Yup. Won't be much longer now. The great depression is right around the corner. Joe bitches about how the media is causing everyone to get worried so now there are bank runs. Well Joe, the truth is that there is not enough money for everyone to have their retirement funds, so it's only natural that they want to get their money out. Wouldn't you be pissed if you worked all your life and now you have to work even longer as the Walmart greeter just to make it? Another big bank just failed, obviously there's a big fucking problem out there. You say "waaahh, the democrats are conspiring to blame the republicans..." They're all at fault, every last one of them is one type of shithead or another. Things can't and never will go back to the way they were. Some want them to and are living in a fools paradise. Others (in elective office) are more concerned about elections than the health of the nation. And still a few others are hoping to assist in destroying America and making as much money for themselves and friends as they possibly can. Oh well though, I wonder if Barry has anything for chronic nostalgia...
Try this simply take the partisanship part completly away. There is not majority or minoritry. There is no Democrat or Republican. There is simply a Senate, a house of Congressional Representatives, and a President. Now focus entirely on policy that caused problems that was then bandaided by more policy. Divide all the policy into two catagories. Socialist policy. Capitalist policy. I strongly recomend you stop the partisan finger pointing and instead right hear and right now before the "Spin Meisters" brainwash you to point the blame at the political ideology that failed you. I will key you in to the next favorite catch phrase of the next year. "Regulation" The spin meisters will want to propose more regulation of the banking industry and suggest that de-regulation of any kind that can be identified over the last decade is the root of the problem. But before they do I would like to remind you that "Community Reinvestment Act" is REGULATION. Assault on the mortgage lenders: in the name of racial justice, the Clintonites want the power to decide who gets a home of his own - efforts to impose regulations on banks to make loans even if applicants are not creditworthy National Review, Dec 27, 1993 by Robert Stowe England QUIETLY, behind the scenes, the Clinton Administration is preparing for the biggest regulatory crackdown of recent years. Attorney General Janet Reno is linking up with banking regulators and with HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros to end the supposed epidemic of discrimination against minorities in making home loans. The implications for society at large are ominous. Here, as in affirmative-action efforts in hiring, college admissions, and the drawing of voting districts, the Washington establishment is obsessed with "disparate impact," which it equates with racism. In the mortgage-lending area, there is ample evidence of disparate impact to feed this obsession. Data collected by the Federal Government reveal that in 1992, while 16 per cent of white applicants for mortgage loans were rejected, 36 per cent of black applicants were rejected. But does disparate impact indicate racism? According to Lawrence Lindsey, the Federal Reserve governor who oversees the collection of mortgagelending data, even the celebrated Boston Fed study that inspired this crusade found that factors other than race--such as one's credit record and whether one has sufficient income to meet the payments--are enough to account for nearly all the difference in rejection rates. Furthermore, a different analysis of the data in the Boston Fed study by David Horne, an economist with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, finds no evidence of a pattern of discrimination. In any case, Census data show whites and blacks, taken as groups, have similar default rates. If discrimination were in fact occurring--that is, if banks were applying a higher standard to blacks than to whites--you would expect blacks to have a lower default rate. The essentially irrational assumption underlying the notion that there is widespread discrimination in mortgage lending seems to be that lenders are willing to give up good profits in order to feed their subtle but thorough-going racism. Says Senator Don Riegle (D., Mich.), "They talk about how the free-enterprise system is supposed to work, but it's sophistry, as we all know." Senator Riegle (one of the Keating Five who plans to retire rather than run for re-election next year) has made a holy crusade of mortgage-lending discrimination since he took over the Senate Banking Committee in 1989. Senator Riegle has found enthusiastic allies in the Clinton Administration, particularly Attorney General Reno, Secretary Cisneros, and Comptroller of the Currency Eugene Ludwig. As Ludwig told the Senate Banking Committee, "We have to use every means at our disposal to end discrimination and to end it as quickly as possible." One Size Fits All MR. LUDWIG'S idea of ending discrimination is for blacks and whites to have the same rejection rates, regardless of the legitimate reasons for differences. The crackdown is already well under way, as the Administration turns many of its bank examiners into discrimination police by re-interpreting the Fair Lending Act of 1968 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. The primary responsibility of banking regulators--the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision--has always been the safety and soundness of banks and thrift institutions. In the last few decades a separate cadre of bank examiners for fairness and consumer protection has been established. These so-called "compliance examiners" represent the shock troops of the Clinton assault. Ludwig is increasing the number of OCC compliance examiners from 330 to 530 by next year. Already they've been busy examining loan files; their work has resulted in four referrals to the Department of Justice for further investigation. Miss Reno, meanwhile, has chastised the other bank regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, before the Senate Banking Committee for failing to get with the program. While Justice has not yet identified any of the four referrals, two of them have publicly identified themselves: Shawmut National Bank of Hartford, Conn., the largest mortgage lender in New England, and Barnett Bank of Jacksonville, Fla. Only two weeks after Miss Reno's slap at the banking regulators in Senate testimony, the Federal Reserve Board, usually not prone to politicizing its bank examinations, prevented Shawmut from acquiring New Dartmouth Bank of Manchester, N.H., under a rarely used provision of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, claiming Shawmut had discriminated against minorities. While it is impossible to judge the case against Shawmut without more information, the timing of the denial is suspicious. Henry Cisneros quoted Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan as saying in Senate testimony that an end to discrimination would boost economic activity. Mr. Greenspan has made no secret of his campaign to win over the President on the issue of the Fed's independence, endangered by battles with congressional leaders like House Banking Committee Chairman Henry Gonzalez. Thus, the Fed's Shawmut action might be seen as the regulatory equivalent of sitting next to Hillary Clinton at the President's inauguration. Tightening the Screws THE SHAPE of the future may be seen in a case that actually pre-dated the Clinton Administration-the case against the Decatur Federal Savings & Loan of Atlanta. That case was referred to Justice during the Bush Administration, and, under the threat of litigation, Decatur Federal agreed to a draconian settlement last year that permeates almost every activity the bank conducts. The settlement includes Maoist-sounding sensitivity training for Decatur's loan officers and recommends bonuses for those who bring in minority loans. Justice's case against Decatur was not based on individual complaints and contained no proof that any single minority loan was rejected without just cause. It relied entirely on a computer model that attempts to duplicate the factors that banks consider when making loans--a process that is an art, not a science. As Congress's leading mortgage expert, Represehtative Bruce Vento (D., Minn.), explains: "We can't take away the judgment of individual financial institutions about what is a good credit risk. You can't put that into a computer because there are too many uncertainties. You have to have a market test at some point." Nevertheless, Justice's computer concluded that Decatur Federal had discriminated. The Federal Reserve now has its own computer program too, according to Lawrence Lindsey, who revealed its existence in Senate testimony. The Fed apparently used it to make its case against Shawmut Bank and is using it to ferret out more cases to refer to the Justice Department. Furthermore, under the new examination process at both OCC and the Federal Reserve, compliance examiners can look through an entire mound of applications until they find a single case of an approved white loan applicant whose qualifications are close to those of any rejected minority applicant, which includes blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans. This one close match would establish that the bank had discriminated. Stephen Cross, OCC's deputy comptroller for compliance management, says that perhaps as few as four examples a year would lead to a finding of a pattern of discrimination. Since no two applications are ever identical, this approach allows the discrimination police considerable latitude. Mr. Ludwig is in the process of rewriting regulations for the Community Reinvestment Act so as to offer further inducements for banks to allocate credit by race. In the past, banks and thrifts were rated on the efforts they made to reach out to minorities. Under a directive from President Clinton, however, Ludwig plans to introduce new CRA regulations that will require lenders to meet certain numerical guidelines in total minority loans. Ludwig calls these "performance-based standards"--that is, they will judge institutions not on their efforts but on the results. Congressional supporters of the performance-based CRA standards, such as Senators Paul Sarbanes (D., Md.) and Carol Moseley Braun (D., Ill.), and Representatives Joseph Kennedy (D., Mass.) and Maxine Waters (D. Calif.), deny they are quotas--but some CRA consultants and Wall Street banking analysts say that banks having trouble finding qualified minority candidates will simply approve the minimum number of bad loans and consider them, as one put it, "blood money for the politicians." COMIC RELIEF HILLARY CLINTON HER WORDS JAN 2008 Clinton said unscrupulous lending leads to bad mortgages, which lead to foreclosures, which lead to people with nowhere to go and vacant neighborhoods that can go rapidly downhill. "We treat these problems as if one is guacamole and one is chips, when ... they both go together," she said.
Try this simply take the partisanship part completly away. There is not majority or minoritry. There is no Democrat or Republican. There is simply a Senate, a house of Congressional Representatives, and a President. Now focus entirely on policy that caused problems that was then bandaided by more policy. Divide all the policy into two catagories. Socialist policy. Capitalist policy. I strongly recomend you stop the partisan finger pointing and instead right hear and right now before the "Spin Meisters" brainwash you to point the blame at the political ideology that failed you. I will key you in to the next favorite catch phrase of the next year. "Regulation" The spin meisters will want to propose more regulation of the banking industry and suggest that de-regulation of any kind that can be identified over the last decade is the root of the problem. But before they do I would like to remind you that "Community Reinvestment Act" is REGULATION.
