Outlander on September 23, 2008 at 11:48 AM

It’s my secret hope/desire that McCain uses S109 and it’s defeat on a Dem partly line vote as an OFFENSIVE THERMONUCLEAR STRIKE during the upcoming debate with Obama.

MAV you magnificent bastard !

This system was the most corrupt. Those loans were dangerous and risky and people didn’t have any grasp of what they were getting themselves into.

petunia on September 23, 2008 at 1:10 PM

Regardless, it’s impossible to create laws to prevent people from being foolish or stupid. At some point adults, and that’s who these people were, have to take responsiblity for themselves.

It’s not the job of the state to prevent ignorant people from losing their money. I happen to like playing Blackjack and usually walk away with money…because I walk away. We could ban gambling because some people can’t seem to walk away, but what about my rights?

I like easy store credit because I can get an item for no interest and I pay the balance before the interest comes due. Should we make that illegal because many people get stuck with a fat charge because they didn’t read the fine print like I did? No…

If I wanted to ‘purchase’ a house with an interest only loan for 4-6 years and then sell because I knew I’d be moving on instead of paying twice as much per month renting, should I be made to pay more because some poor sap thinks that paying 30 years on the same terms will actually net him the house?

I don’t want the government to be responsible for me….at all. ‘Protecting’ people from their own ignorance is a losing proposition that only makes everyone else miserable.

That’s what we should do.

And yes, I’m an 80’s geek. :-P

You are absolutely correct on this.

I was talking to someone about this earlier today and we both noted that Obama has done and said nothing about dealing with the credit crisis in the past.

The Democrats were too busy worrying about civil liberties for terrorists, too busy trying to lose the war in Iraq to even take note of the disaster right here under their noses. And it will be the same with social security too. The checks will have to start bouncing before they admit there is a problem. Obama certainly has not dealt with either problem in a straightforward way.

My point was that McCain is as bad as Obama on these issues. No difference.

Sure.

I hope this nation will change the leadership in Congress so that we can get work done for America.

Anyone that ‘bought’ a house with an interest only loan or a mortgage with a huge balloon payment tacked on to the end had the danger spelled out to them in black and white. There are uses for such loan products in certain situations, but people lead with their hearts instead of their heads and lost big time. That’s life…being foolish gets you hurt.

Lenders weren’t generally this ‘creative’ with loans until the 1990’s when ‘red-lining’ became an issue. There were certain income levels and credit ratings that just could not get a home loan…largely because this demographic had a higher rate of default. When the goverment stepped in and threatened investigations and penalties for this business practice, banks found ways to get loans to people that really could not afford what they were buying.

Now the same people who screwed this up are going to be in charge. Amazing….

Asher on September 23, 2008 at 11:57 AM

Okay but I know loan officers personally who thought these loans were the best thing and there wasn’t any REAL danger. Because they believed the price of homes would always go up.

There is very little education to becoming a loan officer. And underwriters are suposed to check for mistakes etc.

These loans were defective. It shouldn’t be up the home buyer to say you don’t have hard enough requirements. Most of them trusted their loan officers to give them advice.

For instance, I know a certain loan officer who had the designation CMP (If I remember right) after her name. And according to her that was the highest level obtainable. CMP stands for Certified Mortgage Planner. She certainly considered herself the best in the business. She knew everything. She got HERSELF a no interest-negative am loan. And she push those kind of loans hard and made lots of money with those loans. When the payment became too much she would refinance people.

She told people she was giving them the most up to date and best financial advice available. (We planned to relocate for awhile and she was a client of my husband’s.) She said she could approve us for an outrageously high construction loan with little twists and turns about subdividing some property we considered, etc. We didn’t go through with it. But I know what she was pushing and how she truly believed that what she was telling people was true. It propably would have been a disaster. And we came pretty close to doing it–closer than I really want to admit.

I put myself in the place of someone who had only a high school education and had a lot of equity in a house and wanted to move up… I can imagine the kind of things she might have recommended. And she would have thought she was getting people into a great deal that would increase their networth.

OH by the way. To get that CMP designation? She apparently had to take some siminar offered by some lender about how to market their loans and she became, magically, qualified to give people financial advice by virtue of some bogus letters after her name. In her mind she was qualified. She won awards and was honored nationally… As far as I know she didn’t have any real college education.

This system was the most corrupt. Those loans were dangerous and risky and people didn’t have any grasp of what they were getting themselves into.

I THINK SOOOO!!!

John McCain thought he could get corrective action through even a Democrat controlled Congress and co-sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.

The Republicans controlled congress in 2005.
Though it was the Democrats who were instrumental in blocking the bill. They voted 100% against.

I’m John McCain, I lied to get the nomination and will be as bad a Barack Obama and I approve this message.

Okay I’m saying this again. To blame homeowners is like blaming someone for using lead paint, asbestos or buying a Pinto in the 70s. The banks were pushing defective dangerous products. And they made millions doing it.

Not an exact correlation. People were unaware that the paint they were using contained lead…or that asbestos caused acute and chronic problems or that Pintos were defective.

Anyone that ‘bought’ a house with an interest only loan or a mortgage with a huge balloon payment tacked on to the end had the danger spelled out to them in black and white. There are uses for such loan products in certain situations, but people lead with their hearts instead of their heads and lost big time. That’s life…being foolish gets you hurt.

Lenders weren’t generally this ‘creative’ with loans until the 1990’s when ‘red-lining’ became an issue. There were certain income levels and credit ratings that just could not get a home loan…largely because this demographic had a higher rate of default. When the goverment stepped in and threatened investigations and penalties for this business practice, banks found ways to get loans to people that really could not afford what they were buying.

Now the same people who screwed this up are going to be in charge. Amazing….

***This would not be a “negative” ad, but would show McCain’s own foresight in anticipating future problems, as opposed to Obama’s focus on criticizing the past.
Steve Z on September 23, 2008 at 10:44 AM

This is what McCain needs to hammer home in the debate on Friday night. In 2004, more than 62 million people watched the debate. And people are going to be scared. Hell, I know people who are cashing out their entire investment portfolios because they’re convinced the Dow is going to drop to 8,000. I actually seriously considered doing it myself.

McCain needs to show leadership and earn trust on Friday. That means no goofy ads, no cheap shots at liberal media bias, and no gotchas with The One. McCain needs to push home HARD the fact that he saw trouble at Fannie and Freddie three years ago and desperately tried to reform it, but the Democrats shot him down. And then go into his maverick shtick and talking about how he and Palin are going to go in, kick ass, and take names.

You make the Fannie and Freddie guys and unnamed “Wall Street fatcats” the villains. It’s populist shtick, but it probably does fit here to a degree.

Arrogant SOB/liar !!
ARRGGHH !

Philip J Berg lawsuit, Obama, Fox News, Media, PA, Jeff Schreiber, September 24, 2008, Obama response

Obama has until Wednesday, September 24, 2008 to respond to the Philip J Berg lawsuit that states Obama is not qualified to be president.

Jeff Schreiber, a law student, writer and blog host was in Media PA for a McCain Palin rally and mentioned the lawsuit deadline to a Fox News reporter. Here is what happened:

“After attending a McCain-Palin rally in Media, PA (photos and story coming later), I hunted down Fox News Channel’s Carl Cameron and asked him whether he know about Philip Berg’s suit.

He did not.

He originally thought I was referring to some state-level action regarding ballots. When I told him it was a federal suit and that ANSWERS FROM BARACK OBAMA AND THE DNC ARE DUE ON WEDNESDAY, he made a phone call and referred someone to this site.

So, to those from Fox News currently checking here, all of the materials and links for the Berg suit is located on the right-hand side of this page, under the “BERG v. OBAMA @ AMERICA’S RIGHT” header.
Read more here:
http://www.americasright.com/

——————————————————————————–

Possibly related posts: (automatically

Unfortunately when I bought a house by banker asked all kinds of little questions. Like: do I have a job, can I pay back the money, do I have enough for the down payments and closing costs? If only I was a drag on society I could of had all of you buy me a house.

Tommy_G on September 23, 2008 at 10:23 AM

It seems to me, the crisis is just as much the fault of stupid “homeowners” as the unscrupulous banks through which they received their loans. But to assess the blame or even part of the blame on the “homeowner” would require the Dems to hold the individual responsible for thier actions. Which goes against their desire to make everyone feel like victims willing to give control of their lives to the gov’t.

Zaire67 on September 23, 2008 at 10:51 AM

Okay I’m saying this again. To blame homeowners is like blaming someone for using lead paint, asbestos or buying a Pinto in the 70s. The banks were pushing defective dangerous products. And they made millions doing it.

Sophisticated buyers and honest banks didn’t get caught in the traps. But like Tommy G said his bank asked the appropriate questions. What if Tommy didn’t know any better and his banker sold him on a loan that caused him to refinace in a year or two so the broker got to bilk him again?

A lot of people were told they qualified for more and that everyone did loans this way today that those fixed rates loans were for stupid people. If you are financially literate you should have known the difference but banks were not looking for sophisticated people.

I think the dishonest bankers shouldn’t get a penny and the victims (homeowners in trouble now) should get the bailout.

Maybe the answer is going to be class action lawsuits because obiviously no one is looking at what was really going on in the lending industry. It was corruption at the highest levels down to the loan officers. Every incentive was to bilk people out of thousands by driving prices up and monthly payments stupidly low. Having a built in incentive to refinance by having payments low which meant the banks would get to charge points and fees all over again. It was quite a racket.

When this whole financial mess comes up during the debates, I am seriously hoping that B.O. is going to bumbling and stumbling all over the landscape trying to explain where he stands, while McCain will calmly and intelligently discuss the issue and offer some viable solutions.

pilamaye on September 23, 2008 at 10:37 AM

You mean like this? :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F-PMY72luY“>

Today’s credit crunch has been a long time coming. Three years ago the risk was so large and so obvious that John McCain thought he could get corrective action through even a Democrat controlled Congress and co-sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.

This failed to pass because leading democrats on the finance committee wanted to take the money, not action. Christopher Dodd, Democrat, took $165,400; Barack Obama, Democrat, took $126,349; John Kerry, Democrat, took $111,000.

I’m John McCain, and I approved this ad – and, by the way, people who work for Freddie and Fannie gave my campaign a total of $21,550, but I didn’t take one cent from the companies or their political action committees

Good work Paul Murphy

I have several friends that have PhDs and they are all the same. Products of academia. BDS is rampant. They are so entrenched in their ideology that reason, rationality and common sense have no place. They say the craziest stuff that has no basis in fact and when I challenge them, they just shup up and change the subject. I’m like, if you didn’t want to really talk about the issue, why did you bring it up?

None have accounting degrees though. Does your wife’s accounting knowledge/expertise encompass banking, securities, loans, stocks, etc.? I’m curious b/c it seems very simplistic of her to say such a thing if she has knowledge about the markets.