Y’know, like, if only Glass-Steagal was still in force…

But that doesn’t matter. This will take hold among Republicans, and it will be fact to them.

I’ve blocked a couple of people from my email over the last couple of years. I’m a mite grudgy myself, I guess.

So I understand the temptation to write someone off. But “undecided” might just be a polite way to say “None of your business, leave me alone”.

Hmmm. That’s possible.

Mikey:

Here in So-Cal, there are communities near the border where as many as 40% of the homes are in foreclosure or are lender REOs, listed below the loan amount for other properties in the area. In a situation like this, the homeowners can’t refinance–even if they can afford their current mortgage–because their houses don’t appraise.

How long do the lenders seriously think it will be before people who have maxed out their credit cards in a vain attempt to cover their ballooning mortgages until they can sell their homes realize–HEY! I could probably hire some poor Mexican to torch the 14 other comparables in my neighborhood that are artificially depressing the value of MY home for about $1,000! (You burn a house down, it’s no longer a comparable because it’s raw land. ) Perhaps the lawyers and M.B.A.s who are the nexus of our country’s financial brain trust didn’t think the peons would figure this one out.

The bankers, insurers, money marketeers, and other jet-plane-owning miscreants will have to come to grips with the fact that, while they may determine the rules when it comes to credit and mortgage lending, it is the “little people” who ultimately determine how much they can collect. We go down, they go down. They piss us off at their peril. Don’t know how this will solve the debt imbalance, but here goes:

1. Lenders must negotiate better terms with borrowers who took out sub-prime mortgages as part of any bail-out. Desperate people do desperate things–which often have a greater-than-intended negative effect. This year’s fire season in CA could very well be sparked or exacerbated by people who couldn’t get a refinance from their bank.

2. Credit lines extended by lenders against homes cannot be reduced simply because the value of the asset has diminished if the borrower has no record of late payments, and has not defaulted. This should be a no-brainer. Anyone who can afford to pay through the nose for the luxury of a credit line is the sort of person banks can’t afford to piss off right now. God forbid they should invest in something more tangible–like massively devalued assets sold at a loss by the banks!.

3. The “universal default” on credit cards, auto purchasing/leasing agreements, and some mortgages must be abolished. These clauses can transform a difficult financial situation that would otherwise be a temporary setback into a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy.

4. Finance charges on credit cards should be more stringently regulated. That $30-$50 people pay just because the bank tells them their payment is late is a cash cow that the credit card companies work to their advantage. If I opt to pay my bill on the first of the month, don’t send it out dated the 8th of the previous month, so that it arrives on the 12th, and tell me that it arrived late when I mailed the check out on the 25th “Because we didn’t receive it until the 3rd.” It shouldn’t take any longer for my check to get from my house to your wage slaves than it took for your bill to arrive. And if “payment occurs as of the date a check is posted” is good enough for Congress, it should be good enough for Wells Fargo.

Just my opinion

Candy said,

September 21, 2008 at 22:03

OT: I received a group email from a long-time friend in which she asks not to receive any more political emails from anyone, for or against any candidate. The email was nicely worded, and I don’t blame her for this; it’s maddening to have one’s inbox cluttered up with a ton of forwarded crap.

But what bothered me to the point of thinking about simply shining her on and writing her off from this day forward is this: She signed it “Her Name Here – Still Undecided.”

It’s like my mind just snapped. I’m not sure that I can be friends with or that I even want to fucking know someone who could still be un-fucking-decided at this point in the festivities.

People who choose to be willfully blind at times like this are the Pontius Pilates of politics. I may not be thrilled about either choice, but I realize that the ideal candidate is probably too smart to seek public office. At least I know what I DON’T want–and that’s 4 more years of the same old crap, dressed up in pageant sashes and even more religious wingnutism. And do we really want foreign policy dictated by a former snowmobile salesman?

.

The report supports your first two bullets, but does not have any data to connect to foreclosures and support your third bullet point.

Fannie and Freddie is the second culprit: passing off risky loans as “safe” gov’t backed loans to the financial markets which contained many investors (a lot of foreign countries) who had a huge appetite for “safe” investments.

Loosening by the SEC of the leverage ratios was the 3rd culprit: making investment banks abe to carry on more of the “safe” loans that they should.

The CRA is the equivalent of the left eating up the blame on the Graham-Leach Act. The diversified banks surviving are the ones that wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for this Act.

That’s right since there wouldn’t be these credit swap derivatives and other byzantine and arcane things out there. These laws need to be repealed yesterday. It is nothing but legalized casino gambling with other people’s money. But all the financial deregulation laws which were passed back in the Reagan era like the Germain-Garn Depository Deregulation Act need to be revisited and repealed as well and replaced by usury laws that prohibit the type of consumer and taxpayer exploitation that has been and is going on.

http://www.1001words.com/2008/09/obama-to-nation-im-outta-here.html

I don’t know if it would work or not, but it would be simple justice to grab every last thing these motherfuckers owned. I don’t know if they have a trillion dollars worth of assets but that’s a good place to start.

The problem is political. Having a sensible fiscal regime half the time, and the other half a criminal plundering of the treasury under corrupt cronyism, is not sustainable.

Ramen.

I see signs that Obama is already not capitulating to the first demand of the Republicans. Did they really stay up all night writing this, or was it hanging around on somebody’s word processor, waiting for them to pull the trigger?

That’s the stinkiest part of this. The speed with which they came up with a “solution.”

But what has been happening is that around the globe countries are banning shorts. This reduces confidence and when the bans expire the stocks could easily find they no buyers, none, not at any price. The US ban on shorts expires on Oct 2nd. If nothing is done and things remain as they are, on Oct. 3rd the global economy crashes and crashes hard. From what I understand.

On the up side I suppose I could give lessons in dumpster dining and there will always be plenty of good meat walking on the sidewalks. So there is that to look forward to.