Yeah! Evil elves made the Democrats say those things!

Can you show this?  Or are ya just saying it with out proof?

What are the odds that a liberal would say something as if it was a fact when in reality it is just his (and not even the majority of liberals') opinion?

Evil Elves are a myth (have you never read Tolkein?).

They were Orcs.

Not sure who did what, but I can say when things started to get rough for my family. close to 3 years ago some decided it would be a great idea to increace minimum rate for credit card payment, which for the most part it was okay, you just pay it off faster. Great idea but then months later those credit card companies that did do the increase decided to go a little further and increase your rate. Mine alone went up monthly until it reached 11% increase. I did call and they claimed they cant lower it and of course I told them yes you can you just choose not to. They stopped the increase but only lowered it by 1 %. 

 Shortly after my property tax went up 2 years in a row and of course we all know about the gas price. My husband alone was paying 320.00 monthly and myself 245.00. Mine use to be about 120.00 and 160 for husband.

Food prices are jumping, one dollar  increases on someitems. We also had a big crack down on illegal immigrants and some up and left there homes. Now our electric has increased a good little chunk.

When you do a budget you dont expect to have so many surprises added in. My paycheck is by far not keeping up with all of this.

I dont know who created this maybe you all can fill me in but I just know somebody needs to fix this.

http://www.usvetdsp.com/aug08/mccain_unfit.htm

I have a hard time getting past McCains history. I alos dont care for the trickle down effect McCain wants to do, that is what Bush is doing and the only thing trickling is the money out of my pocket. We need a strong foundation to build on not a top heavy economy.

I still believe in Evil Elves.

They must exist. They make Democrats say bad things because of right-wingers.

Its archived on the web simply google it. A lot of the old stuff links to library archives which you'll have to register with an remember that in prior years you have to look at PAC's since that was the main money trail. There is some really good info on Tom Delay's links since he was actually indicted for many of his various activities.

Here's a decent article that shows some lobbyists that have moved in and out of the GSE's and Govt. The Revolving Door.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92540620

Heres Freddie MAC lobby info. Fannie Mae isn't on the heavy hitters list  but Freddie has spent about 3 times the amount in lobby money in any case. You can get the same type of report on Fannie but they charge for it since its not on their heavy hitter list.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000163

If you further search the site you will find breakdowns on the specific individuals and PAC's which got the moola.

I thought that was the VRWC.

Lula posts:

Smoothseas,

Yes, I imagine there are some Republicans involved in this too, but the point is at this particular hearing it was the Democrats covering for Fannie Mae's fraudulent dealings. To date, I've only seen that it is the Dems who are knee deep in keeping the fraud going forward...the warnings and attempts to regulate came from the Republicans....that's fact and this is backed by news items and actual congressional bills that were defeated by the Dems.

Here's a New York Times article written in 1999.......    

LILLIESGRACE POSTS:

The video posted by Draginol gives a very fair analysis of who created this. I know it moves fast and if you aren't one to follow the markets, etc. could get lost but even so, review it a couple of times and you should get the drift. Following that, the link that's under the video is very helpful as well.

Good luck with your particular situation....it's really frustrating when you are being responsible when next door those who aren't are rewarded.....let's hope this economic fix doesn't reward wrong-doers. Where I live, the local grocery store is having trouble staying open which means I'll have to travel 14 miles to buy groceries......I heard one woman tell another....pray, hope and don't be afraid.  

Lilliesgrace,

This is you mouthing Obama empty-speak.  Obama's the one with the nasty history ....his economic advisor was/is Raines who walked away with 100 million from the Fannie Mae fraud.

Be more concerned with the greed, the principal vice of the present age as well of the present crisis...Obama's smooth talk will lead us straight into socialism. 

Are you sure that they actually knew that the GSE's were engaging in fraudulent dealings before the information came out? I don't agree with what many of the Dems do and would actually like to see most of those who are closely tied to the GSE's go. Unfortunately they do not represent my state. I am more concerned with which republicans are involved because the Senator and Representative I voted for last time are republicans. But its like I always say this isnt one side vs. the other. Look at how many people in the Bush Admin were Directors in the GSE's before they were appointed into his Administration. Same goes for Clinton, and if you look at McCain you will see that every time he puts on a big show about a certain issue it is because he is running for cover from something he was previously involved in. Hard to say with Obama, he hasn't been around much, but you know damn well he will use some of Clintons people. Its hard to say how the revolving door actually works but the housing market is extremely important to our economy. But keep in mind that there was very good reason for both sides to turn a blind eye. If you look at the legislation that was proposed as regulation it was a farce.....All it did was transfer oversight from one dept. to another. It actually would have raised the limit on the loans it could have which would have made it worse. It was a bad bill and probably purposely written to be a bad bill. So as you watch the video that shows McCain grandstanding a reform bill you should also look at how many of his advisors have traversed the Fannie/Freddy revolving door and the same the same goes for Obama.

On issues like this both parties are really doing much the same. The only difference is that they use different rhetoric because they are preaching to different flocks.

In any case you should watch the hearings they have had and will have in the future regarding the GSE's. You are going to see that that the vast majority of bad loans that they are sitting on were not created from their own programs but were loans and mbs's that they bought from Mortgage Companies and the investment banks.

Of course the housing market is key to the ecomony....owning a home is the American dream and a wonderful one when the government helped honestly and properly....

But that's the whole point...it changed drastically when the Carter and Clinton Democrats got into social engineering wanting every one of their constitutents,  even those with poor or no credit (today it's the illegals) to own their own homes....they wrongly interfered by forcing banks to provide "affordable mortgages"credit .

You saw the video....the government required banks to make loans or face penalties...banks became rated on performance results...IN 1994, one year before Clinton changed the "Community Reinvestment Act", Obama sued Citibank on behalf of a client who claimed the bank was systematically discriminating against African Americans. Whether or not they could afford the loan didn't seem to be important.

No because growth in the housing market generally leads economic expansion. People build houses...jobs people buy houses....jobs  people fill their houses, add on to their houses, and grow lawns outside their houses....jobs jobs jobs.

That is why both parties have their hands all over the GSE's

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

Haven't had a chance to watch said video as I am at work but will do so later, but it likely has a lot of the things in the article i just linked. Its a interesting read, they pretty much lay out all the people who bare the blame and there ultimate conlusion was that BOTH sides had a lot go wrong.  Theres a whole lot of screw ups in washington in general repsonsible for this. Its times like these the parlimentary system looks real nice. We could simply kick everybody out and elect an entirely new washington. That would be good times.

After i watch the video  I'll ask fact check about it and maybe they will track down some info on it, unless someone else wants to go ahead and do it. Thought they may already have covered it in that article.

No need to. The document you linked to already points out most of the falsehoods that the FOX edit tries to manipulate. Fact Check got most of it right. Theres only a few small points that I would consider potentially incorrect but only time will tell if they are or are not.

False

False

False

Case Summary
Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982. Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief, actual damages, and punitive damages.

The case was based on racial discrimination. The summary states:

Don't be silly... wait don't be STUPID!

It was evil REPUBLICANS that made the good liberals say those things [/sarcasm]

PS. This is a real argument I was told in all seriousness by a liberals (only two seperate individuals, but still, more then one nutcase) about why democrats voted for the war in Iraq...

Good post Vishmaw, but Fact Check is not totally on point.  The video deals with a lot of the stuff that Fact Check does, but it is not a "McCain/Obama" finger pointing like the ads they are running.  It is close to the history of what did happen, with a bent towards the mis-deeds of the democrats primarily.

But on the Fact check, they seem to want to go out of their way to assign blame to anyone and evryone, even to the point of mis-representation.  Specifically:

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

That is a stretch.  Home buyers are not a monolithic group or in anyway organized to do anything in sync.  This is more a result of the bad policies of the Government than a cause of the problem.  In other words, they were swept up in the problem, not causing it.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

This is true to a degree.  Most people do not realize that Real Estate agents are representing the seller, not the buyer (you can hire your own Buyer agent, but most people do not.  And the deal there is the seller still pays them!).  But then their job, since their inception, is to Upsell, so that is again not a cause of the problem, just a part of the market.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

I will not deny this delusion exists.  It was there when the S&Ls failed in the 80s (after the Housing price inflation of the late 70s and early 80s), and of course in a different form during the Dot com bubble of the 90s.  But making this a cause is akin to saying "breathing" was part of the cause (due to the 6 degrees of separation, everything can be blamed).

But I think the rest of their "foxes in the henhouse" are close to the truth.  I am sure everyone is going to have their own pet peeves and culprits.  But in a general sense, the rest of their instigators is correct.

Not false.  As we see, it was all too true.  In real estate, the 3 most important factors have nothing to do with race.  They are: Location, Location, Location.  Redlining has been outlawed, yet it was a very important tool for banks for the 3 important factors of real estate.  You may not like it, but it is a sad fact of life.  You dont buy in distressed neighborhoods and expect to see prices rise.  The case was looped back to racism, but the origins of it were redlining - an illegal practice, but smart business.

However the discusssion was about someone claiming that the lawsuit did not account for:

"Whether or not they could afford the loan didn't seem to be important."

So once again THE SUMMARY OF THE CASE PROVES THAT CLAIM TO BE FALSE.

Unfortunately we will never know if the banks were redlining since it was settled out of court. You are simply assuming that it is when more than likely you do not enough about the case to make such an assumption. How can you be so sure that they were in fact redlining? Do you know whether or not there were loans approved in the same neighborhoods to other ethic groups with the same or lower credit standings? That is one of the problems with partisan politics. You make assumptions and apply them to all cases without knowing the facts.

Its called flipping. You buy a home in anticipation that the value will rise either before your teaser rate expires, an ARM resets and so on and so forth. There were a lot of people doing this in the second home and condo markets.

Thats not flipping that is speculation.  Flipping is when you buy a property that is below market value because it need renovation. Perferably quick cheap fixes that add large amounts to the value to that peice of property. Flipping can also be done with cars, and isn't dependent on the rise of the price of whole group of properties as speculation is.

Flipping is a term used primarily in the United States to describe practice of buying an asset and quickly reselling (or "flipping") it for profit. Though flipping can apply to any asset, the term is most often applied to real estate and initial public offerings.