners Record Is Set in Third Quarter - NYTimes.com
1997 NYT

...
...

POSTINGS: Higher Loan-to-Value Ratio; Fannie Mae Eases Refinancing Rules
By Mervyn Rothstein
Published: November 28, 1993

The Federal National Mortgage Association, the country's largest source of home mortgage funds, has revised its policy to make it easier for some homeowners to refinance their mortgages and take advantage of current low interest rates.

The change expands Fannie Mae's mortgage refinancing policy to include home loans with as high as a 95 percent loan-to-value ratio. Previously, refinancing required no more than a 90 percent loan-to-value ratio.

....
.....

Fannie Mae Seeks to Ease Home Buying
By KEITH BRADSHER,
Published: March 10, 1994
WASHINGTON, March 9— The organization that stands behind many of the nation's mortgages is taking broad steps to make home ownership easier for lower-income Americans, particularly recent immigrants and minorities, people involved in the effort said today.

Under the new rules, banks would have more flexibility in lending to people who already owe a considerable amount of money or who cannot afford a down payment equal to 20 percent of the price of a home, the people said. Tuesday Announcement

.....
WASHINGTON, March 9 1994(By Bloomberg Business News) -- The Federal Reserve loosened lending regulations today on bank holding companies by requiring fewer appraisals of property involved in real estate loans.

The rules exempt banks from conducting a real estate appraisal for loans of $250,000 or less, raising the threshold from the previous $100,000.

Appraisals on some loans are required by the 1989 Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, though Congress gave Federal banking agencies the power to set a threshold to exempt smaller loans from the requirements.

Three banking regulators -- the Fed, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency -- proposed raising the threshold to $250,000 last June. The Fed is the only agency so far to approve the proposal.

In its proposal, the Fed staff said raising the threshold would increase the availability of credit and ease the regulatory burden on banks without endangering the safety and soundness of the banking industry.

.....
.....


Big Losses and Bad Accounting Leave 'Subprime' Lenders Reeling
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Published: February 12, 1997
CHICAGO, Feb. 11— The business of lending money to the millions of Americans with tarnished credit ratings -- or none at all -- has always been a walk on capitalism's wild side.

''Subprime'' lending, as the business is known, is a volatile world of big risks, staggering profit potential and almost no barriers to entry. Its clients vary from swindlers with no intention of paying off their loans to hard-working immigrants and victims of personal tragedies like layoffs or debilitating illness. And the hardball tactics some lenders use to encourage borrowing or to collect on loans breed both lawsuits and criticism from consumer groups.

Until recently, though, Wall Street had been mesmerized by the rapid growth of the subprime sector and many investors seemed to have forgotten just how wild it could get. The rude reminder has come from a sudden rash of reports of crooked accounting, bankruptcy and unexpectedly high loan losses among several of the industry's prominent players.

In a business where the line between exploiting risk and drowning in it is thin, some players have gone ''too close to the edge,'' said William A. Brandt Jr., a corporate turnaround specialist, shortly after he was brought in late last month to stabilize the Mercury Finance Company in the wake of disclosures that its earnings reports had been falsified from 1993 on.
So far, the bad news has been heavily concentrated in the volatile auto-lending sector, but analysts say that investors are bound to be more cautious about the entire subprime world, at least for a while.

''It's going to have an effect on mortgages and credit cards,'' said Jewel Bickford, managing director of Rothschild Capital Markets in New York, which helps finance companies assemble packages of auto loans, mortgages, credit card receivables and other assets that are sold as securities to investors.

The effects, primarily price declines for existing securities not backed by insurance and tougher financing terms for new deals, could be short-lived if most companies continue to report the steep growth in revenues and earnings that first attracted investors. But experts say more bad news is inevitable.

''This industry is immature in so many respects,'' said Jeffrey C. Mack, who resigned as Olympic's chief executive last summer after disagreeing with the board's attempt, since abandoned, to sell the company. ''There weren't many independent companies in subprime lending prior to 1990 and now there are hundreds.''

The home loan business is now the most stable subprime market. Analysts say that anywhere from $50 billion to $120 billion in such loans were made last year, depending on how the sector is defined. The highest-risk customers are sometimes required to pay as much as 10 percent of the loan in up-front points. In cases where up-front fees are lower, the interest rate can exceed 14 percent, about twice the 30-year rate for a borrower with good credit.

''The mortgage business is growing rapidly because consumers are so loaded with credit card debt that they are taking out home loans to pay them off and consolidate their payments,'' said Darrell Hendrix, who follows the subprime markets for Duff & Phelps, a Chicago brokerage and debt-rating firm.

Analysts say the subprime mortgage markets look especially strong now because real estate prices are rising. In addition, though the size of loans in relation to home values is creeping up, most lenders still insist on making loans for far less than the assessed value of the house. By contrast, car loans are typically for more than the car's resale value.

But that has not stopped companies that make a lot of subprime mortgage loans, like the Contifinancial Corporation and Money Store, from moving into the subprime auto market.

Sometimes it seems as if only the imagination will limit how far high-risk lenders will go. Jayhawk has already ventured into financing cosmetic surgery. And, though skeptical analysts fretted that no one could repossess a nose job, Mercury had announced plans to follow suit before its bookkeeping scandal broke.


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blank check was writen long ago

[kovert]

Originally Posted by Blind Sniper

The Wall Street influence is not partial to one party or the other. This corruption comes in both red and blue. We need reform and regulation now! Not more red / blue bickering.

I agree and have made many posts and threads about the oligarchies that literally run the nation.

[momonkey]

Originally Posted by EinsteinsGhost

Who were the sponsors of the bill? And what provisions were forced into it by republicans like Phil Gramm? Personally, I believe, Clinton should have vetoed anything and everything along the lines. So, he is also responsible but largely because he listened to the republicans too much.

Let me ask couple of questions.
1. Do you think CFMA should not have passed? Why?
2. Do you think banking/financial industry needs reform today, with regulations that include overruling those changes?

Since Republicans controlled both houses, Democrats, whether they supported legislation or not were not likely to author it. This is much like the situation we have today with Democrats authoring everything coming out of Congress.

I think not regulating CDOs is an obvious problem and one that played a huge roll in the financial melt-down.

Yeah, Gramm's a tool, but he has a lot of friends on both sides of the isle. In fact, the compromise language that Clinton's WG negotiated had more Democrat support than Republican. See, Clinton wanted more CRA loans for all those ghetto houses that later became the toxic assets behind the worthless CDOs that were leveraged with other equally worthless CDOs.

ICKY PEOPLE: Phil Gramm, Bill Clinton Key Culprits in Subprime Meltdown


Of course Glass-Steigall should be reinstated and all the financial organizations that became "too big to fail" in its absence need to be broken up. No business can be too big to fail if we are to continue our present form of self-governance since these companies require their own special rules to protect them. Capisce?

OFHEO needs to be replaced with an effective regulator with power to control the GSEs.

And of course, no financial instrument can be allowed to circulate throughout the financial industry leveraging other assets and investments without being regulated.

[crazyfacedjenkins]

Goldman Sachs scum have been in the Treasury since god knows how long. Why do you people think it will be any different under Obama than Bush? If Obama wanted change, than why does he let these bankers into these high positions?

[EllenArlingtonPark]

Originally Posted by crazyfacedjenkins

Goldman Sachs scum have been in the Treasury since god knows how long. Why do you people think it will be any different under Obama than Bush? If Obama wanted change, than why does he let these bankers into these high positions?

Funny you say that, we were talking about that the other night. I think the conclusion we came to is "it takes a crook to catch a crook." Only the people who have worked on the inside understand how to snake through regulations and who to pay off at the SEC and Congress.

It is will an enlightening process to see who is working for who......
stay tuned.

[EllenArlingtonPark]

Originally Posted by whatyousay

You mean like the CEO's of Fannie and Freddie who got a blank check to rack up as much debt as possible? Or the fact that they were given multi-million dollar bonuses this past year by none other than the Obama administration.

I think we all agree that both parties had a hand in the Wall Street bailout. I think we all acknowledge the fact that the housing and mortgage crisis was because of the toxic legislation written by Phil Gramm. It was not solely his fault but the question is the ethics involved with the motives. Phil left public office and has probobly retired on the millions of dollars he made from the mortgage bankers.

It is true that FHA changed their ratios so more people could qualify for FHA loans. Your wrath against Fannie May and Freddie Mac is misdirected.

The true villians is this crisis are the fat cats that cooked it up and knew what the consequences would be, like Phil Gramm and Greenspan. Our President and Congressmen and Women rely on the opinions of people like them. They conspired to make lots of money and let the elected officials take the fall. There are other villians out there that had a hand in this and it will be interesting to see who they are. I suspect Paulson was up to his neck is this scheme, among others.

President Clinton got the Welfare Reform Act Passed and that was a huge piece of legislation, and it was passed about the time this first bill came into law.

ARE YOU NOT EAGER TO SEE WALL STREET'S CROOKS FEEL THE PAIN THAT WE ALL FEEL???

[UNC4Me]

Originally Posted by EllenArlingtonPark

ARE YOU NOT EAGER TO SEE WALL STREET'S CROOKS FEEL THE PAIN THAT WE ALL FEEL???

Yes, absolutely! If they broke the law they should pay the price. But, if they played by the rules (as legislated by our elected leaders), then unfortunately there's been no crime committed.

Do I think they were unethical? Yes. But, so were people who bought houses and took out loans when they knew they couldn't really afford them. Those folks are being cast as victims. Why does one get vilified when the other gets glorified?

Just wondering.

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by EllenArlingtonPark

Now that the House and Senate will start debating the reforms for Bankers, we will know who has been lining their pockets with the money of the unethical Bankers. What will they say to defend these lousy crooks?

I sure hope they find out who they are there to represent. I think there are at least a couple of dozen of them that have been on the Bankers gravy train for several decades.

This will be interesting.

The lobbyists are smart enough to give large contributions to BOTH political parties.

The voters (and posters here) are dumb enough to believe that THEIR party is materially different from the OTHER party.

[hnsq]

Criticizing an entire idustry because of the poor actions of a few select people is always an ignorant stance.