I don’t think even conservatives are stupid enough to try and convince people of this. Who would believe such a bald faced lie.
CATO institute once issued a report stating that the CRA was no longer necessary because the credit market had gotten comfortable with subprime credit risks and were providing plenty of it as evidenced by the fact that MOST subprime mortgages were originate by lenders who are not subject to CRA.
The major cause of the mortgage market collapse was private label mortgage securities. The onjes NOT backed by Fannie and Freddie.
Well, there’s your disconnect. The problem isn’t taht they were selling everything to fannie and Freddie. The problem is that the market developed so that you no longer needed to sell your mortgages to Fannie and Freddie (see Angelo Mozilo’s call to Fannie saying he would sell his conforming mortgages to iBanks if they didn’t buy more of his subprime crap), investors were receptive to private label securities and Fannie and Freddie started chasing the market. But they were chasing it, not leading it.
Where’s all the window smashing? The violent disruption? Rather well behaved for revolutionary scofflaws. Back in the Dark Days, a protest always drew the self-styled revolutionaries, the shit disturbers. What’s different?
This is not a snark point, I am genuinely confused.
I brought a question. So far, no answer. You claim to know, but won’t say how you know. You make some vague gesture about how they said it themselves, when you know as well as I that there is no apparent central organization, no spokesperson.
Is that it, then? You read something, somewhere, that slots in neatly with your opinion, and offer that for fact?
The CDOs you are talking about weren’t really the problem (i don’t think). These banks were effectively acting like your neighborhood butchers. They bought a cow and sold the individual cuts for enough of a profit so that you didn’t need to sell the bone and gristle to make a profit, I don’t think they ever really relied on the value of the bone and gristle very much. The subprimes stuff had mroe bone and gristle but they cost less to buy as well and frankly there was a market for bone and gristle too.
You can chop up mortgages in some pretty hairy ways. What everyone seems to understand is securitization that takes a pool of mortgages and simply tranches with different seniority but it got a lot more complicated than that. Even simply separating the interest payments from the principal payments results in securities with charactetristics that would take a chapter in a textbook to explain even superficially.
There was a whole menu of shit taht happened:
Banks have capital reserve requirements and different types of investments had different regualtory treatment.
Fannie and Freddie preffered shares became worthless and a bunch of small banks went bankrupt because their reserves were largely invested in these things because of the favorable weighting they received for capital reserve purposes by regulators.
Fannie and Freddie securities were also a bit distressed for a while (they have more than recovered since then).
Some banks were taking risks they didn’t understand very well.
CDS’s were poorly understood by folks like AIG who were taking HUMONGOUS positions in them.
People were synthesizing mortgage securities which allowed a much larger degree of leverage than you would be able to achieve with actual securities and when it hit the fan, it mutiplied your losses.
The list goes on and on and on but it was mostly the result of market innovations that outpaced the ability of regulators (and frankly market participants) to understand what this stuff was and the risks involved.
I’ll stay out of the argument over whether anyone was tricked into thinking it was OK to march on the roadway.
Much to my surprise, though, I think we have to regard this protest as a success. It’s gotten the question of whether Wall Street fucked the rest of the country a tenuous foothold on the edge of our national conversation. Three weeks ago, that seemed unimaginable.
And the prospect that organized labor, such as it is these days, might join in, is definitely a Good Thing whether or not it leads to any further progress. That’s a big improvement over the days of hardhats beating up anti-war protesters.
Everyone at the protest knows the default law for walking in the middle of the street=don’t.
The police, through bullhorns, reminded the first group of protestors that the law for walking in the middle of the street=don’t. This is according to the protestors.
No protestor has come forward saying that a police officer told them that the default law didn’t apply.
If you do doubt any of these facts, why?
If you don’t, then what trick do you think might have occurred?
Edit: the only thing I said the protestors said was a report from protestors about the police reminder of the law. That’s not something that needs to come out of a central committee. That’s a report of facts, and facts don’t need to be filtered via authority. If you doubt that fact as reported, please explain why, without some stupid nonsense about central committees.
Damn, there was a poster here who no longer is allowed to post here. I sure wish we had his view on this and how it’s going to signal the beginning of the end of capitalism and personal wealth.
“The police did nothing” does not equal “told us the default law doesn’t apply.” If a cop does nothing when you break a law, that does not mean you’ve got a “break the law free” card. It does not constitute a trick.
If the cops guided them onto the road, well, that’s different–but what form did that guidance take? Why such vague weasel words like “seemed to” in the description?
Nonetheless, if there’s corroboration that the police took some action that could reasonably be construed as “guiding” the protestors onto the street, I’ll partially withdraw this criticism.
Well, no. “Justice” does mean treating people fairly under similar circumstances, and I believe that in this case, the immediate application of justice would involve arresting the protestors. Which is okay. What appear to me to be serious contortions to exclude protestors from the law appears to me to be a call for injustice.
Not a huge injustice, of course, and an injustice totally dwarfed by the actions of our government toward the super-wealthy who caused this problem in the first place (poor people screw up? Lose your house. Rich people screw up? How about a taxpayer-funded bonus, and lower tax rates?).
But a nonviolent movement succeeds by claiming an unassailable moral high ground, by setting up chiaroscuro differences between themselves and their opposition. When protestors call for tiny injustices in their favor, it is fatal to this necessary claim of moral superiority.
So, yeah. If you’re willing to say that police are fine when they’re arresting protestors who break the law, and that protestors who break well-known laws should proudly accept the consequences, then I’ll withdraw that remark. Otherwise it stands.
Oh, so perfect sainthood is a prerequisite for protest? We must occupy a position of absolute moral superiority? How do we go about excluding the unworthy?
Not going to get into any sort of “debate*” over this, but IMO, the mocking & derision many here are directing towards these protesters is only a reflection of their own conformity and/or jaded cynicism vis-a-vis the status quo. Some may want to preserve it for obvious reasons, while others who have simply given up might feel scornful as they literally subjugated their whole lives to the injustices surrounding them w/out doing a damn thing about it.
I for one, feel heartened by seeing the current youth of the Western world starting to wake-up and demand a revision of a system run amok. Because even if I am not around to see it, I can guarantee that if we don’t make some radical changes, there won’t be much of anything left two/three generations down the line. So hell yeah, not only do I support Cairo/Madrid/Wall Street, but hope the whole thing goes viral.
Right. Now where did I leave that damn walking cane of mine? 'cause there’s no way I’m missing The Revolution should it make it down this way…
*Simply because there’s nothing to debate. World’s fucked as it is whether anyone agrees or not.
Charming opinion, totally unfettered by awareness of any of the specific critiques made of the protests.
I’d LOVE for something to happen on the left that outshines the Tea Party. There are a few glimmers that some people with clues (read: labor unions) are starting to get involved, and a few glimmers that more people in general are getting involved. But so far I’ve seen no signs that the protest is anything more than an angry sea anemone, lashing out blindly with tentacles but not able to move in any direction.