Consider, for example the chart of mortgage debt holdings. The pink line (agency- and government-sponsored enterprises backed mortgage pools) is Freddie and Fannie. Notice how their market share plummeted in 2003, which is when the housing bubble really separated from reality. That is also when the sub-prime and alt-A (a less sub kind of non-prime mortgage) mortage sector took off. The aqua blue line (Asset backed securities issuers) is the unregulated private mortgage finance industry. Notice how it exploded starting in 2003. You can see that F&F managed to halt their market share collapse in 2006, the pink line flattens out. That is when they entered the sub prime market, in which they were previously a bit player. By that time the bomb was there with it’s fuse burning and they were dooming themselves to be blown up along with the rest of the financial industry.

So F&F were followers in the crisis, not leaders. The leaders were the mortgage issuing companies (eg countrywide) and the unregulated private mortgage finance industry (such as investment banks).

Mark Thoma’s blog post goes over various other lines of evidence.

With regard to that chart I also find the earlier time period interesting. Notice how F&F’s market share had been increasing since around 1970, but really took off in around 77. Notice also the maroon line which is declining inversely. That maroon line is the Savings and Loan industry, which was collapsing under high inflation, then deregulation and looting by executives.

As for Orson Scott Card, it is widely known that he is a closeted pedophile. That is why so many of his novels are about children, this gives him an opportunity to undress children in his imagination while he writes. If you read Ender’s Game as an exercise in pedophilia — especially the ways in which the children are abused (in a way similar to sado-masochistic sex, you can almost imagine OSC wanking off while writing those scenes) — you start getting a really sick feeling and start wanting to track OSC down and tie him to the ground and let a dozen or so nasty 12 year old brats beat the sh*t out of him. OSC is one sick mofo…

- Badtux the Sci-Fi Penguin

Mmm – Teller’s bomb pulse lasers are a design to turn a single nuclear blast into a single shot X-ray laser. No mirror required, although (obviously) a single shot. I would think aiming the bloody things would be a problem, though.

Then Jerry Pournell and Larry Niven become adamant global warming deniers. The evidence on global warming is so overwhelming, convering from so many sources, that denying the anthropogenic nature of global warming is equivalent to denying the roundness of the earth. And yet Pournelle and Niven persist in their crazy denial of the mountain of evidence for global warming.

Yup. I am now reading the latest rant from John Ringo (nutcase, but entertaining at times) which sneers at global warming based on the idea that if, fictionally, the sun stops shining as much, things will get colder.

No shit, Sherlock. And if pig had wings and feathers, they’d be birds – but in the meantime they still produce bacon.

And, from the real world, I see that Singapore is desperately worried about the fact that they now depend on dikes to hold back the tide as the sea level rises. You think these anti-global warming bozos would try making a killing speculating in low-lying land values, if it’s all such a con…

Sometime around 1984, all the right-wing science fiction writers seemed to go insane. Heinlein started promoting and espousing the senile criminal Reagan’s idotic and wholly unworkable Star Wars delusions. How could someone as smart and knowledgeable as Robert Heinlein fall for that horseshit?

Didn’t he realize we didn’t (and still don’t) have mirrors capable of reflecting X-rays, so there was no possible way we could produce X-ray lasers? Didn’t he know that after the shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986, there was no possible way to ship thousands of shuttles worth of components up into space to create giant space-based lasers? Didn’t he understand that space-based lasers required such titanic amounts of energy that even if we could lift the thousands of tons of chemical or fissionable energy sources into orbit required to power a laser, you’d only get one shot? So you’d need thousands upon thousands of space-based lasers?

But Heinlein babbled that delusion idiocy in flagrant violation of engineering reality and physics and budgetary practicality…and he kept on spouting that gibberish, until the day he died. What the hell went wrong with Heinlein’s brain? You have to suspect brain damage of some kind.

Then Jerry Pournell and Larry Niven become adamant global warming deniers. The evidence on global warming is so overwhelming, convering from so many sources, that denying the anthropogenic nature of global warming is equivalent to denying the roundness of the earth. And yet Pournelle and Niven persist in their crazy denial of the mountain of evidence for global warming. According to them, global _cooling_ is the big problem…despite the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheets, despite the increase in hurricanes, despite everything. They just deny, deny, deny. Have Pournelle and Niven gone insane? Are they permanent high? Did they hit their heads in a car accident and suffer severe head trauma resulting in massive cognitive deifcit?

And now this latest insanity. The evidence is overwhelming that the ACM loans had a _lower_ delinquency rate than other types of loans. Yet Pournelle and Card blithely deny the facts and persist in blaming the victims for the subprime meltdown. You have to wonder — is there an epidemic of brain damage among science fiction writers? Did some brain-sucking amoeba get into their water supply and destroy their frontal lobes? What the hell is wrong with these people?

Next, I expect to hear the Democrats blamed for the Iraq war. Bill Clinton will be blamed for the corruption and incompetence over the last 8 years. It’s delusional. People like Orson Scott Card and Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven sound like they’re high on LSD. That’s the only explanation I can come up with. Either that, or these people are just plain nuts.

He bragged that all he had to do was give a title of the next Horseclans novel to his publisher and he’d have a contract, along with an advance payment. He crossed himself whenever he mentioned his mother, so he had a Catholic upbringing, FWIW

As for kicking him in the balls, you’ll have to dig him up for that one, he’s been in the Choir Invisible for lo these 18 years.

1) The Iraq War is the best run of any American war.

2) Pres. Fredo is the greatest President in Card’s lifetime.

3) Pres. Fredo is truly a moderate.

No wonder AssRocket thinks Card is reputable.

then again, knowing what securitization is, what collateralized debt obligations are, what SIVs are….leverage ratios….credit default swaps….the LIBOR rate., etc. etc.,…all requires big hurty thinky power! ouch my brain! something i cant possibly understand must be the fault of TEH BLACKS!!!1!1!! Damn the liberal media for ignoring this!!!

That.

One thing he might like to explain to us – if letting the darkies take out home loans was the reason for the collapse of Wall Street, howcum it took ten to thirty years for it to work?

I missed where mainstream Christianity went through a sacred-underwear phase, though it could have been the gnostics, I could never keep track of them.

Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.) [emph added]

then again, knowing what securitization is, what collateralized debt obligations are, what SIVs are….leverage ratios….credit default swaps….the LIBOR rate., etc. etc.,…all requires big hurty thinky power! ouch my brain! something i cant possibly understand must be the fault of TEH BLACKS!!!1!1!! Damn the liberal media for ignoring this!!!

say what you will, it must be really easy being republican.

Card has written one really good book, a few reasonably decent books, and a raft of crap…

Pretty much my assessment, too.

…(always on the lookout for that 10% non-crap that Sturgeon’s Law tells me is out there)…

…and there, Dan Someone has demonstrated the only valid way to put Orson Scott Card’s name anywhere near Theodore Sturgeon’s.

Guess it was just their turn. Again.

And if you look for something to read out of this thread, Cordwainer Smith’s “The Lady Who Sailed The Soul” ought to rip your heart out. In a good way. “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” is another great short story, highly recommended by me and Ursula LeGuin.

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416521461/1416521461___6.htm

The Gospel of John is the Jew-blamiest one.

If I had remembered that Hart’s Hope was written by Orson Scott Card, I never would have read Ender’s Game. That book was also misogynistic, but not to the same extent as Hart’s Hope. And that’s about the best thing I can say about it, frankly.