Lest we Forget Rant!

[WouldaShoulda]

It's obvious that the Dems are the party of effective regulation!!

Heh, heh.

[Winderlust]

This is from a source I will protect; everything that follows is quoted from that source. The URL is the key:


They pulled it because it was too TRUE to be FUNNY!!!

SNL did a "Bailout" skit in 2008, which has created some rather awkward problems for NBC. They spiked the video and tried to shut it down on the Internet. But aha, there's still some sites that have it. (CLICK THE LINK BELOW)

http://msunderestimated.com/SNLBailoutSkit.wmv

Very startling to see Saturday Night Live absolutely nail the history and culprits of the Big Bailout. No wonder the powers at NBC pulled the skit. Through impersonations they present stark truth, perhaps one of the most surprising presentations almost allowed on NBC.

[Winderlust]

Sorry the link doesn't work in this format; at least not from my Apple machine and Firefox browser. I don't know why. I assume everyone else is having the same problem.

[Harryeod]

Works great on my PC.

I usually don't watch the videos that are posted but I watched this and it is FUNNNNNNY. And IMHO, spot on!

The Bush adminstration failed to act aggressively and they let the Congress, along with greedy bankers, run this country's economy to the ground. Now the only change we have is that the Speaker of the House actually runs the country. Her and her lap dog Ried will get their marsh mouse saved and their railroad installed while we, the tax payers, get royally screwed.

My hero, Ronald Reagan, God Bless him, is rolling over in his grave not believing how close our United States is to becoming Western Europe.

Now the chosen one is going to cut defense spending which will further weaken our country.

But, as true Americans, we are going to pull out of this, figure out how to make money off this situation and elect a TRUE CONSERVATIVE, as President of the United States.

[Winderlust]

Harry,

It's people like your son that gives me hope.

I agree with everything you said. It's what you didn't say that I felt missed the point. Aren't you just a little miffed that NBC sat on such a funny and spot on skit. The double standard is glaring.

Are they afraid of the Dems or are they complicit in the coverup? You can't say they were afraid of President Bush. He absorbed years of that stuff; so did President Reagan and Clinton for that matter. Is the First Amendment silently slipping away?

[Harryeod]

To quote John Gibson, NBC = National Barack Channel. The mainstream loves this guy; there are veteran reporters waiting in line to suck up to him.

Miffed is a little light; I would say pissed! Most of my anger is directed toward Congress and the Bush administration for letting this collapse happen and opening the door for the wacked out left to take over. We are in for a rough ride the next four years, Obama is sounding more and more like Peanut Jimmy and I was in the military during that fiasco and it wasn't pretty.

I would never pull a Baldwin and say I will move out of the country but I am installing a wind generator on the boat so I can at least take an extended vacation somewhere across the big blue, if the need should arise.

Just in case Senator Schumer is a sailor, but I really doubt he is, since when is a million here, a million there, small change? We the people do care about where the chump change is being spent!

And Wind thanks for words about my son! He is my number one Hero!

[craigimass]

Originally Posted by Winderlust

The Dems. and the PC a**h*** led us here!

This is what remains on "You Tube" of evidence of the seeds of most of our economic troubles. Yes it is a political production. But there is no air brushing or dubbing of the videos.
sww, I'm still angry!

Have a nice day!

How can someone who knows which way the winds blows act so ignorant?

The entire situation, like most human interactions, is very complex - but just for a couple examples........and fine points...

1. A great number of subprime mortgages would mean VERY little. This is evident to anyone in Real Estate or Finance. Here's some math....
A. if 10% of ALL house values in the USA were subprime (and they are not).
B. If these houses ALL lost 40% in value and had to be sold for such by the banks.....
c. Value of ALL USA residential real estate....about 30 trillion.

So, we take 1/10 of that - 3 trillion in subprime (this is way over the actual amount) and we discount it by 40% in order to sell it. Total loss = 1.2 Trillion dollars.......or WAY LESS than we have spend so far just on the bank bailouts.

2. Stupid REGULAR (White, middle class, rich, etc.) speculators are responsible for vastly MORE of the crash because the stuff they speculated on cost VASTLY MORE. Again, some examples:
A. Donald Trump
B. I know a hairdresser in SC who owns 2 million dollars worth of houses - she makes 40K per year. Both are mansions (she will lose them soon).
C. People in my family and MANY others I know invested in speculative Real Estate that has little to do with Subprime and Everything to do with pumping up values and trying to FLIP.

BUT, even all that said...and I could go on for HOURS with examples....... NONE of that is what is causing these problems! These problem, if we want to be simply about it, are caused by two things.....

A. The Casino called CDS - Credit Derivatives and Default Swaps. Here is an easy way to explain. You are allowed to take out a million dollar life insurance policy on yourself. So can your spouse or children. But what would happen if EVERYONE was allowed to take out life insurance policies on ANYONE? In the case of CDS, this is what was allowed - unregulated "bets" in the health of everything from mortgages to banks to corporations to the weather. It was deregulated and leverage (the betting amount you need to participate) was lowered. All those companies like AIG bet on Franks Life Insurance Policy...they then sold pieces of their bet to each other in an attempt to hedge their bets......guess what? Frank Died.

The dollar amount of these bets is over 50 TRILLION. Compare those REAL numbers and bets to the POSSIBLE loss of 1.2 trillion in bad mortgages. It does not compute.

B. Fraud. This should hardly need explaining. Watch the show American Greed, read about Madoff and Enron and MANY MANY others......Wall Street and the banks are criminals who featured their own nests using our own selfishness (to be like them) to lead us on.

The ship might have held together with the normal amount of corruption and speculation. But when the government took away ALL the rules and actually championed the "free unregulated market", that would be the same as leaving your Porche in midtown with the keys in it.

Make no mistake about it. A lot of people are responsible, including perhaps you and I. But it is the ideas of the GOP - the Phil Grahams, their thinktanks, etc. etc. who took away the last bit of regulation and allowed for the bets to get out of hand.

[southernwind]

The Washington Post is a "pretty flimsy" source of information, two Post hotshots declared in an effort to diminish a politically uncomfortable association for Sen. Barack Obama.

Franklin Raines, CEO of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) from 1999-2004, is the individual most responsible for the subprime mortgage crisis. It was on Mr. Raines' watch that Fannie Mae went bankrupt.

He was accused of manipulating earnings statements so he could be paid bonuses to which he was not entitled.
In July, Mr. Raines was interviewed by Anita Huslin, a business reporter for the Washington Post.

"In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae's chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself," Ms. Huslin's story began. "He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case's D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health care companies and, more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing matters."

Sen. John McCain pounced. In an ad Sep. 18, he said: "Obama has no background in economics. Who advises him? The Post says it's Franklin Raines, for 'advice on mortgage and housing policy.' Shocking. Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed 'extensive financial fraud.' Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill."

The Obama campaign rushed out statements by Mr. Raines denying he had offered Sen. Obama advice, and by Sen. Obama denying he had sought it.

Who was the source for Ms. Huslin's assertion that the Obama campaign had solicited Mr. Raines' advice? Mr. Raines himself.

"I asked Huslin to provide the exact circumstances of that passage," wrote Michael Dobbs, who writes the Post's Fact Checker blog. "She said she was chatting with Raines during the photo shoot, and asked 'if he was engaged at all with the Democrats' quest for the White House. He said that he had gotten a couple of calls from the Obama campaign. I asked him about what, and he said, Oh, general housing, economy issues.'"

But that conversation is "pretty flimsy" evidence, Mr. Dobbs said. "The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama," he said.

Howard Kurtz, the Post's media writer, said: "(Raines) has never been a close adviser to Obama."

The McCain campaign never said he was. The only description in the ad of the Obama-Raines relationship is a direct quote from Ms. Huslin's story. To diminish the impact on Sen. Obama of the disclosure of an unsavory association, Mr. Dobbs and Mr. Kurtz distorted what Sen. McCain actually said.

The furious efforts of Mr. Dobbs and Mr. Kurtz to spin on behalf of Sen. Obama at the expense of their own newspaper are hilarious. But they were topped by Karen Tumulty of Time magazine, who said the McCain ad was "racist" because both Sen. Obama and Mr. Raines are black.

"Sinister images of two black men, followed by one vulnerable looking elderly white woman," she wrote.
Proof the ad is racist, Ms. Tumulty said, is because it doesn't mention "a far more significant tie -- that of Jim Johnson, the former Fannie Mae chairman who had to resign as head of Obama's vice presidential search team."
That's because the McCain campaign devoted a separate ad to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Raines' predecessor at Fannie Mae.

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Raines aren't the only figures in the subprime mortgage scandal to be connected to the Obama campaign. Jamie Gorelick, rumored to be an attorney general candidate in an Obama administration, was vice chairman of Fannie Mae from 1997 to 2003. Penny Pritzker, Mr. Obama's national finance chairman, has been described as "the Michael Milken of the subprime mortage crisis" for her pioneering of the packaging of bad loans with good ones at her now defunct Superior bank in suburban Chicago.

"The financial engineering that created the financial meltdown was developed by the Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch to sell bonds securitized by sub-prime mortgages," said Timothy Anderson, a retired bank consultant.

These connections -- and Mr. Raines' own words -- contradict the notion he was the peripheral figure to the Obama campaign Mr. Dobbs, Mr. Kurtz and Ms. Tumulty would like you to believe.

"I no longer trust the major newspapers or television networks to provide consistently accurate and fair reporting of all the charges and counter-charges," wrote Stuart Taylor in the National Journal Sep. 20.

[southernwind]

craigimass you sure are from mass arent ya, keep drinkin the teddy koolaid.