Comments on: Thank The Democrats For Current Banking Crisis

By: Mike Thomas

Mike Thomas — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:59:12 +0000

C’mon, Nick, admit that you were misinformed about Raines’ connection with the Obama campaign and give it up. You can’t honestly argue that because someone with the Obama campaign called Raines once to talk about economic issues that somehow makes him an official advisor to the campaign. That is utterly ridiculous.
Here is what most likely happened: Someone in the Obama campaign was assigned the task of finding out all they could about the situation with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and what went wrong with them. They then called up Raines, the former CEO, and said “What happened?”, as part of their research. They would have been dumb not to have talked to him.
Secondly, I did a Google search and came up with dozens of sources all saying the same thing about the CRA and how it played only a small role in the current fiasco. I picked one and linked it. Your knee-jerk response is to claim that any source that disagrees with or disproves one of your beliefs is biased and wrong. We can’t have a legitimate discussion this way. If you have a credible source that counters what my source is saying then let’s see it. Don’t just put your fingers in your ears and scream “Liberal! Liberal! Liberal!”
If we had had the proper regulations and oversight in place, the bad loans left over from the housing boom would never have metastasized into the enormous tumor that is now strangling our entire financial system. And that, is very much the Republicans’ fault. Their brilliant idea that deregulation and unfettered markets will lead to an era of economic bliss has once again been proven to be disasterously wrong.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:30:11 +0000

Guys, according to the article you cited above: By Raines’s own account, he took a couple of calls from someone on the Obama campaign, and he or she had general discussions about economic issues. I have asked both Raines and the Obama people for more details on these calls. Does this make him an adviser to the campaign? Probably not, but the fact remains that the Obama campaign, and by extension Obama himself, thought enough of Raines to ask him about these matters, and this was after he forced to leave Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac due to his poor financial management.

Mike, far from debunking anything, the article you cite was written by and for liberals looking for a way to make the CRA look good. It is a source with a severe bias and a flawed premise: that evil corporations wanted to make money, so it was their fault. The fact is, every single lending institution out there is trying to make money with their business. Contrary to popular liberal belief, businesses do not exist to provide services to people free of charge so that everyone gets to have the same quality of life.

Common sense tells you that if too many people cannot afford to pay their mortgage, the banks holding those mortgages are going to loose huge amounts of money and quite possibly fail. Because the CRA forced lenders to make sub-prime loans to people based on criteria other than credit worthiness, it doesn’t take a genius to see that a majority of these loans are probably going to default.

The changes to the CRA made by the Clinton Administration were nothing more than social engineering; giving mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them just because “they deserve the chance to live in a home.” It was just affirmative action applied to the lending industry. Now, banks are failing and these mortgages given to people who can’t afford them are in foreclosure. For years, the Democrats in Congress not only failed to act, they prevented others from acting to correct the problem.

All in all, yeah, the Democrats are to blame for creating this mess, and then preventing anyone from fixing it before it got as bad as it is now.

By: AnnPW

AnnPW — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:20:28 +0000

Good grief, Nick. You can follow the link to the study and read it yourself, but the relevant information is thus: Shorter Response: A study of CRA loans shows: * CRA loans constituted only 23% of all loans and 9.2% of high-cost loans. * CRA loans were twice as likely to be retained in the originating bank’s portfolio than loans made by other institutions. * CRA loans were less likely to be foreclosed upon than other loans. Nice try to pin this one on the Democrats, but anyone with the IQ above that of a houseplant ain't buying it.

By: Mike Thomas

Mike Thomas — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:59:52 +0000

This is the man Senator Obama named as his Economic Adviser for his Presidential Campaign. Wrong! Franklin Raines WAS NOT and IS NOT part of the Obama campaign and was certainly never asked to be his "economic advisor". But Rick Davis, who was paid almost $2 million to lobby for Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac isn't just an advisor to John McCain, he is HIS CAMPAIGN MANAGER!!!!! In fact, more than a dozen members of McCain's campaign staff were paid lobbyists for Fannie Mae at one time or another. Also, there are many reasons for the subprime mortgage crisis. Trying to blame it on a Carter era initiative to promote affordable housing has already been thoroughly debunked.