www.CostaRicaTicas.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5tZc8oH--o

An absolute EXCELLENT summary!

Berk....

_________________
FRUITCAKE... and you thought it was something you eat! Not on CRT!

Excellent but way off the mark. The idea of putting low-income people in homes is noble and good for the economy when done properly as it was in the Dem. administration. The idea of deregulating all the safegaurds and cutting enforcement of predatory lending as done during the Bush administration is devastating. Your good friends at Countrywide may make a few hundred million, but you'll devestate the economy.

I also can't buy the fact that these problems we're started by Dem's over 8 years ago, and if they we're then the Bush admin. is totally incompetent for not addressing them. I believe the scenario presented below to be much more probably: http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... hould.html

The Housing "bubble" Everyone Should Have Seen Coming
As early as 2004 there were signals in the economy that the housing boom couldn't be sustained. Of course it was still red hot in many areas, so most people didn't care enough to see them. Most especially the economic team advising President Bush and leaders in Congress. The boom was a reflection of under-regulated industries going bubble to bust. And that phenomenon is a direct result of the failures of what has been called "Reaganomics" or if you listen to Bush the Elder, "voodoo economics." Unregulated industries are allowed to hyper-inflate until, like a thunderstorm that grew rapidly only to collapse in a downpour, they blow. We have seen similar bubbles in the airline industry, energy, savings and loans (remember the Keating 5, John McCain?) and most infamously, the dotcom crash.

What really fueled the housing bubble and subsequent crash was the further deregulation of the mortgage industry by the Bush Administration coupled with the false idea that tax cuts to the rich and huge budget deficits are good for the economy. Think of that approach as being similar to getting yourself a brand new credit card with a high limit and no payments for a year. You could make your own little economy look quite good for awhile. But alas, the debt does come due. This president has essentially ran up 25,000 for every man, woman, and Ch*ld in America on our collective credit card. That just doesn't happen without repercussions.

Sixty percent of the wealth of the country is now held by the top one percent, up from just 37 percent at the beginning of the Reagan presidency, and from 48 percent at the beginning of Bush the younger. That is a bad thing for the vast majority of Americans. Again, it is not sustainable without the economy taking a hit for most of us.

What does that have to do with the housing market? Basically, a good portion of Americans were priced right out of it. At the same time, the houses many did hold became worth far less - either through being over value in the first place, or through a market glut. When you throw on deregulation (allowing unscrupulous mortgage brokers to run amok) there ya go.

Well said and on the mark

The facts as to the history of lending money to people who could not qualify for a traditional mortage started with the Carter administration in 1977 and it was called the Community Reinvestment Act. Google it and you'll pull up more info than you can read.

Clinton made changes to the Act in 1995 that ended up to make things worse. http://clinton6.nara.gov/1993/12/1993-12-08-briefing-by-bentsen-and-rubin.text.html

In 2003, the Bush Administration recommended what the NY Times called "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago." [1] This change was to move governmental supervision of two of the primary agents guaranteeing subprime loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under a new agency created within the Department of the Treasury. However, it did not alter the implicit guarantee that Washington will bail the companies out if they run into financial difficulty; that perception enabled them to issue debt at significantly lower rates than their competitors. The changes were generally opposed along Party lines and eventually failed to happen. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) claimed of the thrifts "These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis, 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 Mel Watt (D-NC) added "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."[2]

When you post rebuttals from left wing blogs, written by partically educated people blinded by hatred, who site no references, offering only opinions littered with prejudice all one gets is a bucket full of crap that cannot be relied on.

References
1. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
2. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

_________________
FRUITCAKE... and you thought it was something you eat! Not on CRT!

Berk,

OK, let's try this again. There is nothing wrong with making loans available to people who can't qualify for traditional mortgages. But you have to make sure they are able to PAY the mortgages. All through Clinton this was acheived, millions of loans were given out to people who couldn't get traditional lending. It was set up responsibly and worked fine.

When Bush came in he did his standard operation of letting Big Business write their own rules and offered no government oversight and removed the safeguards and wallah! You have his cronies at Countrywide Mortg. doing millions of loans to people who don't qualify for tradional loans(no problem) but also can't PAY the loans(big problem). These people weren't able to get loans prior to Bush because the program was legit before he got in. That is where the problem started, otherwise we would have had this problem a long time ago.

Look you don't have to be a genius to see how things went, just follow the money trail. Millions of Americans are enduring incredible hardship and our economy is in the worst state arguably in our history. Yet, Bush's buddies at Countrywide all have hundreds of millions in their pockets, the heads of the banks have hundreds of millions in their pockets, Mobil/Exxon has billions in their pockets, Haliburton has billions in their pockets, Blackwater, KBR, the insurance companies etc, etc, etc. Big business has never made more and been less regulated and the people haven't been in worse shape since the depression. There are tent cities going up in almost every state. None of that is opinion my friend, that is fact. Here is one of those references you like so much: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflif ... index.html
This will be my last post on this it's kind of an excersise in futility.

Really? You base this on what? You provide no references. Well, you provided one reference... "Growing 'tent cities' blamed on foreclosure crisis" which were are all aware of, but does nothing to back up your claims.

Berk....

_________________
FRUITCAKE... and you thought it was something you eat! Not on CRT!

So says the man who started the topic based on a YouTube video, the respected source in journalism.

_________________
[url=http://www.amishrakefight.org/gfy/]

That's a meaningless statement. Where information is located as long as it is factual is of no concern. Let's be intellectually honest.

Berk....

_________________
FRUITCAKE... and you thought it was something you eat! Not on CRT!

Fox News called they need you Berk or should I say.. Bill O’Reilly.

Let me show you true intellectual honesty that I found on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt33u0GeAbg

I'll back it up with additional intellectual facts that I found on a supporting site.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6rpp6 ... -boobs_fun

_________________
[url=http://www.amishrakefight.org/gfy/]

OK, just one more post then I'm done as it's pointless. Here's your reference, from a fellow monger no less.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02783.html

Triple FFF you are very wise and your insight is on target.

When are you coming back? Then again, why would you want to?

P.s. Mom says to stop RFMing her.

I notice how Mr. Spit (a good partisan Democrat) wants to lay the blame on someone or something other than his own party. He's short on detailed facts and heavy on opinion. He cleverly leaves out the attempt to reform the system by the Bush administration in 03 that was shot down in flames by "Barney" and others in the Democratic party.

On the other hand... whatever happened to personal responsibility on the part of the borrowers? They want to blame someone else too.

Berk....

_________________
FRUITCAKE... and you thought it was something you eat! Not on CRT!

My thoughts on the bailout / wall street unscrew us package.

Greed which is the driving force of our capitalistic society has the ability to rear it’s ugly head and barf all over us from time to time.

Right now our biggest problem (out side of greed) is a vast number of bad home loans. Some brilliant financial genius sold the CEOs and CFOs of the world banks on the idea of overselling homes to people who don’t make enough money to pay for them and the government agreed and concurred fully. This is the used car lot mentality and they get busted by the state commerce commissions and attorney generals all the time for bad business practices, but hay it’s the BIG BOY this time, not the corner shysters.

Now that we seem to be stuck and our government wants the people who had nothing to do with the problem to bail out the high rollers, the shakers, the movers, I see a bunch of greedy people looking for a quick ticket out of the pits they caused and at our expense.

My thoughts - Bank X has Y number of bad home loans. This means they have houses sitting unoccupied. This is bad. This is Property losing value, Neighborhoods losing value and no money coming in to the banks. All Bad.

Quickest remedy, get someone in the house. This is Not rocket science nor a radicial idea, just plain common sence.

OK, available resident can’t afford the costs. Well what can they afford ? 75%, 50%, even 25%. Now the Bank has money coming in. We are one step up .

A house unoccupied deteriorates rapidly. The simple act of opening and closing doors moves the air, the house breaths, it lives. Thugs and criminals don’t occupy a house someone lives in. The grass gets cut, Utilities get paid,, you know how this part goes, the property is not depressed, nor is the neighborhood blighted, a lot of good people are better off. 2nd step out of the hole.

The government can then help out with some defered tax relief as long as the occupant keeps the property up and keeps the payments up. This is very important. We are now 3 steps up.

The loans need to be structured so a person can afford them. I’m not advocating an easy way to own a good house, I’m talking about a fair and even way to help all of us out. Another step out of the hole.

Just the thoughts of an old and grumpy person who knows NO ONE will ever bail me out for my bad decisions.

My name is Shamas O'Dognasty and I approve of this message.

Vote for me and I'll Set You Free ! !

_________________
Shamas O'Dognasty
Gourmet Catering & Septic Tank Cleaning

Just read this story where the rest of the world now blames the US for their losses. This kind of stuff is actually funny. I guess we all have to blame someone. I say blame Berk.

Quote from president of CR from the article.

"The managers of big business took huge risks out of greed," said President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, whose economy is highly dependent on U.S. trade. "What happens in the United States will affect the entire world and, above all, small countries like ours."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26962762/

It is amazing to the degree that greed can blind people to reality. I remember thinking four years ago that the real estate boom had to suffer a harsh correction. At that time in Northern Va, single family homes were selling in the million dollar range and town houses were five hundred K and up. I felt that the limit had been reached knowing that two income households could't afford mortgages in that range after initial low rated dissapeared. I'm not partiicularly sophisticated about finance, but even I could see the train wreck coming.

_________________
Providing humanitarian assistance to self employed chicas, one cash grant at a time.