A video response...

In all of my reading i found this response:



Enjoy - i know i did.

Response to video - part deux.....

As I am delving deeper into all of this I'm learning quite a bit. I want to make yet another point about the CRA when it comes to Clinton's involvement with it in the 90's - all that Clinton did to the CRA was require that only numerical data be utilized when getting a CRA rating. That's it.

Ok, back to the video. It likes to claim it is being banned because of its political message...sigh...This just tires me - kinda like that Illuminati, Freemason,
CNN logo thing from a couple of months back. From what I can gather, the video was removed for COPYRIGHT issues. The internet is ripe with copyright infringement. I know this first hand (I'm also the copyright agent at work - yet another hat). And I have been accused of stepping all over someone's right to free speech because they've blatantly stolen and used someone elses work without permission or credit...sigh..


Now on to McCain's "co-sponsorship" of the bill that was to have helped. The bill they are referring to is S190:

Some people have actually claimed that the present crisis would have been averted if “McCain’s bill” had passed. We have to stop right there. McCain did not even believe that the scope of the bill could have such an effect when he endorsed it. The bill was written in response to an accounting scandal that rocked Freddie Mack and Fannie Mae. In the best of all circumstances the bill would have helped avert (this is hotly contested) the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack, but that had happened before the current crisis.

"In his speech in which he announced his sponsorship a year and a quarter after the bill was introduced, he said:

Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.

He does in his concluding sentence allude to problems for the economy if effective regulations are not implemented but this was not the focus of the speech at all." (taken from: http://northwestlaw.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/s-190-it-has-attained-myth-status/).

So again, the video is wrong and misleading. This kind of inflammatory rhetoric is getting old...

Ok, moving on...

That Obama received monies from Fannie Mae is wrong. "On the Freddie and Fannie question, it as McCain said: Obama is No. 2 on the list, with $126,349, right after Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who had $165,400.

Corporations cannot give to candidates, so the center's list adds up contributions from Fannie and Freddie employees and their families. Obama has received a lot of money during his presidential campaign, though, and Fannie and Freddie don't make his list of top 20 companies.

The New York Times looked at contributions from Fannie and Freddie's boards of directors and lobbyists, who are technically not employees. That analysis found Fannie and Freddie-related contributors gave $169,000 to John McCain and his related committees, compared with $16,000 to Obama and his related committees." (taken from: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/727/).

So more bull....anyone tired of this yet? I know I am....

And then the video goes into education and inner city schools? Ummm...And it appears to only be to bash Obama - which is where it really started getting bad. I'm sorry, stick to your guns and back up your points, don't try to shift the topic (sound like a Palin move anyone????) and ENERGY divert ENERGY from ENERGY the ENERGY subject at hand....

Then it tries to go back to blaming the CRA - which we have already established is not to blame...sigh....At about 9 minutes the video starts to go sappy on me and I have to pause it. Early on I shut the music off as it was just annoying...And then as it goes on to promote McSame it encourages people to SPAM a link to it. Now that REALLY PISSES me off. LMAO. I get so worked up about spam in any form. Had I seen that from the beginning I wouldn't have been able to watch it all the way through!!

Sources:

http://womeninbusiness.about.com/od/womenspolitics/a/cra-lie-truths.htm

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/3/191631/869


http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=27045007


http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/cra.html

http://northwestlaw.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/s-190-it-has-attained-myth-status/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/727/

Response to stupid YouTube video...Part 1 - The CRA

Let me preface this by saying that I am neither a Democrat or Republican. I don't identify with any party (hell, I don't identify with most of humanity) - I simply contribute to the political game by casting my votes for the person I think is going to do the least amount of damage....

However, I'm getting tired of people slamming Obama to me. (He's the one out of these two that I think will do less harm). Unless you have evidence that he killed puppies or babies or is some kind of psycho you're not going to change my mind and make me support McInsane. I don't normally go into politics with anyone because I see little point. However, STOP TRYING TO FORCE YOUR POLITICS UPON ME. Its not going to work - if you know me, you know that I'm terribly stubborn and have little tolerance for coercion - well, at least politically speaking ;-)

That said, I was directed to a YouTube video that I believe was intended to "open my eyes" to see the reality of the subprime mortgage problem - Obama. Yes, this video implies that the Democrats and Obama are to blame for the housing crisis.

I must admit I have been rather remiss these past couple of years - more focused upon this little world in which I dwell and all of the strange and wonderful goings on that have been occurring. I'll admit to needing to do more reading and some research but I do want to respond to this.

The video first looks at the CRA - Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. From what I have gathered in my cursory searching, the CRA was an attempt to give those of lower socio-economic standing a chance to become a homeowner. It appears that it is a government program that requires banks to lend in the lower income neighborhoods where they take deposits.

The first thing that sprang to mind when seeing the date of the CRA is that if the CRA was such a crappy program that could have caused such wide-spread damage (instituted by the crazy left) why has no one done anything about it since? I mean since 1981 (after Carters term) we have had THREE republican presidents and ONE democrat and a republican Congress for about 16 of those years?? So really, I'm sorry, all this time spent under a republican regime and they haven't done a damn thing to change it? Sorry, that just doesn't fly with me...

According to research done by Traiger and Hinckley the CRA loans were MORE responsible loans overall due to the scrutiny they underwent and more than 50% of SUBPRIME loans were made by OTHER lending institutions that were NOT subject to the CRA. And it looks like quite a bit of the good done by the CRA took place in the 90's with increased lending in lower income neighborhoods, increased homeownership, rising property values, etc.

According to Robert Gordon "the lenders subject to CRA have engaged in less, not more, of the most dangerous lending. Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, offers the killer statistic: Independent mortgage companies, which are not covered by CRA, made high-priced loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts."

And University of Michigan Law Professor Michael Barr, a specialist in banking and finance law, flatly rejected claims that the CRA was "a significant factor in the current crisis. CRA was enacted more than 30 years ago. It would be quite odd if this 30-year old law suddenly caused an explosion in bad subprime loans from 2002-2007."

This is to be continued soon. This was only one point the video made.

My sources, in no particular order (may or may not be listed above too):

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_liberals_cause_the_subprime_crisis

http://www.newamerica.net/blog/asset-building/2008/its-still-not-cra-7222


http://www.crahandbook.com/preface.htm

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/09/the-cra-and-the.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_blogspotting


http://www.traigerlaw.com/publications/traiger_hinckley_llp_cra_foreclosure_study_1-7-08.pdf

http://iowadefense.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/burning-down-the-housewhat-caused-our-economic-crisis/

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepresidentandcabinet/a/radio010706.htm