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billy.pilgrim
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Re: OWS

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Vrede too wrote:
Thu Mar 08, 2018 4:24 pm
A Dozen Democrats Want To Help Banks Hide Racial Discrimination In Mortgages
These senators are finding common ground with President Trump.


The 17 Democrats selling out on bank regulation is worse than it looks
There was room for a deal, but they did a giveaway instead.


Everything Wrong With the Democrats, in One Bill
The bipartisan push to roll back parts of Dodd-Frank reveals a minority party that can’t get it right on the policy or the politics.

Dems who voted to move forward with Senate's bank deregulation bill: Bennet, Carper, Coons, Donnelly, Hassan, Heitkamp, Jones, Kaine, King, Manchin, McCaskill, Nelson, Peters, Shaheen, Stabenow, Tester and Warner. #S2155 #DoddFrank
Elizabeth Warren
‏Verified account @SenWarren

Senate Republicans voted unanimously for the #BankLobbyistAct. But this bill wouldn’t be on the path to becoming law without the support of these Democrats. The Senate just voted to increase the chances your money will be used to bail out big banks again.
Tell Chuck Schumer: RESIST, don't assist. Stop Trump’s Wall Street giveaway.

Petition to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:
“As minority leader, it is unacceptable to let 17 members of the Democratic Caucus vote for a giveaway to Wall Street, especially one that makes it easier for banks to racially discriminate. Please speak out loudly and forcefully against the Bank Lobbyist Act, and tell your Democratic colleagues to drop their support of the bill.”
As with the partial repeal of Glass–Steagall, when the next crash happens we won't be able to blame just the GOP and POSPOTUS.
last time they blamed clinton and all them black people getting mortgages - played perfectly on fox. if all repblicans were polled today, I would bet that 50% would blame clinton and 50% would blame obama for bush's crash that immediately followed bush starting two wars and giving the rich a trillion dollar tax break
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 5:22 pm
last time they blamed clinton and all them black people getting mortgages - played perfectly on fox. if all repblicans were polled today, I would bet that 50% would blame clinton and 50% would blame obama for bush's crash that immediately followed bush starting two wars and giving the rich a trillion dollar tax break
There were some threads of truth.
The partial repeal of Glass–Steagall included Clinton and some Dems, especially in the House.
The mortgages were shaky.

However:
The GOP was much more responsible for the partial repeal of Glass–Steagall.
Any blame for Dems was because they were too con.
Shrub reduced enforcement of existing regulations.
The deregulated speculation on the mortgages was far worse than the mortgages, themselves.
The GOP had years in power to fix any issues before the crash.
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rstrong
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Re: OWS

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Vrede too wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 6:10 pm
billy.pilgrim wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 5:22 pm
last time they blamed clinton and all them black people getting mortgages - played perfectly on fox.
The mortgages were shaky.
The Community Reinvestment Act mortgages also had a lot of oversight, and so they actually did well compared to the regular market in the 2008 crash.

They played no significant role in the crash. That was Republican mythology.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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rstrong wrote:
Fri Mar 09, 2018 7:29 pm
The Community Reinvestment Act mortgages also had a lot of oversight, and so they actually did well compared to the regular market in the 2008 crash.

They played no significant role in the crash. That was Republican mythology.
I don't know which mortgages it was, but part of the problem was scuzzy bankers pushing mortgages that weren't safe enough. I don't blame the Dems or the borrowers, and the speculation was still far worse.

Here's how Wiki describes it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis
There were many causes of the crisis, with commentators assigning different levels of blame to financial institutions, regulators, credit agencies, government housing policies, and consumers, among others.\ Two proximate causes were the rise in subprime lending and the increase in housing speculation. The percentage of lower-quality subprime mortgages originated during a given year rose from the historical 8% or lower range to approximately 20% from 2004 to 2006, with much higher ratios in some parts of the U.S.\ A high percentage of these subprime mortgages, over 90% in 2006 for example, were adjustable-rate mortgages.\ Housing speculation also increased, with the share of mortgage originations to investors (i.e., those owning homes other than primary residences) rising significantly from around 20% in 2000 to around 35% in 2006-2007. Investors, even those with prime credit ratings, were much more likely to default than non-investors when prices fell. These changes were part of a broader trend of lowered lending standards and higher-risk mortgage products, which contributed to U.S. households becoming increasingly indebted. The ratio of household debt to disposable personal income rose from 77% in 1990 to 127% by the end of 2007.
If they're not talking about CRA mortgages, fine with me.
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rstrong
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Re: OWS

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The subprime mortgage crisis was just one step (part two, below) in creating the 2008 Wall Street crisis. Here's how I (not at all an expert) understand it:

Part One - Deregulation

It used to be that if the bank handed you a mortgage and you defaulted on it, it was the bank's loss. That made them careful about loaning money.

Banks have always known how to handle high-risk loans and mortgages. Without taking a loss, and without fraud. They charge everyone at that risk level a higher interest rate, to make up for the losses of the few who default.

Then the US deregulated its banks in several rounds in the 1990s and 2000s. The American banking system became a libertarian dream, with Alan Greenspan vehemently opposing any regulation.

The barrier between regular banking - including mortgages - was removed.

Now those mortgages could be bundled up and turned into investment bonds. Now it was the investors who were on the line for any losses. Now there was a complete disconnect between those handing out the mortgages, and the risk.

Part Two - Mortgage Fraud

That disconnect naturally led to "liar loans", now that the banks handing out the mortgages had nothing to lose and everything to gain. The industry as a whole urged people to lie about their finances to get a loan. (But since the Community Reinvestment Act mortgages had much more oversight, they were much less prone to fraud.)

That would create subprime mortgage crisis, but it still wasn't the big problem....

Part Three - Wall Street Fraud

Wall Street started bundling those mortgages together into bond funds. (See: Collateralized debt obligation (CDO))

Here's where things got crazy: The investment banking system created a demand for the riskiest subprime-backed bonds, because they were worth betting against.

And when there weren't enough bad mortgages the investment banks created them a hundred times over by "cloning" those risky bonds. Think of it this way: You insure your house for it's true value. But then a hundred other people ALSO insure your house for the same value. When it burns down the insurance company has to pay out a hundred times the value of your house.

It's more complicated than this, but that gives a good sense of how it works. For a better explanation see there's an excellent article by Michael Lewis, who wrote the "Liar's Poker" Wall Street expose before the crash. It's gone from the original sources, but you can still find it:
There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans.
THAT was the main problem, and the main big reason why the taxpayers couldn't just bail out the mortgage holders.

Part Four - More Wall Street Fraud

Of course, you still need someone to invest in those risky bond funds so that you could bet against them. So Wall Street marketed them as low risk - AAA rated - so that retirement funds and everyone else would buy them.

Part Five - Ratings Agency Fraud

The folks paid to warn the investors - bond rating companies like Standard & Poors - were instead in on the scam. (Just like Arthur Anderson was in on Enron's scams rather than acting as an impartial outside auditor for investors.) All those high-risk funds were fraudulently rated and marketed as low risk. And so other banks, investment and retirement funds invested heavily in them. Including many in Europe.

Part Five - Fallout

- On Sep 15 2008 it all collapsed. The government had no choice but to step in and try to salvage those investments. Otherwise the economy would have collapsed. On Jan 28 2009, Rep Paul Kanjorski gave a short but jaw-dropping interview about what happened that day and what would have happened within 24 hours if they had not done so. You can skip to two minutes in. The threat of martial law revealed by Representative Sherman at the time, if that initial $700 bailout plan was not passed, was quite real and quite serious.

- At a time when the U.S. had a massive national debt and its greatest budget deficits EVER, the U.S. banking system ripped off the very investors holding the debt. Another reason why the government had no choice but to step in and try to salvage those investments.

- Once it all collapsed, banks suddenly got really conservative with their lending practices. And now people couldn't get car loans. Chrysler and GM, in bad shape to begin with, couldn't sell cars. And that was the end for them.

- Greenspan stated after the collapse, "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity -- myself especially -- are in a state of shocked disbelief." Gee, you think he'd have learned a lesson from Enron and WorldCom.

- Despite the role of deregulation and lack of government oversight, Republicans took to the airwaves to blame "central planning". The CRA made a convenient scapegoat.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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1312. ETTD.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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billy.pilgrim
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Re: OWS

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thankfully trump's tax scam on the middle class is a little less harmful than the one obama signed.
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Mick Mulvaney Warns Bankers: I Only Spoke To Lobbyists Who Paid Me

Which should we be more disgusted by - the corruption or the brazen stupidity in openly admitting it?
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billy.pilgrim
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Re: OWS

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Vrede too wrote:
Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:08 pm
Mick Mulvaney Warns Bankers: I Only Spoke To Lobbyists Who Paid Me

Which should we be more disgusted by - the corruption or the brazen stupidity in openly admitting it?


very similar to what I posted at Trump Nocare

it's all about greed and profit
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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rstrong
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Re: OWS

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Image

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billy.pilgrim
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Re: OWS

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rstrong wrote:
Mon May 07, 2018 1:17 am
Image
This is sick.

There was a government study (Senate, I think) back in the early to mid 60s that predicted 30 hour work weeks (this was also when one wage earner could support a family) if the economy continued growing at it's current pace.

The economy did. Thanks workers.

Guillotines slated to make a comeback.
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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rstrong
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Re: OWS

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College, university and housing costs followed the productivity line. Food and other costs are somewhere in between.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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CEO pay: Still not related to performance

... We saw this result as being consistent with a view that pay does not reflect the CEO’s value to shareholders. In this alternative view, the explosion of CEO pay over the last four decades is primarily attributable to the corruption of the corporate governance process.

CEO pay is most immediately determined by boards of directors. The directors, who are themselves highly paid for very part-time work, largely owe their jobs to CEOs and other top management. Incumbent directors who are re-nominated by the board almost never get removed by shareholders.

In this context, there is little incentive for directors to ever reduce CEO pay. This is about the only way for them to put their job at risk since they could anger both top management and their colleagues on the board. As a result, there is no effective check on CEO pay, which is why it keeps rising higher. In the most recent data, CEO pay averages more than 200 hundred times the pay of ordinary workers, and as recent SEC disclosures show, it can be more than 1000 times the pay of a typical worker....
Bastards.
The Case for a Maximum Wage

Modern societies set limits, on everything from how fast motorists can drive to how much waste factory owners can dump in our rivers. But incomes in our deeply unequal world have no limits. Many of our largest corporations pay their executives more in a morning than their workers can earn in a year.

Could capping top incomes tackle our rising inequality more effectively than conventional approaches to narrowing our vast economic divides? In this engaging book, leading analyst Sam Pizzigati details how egalitarians worldwide are demonstrating that a "maximum wage" could be both economically viable and politically practical. One major city in the United States has already enacted a penalty levy on enterprises with wide divides between worker and executive pay. Activists in other global jurisdictions are working to deny these inequality-generating enterprises government contracts, subsidies, and tax breaks.

Governments could go further still and start using their tax systems to enforce fair income ratios between rich and poor across the board. The ultimate goal? That ought to be, Pizzigati argues, a world without a super rich. His clear-sighted analysis vividly explains why we need to create that world - and how we could speed its creation.
Interesting idea.
Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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billy.pilgrim
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Re: OWS

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FDR tried to get a max income passed. The 94% rate was a compromise.

It works, without a strong middle class, there is no economy.
Trump: “We had the safest border in the history of our country - or at least recorded history. I guess maybe a thousand years ago it was even better.”

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Vrede too
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Re: OWS

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billy.pilgrim wrote:
Tue Jun 26, 2018 8:01 am
FDR tried to get a max income passed. The 94% rate was a compromise.

It works, without a strong middle class, there is no economy.
Stand with Rep. Ellison: Reward work, not corporate gimmicks

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
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1312. ETTD.

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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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Re: OWS

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Always be yourself! Unless you can be a goat, then always be a goat.
-- the interweb, paraphrased
1312. ETTD.

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