Stop with the bullshit.

There were no sub-prime loans being made at 80% LTV. If you could come up with this sort of money you did not need a sub-prime loan.

davod on October 6, 2008 at 5:00 PM

sir, may i respectfully submit that you are totaly wrong. take it from me that ltv’s of 80% and below were very common in the early days of subprime. you are forgetting the a) many refinances are low ltv and b) with seller carry backs, many borrower’s had the funds for large down payments but could not meet conforming credit guidelines. dario’s statements are valid. Associates, Ohio Savings, Meritage, Saxon, etc were very active at low LTVs.

i love to say ‘i told you so’, but this is taking it too far.

Subprime lending didn’t start in 2004. Subprime lending was always a good idea. It became poorly implemented when subprime and prime borrowers were given the same underwriting and interest rates. If underwriting of those borrowers was still done with high scrutiny towards LTV and debt ratios along with higher rates of return then this mess wouldn’t exist.

Subprime lending started off as a good idea – helping Americans buy homes who couldn’t previously afford to.

No it wasn’t a good idea. Getting people who could not afford homes into one anyway increased demand and artificially inflated housing prices. Anyone who has bought a house in the past 5 years has been screwed because some of their equity it not real equity, it was the cost of subsidizing the defaults of others. There is a point no one wants to mention to the middle class

+race is not a basis on which to lend money, and in a color-blind society, it would not have been. Economics is the only rational basis to use if you are going to make a business of it and survive.

+the accounting frauds at Fannie/Freddie were the tip of the iceberg saying the above policy was failing in a big way. This was not an acceptable message to designers of the plan, as it called into question their intelligence, goals and honesty. It also meant their favored sons (Raines and Johnson, among others) might have to do the perp walk, another embarrassment. There also were elections to be won, ACORN’s to pandered to.

One should note that the Boston Herald did a internet poll last week, as noted here, and 70% of the respondents put the majority blame on Barney Frank, when they could have put it on Bush or a few others. In a few places, the penny has dropped.

Stop with the bullshit.

There were no sub-prime loans being made at 80% LTV. If you could come up with this sort of money you did not need a sub-prime loan.

Some called it exhorborant and accused such companies of taking advantage of people. But, what it did was get some people with poor credit out of a very tough spot. Once their income or equity (or both) improved, they could then refinance their first and higher interest rate 2nd in to a more practical loan. This was highly profitable for these finance companies but they still suffered a higher rate of collections and forecloser then “A paper”. The finance companies managed their own portfolios and kept LTVs and debt ratios in line with their level of risk (and interest rate).

Once LTVs went over 90 there was no room for equity fluctuations nor forecloser short-sales. At that point sub-prime lending no longer existed. There is a place for sub-prime lending but they cannot and should not be underwritten or given an interest rate that doesn’t equate with their risk. If a family with poor credit history wants to purchase a home at 20% down there should be a way to make that happen.

Why America seems to want to encourage its own doom is a complete mystery to me.

Normal self-hating, suicidal leftism coupled with 9/11 PTSD affecting a larger part of the population. That’s how I figure it.

People are sick. People all over the globe are sick, because without a strong America, no one is safe.

capitalist piglet on October 6, 2008 at 3:11 PM

Exactly. People don’t know what they might be staring at without a strong US. They have no clue, at all.

McCain has now dropped from 7 behind to 8 behind in both Gallup and Ras.

MB4 on October 6, 2008 at 1:09 PM

Then Americans are as stupid as liberals say we are. Obama is a dangerous man, and we are poised to elect him to the most powerful position in the world.

Why America seems to want to encourage its own doom is a complete mystery to me. People are sick. People all over the globe are sick, because without a strong America, no one is safe.

This is a giant bulls-eye NO ONE is shooting at!

Most everyone knew that some of these deals were just too good to be true, but all that money flowing in made it tempting to look the other way and ignore the unscrupulous practice of some bad actors.

Hold on there! Wasn’t Mr. Obama himself personally in a lawsuit against Citibank to force it to take on toxic loans? He’s got some dirt on him which won’t scrub off; he can’t point to his co-conspirators and say it was their fault and he is blameless.

And wasn’t one of the “bad actors” his friend Rezko (who helped him purchase his $1.6M Georgian mansion and garden with a loan from Northern Trust whose rate is the envy of any reader here)?

By the way, note that Northern Trust is a bank for the rich of the rich, and, according to the Chicago Tribune article, had little or no exposure to the subprime market. I wonder why Obama went with that bank and never sued it?

Anyone arguing that subprime lending was essentially a good idea has obviously learned nothing from the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the poison they introduced to the investment sector. The best way to boost home ownership is to build a strong economy in which job creation allows upward mobility throughout the entire economy, and to keep taxes low enough to encourage the kind of investment that creates jobs. Instead of forcing or enticing lenders to take irrational risks with credit, the government would have done much better to build people into position to own homes on a rational basis.

This is my view, too!

For the next 3 weeks, the objective MUST BE to defeat Barack Obama. It will take a concerted effort. Every person who spends time and demoralizes our efforts by attacks on John McCain is objectively working for Obama.

What utter and unadulterated nonsense this brainless bit of strategy is. Why not also throw in there that if you criticize McCain the terrorists have won? By this logic McCain say or promise anything no matter how much it goes against conservative principles and the GOP base is supposed to remain silent? I don’t think so.

A better strategy would be to go out there and argue why Obama isn’t right for America than to become mute McCain drones because of some misguided concept that Americans aren’t entitled to criticize thier leaders 30 days prior to an election. McCain managed to legislate that out of the Constitution, I for one am not going to extend that to my personal comments because of stupid people’s well-intentioned idiocy!

FiveWays on October 6, 2008 at 2:14 PM

Timing is everything, hopefully he’ll press the attack.

I sit corrected……

dmann on October 6, 2008 at 2:34 PM

He HAD to get this out now. The Market has been tanking.

Plus- this gives Bambi’s team a MASSIVE HEADACHE for tomorrow nights debate planning!

Timing is everything, hopefully he’ll press the attack.

I sit corrected……

MCCAIN JUST LAUNCHED!

YES!!!!!!!

FiveWays on October 6, 2008 at 2:13 PM

apparently he’s not listening to me anymore, I told hm to wait until the debate!

“Hee..he..fight….fight with me…..” Elvis has left the building!