The Social Engineering at the Heart of the Financial Crisis
Posted by
Mark Noonan
in
Campaign 2008, Corruption, Democrats, Economy on
October 15th, 2008 at 01:07am with
14 responses.
Tags: Financial Crisis, Government, WordPress.
Tags: Financial Crisis, Government, WordPress.
Click here to get Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority by Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan.
Nevada Pundit cuts through a lot of the nonsense being said – especially on the left – about what caused our financial meltdown. The free market works – the government-managed market fails. Always and all the time.
Thank you for visiting Blogs For Victory. If you enjoy our content, please consider making a donation to help us cover the costs of our servers.Mark Noonan is co-author (with Matt Margolis) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at Nevada News and Views. Follow Mark on Twitter.
14 Responses to “The Social Engineering at the Heart of the Financial Crisis”
Caucus of Corruption
LOL
why did investment banks invest in mortgage backed securities- the government didn’t force them to – that’s not social engineering.
BTW the article is rife with inaccuracies
For example:
Taxes were higher in the 60s and 50s then the 70s
1970s stagflation was more the result of scarcity of vital resources (oil) then any imagined social engineering.
In conclusion a thoroughly bad article whose shallow opinion is not supported by any facts.
If managed economies fail why was it that a Republican administration championed just that?
Yes, the problem was that the market was just too damn regulated.
Wow.
You should encourage McCain to use this line of…*ahem*…”thinking.” Really. Try your damndest to get him to make it a part of his stump speech.
mark
us alienistas are a bit worried about you
you’re gettin’ all jiggy and stuff
what’s up?
Deleted – slander.
JAT – it’s worth repeating that the right-wing SOCIALs are NOT true conservatives nor Reagan republicans.
SOCIALS are single issue voters NOT concerned with:
1) Balancing budgets.
2) Respecting states’ rights.
3) Respecting individual liberty.
4) Shrinking the fed govt.
5) True constitutional judicial restraint.
6) Checks & balances bet the branches of govt
7) Reducing debt.
8) et al
I seriously doupt socials truly understand the proper functioning of govt w/in a federal, constitional framework.
Socials are all about big spending, big govt, & reduced individual liberties.
OhioOrrin: I seriously doupt socials truly understand the proper functioning of govt w/in a federal, constitional framework. Socials are all about big spending, big govt, & reduced individual liberties.
Therein, I think, lies the dilemma for the future of the GOP: it’s hard to get all three legs of the stool (fiscal, social, and security conservatism) under you at the same time. In many ways they are effectively antithetical to each other. It is a precarious coalition, particularly because all three of the legs seem to be getting more and more intolerant of each other — perhaps because Bush’s attempt to do it has been a disaster.
Ricorun and OhioOrrin
Now, you’ve got it. Bush is no conservative. He is a religious liberal who thinks that someone the middle class should fund his programs redistributing their money to the wealthy, just as secular liberals believe the middle class should fund programs redistributing middle class money to the poor.
Whether it’s taxpayers who pay our debt or foreign investors who buy it, OPM (Other Peoples Money) lies at the heart of every liberals actions. Further, it doesn’t matter weather it’s K Street or Wall Street, OPM wasted becomes a global problem.
We need a set of leaders who can encourage the development of a society that sees the responsibility handling OPM as a sacred trust.
If for the sake of the divine, fine. But without denominational baggage that comes with real estate investments needed to serve those denominational concerns. Or, just for the sake of the secular concern for the people the money is being handled for.
Conspicuous consumption is the cardinal sin. Living within ones means is the cardinal virtue. If we can’t find these people in the private sector, how can we ever expect to find them in govt.
I find, in neither party, nor in our system of selecting candidates for managing OPM, in the public or private sector, the ability to groom leaders capable of encouraging the development of a society that values people who can responsibly handle OPM.
This is America, and here is a problem no one can reasonably say a solution is anywhere near at hand.
We are, indeed, bankrupt.
Have a nice day.
Who Bet Your Fannie?
I have watched the youtube clip on the Fannie Mae hearings and I am outraged. 4 years ago this could have been addressed and yet the Democrats stood up one after another to protect Fannie while the Republicans struggled mightily to fix the problem. Perhaps the fact that Franklin Roosevelt created it and Lyndon Johnson privatized it made it difficult for the Democrats to tighten regulation on it but in the end the Democrats stalling in 2004 and their recent prevention in the past two years of George Bush’s efforts to get them to tighten controls on Fannie and Freddie may have generated a Depression.
Now that we know who created this problem decades ago and who refused to fix it we now know to vote the Democrats out this November..
Fannie Freddie Lobby Dem’s
Pulbic records show that in the past 2 years the majority of all campaign donations that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provided were to Democrats. The Democrats at the same time ignored President Bush’s request for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increased regulatory oversight in his December 2007 speech as well as his 2008 State Of The Union Address. Barack Obama was the #3 recipient on the top 25 list and you cannot find his opponent in the top 25.
Socialist Roots To Mortgage Crisis
The American Dream of home ownership rant into the well intentioned but misguided fanaticism of socialist support of that effort through governmental policies to support that dream for all. This was done despite the fact that not everyone is responsible enough to own and maintain a home. The banking system, as a long germ gatekeeper of home ownership, figured that out long ago. Not satisfied with the workings of the free market Congress created entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase the percent of home ownership and even some States followed suit with smaller entities of a similar purpose.
Such socialist economic policies that distorted the housing market in this country. This well meaning effort to aid those that wanted to buy a home and a piece of the American Dream, they created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decades ago. This piece of socialist economics influenced lowering loan requirements and artificially pumped money into the housing market for decades.
When Congress then privatized the program and encouraged the free market to support this two headed beast, along with State privatized entities of a similar purpose, they entangled the private market (AIG, Merryl Lynch, etc.) in the mess as well. In the end, those who were encouraged to aid and abet that program are now suffering the consequences of the housing bust.
Socialism is the root of all evil in this mortgage crisis. We need to hold those who hold dear to socialist economic policies responsible and vote them out of office. There is no free lunch and shame on any of us who knowingly voted for fools who promised things that were too good to be true.
B.Y.: I think that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were also major factors. And I believe that many of the problems in the mortgage area can be attributed to the confluence of Democratic and Republican priorities: the Democrats’ desire to give mortgages to people, particularly minorities, who could not afford them, and the Republicans’ desire to achieve an “ownership society,” in part by giving mortgages to people who could not afford them. Again, I believe that if you are suggesting that the financial crisis is a Republican creation, or even more specifically a McCain creation, I think you’re on pretty shaky ground.
M.T.: Oh, come on. Tell me you’re not ashamed to put this gigantic international financial Krakatoa at the feet of a bunch of poor black people who missed their mortgage payments. The CDS market, this market for credit default swaps that was created in 2000 by Phil Gramm’s Commodities Future Modernization Act, this is now a $62 trillion market, up from $900 billion in 2000. That’s like five times the size of the holdings in the NYSE. And it’s all speculation by Wall Street traders. It’s a classic bubble/Ponzi scheme. The effort of people like you to pin this whole thing on minorities, when in fact this whole thing has been caused by greedy traders dealing in unregulated markets, is despicable.
‘Nuff said.
While we’re at it, a brief explanation of the securities in question, courtesy of Dr. Gonzo:
A CDS is like unregulated insurance. You buy one from a company, and you get money if a third party goes bankrupt. So, for example, let’s say you have $10 million in bonds from GM. But GM isn’t doing so hot these days. So you could buy a CDS on GM from some financial institution such that if GM goes under, you will get your $10 million (either the financial institution will take the bonds off of your hands and give you $10 million, or they will let you keep the bonds and give you the difference between their new, post GM-bankruptcy value and $10 million. Same net result either way).
This use of CDSes is all well and good for managing risk and so on. But what happens when you buy lots of CDSes on GM? Now you could get lots of money, far more money than the $10 million in bonds that you have now. It’s like buying a million dollars of insurance on a $100,000 house. Burn, baby, burn!
When the CDS market got to be $60 TRILLION dollars, people probably should have realized that they are “insuring” several times the value of the U.S. economy, and if even a substantial fraction had to be paid off, there isn’t enough cash on the planet to do so.
Yeah, the poor are to blame. Jerks.
Deleted – off topic slander.