Today's not so funny, laugh!!

[anthonycacace]

I just purchased a ham radio set-up!.....Just one more debt to pay off and then, I just pay the electric/phone bill........looking at a diesel generator/inverter.
.....in the meantime I'm investing in heavy metal!

But, our amps go to 11! Oh, you meant gold, silver, and platinum not heavy metal music.

[kidrock]

No! It proves that some people make good decisions and some people make poor decisions and some of those people that make poor decisions would rather stand behind them and not admit they are wrong. The regulations the Democrats passed regarding Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac were very bad and they continued to back them. The Republicans wanted to see less regulation of the banks that the Democrats had put in place to back the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac loans so that the banks would feel safer in their activities.

Now, take a look at what is going on with the loaning of hundreds of millions of dollars to green energy firms that go belly up when the reports were saying all along that they were bad investments. More Democratic waste.

What about all the "Occupier" complaints? They are down on Wall Street, right? Well, let's look at what the Treasury and the Fed have been doing for over a year the the Quantitative Easement plan. There has already been two six month long periods of quantitative easement where the Fed lowered interest rates as low as they could go in order to prop up Wall Street. Nothing has been done to fix much of what happened on Wall Street during the collapse of 2008-9 other than stabilize the market. That is being done with QE1, QE2 and now QE3. The Fed has already announced that they will keep those rates at their lowest for two more years. This caused a lot of concern in the business and investment world because it basically announced to the world that the government does not expect any change in the economic outlook for at least another two years. The problem with the Quantitative easements is that they have to be paid for. Therefore the Fed must rob Peter to pay Paul. Every six months the Fed and the Treasury print up and release into the economy another $620 billion dollars in currency. This stabilizes the stock market but causes the consumer prices to continue to climb. It also continues to devalue the dollar. Now, who is favoring the stock market(1%) over the 99%? Once again it is the Democrats.

If you think less regulations for these banks will be a good thing. I land in the ocean to sell you.

[wallcrusher]

But, our amps go to 11! Oh, you meant gold, silver, and platinum not heavy metal music.

Not exactly!........ http://www.luckygunner.com/handgun/40-s-w-ammo

[MotorMouth]

If you think less regulations for these banks will be a good thing. I land in the ocean to sell you.

You seem to have no in between to understand. It is either all or nothing with you. I did not, I repeat, I did not say that there would or should be a complete loosening of all regulations. I said that they needed to loosen the regulations that were established regarding the issues that got them into this in the first place.

You just do not wipe slates clean and neither do you just completely throw all kinds of regulations in. It is called REGULATING. Some times you have to regulate down a little bit and some times you need to regulate up a little bit. When you see that one or the other is not working you readjust. In the case of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the Democratically controlled committee over-regulated and refused to admit that anything was wrong and CONTINUE to refuse to admit after going 160 BILLION dollars in the hole that there is anything at all wrong. That is exactly why the higher ups at these two agencies are wanting multi-million dollar bonuses. If Congress is going to continue to trow away hundreds of billions of the American taxpayers dollars away they might as well feel like they are doing a good job and shoot for the moon while the golden goose is dying. Some very proper and appropriate regulation for Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac would very likely stop the bleeding in all areas. That is a reasonable and very sensible response to what has been going on for far too long!

In other words, I am not stupid enough to buy a ocean from you but you seem to think that almost anything is possible even outside the realm of reality.

[Clayton_Wetter]

Well it looks like that proves we need good regulations that work and are enforced and not less regulations.

The problem is that we have too many bad regulations being dealt out by socialist Czars and the corrupted Dept. of Ed, D. of Justice, EPA and more. Cass Sunstein (look up this Marxist) has been a busy beaver writing every socialist rule and reg. that he can think of to help choke off free enterprise. There has been a war on small business, coal, oil drilling, and big industries are a target too. You can't even get a student loan anywhere except the government and now those indebted students don't want to pay the loans back. Who told them that they couldn't make without a college education? The same people who are now using them to help cause chaos and unrest.

The Progessives in the Democrat party.

Somebody needs to Occupy Cass Suntein's office. That would be an actual justified protest!!

[Clayton_Wetter]

If you think less regulations for these banks will be a good thing. I land in the ocean to sell you.

Do you want the banks to become a government owned and operated agency?

[kidrock]

Do you want the banks to become a government owned and operated agency?

Are you kidding but, I sure as the heck don't want them to have free reign either. These guys are some of the biggest crooks there is. Some of them should be in jail right now but, again with that kind of money they will never see the light of day.

[kidrock]

The problem is that we have too many bad regulations being dealt out by socialist Czars and the corrupted Dept. of Ed, D. of Justice, EPA and more. Cass Sunstein (look up this Marxist) has been a busy beaver writing every socialist rule and reg. that he can think of to help choke off free enterprise. There has been a war on small business, coal, oil drilling, and big industries are a target too. You can't even get a student loan anywhere except the government and now those indebted students don't want to pay the loans back. Who told them that they couldn't make without a college education? The same people who are now using them to help cause chaos and unrest.

The Progessives in the Democrat party.

Somebody needs to Occupy Cass Suntein's office. That would be an actual justified protest!!

Then why don't you get your buddy's and stand up and start a protest if you think this is going on. Don't just sit here and do nothing.

[wallcrusher]

Do you want the banks to become a government owned and operated agency?

....actually......most are!

[kidrock]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...ecurities.html


Sounds like this not only was fannie and freddie at fault here but, so was the banks. Like I said a bunch of crooks.

[kidrock]

http://www.prmia.org/pdf/Case_Studies/Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac_090911_v2.pdf

[anthonycacace]

I don't think you guys are going back far enough in history to determine the root cause. Adjustable Rate Mortgages (ARMs) were allowed under a piece of legislation passed in 1982, the Garn–St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. The bill, whose full title was "An Act to revitalize the housing industry by strengthening the financial stability of home mortgage lending institutions and ensuring the availability of home mortgage loans," was a Reagan Administration initiative. Combine an ARM with an interest only payment component and you begin to realize, "Houston, we have a problem."

Clayton, as you stated relating to CEO compensation, the mortgage crisis is a complex issue. Borrowers bear some fault, institutions bear some responsibility, and government deserves some blame. IMO, institutions and their employees should have the lion's share though. Why? Here is a comparable example:

You see a mechanic and they charge you to fix your car. Now, he/she is a business person out to make a living and does so based on how often you visit the garage. But above all, the technician holds the trust of all his/her clients to direct their car care in a way that is best suited for longevity of the vehicle, not solely to make money.

How does the relate to mortgages? Many borrowers are not as fiscally astute as they need to be (similar to people not knowing how to check oil let alone change a tire in the mechanic example). So, they trust a banker/broker to help guide them toward their their ultimate goal, the longevity of continued housing. But, the banker need not worry about going out of business (unlike the mechanic) even if, these are bad decisions that were not in the best interests of a mortgagee. The banker/broker bundled the risk and sold it to unsuspecting investors. When he did so, the package received a rating of grade AAA, because there were supposed to be good mortgages to balance out the bad. But, that is not what happened now is it. Instead of a 95-5 ratio (not realistic simply an easy example) they put in 85-15. Those ten additional mortgages paid the banker his cut, but slammed the investor (and/or Fannie/Freddie) with the final cost and financial risk.

One last side note, the pink statement was from USA Today, not any of the other sources cited.

[Clayton_Wetter]

Anthony, if you go back to Woodrow Wilson, that would be a real appropriate starting point of what's going on to this very day..

[Clayton_Wetter]

Democrats are fighting that for you Clayton.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-net-neutrality-20111111,0,3415946.story

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/10/142219755/net-neutrality-survives-republican-challenge

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/68079.html

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/10/senate-rejects-gop-bid-to-overturn-net-neutrality-internet-rules/

I made sure to include a link from Fox News just for you.

Net neutrality is another wolf in sheeps clothing Jody. Be careful who you trust.

The unintended consequences of rules forcing Internet service providers to treat all data as equal could include ruinous constraints on network-security measures. As reported in Hands Off the Internet, certain types of security measures that prevent denial-of-service attacks (which are all too common in a world whose nations are fighting World War III in cyberspace) would be forbidden under the FCC's net-neutrality rules. Do we dare tie the hands of service providers knowing the security risks?
The Cato Institute weighed in on the issue last year, speaking of "The Durable Internet" in a policy analysis by Timothy B. Lee. In the paper, Lee states that an "important reason for the Internet's remarkable growth over the last quarter-century is the 'end-to-end' principle that networks should confine themselves to transmitting generic packets without worrying about their contents. … On a network that respects the end-to-end principle, prior approval from network owners is not needed to launch new applications, services, or content." Lee goes on to describe the net-neutrality movement and its activists as understandably concerned, but condemns government regulation as "premature," saying it would limit competition.
Nobody wants data providers to become de facto censors, deciding what their customers can and cannot access, creating classes of users who are treated differently (and perhaps poorly) based on their data needs. This is why the net-neutrality movement originally arose. But the real problem at hand here, and the one on which we must focus before we can address true net neutrality, is one of trust in government.
In a free society, governments are instituted by the citizens they serve for one purpose: to protect individual rights. If the government of the United States truly served the citizenry and protected individual liberty, the notion of federal regulations to maintain net neutrality and thus to ensure free and ready access to information (while maintaining the uninterrupted flow of data) would be a benefit to us all. Sadly, our increasingly invasive and oppressive federal government has proven time and time again that it cannot be trusted. It pays lip service to the notion of freedom while constraining and controlling the actions and lives of those human beings it only pretends to protect.
Just as the euphemistically named "Fairness Doctrine" would instead crush freedom of speech on the public airwaves, any net-neutrality regulations instituted by the Marxist drones of the Obama administration cannot be trusted to accomplish their stated goals without unintended consequences. The "Fairness Doctrine" perverts fairness; Obama's idea of net neutrality may prove to be anything but neutral. Instead of trusting our government to protect individual rights, we are forced to ask ourselves in what way it might abuse them. The result is that while net neutrality is a good thing, its institution by Barack Hussein Obama and his minions almost certainly won't be.

[MotorMouth]

Anthony, if you go back to Woodrow Wilson, that would be a real appropriate starting point of what's going on to this very day..

In the late 1800s there some people that came to America who were from Oxford University and members of the Fabian Society. The Fabian Society is a society that believes in creating a melting pot of all the nations of the world and remake them into a global one world government. This ideology has, of course, been around since about the 1400s but this society was/is much more organized. The movement grew to a point that in the 1920s the Council on Foreign Relations was formed in the United States with the idea of creating the ground work for tying all the important connections together. Of course, prior to that Woodrow Wilson was very active in many ways trying to limit the abilities of free commerce. In fact, actually Teddy Roosevelt was also a believer in a socialistic style of government. Since those days there has always be limitations put upon the free market but it has continued to succeed until recently when the amount of regulations and restrictions has gone so far as to practically put all the people out of work. The probability of a lost decade economically is very possible.

I have a three videos that are 32 years old that everyone should watch. They answer all the questionsl:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-o0kD9f6wo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi-D24oCa10&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRpEV...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1lWk4TCe4U