Congressional Wrap-Up
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-12-01/congressional-wrap
As the year is rapidly coming to an end, congress has a long list of things to do. Among other things, lawmakers are debating the payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, patching the alternative minimum tax, preventing cuts in medicare patients to doctors and a new proposal to end earmarks. A number of tax provisions are set to expire on December 31st. While congressional gridlock has been an issue all year long, there may be more motivation to get things done as some lawmakers say they want to be out of Washington, DC, by December 16th. A look at what’s ahead for congress as the year wraps up.
Guests
Humberto Sanchez
staff reporter at Roll Call
Janet Hook
congressional correspondent, The Wall Street Journal.
David Welna
congressional correspondent, NPR.
Comments
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The "government" did not put people into houses they couldn't afford. The "free" market did.
Teece Bowman wrote"I've more important things to do with my time today."
Like torturing that old man you despise!
civres@aol.com wrote:
The "government" did not put people into houses they couldn't afford. "
The hell it didn't! Do you think any of that would not have happened without CRA or Fannie and Freddie?! Duh!
Here ... broaded your education ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_mac
I don't believe that was what my statement was about. You apparently missed it. Let me summarize it for you. Just because it's legal doesn't make it right. That applies to people as well as institutions.
What really makes you think that an lesser regulated marketplace will result in more morality in the marketplace? In a country that no has exchanged the "Together we all move ahead" motto, to "What's in it for me" motto, how is the free market going to prevent the mortgage debacle from happening again, and again, and again? We used to help each other out in this country. If I needed a hand fixing my tractor, my neighbor would help and not charge me a thing, knowing that his tractor may go down next week and I will be there to help him, because it's the right thing to do. That mentality is gone, everybody wants a buck for doing the right thing. Put that mentality with an weakly regulated marketplace and explain how we don't end up with the Rockafellers, DuPonts and Carnigies again. Please consult your history texts before answering and turn to the pages about company towns, the slums and child labor.
I don't support the nanny state of families that have been on cash assistance for generations, while they stay high on drugs. I do support the assistance of people who have worked for years, paying their taxes, living their lives quietly, doing the right thing and lose their jobs because on circumstances beyond their control.
Please stop this BS. Just because it is legal doesn't mean it should be done. Nobody in the government put a gun to the heads of the mortgage brokers and said if you don't loan to everybody who comes in here.... There's the education that you seem to be missing. Somebody saw a way to make a quick buck and took it. That's the "free" market.
It is obvious that you didn't read the information that you claim mandates that banks make risky loans. The CRA only mandated that redlining could not be the rule when making home loans.
The foolishness of making the liar loans and 0 down interest only was an invention of the loan makers to make more money for themselves. When you put people who HAD jobs, who had good credit into the sub-prime mortgage system with an ARM, then you send the job they were using to make house payments to India, what do you expect. The system will and did fail.
Nothing in the rules forced any prudent lender to follow the herd into the stupid loan products, it was greed: pure and simple.
ecgberht, today proves that a couple sensible voices from the wilderness can bring some sanity to this forum. I cannot wait until they get Elizabeth Warren on the show, that'll be a hoot.
jlynwood and mike s. and anyone else. Get over it, the government led the way for the melt down. The government you bow down too and refuse to accept that it is nothing more than a destroyer of wealth has proven time and time again it cannot regulate anything in the free market without making things worse.
Sorry Monte, I think your ideas are out of touch with reality. If you don't regulate fools, they will do as fools have done to this point. The government had little to do with the actions of fools.
Hmmmmmm. I don't remember ever "bowing down" to the government or making statements to that effect. I do not "bow down" to anyone but Jesus.
If you are going to respond to my posts, please read them first and respond to what my statements are. Example, please explain to me how the "free" market you advocate will NOT result in the late 1890's early 20th century where a very few owned everything (Rockefeller, DuPont, Carnigie) and everybody else had almost nothing. Children were working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day in dangerous conditions and if something happened where the worker was permanently disabled, then the "free" market's response was "so sad too bad, plenty more where he came from". The "free" market has shown over and over that the result is a few with most and most with few.
Again if you had read my posts, I do not advocate a nanny state, otherwise we end up with a Soviet Russia where there are no consequences to your actions and there is no motivation to get ahead. What I do advocate is a system that helps those who have always contributed, but have fallen on hard times. This is the sensible voice that is needed. It is in the middle neither Capitalist nor Communist, but aspects of both.
We no longer have this. We have the conservatives who steadfastly hold to the Capitalist model and the liberals who hold steadfastly to the Communist model. THESE people/ideologies have torn this country apart not a guy like me that get up every day and fight the fight and hope that I have done some good in the world. I get called a Capitalist pig by the liberals and a Socialist/Communist by the conservatives. I am neither.
"Just because it is legal doesn't mean it should be done."
Mike Sargeant, learn the parable of The Farmer and the Snake.
One winter day, a farmer found a snake by the roadside, stiff and motionless with cold.
"If you put me inside your shirt," the snake said, "your body will make me warm and I won't freeze to death."
"Oh, I know your kind," replied the farmer. "If I pick you up, you will bite me."
"Oh no," the snake objected. "Why would I do such a thing, if you are good enough to help me?"
So the farmer had compassion on the snake, and taking it up, he put it inside his shirt. The warmth quickly revived the snake, and resuming its natural instincts, it bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. "Oh," cried the farmer with his last breath, "why did you bite me? You promised you wouldn't."
"Ah," said the snake. "So I did. But you knew I was a snake when you picked me up."
Banks were doing what banks do. They do what they are permitted to do. The difference this time was, the could do it with INVESTMENT money, not just savings.
jlynwood wrote:
"The CRA only mandated that redlining could not be the rule when making home loans."
Yeah. That's the point. Again ... Duh. Read section ... oh, I don't know ... 802 for example. I actually did.
(a) The Congress finds that—
(1) regulated financial institutions are required by law to demonstrate that their deposit facilities serve the convenience and needs of the communities in which they are chartered to do business;
(2) the convenience and needs of communities include the need for credit services as well as deposit services; and
(3) regulated financial institutions have continuing and affirmative obligation to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered.
(b) It is the purpose of this title to require each appropriate Federal financial supervisory agency to use its authority when examining financial institutions, to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions.
Now, setting all this aside, let me introduce you to ecgberht's 3 step plan to restore fiscal sanity to the mortgage and housing markets.
1) Dissolve Fannie and Freddie. Sell the loans off to the highest bidder. They distort the mortgage, and therefore the housing, market.
2) Require banks to service their own loans. No more packaging and selling of loans. They can still use loan originators - you don't want to put them out of business, but market forces (i.e. banks' willingness to use them) will force them to make good loans. When banks are required to service their own loans, market forces (fear of the loan going bad) will force them to make good loans. They will not be able to package and sell the good with the bad as before.
3) Prohibit insurance against bad loans (no more Credit Default Swaps). If you're making good loans, they don't need to be insured.
One strategy Americans can use to personally provide a boost to our current economy and employment numbers would be to buy American made products more frequently. The holiday season is a perfect time to put this into motion. There are a number of web sites that offer lists of companies that offer Made In USA goods. Americans should put their money where their mouths are...supporting USA workers and economies is the most patriotic action we can take to aid our country! America's desire to buying imported products is the fuel that drives corporations to head abroad. It is simply supply and demand...good ole capitalism at work. We can reverse this by using our wallets more wisely.
Yep. I do not argue the point. If you place a snake in your shirt it will bite you, because the snake has no moral compass and worked solely on self-centered instinct. The reason that our system worked so well, was because there were people with a moral compasses that tempered the self centered instinct. That is gone. Replaced with the snakes of the world.
I disagree that banks were doing what banks do. Banks USED TO look at your credit history, employment history, and ability to repay what they were about to loan you and then one the mortgage was made they held onto the mortgage. They could have handed out loans like candy and sold them in complicated derivatives to make a quick buck but didn't. This is the moral compass banks used to have, now they follow the way of the snake.
By the way, I am permitted to go out and paint my house bright fluorescent yellow with hunter orange trim with a forest green door but I don't because doing so lowers my property value and affects my neighbors adversely. Again, just because I CAN do it doesn't mean I SHOULD do it.
We forgive you for your intentional or not lapses of integrity, morality, or empathy.
What was or was not matters little but to distract.
As to arguments over labels or real or ideal.
Some concern for tomorrow as today so uncertain. Yesterday fights? Really? Still?
Perfectly capable people are lost daily. ImaginaNation with access to education... healthcare for people NOT corproration profit... have worlds best military and space capability... though fading fast...
Will we commit to going back to leading the free world toward Lady Liberty's light or continue 1984 fear regime brave new world?
Read local ordnances and convenants and find that you cannot paint that scheme...
Legal or not seems if you own something... BUT that is the libertarian in US...
Needed paperwork correction eight years ago... and a filling...
Five years ago primary care giver and needed help with sick Mom before death. Needed tooth pulled and a job. Worked a contract for Ft Bragg. 82nd.
Yesterday went back to VA as tooth now infected enough to almost qualify for care(never shot in mouth). Lost home. Lost eligibility for food stamps(ONLY income last two years- unemployable due to tooth and need for paperwork correction.
Another degree of temperature from infection(tooth now broken at gum line) and tooth will be surgically cut out... if damage from infection to heart NOT too severe. Which now guarantees unemployment AND continued homelessness.
Luckily fifteen minutes of internet access at library today(open). Cold last night- feels good on the fever.
Vote for change JAN 2013. We would if still here.
Another educated worthless(now) veteran(welcome for our score plus years service)bum thrown out with the trash. Will try to succumb quickly so as not to detract from property values...
Although empty Fannie Mae home(we used to take care of it for almost 30 years) now looks as if should be condemned... made spouse and I cry- just like the IRS did Grandma(before passing).
Prefer original frog and scorpion on Nile River tale...
which is why open governments AND regulation BOTH required for successful society... and currently both at historic lows in US- and world-wide.
farmergirl wrote: "One strategy Americans can use to personally provide a boost to our current economy and employment numbers would be to buy American made products more frequently."
I have been doing that my entire adult life, not sure if much good came from it and I certainly have no regrets for doing it. It is a source of amusement for me though when liberals who cry the most over the exporting of jobs drive Toyota's and Honda's.
Mike Sargent, The government has been run and controlled by liberal democrats and liberal republicans for decades. This is the first time in modern history where conservative view points are being pressed forward. It's my view government is now working properly, lots of gridlock, just the way the founders intended. Liberal progressive compromise between the parties brought us what we have today, bankruptcy. No one is suggesting going back to the 1800's.
"monte wrote:
What do people that are dumber than dirt want to do first? Pull the tongues out of everyone who disagrees with them.
November 30, 2011 - 11:58 pm"
If anyone gets their say on the Show and this Blog and then some, it's you people.
"ecgberht wrote:
"civres@aol.com wrote:
Only in the bizzaro world that is Republican political thought could blame for the financial meltdown be attributed to a desire to make home ownership more affordable for a greater number of Americans: Republicans believe that no good intention can come to any good."
When a post begins with that kind of invective ("bizzaro world that is Republican plitical thought", I stop reading."
Didn't stop writing though.
Invective??? "I stop reading."
Maybe that explains some of your bizzaro responses, you don't read what you are commenting on.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
I was listening in the car and a caller said that she was a small business owner and her feeling, and that of her friends, is that since the Tea Partiers got elected nothing got done in Congress.
As a fellow business owner, I wanted to chime in and say that I agree on every single point you made.
"I disagree that banks were doing what banks do. Banks USED TO look at your credit history, employment history, and ability to repay what they were about to loan you and then one the mortgage was made they held onto the mortgage. "
Ok now wait ... I thought
"in the late 1890's early 20th century where a very few owned everything (Rockefeller, DuPont, Carnigie) and everybody else had almost nothing. "
Is that when banks did what banks used to do?
"They could have handed out loans like candy and sold them in complicated derivatives to make a quick buck but didn't. This is the moral compass banks used to have"
Fail. Not when Glass-Steagall was in place - until the late 90's.
"By the way, I am permitted to go out and paint my house bright fluorescent yellow ... Just because I CAN do it doesn't mean I SHOULD do it."
Sorry, your example is non sequitur. You cannot legislate morality. You have to legislate around it. In other words, you cannot make somebody a moral person by law. You can only make them behave in moral ways by law.
re: The concept that the federal government "forced" banks to make risky loans
Please read the last part of subsection (b). Here, I'll copy the relevent part, with emphasis on the part between the astericks:
"to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered ***** consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institutions. *****
The law specifically(!) calls out for the "safe and sound operation" of such institutions.
The only reason the mortgage brokers and banks made these risky loans was because they could dump them off and make a ton of money doing it and to hell with the consumer.
That being said, I agree whole heartily with the second and third steps of your plan.
SusanKr wrote:
" The concept that the federal government "forced" banks to make risky loans ... The law specifically(!) calls out for the "safe and sound operation" of such institutions. "
That would have amounted to redlining.
Look, the FG doesn't have to "force" anybody to do anything. All they have to do is "encourage" as the law states. The law might have more plainly stated "to encourage such institutions to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered ... or else".
That the left prefers to defend the role of the FG in this debacle is not a surprise but it is misguided.
ECG wrote:
“Here's an idea. Warren Buffett seems anxious to get his taxes raised. Perhaps the President should invite Warren up to the WH and ask him and 299,000 of his closest friends to just pony-up“.
Here’s a better idea. Since W was elected by minority of Americans and than decided to engage in unfunded Wars (& a huge unfunded Medicare drug benefit), let’s ask all GOP voters that voted him in to pay an extra 10 or 20 grand in tax for a few years in a row so that future generations won’t have to bear that tax burden.
Monte wrote: “What we have at this….”
Truly “what we have here is a failure to communicate”- Warden in “Cool Hand Luke”
Teece:
truly appreciate your insightful comments. Without folks as yourself this comment page can get overun by the Fox “News” infotainment crowd.
...And you know for all their numerous posts, none of them would ever actually think of supporting NPR programming they use for the benefit of espousing their views.
Pink Floyd- watch out for those purple tabs- there's some bad stuff going around.
It's obnoxious that some commentors cannot keep it under a dozen posts and feel it's necessary to chase down and insult everyone else who has a different opinion, instead of addressing what actually is being covered on the DR show.
John Doe wrote:
"It's obnoxious that some commentors ... feel it's necessary to chase down and insult everyone else who has a different opinion, instead of addressing what actually is being covered on the DR show."
I know, I hate that!
Drew Kelly wrote:
"Here’s a better idea. Since W was elected by minority of Americans and than decided to engage in unfunded Wars (& a huge unfunded Medicare drug benefit), let’s ask all GOP voters that voted him in to pay an extra 10 or 20 grand in tax for a few years in a row so that future generations won’t have to bear that tax burden."
I don't think you want that, Drew Kelly. 'Cause then we'd have to charge you and the other liberal progressives for Obama! His spending DWARFS that of GWB. You shoulda thought that through a little more!