Has Obama gone too far ?

[BoredGeorge]

Do you think Obama being elected was the worst thing to ever happen to the USA ?

Do you believe that he is a special breed of communist ? Or just a communist ?

Why Democrats (Obamacrats) feel they have the right to take other peoples money that they did not earn ?

[Junket]

How many republican presidents have we had that did not repeal the income tax?

And what makes Obama any different from them?

Hell, Bush reduced taxes but increased spending, tell me how that makes any sense.

[ecojeanne]

they are all the same, he aint no saint as the media and population initially made him out to be-the frikin savior me ass. he has made a huge error by publically blocking fox news. the media are backing them up in outrage. he thinks he can do and say as he pleases and no-one will say anything coz he's the 'savior'...bullshit. he needs to let someone who has a backbone take over. biden is obviously in charge, look at the poland backtrack biden agreed to instead of complying with what stupid obama says. he is actually stupid like all the puppets before him and it's an absolute insult to previous nobel winners that he was given such a prestigious prize for doing absolutely fck all except maybe being black. looking different does NOT mean he is different.

[MDavis454]

Political discussions never end well.. Fact is, who could fix this shit heap we've found ourselves in? There will NEVER EVER be a way to please everyone so really any questions involving political opinions will snowball and it goes downhill and we all find out how little we all really know about politics

[Gigabitch]

I'm not seeing any Americans in here freaking out about Obama. Just a mick and an Aussie.

[DoesntMatter]

Obama is not a bad guy. I feel bad for him for certain things, like the headache of winning the Nobel peace prize which took him by surprised like everyone else and other things. Although I do not agree with some of his socialist policies

[CocoChanel]

You can make a celebrity overnight, but a president can't clean up the republican mess overnight.

[DoesntMatter]

lol, Republican mess? This mess was caused by the Democrats who thought anyone and everyone should be able to buy a house, regardless of it they could even afford it

Obama voted AGAINST regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. lol. The liberal news never talks about that

[CocoChanel]

There is always a democrat elected after a republican screws shit up.
I wonder why that is?

[DoesntMatter]

Umm, you completely avoided my statement. This wasn't a Republican messup, but it will turn into a Democratic messup

The Democrats were absurdly gung-ho for housing for everybody and didn't want banks to be able to check whether people could actually pay for the houses they intended to buy

That is why Obama voted AGAINST regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because it would have reeled in the absurd subprime mortgages that were rampant (I know in real life of multiple people, such as my cousins neighbor, who contributed to this financial meltdown by buying houses orders of magnitude outside of their range and walking away from the mortgage afterwards)

[CocoChanel]

Did I? My apologies but your post wasn't the center of my attention.
I just wanted to make it very clear the republican who just left the office has done nothing but screw shit up. If you want to defend that then don't be my guest because I could care less about what you want to debate about when it comes to the republican mess he left behind.

That's that.

[MVPlaya]

Actually, thats just incorrect, DM. The "affordable housing" push did push more homebuyers into the housing market, but thats not what did the economy in, it was simply a small contributing factor that exacerbated the crisis, but the crisis would have unfolded anyway. The real problem was derivative trading which went from a non-existant market to over a trillion dollars in the span of two/three years without any serious study or inquiry into its market value or stability, it was just a giant bubble and people believed that they could invest infinitely into a housing market that was booming, despite the fact that American's real wages were declining for the second year in a row, which anyone could see foretold an inevitable housing slump.

It was the same game as always: bubble / burst.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needed to be regulated, but they were not the only, or main, reason the housing market collapsed. You are just scapegoating.

[DoesntMatter]

I don't know what derivative trading is, but I was under the impression that these subprime mortgages given out by banks were being bought by investors in kinds of bundles, and those bundles were being rebundled and sold to more investors, and when people were unable to pay back these mortgages, inevstors lost money and banks stopped making loans to everyone, including businesses, which helped freeze businesses

I saw some explanation by I think a Columbia University economics professor. Anyway it made more sense than what else I've heard

[DoesntMatter]

Did I? My apologies but your post wasn't the center of my attention.
I just wanted to make it very clear the republican who just left the office has done nothing but screw shit up. If you want to defend that then don't be my guest because I could care less about what you want to debate about when it comes to the republican mess he left behind.

That's that.

You didn't respond because my post wasn't the center of your attention, you didn't respond because you don't want to see anything that refutes your belief that Republicans caused the whole problem

[MVPlaya]

Was it Stiglitz? (My fave Columbia U pres, he's spoken extensively on the issue.)

Its a multitude of factors, the analysis you got is a 'lay man's' version which actually skips out on several important factors that led to the Economic Crisis of 2007. Maybe if I have more time I can write the situation out more fully but a proper breakdown is at least a half hour commitment to my post, so in short:

1. Greenspan

Few people deserve as much blame for the economic crisis as Alan Greenspan, who walked away from his post when his disastrous management caught up to him. The economy was declining long before the housing boom and Greenspan fueled wreckless gambling by investors and homelenders by keeping the Fed. Interest rate at its lowest point in decades, 1%, for a ridiculously long time. Greenspan's constant lowering of interest rates encouraged an excess of credit issuance, all under the justification of making it easier for businesses to apply for loans.

2. Misconceptions of the Housing Market

After the stock market bubble and the dotcom bubble, people thought that the Real Estate market represented real value. They were under the impression that assets purchased in real estate were less susceptible to market swings and less likely to bubble, so when the real estate boom began in 04-05, a lot of people jumped into the market and began buying and trading properties in large degrees. Problem was that a lot of people were buying homes, as they always do, on the principle that they are not paying off the entirety of the mortgage, only part of the mortgage since they intended to sell the house in a few years. Early financial successes in selling homes at higher values led to a lot of people entering the housing market for profit, believing that the boom would continue endlessly.

3. Credit Companies

A lot of banks and credit companies started taking advantage of the high demand for mortgage credits and issued a series of ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) that screwed their customers. It was a prime example of market failure, buyers were unaware of what they were getting themselves into, when the interest rates jumped, most buyers were unable to afford continuing the payments. Bank greed led to houses being foreclosed, high foreclosure rates caused property value to plummet, plummeting property value meant foreclosed homes led to personal bankruptcy and less credit issued, while the banks had an issue of Non-Performing Loans, which is that the assets in collateral were worth significantly less than the initial value at which they were purchased, and liquidity began running low for banks.

Derivatives / Credit Swaps / Subprime Lending / Collateralization

I could write 50 pages on any of these categories, but if you want a decent breakdown of the largest trigger that started the financial crisis, see:

[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101403343.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008101403 344&s_pos=]What Went Wrong, Washington Post[/url]


That people stopped being able to pay back their mortgages is a simple analysis, but that obscures the fact that people, and banks, were pushed into buying properties and deceived about a series of shifting values so that people could earn high short-term profits. The housing bubble was less a case of 'poor people started buying homes' and more a case of over-leveraging of credit and easy access for everyone under the assumption of indefinitely rising housing values.