kimmy

Yes they would have, because they allowed the bankers to create the complicated financial structure by which they were able to pass the risk along to others. The banks were willing to take reckless risks because they had "no skin in the game". That's a structural problem that can only lead to bad results. So why were the banks telling their own due-diligence people to rubber stamp anything and everything that crossed their desks? Cite a specific piece of legislation, please. You're repeating that lie for about the hundredth time. And for about the hundredth time, the portion of sub-prime mortgages that resulted from government requirements was a small fraction of the sub-prime mortgages, so your attempt to blame government is a big fat failure. -k

Your argument is bad, and you should feel bad. You have used a lot of words to say that the banks saw a business opportunity, and took it. Good for them. Nothing illegal or immoral about that. You have used a lot of words to say "life is risky". If bankers had really understood what was going on, they would have realized that their scam would implode if fund managers stopped buying MBSs. And it appears that some did. There were quite a few bank execs who took their performance bonuses and cashed in their stocks and got out of Dodge before sundown. This is a valid criticism of the government and regulators, but it is not a justification or an excuse for the behavior of the bankers. And the whole premise that the banks were failed by regulators or government flies in the face of the "business knows best" philosophy that your type always flogs. And this is just ridiculous. On the one hand you point out that the government did nothing, and in the very next breath you say that if the banks were unfettered by regulation none of this would have happened. That's laughable. The derivatives market that was the instrument by which the banks "hedged themselves against loss", as you put it, was completely unregulated. The stuff they did was exactly what they would do if they were unfettered by regulations, because there were no regulations on derivatives. They were free to do whatever they wanted, and they did, and the result was an unmitigated disaster. And you still didn't get to the part where they disregarded their own due-diligence research so that they could issue more mortgages. And you still didn't get to the part where these crap mortgages were willfully misrepresented to investors as "AAA" investments. -k

I should just need to rack it after each shot, right? As in it should work basically like a bolt-action? It also has a last-shot hold-open, which should be good enough for the range officer. It's not as handy as the last-shot hold-open on my battle rifles though, because with those when I've loaded it I can just pull the bolt back and it'll chamber a round right away. Whereas with the Model 60, it holds open, then you load it, then you have to press the Bolt Close button which closes the bolt but doesn't chamber a round so you have to rack it anyway. -k

Headline: "Bible Thumper Claims Prayer Would Have Stopped School Massacre; Recites Bad Poetry". What exactly is newsworthy about it? Bible thumpers have been telling us that prayer in schools would have prevented Sandy Hook since the day it happened. Hey, if prayer in schools would prevent school shootings, maybe prayer in churches would prevent child molestation! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNXxDLhGpO0 -k

Soon-to-be Persecuted Christian Bob Grisham: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58mAWp2S_Gs -k

Sounds terrific! -k

Sounds like the "No True Scotsman" story to me. That's true. But many, probably most, atheists are also humanists. Not true at all. There have been Christian celebrities and Christian athletes and Christian musicians and Christian video games trying to reach younger people for a long time. It's not that Christians weren't aware of the possibility of using new media to reach young people before now, it's just that Christians aren't very good at it. The new Bible Beagle app isn't competing against Muslim Mouse and Atheist Armadillo. Bible Beagle is going to be competing against Angry Birds, and the Angry Birds are going to win. -k

It can shoot shorts, but the manual recommends against using them because they might not feed properly. I suspect for the reason you mention. It does indeed have that feature. What's the benefit? When would somebody want to do that? -k

A 12-year low for Fox is still miles ahead of everybody else, apparently. Interesting factoid: The average Fox viewer is 65 years old. The other cable news networks have old audiences too. CNN-- 63. MSNBC-- 59. I suspect that younger people tend to get their news from other sources and only watch the news networks for coverage of special events. -k

14 shot tube magazine-- more than 14 if I used 22 short. I'm looking forward to using it to fight the zombie milk-jug apocalypse. Won't be this weekend, though, as my jet-setting lifestyle has once again called me out of town. -k

Yeah, I wouldn't give the mooks at NRA any money even if I was in the US. And Chuck Norris is a Christian Dominionist theofascist and I'll probably use his "Trigger the Vote!" poster as target practice. -k

At this point you're just making stuff up. They absolutely wanted to lend money to high risk people. They aggressively pursued high risk people. They were so excited about lending money to high risk people that they ignored their own due diligence investigators to make it happen. It wasn't government policies that made that happen, it was their own policies. That policy was to give a mortgage to "Anybody who can fog a mirror," as a former Countrywide employee put it. Once again you ignore the fact that only a small fraction of the sub-prime mortgages that were issued were a result of any government rules or quotas. The overwhelming majority of them were not. And none of that explains why these companies turned their due diligence process into a rubber stamp. And none of it explains why Moody's and Fitch and Standard & Poors were giving this crap AAA credit ratings. And it's these last two issues where there ought to be fraud charges occurring. -k

I will be ready for them, now that I have my brand new... ...Marlin Model 60SS! The laminate is extremely nice and very attractive. The stainless steel barrel is surprisingly thick, like some of those heavy-barrel or "target" rifles around. It's a very nice size and weight. It's actually just a bit smaller than my SKS in both length and weight, which is fine. I find it very pointable and easy to handle. I see no issues with fit and finish, other than that the screws that hold the receiver in the stock were loose when I unboxed it (not a problem, since I disassembled the whole thing anyway.) I like everything about it, except that the trigger group isn't metal, it's synthetic. Not sure why they did that, other than to save a few bucks. I don't think the durability will be an issue, but it detracts from what otherwise seems like a high-quality product. I operated the action with the stock removed just so I could see how it works. It's a simple and elegant mechanism, just like my Soviet guns. Unlike the Soviet guns, I think there's a couple of parts that I anticipate will wear out eventually. The extractor mechanism is just a pair of metal clips that grab the rim from each side and I could see those wearing down eventually, whereas the corresponding mechanism in my Russian rifles is made of heavy machined-steel parts that should last forever. This is the third semi-automatic action I've been able to study and play with, and I think I could probably design my own. The tubular magazine is kind of nice. I made some "speed loaders" with some drinking straws I got at Taco Time. Instead of sliding the tube back part way and using the slot, I'll just take it out completely and drop a straw-full of bullets in. This is the first "new" gun I've purchased, and aside from the rifle itself, the box also came with: -a safety lock (a super-effective design that basically puts a thick metal bar right into the ejector port) -a manual -an NRA membership application ($10 off. Membership has benefits, like an insurance plan, discounts at hotels and motels, and if I BUY! NOW! I also get an official NRA Bullet Pen, a ballpoint pen made out of .308 cartridge casings. ) -and a "Trigger The Vote!" poster featuring Chuck Norris, who is here to remind me that a gun isn't enough to defend my rights... I need to register to vote. Thanks, Chuck, but no need to worry. -k

How can you lie to the banks? They can access your financial history with a few phone calls. When you apply for a mortgage, you sign a clause giving them permission to run any checks they need to verify the information you've provided. The reason that so many people were able to "lie to the banks" is that the banks *wanted* to be lied to. The "due diligence" the banks applied was a joke. One of the highlights of "The Untouchables" was interviews with due diligence contractors who were employed by banks to review mortgages they were buying from outfits like Countrywide. The due diligence contractors were flown in to a city, put in a hotel conference room to review box fulls of mortgage applications, and they'd work til late in the evening at it. They described a party atmosphere. And the supervisor would get a phone call the next day that said "we notice that you're rejecting quite a few applications. Please review these new guidelines and have another look at the applications you've rejected." And the next day he'd get another phone call that went "we notice you've still rejected some applications. Are you sure these applications don't meet our new guidelines?" And the next day the phone call would be "look, just approve the damned applications." So one of the due diligence contractors gave this example where somebody started laughing and said "Hey, I've got one here from a waitress who says she's earning $12,000 a month!" and everybody laughs their asses off and the supervisor says "Sounds legit to me!" and that mortgage got approved. And a few minutes later somebody else would come up with a knee-slapper and they'd all laugh their asses off, and that mortgage got approved too. They knew people were lying, and they were told to approve the mortgages anyway. Because if you've invented a way to spin straw into gold, you're gonna need a lot of straw. What risk? It wasn't their money they were playing with! They invented a way to pass the risk on to other people. State specifically where this happened. A guy lying on his mortgage application doesn't destroy the economy. Tens of thousands of guys lying on mortgage applications doesn't destroy the economy either, if the banks don't approve the mortgages. The banks approving crap mortgages in vast numbers is where the fault lies. -k

Bonam, you may know how to make an ion drive out of a wrist-watch and an aspirin, but you probably don't know what assets you have money invested in unless the only investments you have are stocks that you selected yourself. Nobody walks into a bank and says "hi, I'd like to buy a CDO and an MBS, please!" If you're like me (and I suspect I'm pretty typical in this) you got to your bank once or twice a year and talk to your banker about your RRSP contributions, and you do a questionnaire to identify your investment objectives, and then based on that your banker gives you some recommendations that fit into general headings-- "steady growth", "aggressive growth", "diversified investments", and so on. And you're buying into a big pool of assets that will generate returns for you, and these assets are run by capable professionals who do the due diligence and research for you, because it's a full time job that most of us don't have the time or the knowledge to do competently. So I talk with my banker and we decide to put 40% of my contributions into SteadyFund, 40% of my contributions into ExplosiveFund, and 20% into FunFund, and each month the bank takes some of my paycheck and buys shares of those funds. And they send me a quarterly update with graphs and pie-charts telling me how things are going. And things go along fine for a couple of years, but then I'm looking over my update and I notice that ExplosiveFund is generating negative returns on my investment! ExplosiveFund is losing money. But I've been assured that their aggressive growth strategy can be risky, so I give it some time, but more quarters go by and they're still losing money. And I go to my banker and say "ExplosiveFund sucks! I don't want to buy anymore!" And so we adjust my contributions so that 60% goes into SteadyFund and 40% goes into FunFund, and I'm not buying ExplosiveFund anymore. I'll live. My RRSP contributions generated less return than I wanted for a couple of years, but for me it's not the end of the world. Meanwhile, Steve, the guy who runs ExplosiveFund, is pretty upset. His fund has been struggling and he's losing customers. He's been investing in CDOs and MBSs, and they've worked well in the past, but now it's 2006 and the CDOs and MBSs are really hurting his fund's value. Steve and his staff have been analyzing the US housing market, and they've concluded that things are going to get worse before they get better. So not only is Steve not buying anymore CDOs for his fund, he's also trying to unload the ones he already has. Steve and ExplosiveFund take a hit on this, but luckily for them, CDOs and MBSs aren't the only assets in the fund, and they'll bounce back. But you know who *is* screwed? The investment banks that are holding all of these CDOs and MBS products that, suddenly, nobody wants to buy from them. They've bought billions of dollars of mortgages from companies like Countrywide, and they've been planning to sell them to fund managers like Steve, but Steve no longer wants to buy those products because they're tanking. This is extremely bad for these banks. They have billions of dollars tied up in assets that are rapidly becoming *worthless*. So what did they do? They got the government to buy these "Troubled Assets" from them. -k

Ok, this is ridiculous. Why didn't the people who were lending the money say "no" to people who wanted mortgages they couldn't afford? Why didn't the people who were lending the money say "no" to people who wanted mortgages they couldn't afford? Why didn't the people who were lending the money say "no" to people who wanted mortgages they couldn't afford? You guys (collectively--- Pliny and Shady included...) apparently believe that the answer to that question is that the government forced them to to comply with quotas. But only a small fraction of subprime mortgages were a result of those requirements. The truth is, they lent these mortgages because they wanted to. It was profitable. It was so profitable that they were advertising heavily to convince people who couldn't afford mortgages to come to their offices and sign up for mortgages they couldn't afford. They *wanted* those "entitled idiots" to come apply for mortgages. They didn't *care* that those "entitled idiots" were poor risks. How can that be? If a hobo asks you for $20 and promises to pay you back with $5 interest, who is to blame when you don't get your $25? You're asking us to believe that the poor financial decision was 50% yours and 50% the hobo's. Wrong. The hobo made a great financial decision! But now imagine a situation where you know a guy who is willing to buy hobo promises from you at $24. You sell it to him, right? A guaranteed $24 is better than an iffy $25. This is such a great arrangement that you decide to go back to Hobotown and lend money full time. Soon Hobotown is full of happy hobos, and you have $24 in cash in your pocket for each happy hobo. What about the guy who is buying those hobo promises? What's in it for him? Well, he's selling them too. Each time he gets 100 hobo promises, he puts them in a package called a "Credit Debt Obligation", and sells it for $3000. He's happy too. He's hoping you can bring in a hell of a lot more hobo promises. So who is buying all these hobo promises? Who ends up holding the bag when these hobos don't pay up? By the time the hobo promises find their eventual owners, they're part of a portfolio of assets that includes lots of other things, sold to people who don't even know that some portion of the financial investments they're making is made up of loans that the loan originators know perfectly well are unlikely to get paid back. And the end holder of these hobo promises might not even notice what a crappy return the hobo portion of his portfolio has provided, because his portfolio is made up of big composite financial products that are so complex that he doesn't even know that some portion of it is made up of hobo loans that are likely to fail. Now, imagine that the hobos are home buyers, and you are Countrywide Mortgages, and your friend who buys your hobo loans is Bear Stearns, and the suckers who are buying the end financial products are me and Argus and everybody else who puts money into their RRSPs. -k

This dude's case falls apart in the very first paragraph with these nuggets of misinformation: "When someone gets a mortgage from a bank or mortgage broker, that lender can hold the mortgage, but more often sells it to a GSE." * he was correct, right up to the last 3 words. "Today, Fannie and Freddie alone either own or guarantee roughly more than half of the nation’s outstanding mortgage total (the ratio would be higher if not for estimated private arrangements)." * that is true today, and it was true in 2000, but it was NOT true during the housing crisis. During the early 2000s, when the bubble was forming, private securitizers were buying mortgages so quickly that the ratio of mortgages held by Fannie and Freddie plunged from half to less than 1/4. Trying to pin the bubble on Fannie and Freddie is dishonest. Your source, whoever he is, is omitting crucial pieces of information to support a false narrative. -k

Sadly, wasn't able to get out and slaughter milk-bottles yesterday. Real life intruded. -k

Is that the new "Complete Nonsense ™"? If you're going to say something like that, at least let us know which parts you object to. The ones who need to wake up and smell the roses are the ones who still cling to this idea that "it's not the banks fault! the government made them do it!" -k

Perhaps the idea that black people are descendents of Ham is a touchy subject because the "curse of Ham" theory has been used as a justification for slavery. The idea that black skin was inflicted on Ham's descendants as a punishment is in itself incredibly offensive; the idea that the Bible itself endorses the enslavement of black skinned people as a result of this ancient curse is doubly so. If people had concluded that white people were the descendents of the bad son and were doomed to eternal servitude as a result, I think white people would be quite up in arms as well. -k

See, this is exactly what I'm confused about. Nothing in there seems to indicate that the curse involved "blackness", and nothing really indicates black people as a group are descendents of Ham at all. Unless there's more elsewhere? Also, the whole story is stupid. If Noah was pissed at Ham, why did he curse Caanan? Why just Caanan when Ham had 3 other sons? How does that make any sense? I can only assume that Caanan's reaction when learning of this curse bestowed upon him was "Me? WTF? What did I do?!" -k

Sharkman's response indicated that he thinks it is perfectly normal for a Bible class to be teaching students that black people are the descendents of Noah's cursed son. Once again, I'm curious to know if that view is officially supported in the Bible (in which case Sharkman is correct) or if it's an interpretation of the Noah story that's not specified in the Bible (in which case Sharkman is incorrect.) -k

Well, from Japheth, according to Texas Public Schools. I'm just curious to know if these theories of racial origins are actually stated in the Bible or if it's an interpretation that has been added more recently to support racism and slavery. -k

This video should be mandatory viewing for people during the CFSC. Telling people "if your gun misfires, point it someplace safe and wait 60 seconds because the bullet might still detonate" but nothing makes the point quite like seeing a guy almost get his head blown off by a delayed detonation. -k

So does the Bible actually teach that black people are descendents of Ham, or is that an interpretation that's been added since then? (Honest question.) -k