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sebster wrote:

halonachos wrote:Clinton wanted the banks to give loans to underprivileged people, the result was the same people being kicked out when they got loans beyond what they could pay.

So never lend to poor people? Keep them trapped in the rent trap for their own good?

Rent trap or foreclosure, your choice.

halonachos wrote:Rent trap or foreclosure, your choice.

No room at all for responsible lending practices? Initiatives to provide more low cost housing? Replacing funding for rental assistance with mortage assistance?

halonachos wrote:
Rent trap or foreclosure, your choice.

That's a false dilemma, as there are numerous ways that the state can limit the rate of default on secured loans.

sebster wrote:

halonachos wrote:Rent trap or foreclosure, your choice.

No room at all for responsible lending practices? Initiatives to provide more low cost housing? Replacing funding for rental assistance with mortage assistance?

Its called Section 8 housing and Richard Nixon created it. Unfortunately there are a lot of tenants who are less than savory and end up wrecking the place, my friend's dad had to replace three AC units because they were taking the copper out of them before leaving the houses. They left the houses because they trashed them, how do I know they trashed them? Because I helped fix them up before and after each tenant. You can't go after the tenants because its not worth it.

But yes we have had initiatives for low cost housing.

halonachos wrote:Its called Section 8 housing and Richard Nixon created it. Unfortunately there are a lot of tenants who are less than savory and end up wrecking the place, my friend's dad had to replace three AC units because they were taking the copper out of them before leaving the houses. They left the houses because they trashed them, how do I know they trashed them? Because I helped fix them up before and after each tenant. You can't go after the tenants because its not worth it.

But yes we have had initiatives for low cost housing.

I know there's plenty of disfunctional people out there who do all kinds of ridiculous things to housing. Exactly how to deal with such people, basically minimise the damage they do to society and to the horde of children they typically produce is a really hard question.

But I don't know what that has to do with initiatives to provide loans to people who can't build up sufficient equity to have a bank lend them money for a house, but are stable, working families.

Why do people call the protesters lazy? Im sure they would love getting your job! There are not many jobs in the west now due to cuts and moving industry to cheaper countries where slave labour is used. Anyway as in village peoples "Go West" song change to to "Go north!".
God bless Canada!

Space Crusader wrote:Why do people call the protesters lazy? Im sure they would love getting your job! There are not many jobs in the west now due to cuts and moving industry to cheaper countries where slave labour is used. Anyway as in village peoples "Go West" song change to to "Go north!".
God bless Canada!

Because the alternative is to consider that powerful and hard to define systematic forces hold considerable sway over our lives, so that despite one's personal virtures, they can still end up unemployed, or otherwise gak out of luck.

Most people don't want to do that, because it is scary and humbling. They'd rather be self-satisfied that their own position was won entirely through hardwork and personal awesomeness.

sebster wrote:

halonachos wrote:Clinton wanted the banks to give loans to underprivileged people, the result was the same people being kicked out when they got loans beyond what they could pay.

So never lend to poor people? Keep them trapped in the rent trap for their own good?

You shouldn't lend to anyone who doesn't meet loan criteria. Millions didn't.

On the flip side you have the absolute degredation of standards like you saw in California. People acquiring mansions on loans at 5x - 10x income. Thats not sane. Yet it happened, a lot. And thats the fault of the mortgage lenders permitting their standards to fall, on the mistaken belief the market would continue to grow, in other words, a perpetual bubble.
Same that happened in Japan.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

sebster wrote:

halonachos wrote:Rent trap or foreclosure, your choice.

No room at all for responsible lending practices? Initiatives to provide more low cost housing? Replacing funding for rental assistance with mortage assistance?

You're not getting it. Responsible lending practices would not have lent the money in the first place. That led to so called "redlining practices" (similar practices occurred in the insurance industry. Once the walls were breached with poor lending criteria for some, everybody got greedy. The borrowers borrowed for homes way above their ability to repay them, or multiple homes on the theory they could float it for two years and flip for a profit. The lenders got $ signs in their eyes. The mortgage brokers and real estate agents got $ signs in their eyes. The local tavxing districts got $ signs in their eyes. In this instance, greed was not good.

Meanwhile China decided to become the manufacturer for the world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Space Crusader wrote:Why do people call the protesters lazy? Im sure they would love getting your job! There are not many jobs in the west now due to cuts and moving industry to cheaper countries where slave labour is used. Anyway as in village peoples "Go West" song change to to "Go north!".
God bless Canada!

Because they are. Lower your standards and get a job. Thats what my parents did when Dad's industry imploded. Thats what I have done.
They aint, so they can suck it.

An external locus of control will never help one improve their own lives.The occupy crowd seems to be saying "We're poor because the 1% has all of the money.", which is cool because that's the same thing some dictators say to their people, "Our country is poor because America has all of the money.".

Don't begrudge the 1%, work on ways to become the 1%. They have misdirected their anger, they should focus on education reforms. If they really care about the 99% then they would do this just to help future generations, otherwise they just want money.

halonachos wrote:An external locus of control will never help one improve their own lives.The occupy crowd seems to be saying "We're poor because the 1% has all of the money.", which is cool because that's the same thing some dictators say to their people, "Our country is poor because America has all of the money.".

Its also, to some extent, true.

halonachos wrote:Clinton wanted the banks to give loans to underprivileged people, the result was the same people being kicked out when they got loans beyond what they could pay.

This, though I'm not sure it's fair to lay this at Clinton's feet. It was Congress as a whole, and the then-President was in bed with them.

You can't make a law saying banks must loan money regardless of the ability to repay, and then act surprised when defaults occur. To further try to pass laws that forbid banks to foreclose is an insult to the average intelligence.

Ok now we have two threads about this active. Can we get one locked please?

I'm pretty sure that isn't what the law said.

The law specified to continue regular loan crieria, but you couldn't discriminate because of things like race, gender, ethnicity etc. It DID not say you HAD to loan to people who were poor credit risks.

Banks chose to lend to those peopel because they were makign a killing in the derivatives market, and in order to create derivatives, you NEED mortgages to back them up. There was intense pressure to find more home mortgage loans to create the Derivatives, and hence to meet the demand, loan requirements were systematically reduced by BANKS.

There were a lot of other factors, such as poor modelling using faulty assumptions, little or no oversight, legislation that exempted Derivatives from other investment laws, Invest/Commercial bank hybrids, etc.

However, poor people being suckered into the American Dream of home ownership is by far the smallest reason for collapse. Those people would never have gotten a loan if it wasn't so lucrative for Wall street to give them one.

So, this wasn't about one law durign the Clinton years, it was about a lot of stuff; but mostly bankster greed.

Easy E wrote:
So, this wasn't about one law durign the Clinton years, it was about a lot of stuff; but mostly bankster greed.

Clinton signed the repeal of the glass-steagall revision. So yes, it's still about one law during the clinton years, just a different one law.

Banker greed is not going away. Idk how you think we can get rid of it. We had a nice system that harnessed it for our benefit for 200 years, then we screwed it up by allowing investment and savings banks to merge.

I mean seriously how do you propose we end banker greed?

Kill off the bankers?

Frazzled wrote:Kill off the bankers?

No, then you would probably kill me! I am pretty sure we can't end greed without killing all of humanity in the process. Possibly appealling, but self-defeating.

Rented, I think you hit the nail on the head- Glass-Steagal would help a lot.

It would probably also help to end the charade of Corporate Personhood as well. Corps don't vote, why should they be treated as persons? Since Government is theoretically responsible and held accountable by the voters they have more incentive to do what is in the the public general good by regulating the corps if they no long have corporate personhood. Plus, we could end Citizen's United then too, therefore further freeing the governments hands to regulate.

I see no other party capable of regulating Banks. I am open to suggestions. However, we have tried self-regulation, and look where that got us.

Frazzled wrote:Kill off the bankers?

Kill off everyone? At least there'd be no arguments then...

Frazzled wrote:

sebster wrote:

halonachos wrote:Clinton wanted the banks to give loans to underprivileged people, the result was the same people being kicked out when they got loans beyond what they could pay.

So never lend to poor people? Keep them trapped in the rent trap for their own good?

You shouldn't lend to anyone who doesn't meet loan criteria. Millions didn't.

On the flip side you have the absolute degredation of standards like you saw in California. People acquiring mansions on loans at 5x - 10x income. Thats not sane. Yet it happened, a lot. And thats the fault of the mortgage lenders permitting their standards to fall, on the mistaken belief the market would continue to grow, in other words, a perpetual bubble.
Same that happened in Japan.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

sebster wrote:

halonachos wrote:Rent trap or foreclosure, your choice.

No room at all for responsible lending practices? Initiatives to provide more low cost housing? Replacing funding for rental assistance with mortage assistance?

You're not getting it. Responsible lending practices would not have lent the money in the first place. That led to so called "redlining practices" (similar practices occurred in the insurance industry. Once the walls were breached with poor lending criteria for some, everybody got greedy. The borrowers borrowed for homes way above their ability to repay them, or multiple homes on the theory they could float it for two years and flip for a profit. The lenders got $ signs in their eyes. The mortgage brokers and real estate agents got $ signs in their eyes. The local tavxing districts got $ signs in their eyes. In this instance, greed was not good.

Meanwhile China decided to become the manufacturer for the world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Space Crusader wrote:Why do people call the protesters lazy? Im sure they would love getting your job! There are not many jobs in the west now due to cuts and moving industry to cheaper countries where slave labour is used. Anyway as in village peoples "Go West" song change to to "Go north!".
God bless Canada!

Because they are. Lower your standards and get a job. Thats what my parents did when Dad's industry imploded. Thats what I have done.
They aint, so they can suck it.

But what jobs are there? The low income industries have moved to Asia and the companies like Mcdonalds use a skeleton worker force to save money.
Before we know it the 1% will have us working at factories like the imported volonter workers from Africa did at the plantations.

What imported volunteer workers? Are you talking about slaves?

Easy E wrote:
It would probably also help to end the charade of Corporate Personhood as well.

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with establishing corporations as legal persons. The issue comes in deciding what rights the state is going to extend to legal persons.

dogma wrote:

Easy E wrote:
It would probably also help to end the charade of Corporate Personhood as well.

There isn't necessarily anything wrong with establishing corporations as legal persons. The issue comes in deciding what rights the state is going to extend to legal persons.

True dat. Some of that has flowed through to the Federal level now however, which makes changes difficult.

Easy E wrote:
It would probably also help to end the charade of Corporate Personhood as well. Corps don't vote, why should they be treated as persons?

Here's the thing about that. If I have some money and I'd like to buy an ad expressing my opinions, that's totally unrestricted and legal.

If I have a friend who is doing it as well, that is unrestricted and legal.

But if me and my friend get together and form a company with those exact same dollars, suddenly it's not speech anymore? Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?

Campaign reform is RIFE with little things like that.

Rented Tritium wrote:
But if me and my friend get together and form a company with those exact same dollars, suddenly it's not speech anymore? Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?

That depends, is the company an independent entity with its own pool of assets?

No it doesn't sound silly. You form something other than a corportion and those entities exist, they are called PACs. Therefore, as a person, your ability to express you or your groups views are not restricted.

I am part of a corporation. However, that corporation does not speak for me or my political beliefs at all. However, it has no problem donating money to political groups that I do not want to be affiliated with in my name, since I am part of the corporation. Seems kind of silly doesn't it.

dogma wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:
But if me and my friend get together and form a company with those exact same dollars, suddenly it's not speech anymore? Sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?

That depends, is the company an independent entity with its own pool of assets?

No such thing. A company either has investors, shareholders, a direct owner or it is a non-profit. Of those, only a non-profit doesn't directly represent the will of regular people (and oh man are non-profits ever a can of worms here).

But at the end of the day, the case everyone claims creates corporate person-hood simply does nothing of the sort. I strongly recommend people actually read the ACTUAL DECISION before talking about it.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Easy E wrote:No it doesn't sound silly. You form something other than a corportion and those entities exist, they are called PACs. Therefore, as a person, your ability to express you or your groups views are not restricted.

I am part of a corporation. However, that corporation does not speak for me or my political beliefs at all. However, it has no problem donating money to political groups that I do not want to be affiliated with in my name, since I am part of the corporation. Seems kind of silly doesn't it.

No you are not. You are an employee. Being an employee does not make you part of a corporation. Being a SHAREHOLDER makes you a part of a corporation.

Rented Tritium wrote:
No such thing. A company either has investors, shareholders, a direct owner or it is a non-profit. Of those, only a non-profit doesn't directly represent the will of regular people...

The argument goes that publicly traded corporations function as de facto independent entities due to their relative isolation from shareholders.

Rented Tritium wrote:
...(and oh man are non-profits ever a can of worms here).

There are ever so many fantastic tricks to get around the political restrictions on 501(c)(3)s.

dogma wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:
No such thing. A company either has investors, shareholders, a direct owner or it is a non-profit. Of those, only a non-profit doesn't directly represent the will of regular people...

The argument goes that publicly traded corporations function as de facto independent entities due to their relative isolation from shareholders.

IMO, that argument doesn't work. The shareholders literally own every penny of the company. If they don't like what their company is doing, they are 100% free to take their dollars out.

Rented Tritium wrote:
...(and oh man are non-profits ever a can of worms here).

There are ever so many fantastic tricks to get around the political restrictions on 501(c)(3)s.

SO many.

Rented Tritium wrote:No you are not. You are an employee. Being an employee does not make you part of a corporation. Being a SHAREHOLDER makes you a part of a corporation.

Many employees are also shareholders due to retirement plan options. I am one of those employees. So, I am also a shareholder.

The issue of my companies political donations has come up in our shareholder meetings, guess what; nothing changed. Even shareholders don't get a say unless you own a large percentage of the company. Even if I take 100% of the shares I own out, it is onlly a very small drop in the bucket and will still not change the political focus of my company.

On the other hand, I work to make the Corp money as an employee and get no say in what the company does with it, unless I am a shareholder; where I get an unequal vote. At least my vote for the government carries the same weight as the vote of a billionaire.

Easy E wrote:

Rented Tritium wrote:No you are not. You are an employee. Being an employee does not make you part of a corporation. Being a SHAREHOLDER makes you a part of a corporation.

Many employees are also shareholders due to retirement plan options. I am one of those employees. So, I am also a shareholder.

The issue of my companies political donations has come up in our shareholder meetings, guess what; nothing changed. Even shareholders don't get a say unless you own a large percentage of the company. Even if I take 100% of the shares I own out, it is onlly a very small drop in the bucket and will still not change the political focus of my company.

On the other hand, I work to make the Corp money as an employee and get no say in what the company does with it, unless I am a shareholder; where I get an unequal vote. At least my vote for the government carries the same weight as the vote of a billionaire.

Then sell your stock. Just because you won't exercise the leverage you have over the company's speech doesn't mean you don't have any.

And yes, if you are an employee and not a stockholder, you are not a part of the company. You have to own a piece to have a say. As an employee, you're basically just doing things FOR the company, but you are not the company.

So, I exercise my rights by excluding myself from the rights.

That's a real catch that catch-22.