Obama:"Now is Not the Time for Profits"

[The Tusk]

someone's living in fantasy land. where did i attack all things commercial. i hope your strawman provided you an adequate target for your rant

and btw fannie mae and freddie mac were not root-cause, they got to the party too late to be a causal factor.

No strawman, I was referring to Obama and the Democrats in Congress and state offices. They've taken a decidedly unfriendly stance towards business - no shock - ranging from wholesale threats of re-regulation to card check union organization to threats of investigation if they don't get their way (Cuomo carrying on a Spitzer tradition...). Bailout money is the carrot that allows them to wield the stick.

Most of the Democrats' rhetoric is populist class-warfare nonsense and even a quick glance at the "stimulus" bill that passed the House shows it's more about supporting every liberal shibboleth of the last 40 years than actually helping the economy.

Please demonstrate that Fannie & Freddie are not root-cause. Their purchase of risky paper with government backing long predates the previous administration. The unabashed support they received from Democrats in both houses going back years is public record. Fannie's and Freddie's intent may have been noble but the execution was not.

I'm not saying Republicans don't share culpability but a) they're not in power now and b) they're not the ones making all of the anti-business noise these days.

 

[92tide]

No strawman, I was referring to Obama and the Democrats in Congress and state offices. They've taken a decidedly unfriendly stance towards business - no shock - ranging from wholesale threats of re-regulation to card check union organization to threats of investigation if they don't get their way (Cuomo carrying on a Spitzer tradition...). Bailout money is the carrot that allows them to wield the stick.

Most of the Democrats' rhetoric is populist class-warfare nonsense and even a quick glance at the "stimulus" bill that passed the House shows it's more about supporting every liberal shibboleth of the last 40 years than actually helping the economy.

and all of this was in response to a completely unrelated statement by me, hence the strawman reference.

Please demonstrate that Fannie & Freddie are not root-cause. Their purchase of risky paper with government backing long predates the previous administration. The unabashed support they received from Democrats in both houses going back years is public record. Fannie's and Freddie's intent may have been noble but the execution was not.

I'm not saying Republicans don't share culpability but a) they're not in power now and b) they're not the ones making all of the anti-business noise these days.

link

Fannie and Freddie did not cause the credit crisis and nothing in the article quoted by Cafe Hayek, or anything since the article came out last June changes that.

There are two questions that are being confused in the debate over the source of the financial crisis:

1. What caused Fannie and Freddie to fail?

2. What caused the financial crisis?

Answering the first question does not necessarily answer the second. Showing that some politician, some policy, some legislation, lack of effective regulation, whatever, caused Fannie and Freddie to fail is important, we need to know why they were vulnerable when the system got in trouble, but Fannie and Freddie did not cause the crisis, they were a consequence of it.

How do we know this?

Fannie and Freddie became fairly large players in the subprime market, and they got that way by following the rest of the market down in lowering lending standards, etc. But they did not lead it down. Their actions came in response to a significant loss of market share, and it is this loss of market share that motivated them to take on more subprime loans.

We need to understand why the overall market - the part outside of Fannie and Freddie's domain - was able to lower lending standards (and increase their risk exposure in other ways as well), and how regulation which had worked up to that point failed to keep Fannie and Freddie from dutifully responding to the market pressures on behalf of shareholders by duplicating the strategy themselves, but again, they were followers, not leaders.

 

["Rudy"]

Hang on. Nobody's buying new cars, so they're hanging on to their cars longer. Your tires may begin selling soon enough.

I can burn them or dump them in the landfill. Either way Crenshaw County pollution control will put me under the jail for dumping.

The skeeters will be back in a few weeks. Ruin whats left to sale.