Bush 2002 Speech

I have one word .........Hubris

In one reportage an African-American elderly couple told their story. These people, almost 80 years of age, requested a loan for reconstruction the house they had owned for over 30 years.

One call and everything was arranged.

The sales agent, a young woman, stopped by in the late afternoon, telling them to quickly sign the huge amount of papers as she'd to go home to cook for her husband.

The elderly couple, being naive like many people at that age, quickly signed the papers. Soon after, the mortgage company gave them a cash amount of 9000 USD so they could pay off the first instalments. Why did they do this?

So the mortgage company could sell this mortgage to the big boys (JP Morgan Chase, in this case). For years, these kind of scenarios have been very profitable to the mortgage companies until the amount of people who couldn't pay off their debts anymore was so huge that the big banks got in trouble too.

You should really bear in mind, that the young generation of people has internet and isn't as naive as many elderly people. I know it's not just elderly people, but I just want to give you an example that it's not fully the house owner's fault.

reply to post by midnightbrigade


you know, a I might get slammed fro agreeing with you, at least partially. I grew up poor, the majority of my family has been in dire striaghts for years combined with flagrant drug use and the like. I was adopted by my grandmother at a young age and she too was very poor being a single mom making about 8.00 an hour. We received some government aid, up until my 18th birthday,(since I didnt go to college right after high scool). Through it all I saw 2 types of poor people. Hardworking, people with a great attitude and a work ethhic that would make ww2 bomber plant workers envious. People that just never get a break (at a lot of them arent looking for it. A lot of people are happy to be "poor" as long as they have a home, food and a job. Then there are the lazy, self rightous, blam anyone but myself poor. Usually the dregs lined up at welfare lines and church pantry givaways on sunday. I have seen it all, I have eaten in homless shelters next to bums, I have spent the night with my aunt when she lived in her car and in a tiny moble trialer she would move from campground to campground. I can remember not getting a christmas one year because we all had to pull together to help a family member who's apartment in the ghetto was burnt down in the dead of winter(cause of fire-arson for the ins. money)
Not everyone can make it out of the pit, and those who do look back with extreme pity and contempt for those who have the means but would rather spent government money on meth and complain about how the rich have everything. Even I have been called a rich boy by some of the people once called friends. Why, because I got off my ass. I took out student loans to go to college under hardship clauses set up to reduce and remove interest from college loans to assist poor people in circumstances like this. I didnt finish college, but it would have been possible to do so. College wasnt for me, but that is another story. I own a house 2 cars and have food in my stomach every night. So yes, you can pull up from a bad situation-but you will have to put in the effort. We arent all going to win the lottery or come up with the next get rich quick scheme (man you hear a lot of quick money ideas from the poor, of course they dont work 99% of the time and the rest is dumb luck.
I starting to rant, but my point is, many -I mean MANY of the people who are poor could help themselves but there waiting for lottery or some other scheme like that one nut was waiting for the spaceships on the 14th. Nothing is coming to save you, the sooner you realize this the sooner you realise you are your own jailor.

[edit on 22-10-2008 by Subversive_Populous]

Originally posted by midnightbrigade

Originally posted by moocowman

There is only one thing worse than a man without an education and that is a man who has one but choses to remain ignorant.


For every dollar that's taken from you to fund some drug or alchol poverty or health program, a portion is kept by those who administer them. They in turn buy bigger houses newer cars and may even contribute to your business, or purchase from your employer.

Perhapds you should thank the poor for being poor my friend, they certainly do seem to keep the machine well oiled.

First, Don't call me ignorant simply because I don't see things as you do.

Secondly, you make very valid points. That's why I attempt to vote against the very same measures that you bring up. Of course though, the debate could rage for days on the merits of voting in our system, but I digress.

Good points sir.

[/quote)Didn't intend to imply you were ignorant, sorry dude (my poor education coming to the fore lol) to be honest you really pissed me off by having a dig at the poor. I'm pretty poor and no education so I'm sure you'll understand my grievance, especially in light of the fact that there will be a lot more poor about the place by the time the donkey Bush, has finished feathering his nest.

Allthough I've never in the past paid any attention to US politics, I strikes me from what I've been seeing recently, that Ron Paul seems to be the smartest, decent and honourable man that could be hired as a president.

Christ, the guy even predicted events now unfolding, some dude.

Too much help is given to the extremes in society. The poor get too many hand outs. The rich get too many handouts - I mean - tax breaks.

You mix socialism and capitalism, you get a mess. It's like putting coffee in with tea or sprinkling sugar on your crispy green salad.

People don't need hand outs or help they need decent wages. I've come to realize that things are only cheap in the US because the money is so bad. The whole structure to society is wrong. The national debt is just a way of keeping millions from starving to death. There just isn't enough to go around for all the people in the world. The whole mess has been propped up by credit.

Originally posted by Cowgirlstraitup7
Thank you for posting this! I am afraid though, that it might get buried as it's dead of the night here in the U.S. I will check back often hoping this gets seen by the masses!

Dare I say, we have found our culprit to the housing crisis?

I wouldn't dare say that if I were you.

You could say you've identified ONE of the thousands of greedy, lying, power grabing politician bastards responsible for this mess. It's a long line that goes all the way back to FDR.

Freddie, Fannie, And The Finger Of BlameBy: Norman Poltenson


09/26/08 12:01 PM
Merriam-Webster defines "blame" thus: "to find fault with or to hold responsible."

Our nation's capital is busy pointing the finger of blame while simultaneously trying to figure out how to rescue the U.S. market from a meltdown. The primary culprits seem to be Wall Street fat cats driven by greed, mortgage lenders, brokers, and government agencies with oversight responsibility. Excluded from the blame game are the home buyers who signed the mortgages; they apparently bear no responsibility for stupid decisions. And of course, our elected officials, who are now being called upon to fix the problem, are also largely escaping blame.

At the end of last week (Sept. 15-19) - which began with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, moved to an $85 billion rescue plan for behemoth American International Group, and ended with the government's current $700 billion plan to grease the marketplace - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson blamed "lax lending practices earlier this decade and irresponsible borrowing." Paulson also went on to cite "the inability to determine the worth [of toxic, mortgage-backed securities, which] has fostered uncertainty about mortgage assets and even about the institutions that own them." His voice was one of the few focused on solving the problem rather than on assessing blame.

Before Congress and the White House try another Hail-Mary solution, it would be helpful to shine a light on the politics of "affordable housing" that are the core the problem.

Seventy years ago, the Roosevelt administration founded a government agency to provide liquidity for the mortgage market. The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), and its smaller twin, the Federal Home Loan Corporation (Freddie Mac), were chartered as government agencies to fulfill the American dream of home-ownership. The two agencies bought loans from mortgage originators, repackaged the loans as mortgage-backed securities, and either sold them with an implicit guarantee that the interest and principal would be paid if the original borrower defaulted or they held the mortgages in their own portfolio.

While making more money available for mortgages, the agency also transferred the risk from the original lender, who made a profit on the transaction whether or not the loans were ever repaid.

In 1968, Lyndon Johnson converted Fannie Mae into a private corporation, giving it the special status of a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE). He sold the stock to investors to help pay for the war in Vietnam and to clean up the government's balance sheet.

In 1977, Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), ostensibly to prohibit "redlining" by banks in low-income neighborhoods. Under the act, banks were encouraged to approve loans, once considered risky, to minorities and to "community groups." The banking community complied as long as it could pass the risk on to Fannie Mae. During the 1990s, the Clinton administration reinterpreted CRA to force banks to prove they weren't red-lining by approving loans once considered risky.

In 1998, Franklin Raines was appointed head of Fannie Mae. During his six years at the helm, Raines made it a top priority to ease the process of granting mortgages to those with poor credit, few assets, and little or no money for a down payment. With Fannie and Freddie as the prime customers for mortgages, it's not surprising that Wall Street dumped "securitized subprime loans."

Warning flags were clearly flying in September 2004 when the Office of Federal Housing Oversight released a report alleging widespread accounting errors by Fannie Mae. The report also indicated a shifting of losses so senior executives would be eligible for large bonuses. Despite Congressional momentum to create regulatory oversight of Fannie and Freddie to preclude making risky investments, legislation was squashed in 2005 because of politics, in part because the new officers at Fannie and Freddie promised Congress that the GSEs would continue to be the champions of affordable housing.

The house of cards created by Fannie and Freddie began to tumble last summer when home prices declined. The depreciation of home prices led to growing losses by the GSEs. By the end of August 2008, Fannie and Freddie stock shares had plummeted 90 percent. On Sept. 7, the Federal Housing Finance Agency placed Freddie and Fannie under its conservatorship.

Today, the same politicians who promote the dream of home-ownership and who stymied intervention to preclude excessive risk-taking are busy pointing fingers of blame at everyone but themselves. They are also the politicians called upon to fix the problem. It's hard to be optimistic that Washington will actually solve the problem until it accepts blame for the politicization it has created in the mortgage markets.

Unless sanity in lending practices supersedes the politics of affordable housing, we may paper over the mortgage problem, but we won't solve it.

By STEVEN A. HOLMESPublished: September 30, 1999In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer (and current Obama advisor). ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Sorry about the large quotes, but these items appeared in an online publication that requires paid membership.

reply to post by Gamechanger
Irony is the first word I thought of too!!!!

reply to post by midnightbrigade


There needs to be more balance in wages paid for work done. "Fat Cats" do not work harder than the ditch digger, aircraft mechanic, factory worker can go on and on. Many of us with higher education have a sense of entitlement that is ridicules and overblown. I do not work any harder than someone digging ditches or a GI serving in Iraq yet I played the game and make nearly 5 times as much as a ditch digger. It is not fair. If the "Fat Cats" were not so fat maybe those poor ditch diggers could have made there house payment. Get it?

Wall street says they work hard so they play hard. Well they have a bit to much of the pie to play with in my opinion and now they have all the money and no customers. The stock market is just a place to steal money from the working class that cannot afford to ever buy in at an amount that would make them wealthy.

If you do not get it you are greedy. It is simple as that. I know because I used to be blind to wealth myself.

reply to post by Mdv2


Bush is not to blame for this. It is the Clintons. They enabled the subprime market as "urban redevelopment". I have been a licensed realtor in the state of Texas for over 15 years so I know what I am talking about.

Read this:


________________________________________
September 30, 1999
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called sub prime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called sub prime market.''
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the sub prime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American an Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

So the president should have said it was time to ditch all the lousy homes and propose a trillion dollars costing program to build a decent home for every American? And after that use everything learned in mass building to do the same everywhere in the world, ultimately leading to a worldwide utopia where everyone would live happily ever after.

[edit on 22-10-2008 by Dragonfly79]

hey guys, there is a reason that bush has done what he has - watch "the corporation" in this they discuss the concept of American capitalism striving to acheive ubiquitous ownership - that is - everything from rivers, to forests, to the sky SHOULD and WILL be owned.

The concept that people are constantly alluding to with an NWO, of a one world government is simple - it will be corporate.

Yes this smacks of fascism (the marriage of corporate and government) however basically the idea that the corporate runs everything, that things are done in the most efficient market effective manner is where they are headed.

The Bush agenda has been to simply bankrupt the government and enable the private sector - specifically the use of military in pursuit of commercial interests - fundamentally a return to mercantalism (look this up - East India company and the Virginia Company in the US).

Bankrupting the government will allow the private sector to step in and assume control, it does not require the private sector to bail out the government.

Ironically the current eco climate appears to have turned this on its head , with the government bailing out the private sector - however do not be fooled - the reality is that the issue is greater than (CDS credit default swaps) is more than the entire global GDP, the government will fail financially.

This has been their plan ALL ALONG, it is the natural transition from the Iron Triangle.

Just thought you may like to know.

Peace out.

Actually the date 2002 for Bush's "initiative" to pull the stops out of the housing market is quite important. Obviously the idea was to jump start the economy, which was reeling after 9/11, by artificially growing the housing market.

Well, throwing out the traditional checks to home ownership turned out to be a VERY bad idea. Political expediency at its best, wrapped in good-sounding words about opportunity for the poor. In fact the poor were used, and are now paying, as are we all, for a short-sighted and fundamentally flawed attempt to game the system. In fact, it was such a monumental blunder that it threatens the system itself.

Chalk up another disaster to the Decider, demolition man without equal in the world.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Would-a, Should-a, Could-a.

Wish I could redo some of my less stellar choices in life but reality is I can't. I have to deal with them or take a trip to Egypt.

And they blamed Clinton.

The only reason this isn't all over the news is because this:

www.youtube.com...

would also have to be discussed in the news. Bush was just reflecting being bi-partisan by trying to appeal to Democrats, who pushed this socialist fiasco on America. Nice try though.

here's what I think:
Take whatever this bush says then multiply that by -1 ...ta da! you have the truth.

Great video...shows the dangers of political correctness, and what happens when people don't address the source of the problem, that being education.

Congrats! You finally have a Republican you can blame this whole housing mess on. You can now continue to ignore without guilt the facts that Obama sued Citi to open credit to non credit worthy individuals, and the Congressional Democrats covering up Fannie & Freddie corruption and cooking their books, and all the other liberal and socialist actions to open up credit to those who didn't deserve it. Congrats again for being off the hook!

it sathe video is no longer availible has someone got another link or something

I think its very disgusting for some of you to say"get an education, play the system,....." that is so ignorant. You think people that live in the so called ghettos dont have an education? Wow! I saw a documentary(by Pras) on the homeless that stated that more than 50% of the people on the row' have a college education or a degrees of somesort. I know we are talking about minorities, but can you see what I am getting at. There are plenty of educated individuals in so called ghetto(I Hate that word so much).
What is Ghetto? Using every bit of your mind to recreate an idea without using the same materials, or making sure you have what you need. or is it When you use all of what you have in your possesion to make something new. Isnt that how we evolved into civilized people. What are we doing when we take civilized things to create new?
"people should only buy what they can afford"
What does that mean? Is that equal to seeing middle and high class families downgrading because they"bought what they couldnt afford"? No some posters are referring to minorites when they say that. How ignorant have we become? Being poor is not a choice just like a rat getting zapped because he knows that the only way "he" can get food is by touching that lever. Hes hungry, hes not stupid. people in the inner-inner cities have only what is left after you hand out everything to everybody else. Why cant the schools in the inner cities have better text-books, to provide better systems of education for its community. The funding comes from the outside in! Why do we sit here and wonder "why dont they have this, why are they this way? Its their fault they are...." That is so juvenile and it only reflects your understanding of how things work. Some of you claim to be everything that the ghetto isnt yet you fail to see the big picture that the ghetto represents, Reality. The whole world will be a ghetto soon, everyone will fight, steal, betray, and bicker over things the 'issuers' arent "issue-ing."

I have one famous word for Bush and all the other 'blind' people, KARMA.
sorry for typos