Ye Gods fellow Democrats... please do not vote for this disaster. If we think Dubya is bad, she is going to be worse.

From a Democrat co-worker I know on Hillary, "Her only qualifications is that she is married to a former president and moved to an area where the people would elect a can of beans if it ran as a Democrat."

Sounds like a good description to me.

/She had a whole rant about the crappy candidates the Dems are running.

Here's an idea--maybe send some money to the people who have mortgages and are paying them on time. That's called rewarding good behavior.

You don't swat a puppy who shiats on the lawn and then give him a wish bone when he shiats on the carpet, do you?

Before this gets into a Democrat-bashathon (because quite frankly, the Dems deserve bashing for far worse ideas), Bush and his industry-blowing cronies let this problem manifest itself. Greenspan, who knewn better, and could have done something about it, gave the thumbs up to these trash mortgages and then blew out of town before everything fell apart. And Bush is going to "solve" the problem by handing over taxpayer money to the very banks that created the problem with their predatory lending schemes. How is this solution better than what wacky Hillary proposing?

The article notes that Edwards has an even worse plan; but he is no longer considered a top contender.

/Go away John, it's over

Code_Archeologist: Ye Gods fellow Democrats... please do not vote for this disaster. If we think Dubya is bad, she is going to be worse.

She's not my candidate either, but that's a little hyperbolic.

Hillary: "I have a plan - a moratorium on foreclosures for 90 days [and] freezing interest rates for five years, which I think we should do immediately," Clinton announced at what was the last Democratic debate before the Nevada Caucus on Jan. 19.

Jumping Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. It's shiat like this that really makes me wonder if I'm not a Republican after all... God, I hope not.

I'd LOVE to have gotten in a loan way over my head, and have the government bail me out. I'd be living a hell of a lot closer to work, that's for goddamn sure.

/2 hour commute
//goes off in search of a lame internet "what party are you?" quiz

Cagey B: She's not my candidate either, but that's a little hyperbolic.

I see little difference between her policy positions and Bush's. She has voted in support of giving greater power to the President with less oversight. Her health care plan forces people to buy health insurance without providing consumer protections (making it little more than corporate welfare). And she is one of the most hawkish Democrats in the senate.

Now maybe she is not mildly retarded like our current President, but she holds the same authoritarian positions that Dubya has displayed.

Found one, apparently, Libertarian.

/phew.

ThatGuyGreg: Found one, apparently, Libertarian.

/phew.

Yeah, Libertarians are OK until you get to the part about wanting to abolish things like the FDA, TSA, OSHA, EEOC, and other consumer/worker protection agencies.

Code_Archeologist: Yeah, Libertarians are OK until you get to the part about wanting to abolish things like the FDA, TSA, OSHA, EEOC, and other consumer/worker protection agencies.

But I don't... I just... aw, fark it.

I don't know which worries me more: the fallout from this whole mess or the solutions that the politicians are proposing.

Is there any way to penalize the people foolish enough to have fallen for this or the banks that got them into it without it screwing over the rest of the economy?

ThatGuyGreg: But I don't... I just... aw, fark it.

Become a fellow independent. We just make shiat up as we go along. It's the American way.

Philbb: Is there any way to penalize the people foolish enough to have fallen for this or the banks that got them into it without it screwing over the rest of the economy?

Yeah... change lending regulations to penalize for predatory lending practices, such as giving a customer a loan larger than what they can reasonably afford on the idea that...
A) the market will inflate the value of the equity so that the loan can be paid off later with a much smaller mortgage.
-or-
B) the loan will be sold as part of a securities package and therefore will not impact the margin of the lender if it forecloses.

Also SEC rules have to be changed to require for greater transparency of securities. The fact that most securities brokers did not even known the value of their securities when the real estate bubble started bursting is outrageous.

And finally for those people who are suffering through home foreclosures. Sorry. Nothing can be done about it... if we try to force the market to protect these people we will just be postponing the inevitable, and starting another more devastating credit bubble.

GoDawgs!: ThatGuyGreg: But I don't... I just... aw, fark it.

Become a fellow independent. We just make shiat up as we go along. It's the American way.

Yes, and our votes are the most desired. Its us they are trying to make happy with their rhetoric and pandering. Voters should play hard to get.

Code_Archeologist: And finally for those people who are suffering through home foreclosures. Sorry. Nothing can be done about it... if we try to force the market to protect these people we will just be postponing the inevitable, and starting another more devastating credit bubble.

Postponing the inevitable isn't a terrible idea. Tapering off home foreclosures helps the communities where all the homes are being foreclosed on.

The only way to fix it in the long run is to let the pain pass through the system and work its way out. Home prices have to come down, and propping up bad mortgages is not going to help. Adults made bad decisions. Film at 11.

paging Hillary4Real...

you're needed to explain why your candidate's batshait crazy scheme is actually the best thing since Al Gore created puppies and rainbows

Factory Refurbished: paging Hillary4Real...

you're needed to explain why your candidate's batshait crazy scheme is actually the best thing since Al Gore created puppies and rainbows

He is a troll why would anyone even care to hear his misinformed replay?

/Lets all hate Hillary it's what the cool kids do.

Oh, please. Hillary herself probably knows her plan would suffer from many unintended consequences, she's just pandering to a specific voting bloc by telling them what she thinks they want to hear.



She and her analysts know the kind of voter that would be impressed by "ooh, she's freezing rates? let's vote for her!" are exactly the people who won't be reading about or understanding the disastrous effects of investors taking their money elsewhere.


Last summer she mentioned that there should be no refinancing penalties, a move that would basically have killed the mortgage industry. This didn't get much press as her current "plan", but it was probably 100 times as dumb.

The Far Left and Far Right are both retarded.

Independents sit on the fence and laugh at both sides.

We NEED to let the market bottom out and correct itself. We can't continue rewarding people and lenders for making bad decisions.

Damnit anyway. I've kinda been defending Hillary to people for a while, but this is just an awful idea.

FTFA: Barack Obama, meanwhile, wants to require better disclosure by lenders (of low teaser rates, for example) and, like Clinton and Edwards, proposes a government fund to help borrowers transition from unaffordable adjustable mortgages to lower-rate fixed ones.

Seems a tad more feasible than ClintCo's sop to the masses.

Nobody wants to target unscrupulous lenders fer their "play now, pay later" practises that lead us here. Quelle freakin' suprise.

Can't say Jim Cramer didn't try to warn folk

"NO IDEA!"

The only way her plan would work is if she intended on giving a house to each American after she destroys the whole system as we know it. I don't see how jacking up the prices for everybody who didn't get screwed is such a great idea. If that's the case, why not simply have the government hand out cheap mortgages by the barrel load?

More and more I realize that buying a house in this country is so detrimental that I don't think I will ever buy one, student loans or not. The whole system is crooked, but it appears that none of the politicians in the government right now know how to fix it. Wow, I guess regulation was a good thing, huh?

This is absurd. Hillary, hun, if your ideas are like this you might want to talk about forgiving student loans. I mean, if you're going to hand out money, at least get the new voters of the nation a reason to put you in office for a second term. That and health care and you're set. The quicker I get out of debt to this nation, the better.

Mr. Anon: Postponing the inevitable isn't a terrible idea. Tapering off home foreclosures helps the communities where all the homes are being foreclosed on.

Except by postponing it we actually create a greater all around impact on the economy. Letting it shake out naturally, while painful, is going to actually be better for the long run for everybody.

ThatGuyGreg: Found one, apparently, Libertarian.

/phew.

Welcome to the club. Will you be voting for Ron Paul?

BTW, you are now, officially, a kook nutjob whacko.

Again... welcome.

Ron Paul

The only people losing their homes are the ones who shouldn't have been given a loan in the first place.

Fark 'em. They just got an expensive lesson in what a mortgage is.

I'm a Democrat. I'm voting Obama, though I don't live in a Super-Tuesday state.

I saw her make this suggestion at the debate, and I was appalled by it. She showed how totally out of touch she was on this issue, and how irresponsible she would be as a shepherd of the American economy. I thought she was shooting herself in the foot as she was saying these words, and I think this particular story is only going to get bigger as time goes forward.

Code_Archeologist: Mr. Anon: Postponing the inevitable isn't a terrible idea. Tapering off home foreclosures helps the communities where all the homes are being foreclosed on.

Except by postponing it we actually create a greater all around impact on the economy. Letting it shake out naturally, while painful, is going to actually be better for the long run for everybody.

Really? You think having huge stockpiles of foreclosed homes is a good thing rather than just have foreclosures trickel out and allowing home buyers to pick up the slack of foreclosed on houses? It gets much more difficult to sell a house in an area where everyone's house is empty vs a neighborhood where a vast majority of houses are occupied.

The best thing the government or any president could do, is leave the farking thing alone.

All of this bullshiat to avoid a recession is just going to make it worse when it inevitably does happen.

No bailouts, or handouts or any of that nonsense.

Oh you bought a two bedroom house in Phoenix for $900K expecting to sell it to someone else for a profit? BZZZTT! Sorry...you lose.

Part of the game of speculation is that not everyone wins. Those huge profits come about because somebody lost somewhere. This isn't an ages 5-7 footrace where everyone gets a ribbon and is a "winner". Someone has to eat shiat.

Remember kids, a reccesion is like a bowel movement. You can fight it all you want. But the longer you try to avoid it, the messier it's going to be when the inevitable happens.

Hmm, this plan isn't great, but there is something to it.

Look, if you have people who can afford a teaser rate and can't afford the full rate, it's much better for everyone to restructure the loan so that you don't charge them crazy ass interest.

The problem is: 1) they've been sliced up and sold into parcels of CDOs. It's not easy to reassemble all the rights to them to allow them to be renegotiated; 2) many of the institutuions that have CDOs and other mortgage backed securities hold bond insurance on the payments. They cannot collect on that insurance unless the mortgage defaults. As it stands, many of those reinsurers are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, so right now, the smart play is to try to get your claim paid ASAP before they collapse. Thus many entities with these investments have an incentive to encourage, rather than avoid, foreclosure. Government mandated control and renegotiation is probably the best solution for the country, as it would allow many more people to keep their homes (this has very good side benefits for society, more stable homes lead to reduced crime levels, better educational performance, etc). Preventing banks and other CDO holders from stampeding the reinsurers and forcing them to cooperate in restructuring would be bad for some individual securities holders, but good for securities holders overall.

They should get rid of whoever put IT'S STUPID, THE ECONOMY on her wall

quatchi: FTFA: Barack Obama, meanwhile, wants to require better disclosure by lenders (of low teaser rates, for example) and, like Clinton and Edwards, proposes a government fund to help borrowers transition from unaffordable adjustable mortgages to lower-rate fixed ones.

Seems a tad more feasible than ClintCo's sop to the masses.

Nobody wants to target unscrupulous lenders fer their "play now, pay later" practises that lead us here. Quelle freakin' suprise.

Can't say Jim Cramer didn't try to warn folk

"NO IDEA!"

Yeah...I have a little bit of sympathy for the poor schmuck lured into a bullshiat mortgage deal with adjustable come-on rates, and a fund to help transition them to a more reasonable fixed deal makes some sense.

But I have very little sympathy for the predatory swindlers who took advantage of these saps. Fark them in the ear. They knew what they were doing.

/glad I settled for a 30-year fix 4 years ago
//had a feeling this shiat was going to happen
///getting tired of always being right about bad news

Ignorant Keynesian politicians...

/Friedman (economic genius) is rolling in his grave.
//Econ major

Code_Archeologist: Ye Gods fellow Democrats... please do not vote for this disaster. If we think Dubya is bad, she is going to be worse.

yes, and obama will be like both of them combined

Mr. Anon:
Postponing the inevitable isn't a terrible idea. Tapering off home foreclosures helps the communities where all the homes are being foreclosed on.

No, it really doesn't. See, house prices went up so much because these sub-prime loans and aggressive marketing techniques let people believe it was reasonable to pay more than twice what the house was worth five years prior for the house.

So everyone's property taxes went up, even for people who had been in their home for a decade or more, and insurance premiums went up.

A full market readjustment in the housing industry would ultimately lower property taxes (as your house is accounted to closer to it's true value) and lower insurance premiums on those houses for the same reasons. In the short run, it would devalue what your house is currently considered to be 'worth,' but that only has a real impact on your ability to get credit against the equity in your house. If you bought your house inside the bubble, it will affect your ability to sell your house for a profit.

So if you're Joe Blow who has been making his house payments without a teaser rate, or even Joe Blow who already paid his house off, the only negative impact to you is that it will be harder to sell your home in the short term.

And by "Economists," subby means:

*) A dude whole clients would lose money if that plan happened, and
*) A dude who has worked closely with Edwards on his book

OK.

/Not an economist, but this sounds a garden variety bad idea, nothing crazy

Mr. Anon: Really? You think having huge stockpiles of foreclosed homes is a good thing rather than just have foreclosures trickel out and allowing home buyers to pick up the slack of foreclosed on houses? It gets much more difficult to sell a house in an area where everyone's house is empty vs a neighborhood where a vast majority of houses are occupied.

No, its not a good thing. Its also not a good thing to keep the market artificially inflated, which trickling foreclosures would do. The fact of the matter is that the real-estate market is horribly inflated and needs to be adjusted back down.

I guess the simple answer is that there are no simple answers to this problem. No easy solutions.

fernt: Ron Paul

Code_Archeologist: ThatGuyGreg: Found one, apparently, Libertarian.

/phew.

Yeah, Libertarians are OK until you get to the part about wanting to abolish things like the FDA, TSA, OSHA, EEOC, and other consumer/worker protection agencies.

Ahhh, the FDA... the lovely people that hold back potential life saving treaments. Vioxx worked out really well, didn't it?

The private solution works just as good, if not better. Look at Underwriters Laboratories, Consumer Reports, etc.

IrishSamurai9: Ignorant Keynesian politicians...

/Friedman (economic genius) is rolling in his grave.
//Econ major

This one is for you, Friedman DESTROYING Phil Donahue... brilliant.
Greed (new window)

Greed is good!

Mr. Anon:
Really? You think having huge stockpiles of foreclosed homes is a good thing rather than just have foreclosures trickel out and allowing home buyers to pick up the slack of foreclosed on houses? It gets much more difficult to sell a house in an area where everyone's house is empty vs a neighborhood where a vast majority of houses are occupied.

Yeah, that actually /is/ a good thing, because that is going to drive housing prices and costs down to someplace where someone living on a modest income will actually be able to buy a house at a reasonable price for a reasonable (fixed) rate of interest. Have you looked at housing prices? Have you looked at the average payment on a 3-bedroom house in a neighborhood that isn't (a) in the middle of bumfark (b) in the middle of a neighborhood where you're likely to get shot (c) in a neighborhood with decent schools? Even 4+ months into this crisis, housing costs are ridiculous.

It's when those foreclosed-on houses hit the market at bargain-basement prices that housing prices will really start to fall, and owning a house will be affordable again.

SomebodyElsesShoes: And by "Economists," subby means:

*) A dude whole clients would lose money if that plan happened, and
*) A dude who has worked closely with Edwards on his book

OK.

/Not an economist, but this sounds a garden variety bad idea, nothing crazy

It seems like a garden variety bad idea, but this is from a Presidential Candidate. This is something the candidate would like to do, if elected. Even "garden variety bad ideas" are catastrophic if actually applied.

Mr_Fabulous:

/glad I settled for a 30-year fix 4 years ago
//had a feeling this shiat was going to happen
///getting tired of always being right about bad news

I know what you mean. I have been saving for a home for a while now, just waiting for this bubble to burst and it to shift to a buyers market.

Unfortunately I didn't think about it being harder to get a loan, although some places seem desperate to give me a deal...

//No ARM, I have made that abundantly clear to the loan people. They just seemed like a very bad idea.

Anything else I need to add to the list:

1) Ham radio
2) 4 week ration of non-perishible food and water
3) Leatherman multitool
4) Garmin 60Csx GPS devise
5) Shotgun for self-defense
6) 3 cases of red wine

The end is coming...I need to be prepared.

Hank Rearden: Code_Archeologist: ThatGuyGreg: Found one, apparently, Libertarian.

/phew.

Yeah, Libertarians are OK until you get to the part about wanting to abolish things like the FDA, TSA, OSHA, EEOC, and other consumer/worker protection agencies.

Ahhh, the FDA... the lovely people that hold back potential life saving treaments. Vioxx worked out really well, didn't it?

The private solution works just as good, if not better. Look at Underwriters Laboratories, Consumer Reports, etc.

. . . and Moodys and Standard & Poors.

Spike

/kinda tough to promote self-regulation in a thread on the credit crisis

SangamonTaylor: Anything else I need to add to the list:

1) Ham radio
2) 4 week ration of non-perishible food and water
3) Leatherman multitool
4) Garmin 60Csx GPS devise
5) Shotgun for self-defense
6) 3 cases of red wine

The end is coming...I need to be prepared.

Your antipsychotic prescription?

/damn survivalists

S_P_I_K_E: /kinda tough to promote self-regulation in a thread on the credit crisis

Please. When the government messes up, it's perfect evidence that regulation doesn't work. When the unregulated market messes up, it's perfect evidence that we have too much market regulation.

Haven't you been paying attention to what Hank's saying?