Throw the Bums Out

[Anonymous]

I'm so pissed at Congress -- both sides. Once again they have totally abdicated their oversight responsibility, collecting contributions and doing NOTHING to protect the taxpayer. We're the ones who are going to pay for this.

[Anonymous]

That's why their approval rating is actually lower the president's.

[Anonymous]

Wow -- to blame ALL of this on Congress is very short-sided. The Administration pushed most of the policies now in place that were handed to the Congress when the Republicans were in charge and now we are reaping the benefits. Congress did have a role in this but I find it amusing the "outrage" coming from the now minority party in Congress over the aftermath of their own doing hand in hand with Bush...

[Anonymous]

Everyone knows this started in the 90s with Fannie Mae. Search the NY Times. They re-ran a story yesterday.

[Anonymous]

I'm with OP - spineless ninnies more concerned with whether they get returned by the voters in November than they are with doing the right thing.

The blame is shared. If Administration proposals were so awful, the Congress and its Democrat leadership has a responsibility to reject it and put forth another option.

Just saying No No NO is not the adult way to respond.

I would like to see some serious discussion in the debates about using government to push social agendas, using business as the pawns. The banks were basically blackmailed by the Federal Govt, starting with Janet Reno and the Clinton Administration, to increase their loans to minority and low income families - is it any wonder we are in this mess?

When Montgomery County was using its low income rent assistance money to place families in single family homes in neighborhoods where the median sale price was twice the county average - that was insane. Some tenants had never used a lawn mower, didn't own one, couldn't pull weeds...

I am a firm believer in the axiom - If you give a man a fish you feed him for the day; if you teach a man to fish, he can feed himself for a life time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I would like to see some serious discussion in the debates about using government to push social agendas, using business as the pawns. The banks were basically blackmailed by the Federal Govt, starting with Janet Reno and the Clinton Administration, to increase their loans to minority and low income families - is it any wonder we are in this mess?

While the Clinton Administration may have encouraged Fannie/Freddie to increase the occurence of mortgage loans to the low income, I strongly doubt they meant extending $600K loans for those earning $35K. Maybe I'm out on a limb here, but it's a logical assumption that the mortgage brokers conduct their due diligence, verify employment, income, debt ratios before approving loans.

Moreover, these loans were securitized to sell on Wall Street. What do the hedge funds and investment banks do? They package and repackage the securities of subprime mortgages and buy/sell them without understanding what it was they were buying and selling. Investors held onto it until they could make a buck then sold it off to the next sucker. It sounds sort of like a pyramid scheme. On top of it all, the hedge funds only paid 15% tax on their profits because it was classified as a capital gains rather than income which would have been taxed at a considerably higher rate. So now, the hedge funds and other investors didn't pay their real obligation in taxes, but the worker bees who did pay will be bailing them out.

Everyone had a hand in this financial crisis (understatement) but I rely on government to institute oversight because I don't have the authority or expertise to do it myself.

[Anonymous]

Well said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow -- to blame ALL of this on Congress is very short-sided. The Administration pushed most of the policies now in place that were handed to the Congress when the Republicans were in charge and now we are reaping the benefits. Congress did have a role in this but I find it amusing the "outrage" coming from the now minority party in Congress over the aftermath of their own doing hand in hand with Bush...

Actually, your comment itself is very short-SIGHTED. To simply push this off on Bush belies both your complete ignorance of the facts surrounding this debacle, and tells the story of your biased political view.

Frank, Dodd, Raines, Johnson, et al should be paraded, in handcuffs, in front of the cameras of the very biased news agencies that have protected them througout this entire scandal. They should be prosecuted to the point of irrelevance, and left to rot in prison. If it's good enough for Ken Lay, and his ilk, it is certainly good enough for these liberal criminals.

By the way, I will admit that I am a VERY biased partisan. Good day!