Global Revolution!

[joeblast]

Must be nice when one can accept one's own set of facts and create a worldview around it - I really dont understand how you think these cut down the rich ideas will be good for the country - who will they really be good for? I've spoken of many reasons why "its broken" and it aint because of the fundamentals - sorry TJL, you are simply asserting that the paradigm itself is unable to make for a happy, prosperous nation, when the history is pretty clear that the closer to limited government free market conservative principles we get, the more prosperous we get - and yes, the nation as a whole - and the more the government expands, carves out favors from the law for certain constituencies, attempts to force the populace to behave in a certain fashion - the more prosperity is retarded. The "less equal" things get.

 

Which has better consequences for almost all involved? Asserting over and over that punishing rich people is any way to prosperity or a better country is a completely unfounded pipe dream that progressives have been trying to push on the country for a hundred years and change.

 

Oh wait, I forgot - at this point, this is all about "equality" and flattening the statistics, not making the country prosperous. Curious why the jealousy and envy towards "those that have?" The poor are getting screwed remember, but oh...look at how the poor are doing here vs most other places. Compliments of that damn system that supposedly punishes the poor?

 

Be well brother /\ your ideas are just too far whacked out to fit in this country at this point in time. Say what you want about me declaring this "my country" but the things you are suggesting are by and large against the laws of the land, so I have every bit the ground to say "go fk up somebody else's country with these ideas if you really must, but dont do it in my back yard." Because that's what those ideas will do (are doing) to this country since a lot of it is diametrically opposed to the ideas that created the country. We're all coming at this from a place of compassion, we just differ in the application - and my supported ways of governing will make for substantially better results from the standpoint of the entire race - until such time as the method may be dropped; the ways & means long since overcome. Dont worry, we'll get that star trek level of technology so we can provide that star trek level of social services. We just cant reach directly into the future and extract it for use at the present. We've got to grow our way there, and retarding the growth of the human race is not the way.

[Vmarco]

Edited December 31, 2011 by Vmarco

[Vmarco]

[ralis]

Must be nice when one can accept one's own set of facts and create a worldview around it - I really dont understand how you think these cut down the rich ideas will be good for the country - who will they really be good for? I've spoken of many reasons why "its broken" and it aint because of the fundamentals - sorry TJL, you are simply asserting that the paradigm itself is unable to make for a happy, prosperous nation, when the history is pretty clear that the closer to limited government free market conservative principles we get, the more prosperous we get - and yes, the nation as a whole - and the more the government expands, carves out favors from the law for certain constituencies, attempts to force the populace to behave in a certain fashion - the more prosperity is retarded. The "less equal" things get.

 

Which has better consequences for almost all involved? Asserting over and over that punishing rich people is any way to prosperity or a better country is a completely unfounded pipe dream that progressives have been trying to push on the country for a hundred years and change.

 

Oh wait, I forgot - at this point, this is all about "equality" and flattening the statistics, not making the country prosperous. Curious why the jealousy and envy towards "those that have?" The poor are getting screwed remember, but oh...look at how the poor are doing here vs most other places. Compliments of that damn system that supposedly punishes the poor?

 

Be well brother /\ your ideas are just too far whacked out to fit in this country at this point in time. Say what you want about me declaring this "my country" but the things you are suggesting are by and large against the laws of the land, so I have every bit the ground to say "go fk up somebody else's country with these ideas if you really must, but dont do it in my back yard." Because that's what those ideas will do (are doing) to this country since a lot of it is diametrically opposed to the ideas that created the country. We're all coming at this from a place of compassion, we just differ in the application - and my supported ways of governing will make for substantially better results from the standpoint of the entire race - until such time as the method may be dropped; the ways & means long since overcome. Dont worry, we'll get that star trek level of technology so we can provide that star trek level of social services. We just cant reach directly into the future and extract it for use at the present. We've got to grow our way there, and retarding the growth of the human race is not the way.

 

This is not your exclusive country! The U.S. and by extension the planet belongs to all. If you ever studied the Tao, you would realize that a selfish separate existence is an illusion. We all need to cooperate and work together to create a better world for all. That is where a real democracy in place of capitalism would benefit all.

 

The problem I see with your narrative, is that you have bought into the "John Wayne" myth of the "rugged individual" and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". That ideology has been promoted by the objectivists, Ronald Reagan and right wing Republicans.

[taooneusa]

"" The FAO did not publish an estimate in its most recent publication, 'The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2011' as it is undertaking a major revision of how it estimates food insecurity (FAO 2011 p. 10). The 2010 estimate, the most recent, says that 925 million people were undernourished in 2010 (FAO 2010). As the figure below shows, the number of hungry people has increased since 1995-97..

 

"" The increase has been due to three factors: 1) neglect of agriculture relevant to very poor people by governments and international agencies; 2) the current worldwide economic crisis, and 3) the significant increase of food prices in the last several years which has been devastating to those with only a few dollars a day to spend. 925 million people is 13.6 percent of the estimated world population of 6.8 billion. Nearly all of the undernourished are in developing countries.

2011 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics

 

Food distribution is where most of the wealth is lost that should be put to use for

generating equality within nations and between them.

 

Part of the loss comes from

 

Wiki"" The widespread use of children in cocoa production is controversial not only because of the usual concerns about child labor and exploitation, but also because up to 12,000 of the 200,000 children working in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest producer of cocoa,^[1] may be victims of human trafficking or slavery.^[2] Most attention on this subject has focused on West Africa, which collectively supplies 69% of the world's cocoa"

 

Chocolate Liquor is one of the most common ingredients in all chocolate product and 90% of it come from

the Ivory Coast and used by manufacturers in Europe that re-distribute to China, US and Canada.

 

Apart from the obvious problem of people trafficking and slave labor is distribution and resale of Chocolate Liquor. Distrubtion over very great distances by shipping lines is where corporate control of the Worlds-Wealth is held and kept in control by unfair marketing-price increases and distribution practices.

 

Valuation is how the wealthy control food markets. Value-cost that is increased by shipping over great distances and keeping food stores in 'THEIR' storage facilities to increase prices. We all see this happening right now everywhere.

 

Effective distribution of the Worlds Wealth that we already have more than enough of is where real equality will happen

 

The Cocoa in this bar was made with child slave labor and costs 5-6 dollars.

This chocolate at 5-6 dollars is most only available to the wealthy..

would you agree? ..it is highly over valued and produced by

criminals... and.. worst of all.. I cant afford to eat it!

[ralis]

[strawdog65]

This is not your exclusive country! The U.S. and by extension the planet belongs to all. If you ever studied the Tao, you would realize that a selfish separate existence is an illusion. We all need to cooperate and work together to create a better world for all. That is where a real democracy in place of capitalism would benefit all.

 

The problem I see with your narrative, is that you have bought into the "John Wayne" myth of the "rugged individual" and "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". That ideology has been promoted by the objectivists, Ronald Reagan and right wing Republicans.

 

 

Ralis, as always I appreciate your straight to the point posts.

 

What some people here may not realize is that your voice is the voice of

many people that agree with you and are to timid to speak their minds.

 

Thank you for being so forthright.

 

 

This world is everyone's.

 

The resources of this world belong to everyone.

 

It is the "profit Machine" that are the corporations, that are the true criminals

to all of world society. I am amazed that the simple and clear idea of a resource based

economy escapes so many supposedly "smart, and educated people" on this site.

 

It is an obvious fact that in order for some people to enjoy wealth, there must always be a group of poor people to exist to supply the material goods of the wealthy society, all the while they themselves living in substandard circumstances. There would be no wealth without the poor.

 

The mentality of "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps"

is based on the mistaken idea that there exists a true modicum of fairness and equality of opportunity for all. I think most children will recognize that not all people are treated the same. Whether it be their racial heritage, the color of their skin, or their belief system, there are always those that are considered "less than"and treated as such. It is offensive to read people saying that everyone has the same opportunities,

what a smug lie for someone with an easy life full of opportunities to say and think of others.

 

I enjoy reading your posts... and I wish you a very good new year!

[Nanashi]

neo-feudal corporate fascism has taken control

[joeblast]

[voidisyinyang]

Not fearful of liberals, just fearful of the real world effects of Progressive-type legislation, government creep that flows forth from the line of reasoning - with good intentions but woefully inadequate when considered as any sort of path toward prosperity. Liberal is another word that Progressives perverted and usurped, coopted as a "new face" since Progressive became a dirty word last it was used and its policies injected into society.

 

It is the reason you look back at recessions and such in history and you see where conservative policies are employed the recession is V shaped, and the more Progressive it is, the more U-shaped - tell me why was the Great Depression only Great here in the US and it was relatively V shaped elsewhere? FDR and his thousand government solutions via ABC soup of government programs. All done with compassion and the best interests of the people in mind, and they produced terrible results.

 

Contrast to Coolidge in the early 20s after the Wilson disaster and you saw a rippin economy.

 

Gotta let people live their lives!

 

 

 

Things like the cocoa are despicable and I'm all for people having their own gardens and buying local groceries - but it doesnt have a ton to do with my points regarding governing. Corporation-creep pales in comparison to government-creep, and corporations would be more honest if governing bodies were more honest. I think money and politics should be as separate as religion and politics - look at where they are very closely aligned in any case and the results are rather nefarious.

 

Corporation - Creep Nike CEO expose --

 

The Nike Swoosh exposed -- Phil Knight is the Corporate Creep extraordinaire.

[ralis]

Corporations in collusion with the government. Bought and paid for. That is fascism!

[Vmarco]

Edited January 2, 2012 by Vmarco

[voidisyinyang]

So after you all watch the Nike sweatshop expose doc

 

Then we can watch the CIA expose on how they went out of their way to give the 9/11 hijackers their visas to the U.S.

 

haha. I mean corporate-state collusion? CIA-Nazi collusion is a great example as well.

 

But hey this goes back to Plato.

[joeblast]

Corporations in collusion with the government. Bought and paid for. That is fascism!

Yeah, dont forget public sector unions, the media, environmentalist groups...do you think I rail at the root for no reason? If citizens demanded integrity of their leaders...

 

oh wait, I need to spell that out

 

A politician with honesty and integrity (rare as they are) will be resistant to the lobby greasings.

 

Didn't know that. I thought Liberalism was perverted and usurped by Rush Limbough, Fox News, and various Christocrats.

 

Personally I see the Tea Party as the greatest domestic threat to America. The Tea Party is a covert, anti-Constitution political movement of Illiberal populism, social fascism, and Big Money (Koch brothers),...which media-tes up to 28% of the American Sheeple.

 

You may be correct about honesty,...I'm unaware of a single person in both Houses of Congress who put their Oath to the US Constitution before their faith-based agendas. There will never be honesty in America until America regains its roots.

 

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." Thomas Jefferson

 

As you appear to be interested in history,...I'll reciprocate:

Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt pretty much got the party started, though progressive thought was festering since the late 1800s in some of the old republican party - but once Taft decided that Sherman wasnt "a good Trust" like Teddy declared (yes, big is ok so long as they're paying you enough money) then he decided we needed "an honest party" which basically crumbled over a few years and the next Progressive iteration was Woodrow Wilson. By the time the country was done with him, Progressive was a dirty word and Coolidge's policies chopping the government basically in half brought on the roaring 20s. And then can very easily contrast with the exact opposite approach to the issue in the 30s with FDR trying the huge government route that stagnated the country for a decade.

 

In a nutshell, of course. "Its okay to break the bank, so long as your intentions are good in doing so" "could easily be found in the handbook for progressives." But also in that handbook you'd see "if we cant honestly convince people to vote for these things, then it is okay to get them in the back door anyway by taking advantage of the system, getting more people reliant on the system, then once the backlog of promises catches up and there is a real crisis, then the government can step in and make things right." So doing things like mandating lenders make loans to people who dont even come close to qualifying for them (thanks for all that effort Barney) and then blaming the banks for having made the loans is perfectly acceptable.

 

It sounds like you're getting your tea party info from the same source ralis is. AKA the source that is favorable to more and more government programs for anything and everything the government can think of a program for - so of course they're going to detest the tea party, whose real main goal is to chop back the size & scope of the government back to something manageable, something we can actually pay for, ya know, where we're not borrowing 40 cents on the dollar of government outlays. Its kinda laughable to hear people speak of compassion while at the same time having no problem borrowing that large of a percentage of your outlays to pay for things. Its like putting off paying the bills so you can go to rent a center to buy both of your children laptops for christmas - they could really use them, after all. Then a year later when you've finally paid rent a center off you've given them 3 times the value of the laptop.

 

So for anyone that's saying "we have plenty of resources, there is no reason we shouldnt be able to feed, clothe, house the entire world" just look around you and note that wherever government is spending far too much money it actually yields worse results for the populace. I dont believe in fiscal conservatism for nothing - I subscribe to the theories because they work, they bring prosperous results and yes, they do uplift all, just not all equally and not all at once. (And the mechanism is retarded by huge rather unfunded government outlays.)

 

The state shall make no rule about religion - not sure what's so hard [for lack of better word] about that one. Is the case of the religious and the abortion issue *that* significant - (if it didnt keep getting brought up because people know it is a polarizing issue that many people feel strongly about,) but really it is not the government's responsibility to be performing abortions either. Much beyond that issue I wouldnt even know where the religion thing is even applicable to the discussion...the way I see it people really just want someone they can trust, we've seen pol after pol that learns quickly how to grease the wheels of washington, we watch their net worth increase exponentially, while for the rest of us lately things have been flatline at best. So for religious people, honesty and integrity are supposedly two of the top qualities, and that's what's being looked for in a candidate but outside of that...am I missing something on the whole religion thing?

[ralis]

 

So doing things like mandating lenders make loans to people who dont even come close to qualifying for them (thanks for all that effort Barney) and then blaming the banks for having made the loans is perfectly acceptable.

 

 

Please provide a real reference for the above as opposed to a Republican talking point.

[ralis]

14 points of fascism.

 

 

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html

[joeblast]

Please provide a real reference for the above as opposed to a Republican talking point.

You have got to be shitting me!!! You have NO knowledge of the lending standards being relaxed, mandated on banks!?!?! No knowledge of fannie & freddie lying about the fantastically large percentage of subprime mortgages...

 

*facepalm* keep your head in the hole in the ground, ralis. Its starting to make sense why you subscribe to some of the things you do. Willful fking ignorance.

[skydog]

I decided to try and accept everything as perfect the way it is..however I wanted to do some research on the richest people on the planet

 

First of all the true richest people are not on any list because that would be extremely offensive.

 

It is rumoured the rothschilds and rockefeller family own 111 trillion dollars although that figure is probably too small.

 

The queen for example..lives of previously stolen lands and exploited slave labour

 

Then we look at people like Bill Gates- Dont get me wrong in some ways I can agree that he was a smart man, "somewhat" responsible for his success, however he is viewed by millions as the anti-christ. He is said to have prevented an increase in technology, massive monopolisation of the markets, purposely putting viruses into computers etc, his philanthropy is questionable as he donates to causes which benefit his business for example giving money to venezualian government to use his software instead of open software.

 

Then you get things like walmart. It is pretty much slave labour, anything for profit, not to mention all the food products have been exploited.

 

Anyways in all my research I also came to the conclusion that us spending a few pounds on some chocolate needlessly is like billionaires spending money on another car needlessly. Also wealth doesnt equate to happiness for example a lot of people want bill gates dead.

 

I also decided to do some research into religion..judaism in particular, a religion that feeds on this chosen few superior to gentiles stuff, the messchiah is someone who all jews should aim to be and will win many wars and land for israel..that is dangerous and poisoinous.

[voidisyinyang]

I decided to try and accept everything as perfect the way it is..however I wanted to do some research on the richest people on the planet

 

First of all the true richest people are not on any list because that would be extremely offensive.

 

It is rumoured the rothschilds and rockefeller family own 111 trillion dollars although that figure is probably too small.

 

The queen for example..lives of previously stolen lands and exploited slave labour

 

Then we look at people like Bill Gates- Dont get me wrong in some ways I can agree that he was a smart man, "somewhat" responsible for his success, however he is viewed by millions as the anti-christ. He is said to have prevented an increase in technology, massive monopolisation of the markets, purposely putting viruses into computers etc, his philanthropy is questionable as he donates to causes which benefit his business for example giving money to venezualian government to use his software instead of open software.

 

Then you get things like walmart. It is pretty much slave labour, anything for profit, not to mention all the food products have been exploited.

 

Anyways in all my research I also came to the conclusion that us spending a few pounds on some chocolate needlessly is like billionaires spending money on another car needlessly. Also wealth doesnt equate to happiness for example a lot of people want bill gates dead.

 

I also decided to do some research into religion..judaism in particular, a religion that feeds on this chosen few superior to gentiles stuff, the messchiah is someone who all jews should aim to be and will win many wars and land for israel..that is dangerous and poisoinous.

 

Oh yeah that reminds me of all the secret gold stashed by the fascist Japanese in the Phillipines and then U.S. worked with the fascists so the U.S. could get the gold. Amazing expose here -- a huge slush fund of secret billions in gold for the CIA to use to fund secret wars around the world -- http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9196

[voidisyinyang]

You have got to be shitting me!!! You have NO knowledge of the lending standards being relaxed, mandated on banks!?!?! No knowledge of fannie & freddie lying about the fantastically large percentage of subprime mortgages...

 

*facepalm* keep your head in the hole in the ground, ralis. Its starting to make sense why you subscribe to some of the things you do. Willful fking ignorance.

 

If you mean the community reinvestment standards -- that only applied to about 12% of the subprime loans. Most of the subprime scams were through private firms. Here's the latest charges against Fannie and Freddie: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/749226/accountability!_sec_charges_former_executives_at_fannie_mae_and_freddie_mac_with_fraud_related_to_subprime_mortgages/

 

Still Fannie and Freddie are a minority of the subprime loans -- here's a list of the top 25 private corporations of subprime loans accounting for http://www.alternet.org/economy/140130/the_bad_guys_of_subprime_lending_are_raking_in_bailout_billions/?page=7

 

These top 25 lenders were responsible for nearly $1 trillion of subprime loans, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of 7.2 million “high interest” loans made from 2005 through 2007. Together, the companies account for about 72 percent of high-priced loans reported to the government at the peak of the subprime market. Securities created from subprime loans have been blamed for the economic collapse from which the world’s economies have yet to recover.

 

The trillions of dollars that the geniuses at the private investment banks funneled into the housing market were the force that inflated the bubble to its 2006 peaks. Fannie and Freddie were followers in this story, jumping into the subprime and Alt-A market in 2005 to try to maintain market share. They were not the leaders.

 

http://www.alternet.org/rss/1/618173/david_brooks_gets_it_wrong_again%3B_blames_fannie_mae_for_big_banks%5C%27_mortgage_crisis/

 

As much as Fannie and Freddie deserve blame for incompetence and corruption, no serious person can make them the main culprits in this story. The Wall Street crew made hundreds of billions on pushing fraudulent mortgages. Furthermore, if we had competent economists running the Fed, they would have been shooting at the housing bubble as early as 2002 also.

 

More on Fannie and Freddie - http://www.alternet.org/investigations/146154/why__fannie_and_freddie_continue_to_cost_taxpayers_billions/?page=1

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/98076/nationalize_fannie_mae_it_worked_until_it_was_privatized/?page=1

 

Under private management, Fannie did a 180. It was perverted from a government-sponsored and well managed agency that served the public interest into a privatized casino whose big bets enriched a few insiders and then helped crash the entire system

 

Here is the cycle: The government invents something virtuous; the private market takes it over and loses hundreds of billions; the government then bails it out. This is best understood as socialized risk, privatized gain.

Edited January 2, 2012 by fulllotus

[voidisyinyang]

Yeah, dont forget public sector unions, the media, environmentalist groups...do you think I rail at the root for no reason? If citizens demanded integrity of their leaders...

 

oh wait, I need to spell that out

 

A politician with honesty and integrity (rare as they are) will be resistant to the lobby greasings.

 

 

Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt pretty much got the party started, though progressive thought was festering since the late 1800s in some of the old republican party - but once Taft decided that Sherman wasnt "a good Trust" like Teddy declared (yes, big is ok so long as they're paying you enough money) then he decided we needed "an honest party" which basically crumbled over a few years and the next Progressive iteration was Woodrow Wilson. By the time the country was done with him, Progressive was a dirty word and Coolidge's policies chopping the government basically in half brought on the roaring 20s. And then can very easily contrast with the exact opposite approach to the issue in the 30s with FDR trying the huge government route that stagnated the country for a decade.

 

In a nutshell, of course. "Its okay to break the bank, so long as your intentions are good in doing so" "could easily be found in the handbook for progressives." But also in that handbook you'd see "if we cant honestly convince people to vote for these things, then it is okay to get them in the back door anyway by taking advantage of the system, getting more people reliant on the system, then once the backlog of promises catches up and there is a real crisis, then the government can step in and make things right." So doing things like mandating lenders make loans to people who dont even come close to qualifying for them (thanks for all that effort Barney) and then blaming the banks for having made the loans is perfectly acceptable.

 

It sounds like you're getting your tea party info from the same source ralis is. AKA the source that is favorable to more and more government programs for anything and everything the government can think of a program for - so of course they're going to detest the tea party, whose real main goal is to chop back the size & scope of the government back to something manageable, something we can actually pay for, ya know, where we're not borrowing 40 cents on the dollar of government outlays. Its kinda laughable to hear people speak of compassion while at the same time having no problem borrowing that large of a percentage of your outlays to pay for things. Its like putting off paying the bills so you can go to rent a center to buy both of your children laptops for christmas - they could really use them, after all. Then a year later when you've finally paid rent a center off you've given them 3 times the value of the laptop.

 

So for anyone that's saying "we have plenty of resources, there is no reason we shouldnt be able to feed, clothe, house the entire world" just look around you and note that wherever government is spending far too much money it actually yields worse results for the populace. I dont believe in fiscal conservatism for nothing - I subscribe to the theories because they work, they bring prosperous results and yes, they do uplift all, just not all equally and not all at once. (And the mechanism is retarded by huge rather unfunded government outlays.)

 

The state shall make no rule about religion - not sure what's so hard [for lack of better word] about that one. Is the case of the religious and the abortion issue *that* significant - (if it didnt keep getting brought up because people know it is a polarizing issue that many people feel strongly about,) but really it is not the government's responsibility to be performing abortions either. Much beyond that issue I wouldnt even know where the religion thing is even applicable to the discussion...the way I see it people really just want someone they can trust, we've seen pol after pol that learns quickly how to grease the wheels of washington, we watch their net worth increase exponentially, while for the rest of us lately things have been flatline at best. So for religious people, honesty and integrity are supposedly two of the top qualities, and that's what's being looked for in a candidate but outside of that...am I missing something on the whole religion thing?

 

Teddy Roosevelt was a racist imperialist promoter of genocidal warfare. http://www.politicalforum.com/warfare-military/134452-teddy-roosevelts-racism-imperialism-mexico-panama.html

 

Noam Chomsky on Teddy Roosevelt's Racism and Imperialism in Mexico and Panama

 

Theodore Roosevelt was a shocking racist. I don't use the analogy lightly, but it's a fact that you have to go to the Nazi archive to find anything similar. So, here's a couple of his examples about "our little region here" [Latin America].

 

Roosevelt wrote:

 

Quote:

The expansion of the peoples of white, or European, blood during the past four centuries which should never be lost sight of, especially by those who denounce such expansion on moral grounds. On the whole, the movement has been fraught with lasting benefit to most of the peoples already dwelling in the lands over which the expansion took place.

 

That's despite what the remnants of Native Americans or Blacks or Filipinos or others might mistakenly believe. Actually, genocide denial has been a leading and highly valued feature of the intellectual and moral culture in the United States and remains so right until the present.

 

With regard to the conquest of a half of Mexico, Roosevelt explained:

 

Quote:

it was inevitable, and in the highest degree desirable for the good of humanity at large, that the American people should ultimately crowd out the Mexicans from their sparsely populated northern provinces.

Roosevelt continued:

 

Quote:

It was out of the question to expect Texans to submit to the mastery of the weaker race.

 

And, of course, stealing Panama from Colombia was also:

 

Quote:

in the highest degree desirable for the good of humanity .

 

I won't go on with Teddy Roosevelt, whose statue graces Mount Rushmore.

[voidisyinyang]

A little dose of reality here -- Gary Webb's expose on the CIA as the main importer of cocaine into the U.S. -- now confirmed -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/30/ron-paul-conspiracy-theory-cia-drug-traffickers_n_1176103.html?page=1 This story is still too naive. http://madcowprod.com has the real digs -- the same planes that do CIA kidnapping and torture also deliver the cocaine!!

[ralis]

The only thing the government mandated is that minorities with excellent credit ratings were to be given the same opportunity as anyone else in obtaining credit for a home mortgage. No more red lining! That is where government is important in enforcing civil rights and stopping discrimination. The Republican Tea Bagger movement loves to discriminate against others they deem inferior! Vmarco commented on this in a previous post.

 

BTW racism and discrimination still exist in the U.S. Just listen to Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann. Paul believes the Civil Rights Act was wrong! A quick Google search will reveal more.

Edited January 2, 2012 by ralis

[joeblast]

If you mean the community reinvestment standards -- that only applied to about 12% of the subprime loans. Most of the subprime scams were through private firms. Here's the latest charges against Fannie and Freddie: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/749226/accountability!_sec_charges_former_executives_at_fannie_mae_and_freddie_mac_with_fraud_related_to_subprime_mortgages/

 

Still Fannie and Freddie are a minority of the subprime loans -- here's a list of the top 25 private corporations of subprime loans accounting for http://www.alternet.org/economy/140130/the_bad_guys_of_subprime_lending_are_raking_in_bailout_billions/?page=7

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/rss/1/618173/david_brooks_gets_it_wrong_again%3B_blames_fannie_mae_for_big_banks%5C%27_mortgage_crisis/

 

 

 

More on Fannie and Freddie - http://www.alternet.org/investigations/146154/why__fannie_and_freddie_continue_to_cost_taxpayers_billions/?page=1

 

http://www.alternet.org/story/98076/nationalize_fannie_mae_it_worked_until_it_was_privatized/?page=1

Hrm...f&f were at the forefront of this debacle since the homeownership craze began in the 90s. Asserting they were "followers that got in relatively late" in this merely underscores that a lot of the loans originated in private enterprises and had f&f types telling them "sell as many of these as you can, we'll buy all of them" and then basically wiped any risk assessment from them and sold them off - so many of the mechanizations simply wound up serving to obscure the loan risk from the buyer, which is part of the jist of the SEC complaint.

 

F&f aside, it was none other than congress that procured this big push to get anybody and everybody that wanted to own a home into one whether they could afford the mortgage or not. These "packagings" of the loans happened as a response to government action - when you start mandating race or income quotas and you have to fill them even if the people dont "qualify" for the loan - you are seriously bypassing all of the underwriting standards that had traditionally made very good assessments of whether or not a loan was a good idea. Put the "government backed guarantee" on it and you wind up with a free for all, as we saw. Mandate that these guys take on more risk, they came up with a mechanism to alleviate themselves of that risk, screw whomever it went to, because the gub will pick up the tab if it goes belly up - they told us we had to, after all!

 

Greedy? Yes...but.

[ralis]

Just found some interesting research as to the types of personalities that have made their mark on Wall Street.

 

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-03/did-psychopaths-take-over-wall-street-asylum-commentary-by-william-cohan.html

 

http://www.springerlink.com/content/9072633443675517/