Pork And Cheese
Nancy Pelosi apparently loves meeces to pieces.
A tiny mouse with the longtime backing of a political giant may soon reap the benefits of the economic-stimulus package.
Lawmakers and administration officials divulged Wednesday that the $789 billion economic stimulus bill being finalized behind closed doors in Congress includes $30 million for wetlands restoration that the Obama administration intends to spend in the San Francisco Bay Area to protect, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi represents the city of San Francisco and has previously championed preserving the mouse’s habitat in the Bay Area.
The revelation immediately became a political football, as Republicans accused Democrats of reneging on a promise to keep so-called earmarks that fund lawmakers’ favorite projects out of the legislation. Democrats, including Mrs. Pelosi, countered that the accusations were fabricated.
Not as fabricated as the excuses for spending money on mice, apparently.
Comments
One of the lame excuses that supporters of this bill have been citing is all the “jobs” that were created during the Depression to complete Hoover Dam, the TVA, etc.
Was just watching Jim Cramer. Haven’t watched him in a while since he’s not a big fan of the free market, but he’s even now saying this stimulus is a joke and will accomplish nothing, and we’re basically going to piss away money. I wished the whining Republicans would have whined more.
I figured this shit was going to happen months ago. If they would have just let the banks take the hit, and we had our mass down days, we’d still be hurting, but the bad banks would be gone, and the good ones could now grow. I will still stick by my thoughts that when Obama runs for reelection, we have 15% unemployment, and no meaningful recovery. They’re going to drag this shit out, and excuse every failed policy as a reason to grab more power. Just like the Waters lecture of the banks today. Oh, making it harder to lend? Well, no shit lady, sure they are, because they are insolvent, and the money you pissed away in handouts is just keeping the life support going a little longer.
Looks like Stupid Sparkles WVR might be against this bill if it weren’t for his crush the one pushing this thing.
The South Bay restoration is actually a very worthwhile project. The entire ecosystem was destroyed in the past century due to salt production, and it’s only now that we’re getting around to restoring some of the habitat. Interestingly enough, there’s now a set of wildlife that prefer the salty environment over the native, so the project is engineering different areas to accomodate the more recent ecosystem, while restoring other areas to their natural habitat.
Oh, and it is worth pointing out that many jobs are created as a part of the restoration. It’s also a “shovel-ready” project that has been going on for quite some time now.
You can learn more at southbayrestoration.org
One more thing--it’s ridiculous but predictable that the opposition focuses on this one small animal. I guess it’s their way of trying to turn opinion against the project, but it’s disingenuous to imply the whole purpose of the project is to protect a species of mouse Nancy Pelosi likes.
"Those deck chairs aren’t in a row! Get to work! They all need to be in a straight line. What are you waiting for man, step to it!”
Meanwhile, the United States banking system is effectively insolvent.
One more thing--it’s ridiculous but predictable that the opposition focuses on this one small animal. I guess it’s their way of trying to turn opinion against the project, but it’s disingenuous to imply the whole purpose of the project is to protect a species of mouse Nancy Pelosi likes.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t belong in this bill.
Meanwhile, the United States banking system is effectively insolvent.
Yeah, from making bad loans under the pressure of Barney Frank, Max Waters, Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae et al.
WHY AREN"T THEY STILL LENDING?????
Hazehead......another way of saying Dumbocrat!
frankie, i get tired swatting back this neo-con myth, but oh well. I’ll try once again. (Based on your “Dumbocrat” line this is probably going to deflect off your thick head, but what the heck.)
Brown/poor people did not cause the banking crisis you mouth-breathing thick-headed jackass. Here are the questions you can research as homework about the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act and/or the role of Fannie & Freddie.
Until you can put down the Rocky Road and switch off WWF for a couple hours to find the answer to these questions, please keep your mouth shut about things you do not understand.
• Did the 1977 legislation, or any other legislation since, require banks to not verify income or payment history of mortgage applicants?
• 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision; another 30% were made by banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations. How was this caused by either CRA or GSEs ?
• What about “No Money Down” Mortgages (0% down payments)? Were they required by the CRA? Fannie? Freddie?
• Explain the shift in Loan to value from 80% to 120%: What was it in the Act that changed this traditional lending requirement?
• Did any Federal legislation require real estate agents and mortgage writers to use the same corrupt appraisers again and again? How did they manage to always come in at exactly the purchase price, no matter what?
• Did the CRA require banks to develop automated underwriting (AU) systems that emphasized speed rather than accuracy in order to process the greatest number of mortgage apps as quickly as possible?
• How exactly did legislation force Moody’s, S&Ps;and Fitch to rate junk paper as Triple AAA?
• What about piggy back loans? Were banks required by Congress to lend the first mortgage and do a HELOC for the down payment — at the same time?
• Internal bank memos showed employees how to cheat the system to get poor mortgages prospects approved that shouldn’t have been: Titled How to Get an “Iffy” loan approved at JPM Chase. (Was circulating that memo also a FNM/FRE/CRA requirement?)
• The four biggest problem areas for housing (by price decreases) are: Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Miami, Florida, and San Diego, California. Explain exactly how these affluent, non-minority regions were impacted by the Community Reinvesment Act ?
• Did the GSEs require banks to not check credit scores? Assets? Income?
• What was it about the CRA or GSEs that mandated fund managers load up on an investment product that was hard to value, thinly traded, and poorly understood
• What was it in the Act that forced banks to make “interest only” loans? Were “Neg Am loans” also part of the legislative requirements also?
• Consider this February 2003 speech by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozlilo at the American Bankers National Real Estate Conference. He advocated zero down payment mortgages — was that a CRA requirement too, or just a grab for more market share, and bad banking?
And the reason they aren’t still lending, is BECAUSE THEY ARE INSOLVENT YOU FUCKING MORON.
It seems all-caps is how you like to communicate so I thought I’d play along.
I don’t mind people that use the spin for their benefit, but I get the impression you actually accept it all blindly as fact with nary a critical thought. It’s easier that way, isn’t it? A lot less work to just accept what’s spoon fed into your gaping maw.
Here’s another article that you won’t read that goes into the situation in some detail.
Fannie and Freddie made the market for these loans by buying them up, cutting them into tranches, rebundling and rebranding them, and sending that timebomb back out.
The four biggest problem areas for housing (by price decreases) are: Phoenix, Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; Miami, Florida, and San Diego, California. Explain exactly how these affluent, non-minority regions were impacted by the Community Reinvesment Act ?
Have you never been to any of these places?
Non minority?
your kidding me right! Why should I even bother to paddle thru the rest of this drivle. You will never get it anyway.
Put some more words in my mouth. Who said anything about “poor brown people” besides you?
I sudder to think what you’ll call me next.
Other than it was a fairly intelligent post.
(/sarcasm off)
Awesome, I called it. Bounced off your thick head.
I especially like how you had to get 1/2 way through the bullet list before you could find something for your small brain to focus on, then pretend like you didn’t read any of the rest.
And you still can’t refute it properly: check out some statistics on the economic breakdown of home buyers in those areas before you pretend to understand the housing market. Those areas have high ratio of middle/upper class home buyers to lower class. The point isn’t that there aren’t Mexicans in LA you jackass, but that these areas have high numbers of low-risk mortgage holders.
Fannie and Freddie made the market for these loans by buying them up, cutting them into tranches, rebundling and rebranding them, and sending that timebomb back out.
Bzzzzt. WRONG! Look into deregulation of mortgage securities and the development of off-book CDS markets by the investments banks. Freddie and Fannie had a very very small piece of blame to share, the investment houses and lack of oversight allowed a speculative bubble to build that is now 2-4x the worth of the banks themselves.
Doesn’t matter how many facts are thrown out. You guys simply don’t give a shit about reality.
Doesn’t matter how many facts are thrown out. You guys simply don’t give a shit about reality.
Do you have any concept of the term of Moral Hazard, that comes with the “if it’s good enough for the government, then it must be good enough for everyone else”?
Do you understand the chain reaction that would be caused with artificial price increasing, and that it would go up the ladder? For example, the government helps people who couldn’t afford a home in the first place, the people who sold that home go to a higher level they can’t afford, then of course as the bubble grows everyone starts using their house as an ATM, as well as people rushing to get in to buy as they think prices will never come down? No, it’s not minorities that made this mess, it was government intrusion into how the private sector works, creating artificial markets, and helping to keep them stimulated. This is not to say the greedy bankers are not at fault as well. They took the bait, and some of them belong in jail for fraud, but to say that the government did not have a big part in this is ridiculous.
Fannie and Freddie were part of the CRA story, too. In 1997, Bear Stearns did the first securitization of CRA loans, a $384 million offering guaranteed by Freddie Mac. Over the next 10 months, Bear Stearns issued $1.9 billion of CRA mortgages backed by Fannie or Freddie. Between 2000 and 2002 Fannie Mae securitized $394 billion in CRA loans with $20 billion going to securitized mortgages.
Then there is this from 1999 and a warning of what could happen from this crap. So make the stupid neo-con comments hazehead. Fiscal conservatives were warning about it long before folks like you had a clue. To me, the best guys to pay attention to are the ones who called it, not those who try to explain it after.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates—anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
‘’Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,’’ said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ‘’Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.’’
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.
‘’From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,’’ said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ‘’If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.’’
Consider this February 2003 speech by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozlilo at the American Bankers National Real Estate Conference. He advocated zero down payment mortgages — was that a CRA requirement too, or just a grab for more market share, and bad banking?
Consider this Fannie and Freddie already had zero down payment as a standard option. Freddie in 2000, Fannie in ‘01.
WASHINGTON - A policy change last week by the giant mortgage investor Fannie Mae symbolized a market transformation of huge practical importance to homebuyers across the country.
By adding zero-down-payment mortgages to its standard line of products for the first time, Fannie Mae closed the door on an era: From Colonial times through the past century, conventional home mortgages took various forms, but they always required a cash down payment by the homebuyer.
The down payment served to assure the lender the buyer had a personal investment in the property and would be strongly motivated to pay off the debt. In the 1980s and ‘90s, however, down payments began to shrink. Private-mortgage insurers were willing to provide backup coverage to lenders who allowed them to offer 10 percent, 5 percent and, more recently, 3 percent down payments.
Smaller down payments, in turn, helped fuel the unprecedented housing boom of the past decade, pushing the national rate of home ownership to its present historical high of around 67 percent. Houses that were impossible for young couples to buy with 20 percent cash became readily affordable with 5 percent down.
Last fall, Fannie Mae’s competitor, Freddie Mac, announced it would push the envelope to the next level and buy zero-down-payment home loans as a standard product. But Fannie held back - until this month. Now, virtually anybody, anywhere in the country with a good credit history can buy a house with no cash down.
Bzzzzt. WRONG! Look into deregulation of mortgage securities and the development of off-book CDS markets by the investments banks. Freddie and Fannie had a very very small piece of blame to share, the investment houses and lack of oversight allowed a speculative bubble to build that is now 2-4x the worth of the banks themselves.
How did we get here? Let’s review: In order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of “affordable housing.” They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse.
Doesn’t matter how many facts are thrown out. You guys simply don’t give a shit about reality.
Fact is you’re full of shit and didn’t throw out facts except for one link and a bunch of questions that don’t account for the leading by example the government did to get this mess rolling in the first place, and keeping the momentum going all the way to the end. Which is the primary complain.
Oh, just in case anyone actually thinks haze thought of these questions on his own, well here is the real source.
Good one, Section8! His head probably exploded!
Well here is more… 2003
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.
The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.
Fannie Mae, which was previously known as the Federal National Mortgage Association, and Freddie Mac, which was the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, have been criticized by rivals for exerting too much influence over their regulators.
‘’The regulator has not only been outmanned, it has been outlobbied,’’ said Representative Richard H. Baker, the Louisiana Republican who has proposed legislation similar to the administration proposal and who leads a subcommittee that oversees the companies. ‘’Being underfunded does not explain how a glowing report of Freddie’s operations was released only hours before the managerial upheaval that followed. This is not world-class regulatory work.’’
Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
‘’These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis,’’ said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ‘’The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.’’
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
‘’I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,’’ Mr. Watt said.
---
Barney is of course pretending they had no part of it now, as any true politician does.
... the bill never went through.
Section8,
Don’y go trying to confuse hazies rhetoric with all your facts now.
It’s not like he cares about the truth or anything.
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One of the lame excuses that supporters of this bill have been citing is all the “jobs” that were created during the Depression to complete Hoover Dam, the TVA, etc.
Those things would never get built today, government stimulus or no. Hoover’s EIS alone would be bigger than the dam, and environmentalist groups would be protesting to make the canyon a “wild and scenic river”. There’s so many regulations in place now that infrastructure costs a hell of a lot more than it would otherwise.