Actually, Obama didn't fire her, the HUD director fired her in a knee jerk reaction to the edited video and incomplete story about it.
Clearly, things would have been different had there not been the economic problems starting before Obama was in office. The bailout itself is shrouded in scandal. The fact is, there would have been banks go under, but the overall stability of most banks turned out to be better than people were being led to believe. Was the actual bailout a necessary evil? Definitely there are people that feel that way and it was presented that way to the American public.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that anyone here was claiming racism. You have expressed, however, that all we are doing is pointing out the negatives of the administration.
Well, yeah, but things would have been different no matter who was elected, Obama or Bush. Given that one of them would have to face the economic problems when they were elected, the question is: Would Bush have done anything differently? Honestly, I'm guessing no. But whatever he may or may not have done AND the results/consequences of such actions are probably exploring the realms of "impossible-to-know".
If that's your conclusion from watching the bailout results, then I'm not sure you're seeing the whole picture. Yeah, it sucks to see those in the suits and at the top seemingly rewarded (although it happens all the time in "normal" times, execs getting golden parachutes during takeovers and such). But what if the banks failed? What happens to a) the "regular" employees and b) the assets of the bank, particular mortgages? There's probably more but those are the top two I can think of. With the bailout, people keep their jobs and thus DON'T add to the unemployment and people's homes are safe.
Question: Those who have it and enjoy or those that don't?
Isn't it too late to do anything about it now anyways? It's already done and signed. That's why at this point, it pretty much is a "wait and see".
I think you mean McCain. I don't recall Bush running in 2008.
No one is claiming that there wouldn't have been huge problems and a lot of people out of jobs. Mortgages would have been bought up by the banks that were more solvent. Money in banks if federally insured to a certain amount, so that would have hit tax money, but no more than the bailout did anyway. Had there been runs on banks, things could have gotten worse for more banks, so if you want to talk gloom and doom, there are scenarios there also.
Have what? Obamacare doesn't actually give anyone anything that I'm aware of. Health insurance premiums are going to go up, not down. Yes, there are going to be people with diabetes or other long-term illnesses that benefit and I'm all for that, but there are other ways to address that. Obama touted numbers like 45 million without insurance, but what he didn't say is that a huge percentage of this number was college students in good health who didn't feel like they needed insurance. There are certainly going to be some people who genuinely couldn't afford insurance and they will get subsidies to purchase insurance. This will also drive premiums up as a third-party payer issue. The fact that a small percentage of the population is in a better position than they were doesn't offset the fact that overall health care quality will likely be reduced based on what has happened in other countries and with other programs.
There are states talking nullification and there exists the smallest possibility of getting it repealed before it goes into effect. There has also been talk of not funding it from the Senate. I'm not saying I necessarily support any of these options, but it certainly isn't too late and next week's vote will be a pretty big indicator.
I just don't see what good alternative Obama or McCain would have had, if they had not done the bailout. Other banks buying up the mortgages? They weren't doing it during the crisis, I don't think they would have done it afterwards. And don't forget, it was also that huge giant insurance firm that was at risk and got the bailout - seeing how big it was, I don't think smaller insurance firms could "pick up the slack". And if it went out of business, a ton of people and places would be out of insurance also.
An argument to keep better regulators and to listen to the good ones watching for this kind of thing.
How huge?
I guess we'll see then.
When did they have a chance to do it "during the crisis"? The government stepped in immediately and didn't give a chance for things to happen naturally. Eventually, several banks were bought out by other, more solvent banks. The biggest problem is that there were International banks involved and bancrupcy laws aren't really clear in International situations.
Regulation doesn't always mitigate greed - it breeds corruption. Risk does a much better job of mitigating greed. The problems started because government got involved and changed the equation, reducing the amount of risk involved. This allowed greed to grow. Yes, increased regulation might have helped, but the better solution is to let the market do its job instead of trying to create artificial markets.
Honestly, I don't remember exact numbers, but it was something like 20% of the uninsured couldn't afford it. Around 10% were temporarily uninsured (between jobs) and of the rest, about half were college-age and the rest had sufficient incomes, but chose to spend their money elsewhere. They didn't specify whether the college kids could afford insurance, but they showed interviews and the typical response was that they could get very inexpensive catastrophic insurance, but they did think they needed it.
The "market" is a nice fantasy, but a lot of the money made in the mortgage and derivative markets was already taken out of the market as salaries and bonuses for performances that turned out to be false. That money is gone and the risk is less or non-existent for those people. Also the lessening of risk was the reduction or removal of regulation for banks and investment firms. Their capitalization was lowered and thus their risk was lowered.
I'm pretty sure the banks knew what was going on before the government. And since at the time they couldn't be sure that the government would bail them out (since the government didn't know about it), I would hope they were exploring their option on how to save their bank. Being bought by another would have been one of those options.EricBess said:
No, the problems started because the government DID NOT get involved when the derivative marketing and bundling of mortgages began. There was a whole series of articles on this in the Post some time ago. There was one head regulator who sounded warnings and thought this kind of trading should be regulated and was overruled by the other big financial heads at the time, Greenspan and the head of Treasury and a couple of others. So because this kind of trading went unregulated, it was unchecked and all sorts of tomfoolery occurred and brought about the financial crisis.
So this health insurance for all initiative doesn't provide for income levels, but just gives it to all if they don't currently have it?
Jump in anytimeMooseman said:
I have a friend that had a game store. Recently, business has been bad and he was forced to go out of business. As part of this, he started liquidating his assets, selling off games at reduced prices because they hadn't been selling at full price. In some cases, he still made money, just not the markup that would have been necessary to stay in business. In some cases, he ended up losing money. But in all cases, he didn't reduce the price at all until he had stated that he was going out of business.
We may have to agree to disagree here. I certainly agree that the government could have done more when that started happening that the fact that they didn't was an case of dropping the ball. However, I strongly disagree with you that this is where the problems started. The problems started well before that. The government has kept interest rates artificially low for a very long time now. They also encouraged (through incentives as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchasing such loans) loans that allowed people to get into homes with no money down and stated incomes. Since these were risky loans that the banks were encouraged to make, the bundling of mortgages started happening as a way of mitigating this risk.
I don't understand your question. My only point was the president has been throwing around a "45 million uninsured" figure as a reason we needed to push healthcare reform. Certainly there are people that cannot afford healthcare. I suppose he could have more accurately said that 8 million cannot afford it.
But the point is, no one wanted to buy the "bad" or "toxic" loans that were bringing the banks down.
We may well have to disagree
I'm not sure what you mean but "artificially low for a long time" and what exactly "artifically low" *is*, but interest rates were in the double digits in the 80's. The bundling of mortgages did NOT start happening as a way of mitagating risk, they started to make money. And it was all in the early 2000's; again, the series of articles detailed exactly when it began and by what company. Bundling high-risk loans with some low-risk loans to make it attractive was not done before then.Not at the prices they wanted to sell them. My point is that there is probably a price point where someone would have been willing to buy. Were the banks unwilling to take a loss?
Mitigating risk and making money are two sides of the same coin. If you get greedy, you risk complete failure. The question is, did they come up with the scheme and then decide they could make more risky loans? Or did they make the more risky loans because of government incentives and then come up with the scheme as a way to mitigate the risk of those risky loans? My understanding is that the risky loans came first.We may well have to disagree
The government had been pushing programs of low-income housing well before 2000. If more people are able to "afford" housing, then demand is going to cause housing prices to increase. Because housing prices are increasing, the risky loans didn't matter because by the time they came due, people had enough equity to refinance. That didn't make the loans any less risky. Saying that no money down and stated incomes before that time didn't have an adverse affect as proof that the loans weren't risky is like saying that parachuting isn't dangerous because people do it all the time without problems. Risky doesn't mean failure. The problem is that the government programs created a spiral where such loans appeared less and less risky all the time until the market finally hit a point where it couldn't continue to inflate and then it all started to crumble.
Perhaps. Or the government found out and realized they had to take action because no one was taking it at the acceptable price point and they were going to fail before then.
"Risky" loans have always been around, I'm not arguing that. But the schemes came about because the people took the existing risky loans, packaged them and sold them, and then said hey, we're making money, let's make more. The risky loan business exploded after that.
The program were available but banks weren't taking in anybody, they still did screening or their acceptance rate were still within "normal" parameters. Thus, demand was not substantially increasing and housing prices were not substantially increasing. Again, this only happened after the 2000's. Any chart on housing prices or loan acceptance rates will tell and show you this.
Define "acceptable".