kimmy

It works fine. If the the Federal Reserve or fractional reserve banking caused the housing bubble, how come it happened in the 2000s and not 100 years earlier? On the first day of economics class, they show you a graph with a great big "X" in the middle. It's the most fundamental principle of a market system, and the banks messed with that graph by lending to everybody without regard for whether they could actually pay it back. Yes, Fannie and Freddie are not primary issuers of mortgages, they buy mortgages from primary issuers and "securitize" them. Big deal. The point still stands. They don't buy mortgages sight-unseen, and they had higher standards for what they bought than their private-label counterparts did. Source So why did the GSEs have such a dramatically lower default rate than the PLSs? Wars are more common since the advent of modern banking, therefore modern banking causes wars? Seems about as logical as saying wars are more common since the invention of electricity; electricity causes wars; ban electricity. It also seems like an anecdotal analysis, not one based on real information. The current "War in Afghanistan" really only qualified as a "war" in the historical sense for a few years (or less, perhaps); if the ongoing NATO presence in Afghanistan qualifies as a war, then European powers, particularly England and France, were at war continuously from the dark ages right up to the first half of the 20th century. Maybe it just seems like we're at war more often to you. There was a "cold war" between the USA and the USSR from the 1950s to the 1990s? Couldn't one equally say that there was a cold war between between England and France from the 1500s to the 1900s? Is war necessary to our prosperity? I don't think so. It does seem that continually increasing consumption is necessary to our prosperity, and a war consumes more than just about anything else. -k

Bush-Cheney linked to this article earlier to support his view that there wouldn't be much in the way of prosecution to come from the financial crisis. To some extent, he's right. The article lists many examples of situations where the banks did things that were repulsive but not really illegal. However, the article goes on to point out that just because prosecution isn't successful or even possible in most cases, that doesn't mean people should just shrug their shoulders: Lessons were learned, public anger led to political action, reforms were made. Some people here want to skip the part where people get angry and demand reform. -k

"Greater powers". Yes, when I think of the "Great Powers" that control our world, I think of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Opus Dei, the Bilderberg group, and of course, ACORN. A group so powerful that it doesn't even exist anymore. A group so influential that its goals of advocating for the poor, that the gap between the rich and poor in America has never been greater. Yes, ACORN is the real puppetmaster pulling the strings. The idea that the housing bubble was created by "social justice" is wrong, no matter how many times or how many ways you repeat it. Fractional reserve banking works fine when lenders are cautious about who they lend to. Fannie and Freddie were ordered to start buying "troubled assets" from the banks, in what was essentially a pre-TARP TARP. Subprime mortgages issued by the GSEs defaulted at a rate equal to the national average. Subprime mortgages issued by the PLSs defaulted at three times the national average. It's not hard to figure out who was doing proper due diligence and who was rubber stamping "anybody who could fog a mirror". It's not me they have to worry about. I don't even know where to start with that. Wars existed a long time before anybody came up with fractional reserve banking. -k

I read that the Soviets used about 1000 female snipers in WWII; they're believed to have killed over 12,000 Germans. Not yet. Do I need to file that first? Sounds nice. Blued or stainless? Barrel length? Does it have the checkered walnut grip, or the rubber grip that looks like a dildo? $200 seems pretty high for a plain M91/30. Last year when I was taking my CFSC I was seeing them for $120. -k

It's not an image of reality, it's someone's expression of their ideas. It's not any more or less "real" or "fake" than an editorial. Telling the truth is good enough if one aspires to be a journalist. A politician must also offer a plan. And on both of these fronts, the minions of Team Elephant have failed badly. -k

I now have a TT-33 on order, though who knows when the transfer will get approved. I ordered a Russian one, partly because it was $100 less than the Polish one, and partly because it came with an extra magazine plus all the authentic accessories. No, I still don't have a 91/30. Every online store I'm aware of is either completely sold out, or has only expensive "collector models" or sniper models left. Westrifle will allegedly have new stock in before too long. While I was shopping for a 91/30, I stumbled upon the picture of Red Army sniper Roza Shanina, who is now in my profile picture. She had 54 confirmed kills, including 12 German snipers, and plus knows how many more actual kills. She died shielding her commanding officer from an explosion. All before her 21st birthday. She was a true patriot and hero of the people! After I updated my profile pic, DogOnPorch sent me links to information about Lidya Litvyak, a Soviet ace fighter pilot from WWII, as well as the Night Witches, a squadron of female Soviet pilots who carried out daring bombing raids flying junky obsolete biplanes. Fascinating stories. -k

Except for the 2002 Oscars. -k

Is your opinion that no crimes were committed, or just that nobody is actually going to be punished for anything? They're not actually the same thing. Regardless, as these lawsuits in progress make their way through the courts, evidence obtained through subpoena will become public knowledge, like the debate between Morgan Stanley brokers about whether to call their CDO "Subprime Meltdown", "Nuclear Holocaust", or "Shitbag". It will become harder for clowns in politics and the media to spin the story that they're trying to sell right now. It will be harder for the banks and their allies to claim that they need less regulations, not more. And ultimately, whether or not they're held responsible in a legal sense, they'll be shown to have been responsible in a moral sense, and that will have political ramifications. -k

The Bible is true, except for when parts are proven to be false, at which point they become "metaphorical". -k

So, just to recap, Betsy started this thread to complain that some old crank who thinks school prayer would have stopped a school shooting wasn't given a fair shake by the media, and so we're talking about the merits of Richard Dawkins' research? Makes sense. -k

Imagine if Christians fought against people who work on the Sabbath with the same ferocity they fight against homosexuality. -k

Please don't cut-and-paste whole articles from newspapers. -k

Yes, I recall seeing the CEO of Lehman Bros telling a committee how bad he felt that his company was gone; this guy who'd collected something in the neighborhood of $100 million of performance bonuses in the previous 3 years was now out of work. Tough times, bro. I know those feels. They hired a fox to guard the hen-house. And so did Obama later on. They can hire somebody who doesn't understand the game, or they can hire somebody who understands the game and has a vested interest in making sure the game doesn't change. Of course Paulson knew what was up, of course he assured everybody the regulators were doing a bang-up job, and of course he went around trying to raise support for the bailout as soon as the stuff hit the fan. Why would this surprise anybody? Lots of people smoke pot, and traffic is usually moving faster than the posted limits, so there shouldn't be any rules on what the banks can do? I'm not quite sure that follow, Pliny. None of this has any bearing on the subject under discussion. This is just generalized libertarian rambling. The regulators' "preference" for fines and settlements over criminal trial is because they don't have the budget to take these cases to trial, and because they would likely only be able to obtain convictions against the lower tier employees. Fraud, as we discussed earlier. You can talk all you want about "signals", but there was never a signal sent that banks ought to approve mortgage applications from waitresses claiming to earn $12,000 a month. Saying that banks must treat qualified applicants in urban areas the same as they treat qualified applicants in the suburbs wasn't a signal to disregard their own due diligence process. Saying that banks must treat qualified applicants with swarthy skin-tones the same as they treat qualified applicants who are paler wasn't a signal to disregard their own due diligence process. Fractional reserve banking has been around a long time and is used in a lot of countries. It works well as long as the fundamental principle is observed: lend money to people who can repay it. Yes, hiding unwisely created credit was the problem. And it was their decision to approve mortgages for "anybody who can fog a mirror", as one exec put it, that unwisely created that credit. Wall Street invented a means by which it no longer mattered to them if the loans they issued were repaid, and in fact they could make more money from risky lending than from safe lending. That's why they approved all those junk mortgages: they didn't lose money if the mortgage defaulted. Such a system should not have been allowed to exist. -k

Not at all. Nobody's been held accountable. There's lots of blame to go around, and lots has. But no amount of pointing your fingers and shouting "but lookit those guys!" will obscure who the main culprits are. It's very mainstream. Public anger at the failure of regulators to do their jobs is quite high. Elizabeth Warren is being treated like a folk-hero for simply asking some regulators "when was the last time you took a bank to court?" last week. People have had it with excuses. However, that doesn't get the bankers off the hook. If crime is out of control in your town, you might have a legitimate complaint about the police force, but the guys who are breaking into houses are still the criminals. When they go to court, "well the police never catch anybody here" isn't going to fly as a legal defense. And I have to again point out that this line of argument-- that the banks needed the regulators to keep them from getting themselves into a financial disaster-- flies in the face of what people like you and like Marco Rubio always tell us. "Less regulation is better!" "Businessmen know how to run their own businesses!" If Nancy Pelosi is saying that, it just means she's right for once. Nancy told a half-truth... what's you're point? Are you telling me you're justified in ignoring any facts that are presented to you because you assume that everything else is a half-truth too? I tell you that only a small fraction of sub-prime mortgages were mandated by CRA, and I tell you that the banks deliberately rubber-stamped applications they knew were unacceptable, and your response is ... well, that stuff sounds pretty bad but there's more to the story that will exonerate the banks? And why wasn't saying "No" an option? As I keep pointing out, the vast majority of subprime mortgages were not mandated by any government quota or program. The vast majority were completely voluntary by the banks. They could have just said "no". Why wasn't that an option? They *wanted* those insane mortgage applications. They approved mortgages that their own due diligence contractors put in the Reject bin. They told their due diligence people to approve everything. Why? They invented a way to spin straw into gold, and they needed all the straw they could get. That's why. Being bitter about it isn't the issue. The issue is confronting the false information being spread around by Marco Rubio, Fox News, and Shady and some of the others around here. I can't do much to confront Marco Rubio or Fox News, but at least I can confront Shady and others who are bringing that fiction to this message board. -k

If you're comparing donating to politicians to investing in Vegas mob projects, I think that kind of speaks for itself, Mr Vice President. -k

But why is anonymity an important part of that? If a candidate receives a big donation from the coal lobby or the gun lobby or the unions or whoever is giving them money, let them wear that endorsement as a badge of honor. -k

A large donation, period, carries the assumption of an expectation of favors. It's just a question of whether the public is entitle to know who these favors are owed to. Because you can be sure that the people receiving these large "anonymous" donations know who they came from, and what strings are attached. -k

No, Pliny. All the facts are on my side. You've offered no facts at all to support your position; all you've offered is excuses why you think you should ignore the facts, like your anecdote about Nancy Pelosi, which doesn't actually have anything to do with this at all. Or you've offered attempts to make excuses for the banks' behavior. Your latest effort-- the banks did what they did because regulators didn't stop them-- amounts to a flat out admission that business needs regulation; I expect you'll be kicked out of the Junior Libertarians for daring to suggest such a thing. I'm not getting my information from Nancy Pelosi, or any other politician. I'm getting it from journalists and academics who have actually studied this issue and thoroughly debunked the idea that CRA cause the subprime crisis. And from the whistleblowers who've come forward to say that they were told to rubber-stamp every application that was shuffled across their desk. And from the evidence obtained through subpoena for the lawsuits that are now reaching the courts. You're the one wallowing in crap. You believe Marco Rubio or Rush Rimjob or Breitbart or the chumps at Fox News when they say that the housing bubble was caused by the CRA. That's been thoroughly debunked, but Rubio and Rush and Breitbart and Fox keep repeating it anyway, because they know their preaching to an audience that's ignorant enough to believe it-- not to point fingers at anybody in particular. -k

I don't get why people who like Windows 7 would have a problem with Windows 8. If you ignore the "Metro" functionality, it's the same operating system. And it's not hard to get your PC to boot straight to desktop and ignore the "Metro" functionality. I have no complaints at all about Windows 8. In this context, a "creator" is anybody who's doing anything productive, and a "consumer" is anybody who is doing something passive. A lot of time spent on the computer is passive-- watching videos, browsing web-pages, whatever-- and a touch/tablet interface is fine for that. But almost all of us become "creators" at times. Whether you're doing your taxes or finances on a spreadsheet, or writing a term-paper or your memoirs, or designing a program or a web-page or doing CAD or graphics or video editing... touchscreen interfaces suck at all of these activities. I write; I would never use a touchscreen keyboard for doing word-processing. I can't imagine what kind of masochist might consider doing a spreadsheet on a table. Tablets might be the way of the future... but not for people who use their computers for anything productive. That includes almost everybody who works at a desk. -k

Looks pretty reasonable. -k

The plausibility of a zombie epidemic isn't the important part, it's the ability to respond quickly to new or unexpected situations. A zombie invasion might have a number of factors that could be shared by some other new epidemic-- possibly things like an unexpected transmission vector, the need to quarantine large number of uncooperative victims, the need to distribute an immunization or antidote that is not widely available. The zombie aspect of it might be fanciful, but the exercise itself would still incorporate factors that could be applicable to more realistic situations. And it would challenge the participants to adapt to unexpected situations, which is probably the most important aspect of the whole thing. As for the exchange between Mr Martin and Mr Baird, I assure you that if the zombies come to my little corner of this great land, I am ready to stand against them. I hope all of you can say the same! -k

If you or I break get caught red-handed breaking regulations, we can anticipate that the law will deal with us accordingly. That's a load of crap. Fascists didn't pick winners and losers. Regulations aren't preventing small banks from providing competition to big banks. This is also false. First off, the derivatives market that was a major component of the financial crisis was completely unregulated. Second, removal of important regulations in the late 1990s and early 2000s was an important factor in the financial crisis. Third, the banks showed an utter disregard for regulations and laws that did exist. Fourth, regulations that did exist were not enforced adequately. And fifth, even when regulators did on occasion step in to do their job, the penalties they imposed were trivial and the corrective actions they imposed were laughable. So no, banks are not the most heavily regulated industry in the US. In fact, the banking crisis is an example of what business would do if they were given free reign to create the libertarian utopia you guys dream of, and the result is not pretty. The market deserves all the blame their getting, and more. And blaming the CRA for the housing bubble is big fat 100% fail. We've stomped down Shady dozens of times for repeating this flat-out falsehood over and over. Did he appoint you to keep promoting it while he's in the cooler or something? -k

I'm not trying to divide and conquer anything. The division is between Americans who continue to swallow the BS being promoted by the banks and their political allies, and Americans who no longer accept that BS. I am cheerleading for the good-guys from the sidelines. But at this point you're just trolling for attention here. -k