How Democrats Alone Created Financial Crisis


Here is how the people, laws and institutions of the liberal Democrat party alone created our current financial crisis:

 

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, passed by a Democrat Congress and signed into law by Democrat president Jimmy Carter, forced banks to make mortgage loans to “low-income” people and forbade banks from ‘redlining’, an action in which banks would not loan money in certain neighborhoods seen as risky areas. CRA eventually led to mortgages not only for “low-income” people but for “low- and moderate-income” people, which is the way that socialism always expands itself… incrementally. Most of these loan recipients had little, poor or no credit history, had poor employment histories and prospects, and eventually had high rates of default on loans. None of them should have owned homes in the first place, but should have remained renters.

 

Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a left-wing activist group that has accessed billions of dollars from the federal government. Besides engaging in massive fraud in voter registration, ACORN has used pressure tactics like on-site protests and legal filings against banks that ACORN has claimed were not loaning enough money to “the poor”. Obama was closely associated with ACORN in the 1990s.

 

The Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac) are government-sponsored agencies founded, run and staffed by Democrat liberals. These agencies for decades purchased the risky loans that the CRA and ACORN were forcing banks to make. Since these agencies were buying the loans, banks felt comfortable making the loans because the government (the taxpayers) then was assuming the risk when it purchased the loans. Trillions in bad ‘subprime’ loans are the spark that caused this whole financial crisis to explode.

 

The Clinton administration in the 1990s started to agitate for more home loans for poor people even after CRA. Between 1997 and 2001, Andrew Cuomo, Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, advocated a system where poor people needn’t even have had an income nor a job (No Income No Job or NINJA loans) to get a bank loan that then would be purchased by Fannie and Freddie. Andrew Cuomo is the son of Mario Cuomo, the liberal former governor of New York state and a big-time Democrat activist.

 

Democrat US representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Democrat US senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, two of the most powerful people in Washington both said in public statements over several years that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sound institutions. Frank said so as recently as July 2008. Yet both agencies went into conservatorship in September 2008. Meanwhile Republicans John McCain and George Bush warned repeatedly in public statements that Fannie and Freddie were not sound. Dodd also got a sweetheart mortgage deal for his personal mortgage from Countrywide Financial.

 

Robert Rubin, a director and senior counselor from 1999 to 2009 at Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in America. Rubin was Bill Clinton’s Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999 and is considered one of the most prominent Democrats of the last 25 years. He urged Citigroup to begin investing in risky instruments, leading to its almost-collapse. In January 2009, he resigned from Citigroup saying he was “tired of it”. In other words, he wanted to get away from the mess that he himself had created. Rubin got more than $126 million in salary and bonuses during his tenure at Citi.

 

Bernard Madoff, the $50 billion financial scammer who ran the biggest ponzi scheme in American history, is a big-time New York City liberal and Democrat party donor.

 

R. Allen Stanford, an $8 billion Texas financial schemer, was close to the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat party. He financed a special event at the 2008 Democrat convention in Denver. Vice president Joe Biden’s brother and two sons have all been closely associated with Stanford business dealings.

 

Richard Fuld, a big-time Democrat donor, headed Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers and ran it into bankruptcy and collapse.

 

AIG, the crippled insurance giant, was founded by very liberal New York businessman Maurice Greenberg. In 2005, ultra-left Democrat Eliot Spitzer, then attorney general of New York state, acting on his own personal anti-capitalist crusade against big New York financial interests, drove Greenberg out of AIG with false accusations of wrongdoing. Greenberg since has been cleared and has maintained repeatedly that the people who took his place did not know anything about running AIG, leading to its collapse.

 

Democrat US senator Charles Schumer of New York caused a ‘run’ on deposits at IndyMac Bank in California, leading to the bank’s collapse. Schumer publicly released a letter he had written questioning the bank’s liquidity, causing depositors to panic.

 

Warren Buffett, the richest man in America and an Obama voter, is a liberal who has supported all these left-wing initiatives like CRA. Ditto many left-wing multimillionaires and billionaires in Hollywood, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Aspen, Santa Fe etc.

 

Franklin Raines, Bill Clinton’s budget director, was chairman of Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2004 when he took “early retirement” after being accused of cooking the books to the tune of $6.3 billion. Raines left Fannie Mae with $90 million in accumulated compensation and bonuses based on the falsified figures. Democrats in Congress are declining to investigate or prosecute Raines.

 

James Johnson, Daniel Mudd and Jamie Gorelick, all big-time Democrat operatives, drew more than $50 million in salaries and bonuses out of Fannie Mae.

 

Tens of thousands of liberal university graduates and liberal business school graduates have joined the financial system, bringing their politics with them. (Chelsea Clinton works for a New York hedge fund.) These are the people who urged banks and Wall Street investment firms to become institutions of social engineering that hardly asked any questions before loaning people money, causing the housing bubble that burst. Because to liberals, everyone deserves credit, no questions asked. Had “conservatives” been in control of the banking and financial systems, this crisis never would have happened because most of these bad loans never would have been made in the first place. But the media and the universities have demonized conservatives for the last 50 years. Thus this crisis.

 

Labor unions have milked massive amounts of wealth out of the Big 3 car companies, driving them to the brink of insolvency.

 

Democrat-dominated states like California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Vermont and New York had the worst, least productive economies in America even before the economic crisis hit. Meanwhile, the state with the best economy before and after the crisis hit is… George Bush’s conservative Texas.

 

Worldwide socialism in places like Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia have weakened those economies, leaving them with high unemployment and low growth and unable to help the world economy in the wake of the US crisis.

 

Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi and thousands of other elected Democrats nationwide adhere religiously to the ideology that created this collapse.

 

Please visit my website at www.nikitas3.com for more. You can print out for free my book, Right Is Right, which explains why only conservatism can maintain our freedom and prosperity.



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10 Comments Leave a comment

A pretty decent breakdown of the players involved and what actually happened...

randy streu (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 7:33AM EST (link)

I’d LOVE to see somebody come in and try to refute the allegations here.

Really.

I don't have time right now, but before today's out

mbecker908 (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 7:44AM EST (link)

I’ll comment. His conclusions on the specifics of the “mortgage crisis” are off. The fundamentals aren’t bad, but the conclusions stray.

The fundamentals on the UAW “bleeding” the Big 3 are flat wrong.

Sorry for the teaser, but I’m tied up most of the day but will bounce in when time permits and expand my comments.

 

It is vital that Republicans get out of this "we all messed up" refrain

Mike gamecock DeVine (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 8:53AM EST (link)

They must emphasize the Democrats’ singular duplicity in this matter. I would start with the late 90s, though, and not go back to Carter.

Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com, Charlotte Observer and The Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

I would like to see an analysis

robmikpet (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 9:44AM EST (link)

Of the increase in home ownership over the last 15 years and how the numbers of bad debt from bad mortgages is eerily coincidentally related.

I saw a graph online (can’t find it now) showing home ownership rates basically unchaged since WWII (modest rise over time) until about 15 years or so ago they take off right about the time Clinton’s justice department, Dems in generally and HUD start pressuring and even threatening to sue banks to lend to “underrepresented” group – poor people with bad credit.

Now my premise is this: the increase in home ownership by 2007/08 was about 4 million people with homes with an average value of $150,000. This totals $6 TRILLION is bad debt. Now here is the coincidence. Is this $6 trillion not very close to the required capital injection the global financial market requires to maintain solvency due to the fact that banks lose a dollar of capital for every dollar of bad debt.

While I draw a straight line that in fact might be much more circuitous including credit default swaps and structured investment vehicles the basic “the Dems caused this whole thing” seems to hold true.

This is just the main impact. The increase in demand for homes caused a construction labor bubble, an illegal immigrent construction worker influx and even a commodity bubble for things like lumber and copper for plumbing. This is in addition to home prices rising precipitously causing more building.

To show how a collapse in home prices can happen quickly (I have heard the biggest drop in home prices is in only 5 or so markets) I have a friend who owns a concrete pumping business (used to pump basement walls for homes, driveways, etc) who deals directly with home builders (his clients). What happened to home prices was this:

1) The increase in demand for homes caused a building boom
2) New home prices skyrocked MUCH more quickly than building costs increase.
3) People were buying these overpriced new homes, many speculating on the continued rise in prices.
4) Demand started dropping builders stuck with way too many empty new homes.

As a real world example he said to me; Two to three years ago a home builder could finish a house that was to be sold for $250,000 for $175,000 (these are rough numbers and include land and land servicing) By the middle and end of the boom this house could be sold for $400,000 or higher but only cost $250,000 to finish (largely due to increased land costs). Many people were buying these homes as the price increased but very important to understand here – the cost to build the generally the same. Now flash forward to the bust. Home builders have way too many completed homes on the market priced at $400,000 but cost to build $250,000. GUESS WHO HAS THE PRICING POWER TO RADICALLY DROP PRICES AND STILL MAKE A PROFIT?

Who is left holding the bag ALL the homeowners who own $325k, $350k, $375k and $400k houses the builder is dumping at $275k and still making a small profit (breaking even and losing money really when carrying inventory over time is considered but I digress)

Now commodity prices are down construction workers are laid off, etc, etc. ALL DUE TO THE DEMS.

I have lived that 2001-2008 analysis and, interestingly saw a 1960 state today

Mike gamecock DeVine (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 9:49AM EST (link)

that informs.

In 1960, home ownership rates were 62%.

Homeownership reached record levels overall and for blacks and minorities around 2003-2005. It was major goal of Clinton and then Bush and esp Alphonso Jackson. But the rate was only around 65% at its peak.

I know this because I sold my lease-option homes to investors program due to the fact that the only people left to sell to were credit-challenged.

And the only way all the loan officers and realtors made money was by a new sale.

The fact is that there is ceiling on how many can afford homes, esp in a society so debt ridden. But also simply a function of human nature maybe.

more later

Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com, Charlotte Observer and The Minority Report columns
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

5!

silentcal40 Monday, March 23rd at 12:44PM EST (link)

n/t

“Nothing I never said ever hurt me.” – Calvin Coolidge

 
 
 
 
 

Will the Demoncrats return the Madoff donations made with stolen money? nt

olsmithie (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 9:01AM EST (link)

Comments on commentary...

mbecker908 (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 2:29PM EST (link)

As I noted above, I want to clarify two points. First, The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, passed by a Democrat Congress and signed into law by Democrat president Jimmy Carter, forced banks to make mortgage loans to “low-income” people and forbade banks from ‘redlining’…

That’s really only partially true. What really happened is that the feds did in fact forbid red-lining which pretty much required loans to people who had previously been shunned. At the time, mortgages were not really a profit center for banks and “mortgage brokers” pretty much didn’t exist. Mortgages were a service for banking customers and 98% of the money made by lenders was made on servicing. Additionally, all loans were either transferred to Fannie/Freddie (mostly FHA) or serviced by the originating bank. No such thing as a “Mortgage Backed Security”.

When the CRA passed a couple of things happened, the primary being that banks suddenly figured out that they were going to have to make higher risk loans in order to conform to the law. In the world of bankers, higher risk translates immediately to higher cost. In addition, anything that deviates from the norm translates to higher cost. Higher cost translates to higher profit. Much higher profit.

Bing, mortgages became profit centers. Next came the evolution of mortgage banks. Just like a bank on the corner except no deposits, no checking accounts, all they did was originate mortgages and sell the servicing rights. And they used financial warehouses to fund the mortgages they originated, using big credit lines, and cleared them when they sold the servicing rights. They made money on fees from the borrower and from the servicer. It was literally a license to print money.

The profits were big enough to attract risk capital. Along came “creative” mortgages. The more creative the bigger the profits.

And then came Mortgage Backed Securities and the ability to bundle loans and sell them like bonds on Wall St. More money.

Things went just fine until the real estate market heated up and house prices went crazy. That was driven primarily by investors, not so much by “sub-prime” borrowers who benefited from the CRA. As an example, in Phoenix, in “normal” times investment single family home purchases account for about 10% – 12% of housing purchases mostly on the lower end. At the height of the housing boom investment purchases accounted for upwards of 40% of the purchase market and all of that was done with very creative financing. And that segment is what REALLY drove the market crazy. Same in CA & FL and NV.

I’ll add some more to this later today because the really important driver is waiting to be commented on :-)

Wrap up to comments...

mbecker908 (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 10:43PM EST (link)

And the killer in the housing market happened starting in the late ’90′s. Some homeowner woke up one morning and discovered that the $150,000 home he’d bought 18 months ago with a no money down FHA full doc loan was now worth $225,000. And he thought, “Wow, if I’d only bought a $400,000 home it’d be worth maybe $600,000.” And he stopped looking at their home as momma’s nest and started looking at it as a line item on their net worth statement. And then they talked about the vacation they’d like to take while the kids were still at home, you know, building family memories. And it would be great to have that boat so that they could do things together on the weekends. Etc, etc. etc.

And there went the housing market.

As far as the UAW destroying the Big 3, they had a hand in it. Actually, the folks who really orchestrated the demise of the US auto industry was GM, Ford and Chrysler execs. Pattern bargaining worked for them and basically shut out competition until folks with really deep pockets who detested unions with every ounce of their being and who knew how to build better cars cheaper than the B3 came along. Detroit thought it would never happen. Oops. You can thank people like Roger Smith and his ilk for the death of the auto industry, the UAW were just role players.

 
 

So much for stepping up to the cliff

tedpomeroy (Diary) Monday, March 23rd at 2:50PM EST (link)

but what sent us over?

President Clinton’s sustained veto on ANWR energy development in 1996.

See my diary.

See Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist at CIBC on the blog, The Oil Drum on 11/5/08.

Run up in oil killed the US consumer! Drill, Drill, Drill!