Fool Me Once…
-
- September
- 30
A cartoonist friend pointed out that I have done an awful lot of Wall Street cartoons in the past few weeks. Guilty as charged, but for us here in NY, it’s a very local issue. It just happens that my last two weeks of local cartoons have had an appeal beyond NY’s borders…
So. While financial markets sulk – I couldn’t resist pointing out the symmetry of the current crisis juxtaposed with a previous one. Repubs in Congress failed to support their own Dubya’s bailout bill and predictably, the stock market tanked. I’m not sure I disagree with them. Is it really the role of government to make sure the stock market has a good day, rather than say, ensure health care for its citizens?
The fact that we have to pump govt. money into sagging financial institutions probably indicates that whatever schemes they were engaging in were unsustainable. Market forces would dictate a painful redirection. But, like the President’s narrow advice pool on foreign policy, he got one side from Bernanke and Paulson, and instead of filtering and tempering it with varying prescriptions he parroted them in warning of a dire crisis that would cripple the world of borrowing/liquidity and end global civilization.
Borrowing. Call me a simpleton, but isn’t that what got us all into this mess in the first place??
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 9:38 am by Matt Davies.
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Dear Mr. Davies,
If you could remove your liberal head from the sand you would find the “Community Reinvestment Act†passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Carter in 1977. Under this act banks were heavily fined if they did not provide mortgages to individuals regardless of their ability to pay. The act was amended in 1995 by the Democrats and President Clinton so as to force banks to waive mortgage down payments. The cost to the taxpayer of this act alone is to date over $1 trillion. It is these ARM mortgages that were bundled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, along with others, that are the root cause of the current financial crises. If you were unbiased and knew anything about the pyramiding effects of these ARM mortgages on principal, your cartoons would be attacking Carter, Clinton, and the Congressional Democratic Leadership and not President Bush.
Ah yes, President Carter is formulating the immediate policy in response to the current crisis.
Thanks for clarifying that for me.
If I had time I’d quite happily research the Community Reinvestment Act and see just what ‘regardless of their ability to pay’ means in legal terms. ‘Regardless’ seems a bit unlikely to me.
It’s okay D-Man. Anybody that starts their point with my needing to “remove my liberal head from the sand” ensures that I won’t waste valuable time reading the remainder of their comment.
Dear Mr. Davies,
It is a fact that liberal journalists, politicians, and other leftist fanatics are now in a desperate effort to obfuscate the The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which is the root cause of the current fiscal crises. It is unimaginable that a piece of legislation that has cost the American taxpayers more than 1 trillion dollars is not front page news. Why it is not even mentioned on the “Opinion†page you reference?
A clarification of “regardless†in “regardless of their ability to pay“ is found in the article, “The Government-Created Subprime Mortgage Meltdown†by Thomas J. DiLorenzo professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. “So-called “community groups” like ACORN benefit themselves from the CRA through a process that sounds like legalized extortion. The CRA is enforced by four federal government bureaucracies: the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The law is set up so that any bank merger, branch expansion, or new branch creation can be postponed or prohibited by any of these four bureaucracies if a CRA “protest” is issued by a “community group.” This can cost banks great sums of money, and the “community groups” understand this perfectly well. It is their leverage. They use this leverage to get the banks to give them millions of dollars as well as promising to make a certain amount of bad loans in their communities.â€
It perfectly O.K. with me if a close minded leftist bigot such as yourself does not read opinions that contradict a blatantly radical liberal mindset. The use of character assassination, distortions, and lies in your charactures appeals only to the most radical leftists. You sir, are a disgrace to an honorable profession and a threat to the democratic process which relies on a fair and balanced news media to form objective opinions Instead you violate all of the tenets of fair and objective journalism and arrogantly display complete disrespect for those who oppose your radical leftist agenda.
Calm down, Edwin.
I suppose asking you to comment without sophomoric name-calling will be as unproductive as explaining that an editorial cartoonist is supposed to be opinionated.
Your accusation that I don’t read other opinions is equally silly, seeing as your primary “news” source is apparently Fox News, who have been the primary pushers of the “blame-CRA” canard.
The truth is that more than 80 percent of high-priced subprime loans were offered by financial institutions that are not subject to the CRA. And let’s not get started on the real – and frankly sinister – motivation behind the extreme right blaming The CRA for the financial crisis. And you call me a bigot.
Dear Mr. Davies,
My response to various issues is always calm and analytical (my training in science as a Physicist). It appears that you are either totally insensitive or totally naive (or a combination of both) as to what or what is not offensive in you caricatures. Opinion based on fact, reason, and objectivity is obviously acceptable regardless of one’s point of view. Unfortunately yours project a mindset that has none of these qualities and is therefore completely devoid of credibility. I could give countless examples but that would be time consuming and pointless.
My primary and almost singular source of news and research (except for scientific journals) is the Internet. Your statement that, “The truth is that more than 80 percent of high-priced subprime loans were offered by financial institutions that are not subject to the CRA.†cannot be substantiated by any credible source at my disposial, perhaps you could supply one. Let us, however, assume it is true. The subpime loan market is composed of 15 trillion dollars worth of mortgates. If 20% are the result of CRA loans I will let you do the math to determine the impact when 90% were given to iindivduals with poor credit and no down payment required. Your statement illusrtates an attempt at deceipt and deception by the ommission of relative facts chararacteristic of the liberal mindset. I belive it was Dr. Michael Savage, a recognized independent commentator who stated, “liberalism is a mental disorderâ€
I hseiate to use the word “bigot†and do not do so indescriminately. Unfortunaetly in your case these is no other adquate description to account for inane conduct. Your inabilty to recognize (or care) just how offensive and demeaning your chaactatures are is sufficient.
Edwin,
Get a life.
Edwin,
1. A working paper by the bank for international settlements said, “there is no evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act was responsible for encouraging the subprime lending boom and subsequent housing bust.”
2. A center for american progress paper states that fully CRA regulated banks and thrifts made about 1 in 4 subprime loans, while independent mortgage banks made high priced loans at more than twice the rate of CRA institutions
3. In congressional testimony Michael Barr stated that a federal reserve survey showed that institutions making CRA loans found the loans to be both profitable and not overly risky.
There are many other research driven examples of the view that CRA loans played at most a small part in the current mess. You just have to be open to the oposing view and look.
Hello Matt,
When the demagoguery is stripped away there is one undeniable fact concerning the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). CRA loans allowed banks to make loans totaling more than $1 trillion without the benefit of many traditional credit-worthiness criteria, such as the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, savings history, and income verification.
Like many other Americans I am not certain as to the role of the CRA in the current financial crises. Beyond that there is not doubt in my mind that the current fiscal crisis is the result of the biggest scandal in American History.
Scandals require investigations by independent prosecutors to identify and punish the perpetrators. Why then are we the people not hearing demands for an independent prosecutor from the Democratic controlled Congress or the main-stream news media? It is a question which all those who are fair minded and objective should be asking.
Wow. Step away for lunch for 48 hours and a bomb drops on the blog.
Despite the interesting points raised by Edwin, and the unfortunate rebuttals of his arguments by the actions of international banks not subject to US CRA laws (such as the awesome NINJA mortgages written by UK banks) the question I would really like answered IS:
How come the American left can spell, but the right cannot (that’s YOU Edwin); yet…
the case is reversed in their respective school-children?
Edwin – I find the narrow-mindedness displayed in your posts and the unmitigated anger they betray to be worrisome, and indicative of a movement toward intolerance this country has been making in the past eight years.
And this:
“Your statement illusrtates an attempt at deceipt and deception by the ommission of relative facts chararacteristic of the liberal mindset.”
Are you serious? I would assume given your restrictive conservative viewpoint that you’ve voted for Mr. Bush the past two elections, supporting what has been one of, if not the most deceitful, fact-massaging administrations in the history of our nation.
A fine mess your angry, narrow-minded sort has made.
Well, cornhuckles. I’m a Molecular Biologist by training, but I’m not going to flout that as credentials to being calm and analytic. Especially not when the last 15 sentences I’ve made have been narrow-minded and emotionally charged. Way to go Edwin, just another chunk of support for the stereotype of scientists as unable to comprehend anything that they can’t manipulate experimentally.