How many people are aware that Senator Obama has ties to Factcheck.org, the “non-partisan” political “fact checking” site, vis-a-vis the Annenberg Foundation? Or that the controversies surrounding Obama, such as his ties to Bill Ayers, a former member of the violent Vietnam War era Weather Underground terrorist group, and the veracity of Obama’s “birth certificate” are both linked to Factcheck and Annenberg.

jagerdr wrote:

Leverage.......that's the cause.

Euro banks, American I banks.....levered up 40:1 and more.

Credit default swaps appeared to insure it all, therefore they hid the leverage. Yet a CDS was like taking a life insurance policy out on your neighbor then running him over with your car. It was just too easy if you understood the game that way going on. Housing was just a vehicle, as most had trust in the idea that land and buildings were tangible. It made little difference when a 100,000 dollar house was marketed at 4 million.

Sit and wait for the next tulip bulb hype now.

.......and learn from it.

Fannie Mae Seeks to Ease Home Buying


By KEITH BRADSHER,
Published: March 10, 1994

The organization that stands behind many of the nation's mortgages is taking broad steps to make home ownership easier for lower-income Americans, particularly recent immigrants and minorities, people involved in the effort said today.

Under the new rules, banks would have more flexibility in lending to people who already owe a considerable amount of money or who cannot afford a down payment equal to 20 percent of the price of a home, the people said.

The change is to be announced on Tuesday by the Federal National Mortgage Association, popularly known as Fannie Mae. Officials at Fannie Mae would not comment on the plan.

President Clinton is tentatively scheduled to attend the announcement. The Administration is urging that loans be more broadly available to poor and lower-middle-income Americans.

In addition to changing its guidelines, Fannie Mae plans a national educational campaign that will seek to teach recent immigrants and minorities how to obtain mortgages. The campaign will be aimed particularly at immigrants in a dozen "gateway" cities where the percentage of home ownership has been declining.

The long-term goal is to broaden the economic and ethnic diversity of homeowners. About 70 percent of white households now own their homes, compared with 40 percent of black and Hispanic households. Two Million Excluded

Mortgage experts have estimated that up to two million American households are excluded from buying homes now because of conservative mortgage lending standards. These include Americans with minor blemishes on their credit records, for such things as changing jobs repeatedly or failing to pay utility bills on time. Most mortgage experts assume that even people who fall behind on other bills will struggle to make mortgage payments lest they lose their homes.

"Mortgage-lending criteria have been very conservative, and we have a lot of people who should be creditworthy and have been cut out," said Thomas H. Stanton, a former Fannie Mae lawyer.

Dawa wrote:

I am tired of reading it's the dem, it's the reps who caused the economic chaos, so here is a clear and honest iste, well I hope so, that will make you all agree...
Its Bush's fault

www.factcheck.org . . .

mclark wrote:

Greenspan caused it, with a lot of help from his friends. Bush didn't have much to do with it really. He was so focused on Iraq and terrorism that he didn't even realize what his banker friends were doing.

Flood the world with cheap dollars and the bubbles will never pop. That was Greenspan's theocracy. When the Stock Market bubble popped, we should have let the economy slide into recession. Instead we jacked-down rates again and fueled a housing bubble. Then the housing bubble popped; and Greenspan's clone Bernanke ratcheted down rates, killing the US Dollar even more, and created a commodity bubble (including oil).

A recession is political suicide. But the recession is the winter season of the economic cycle. You can't avoid it. And the more you fight it with lower interest rates, the more you excite inflation, kill your own currency, and fuel asset bubbles that come back to clobber you and change a modest recession in to a devastating depression.

Greenspan was more powerful that Bush in the finanicial markets. Bernanke is also. Now Paulson is also more powerful than President Bush.

Bush, like most politicians, doesn't understand the complexity of the financial markets, especially as derivatives become more and more esoteric. Bush is dependent upon his financial advisors to tell him what's going on. I don't blame him for that. Wall Street (especially the investment banking arm, now suddenly exterminated) is a private club.

Those who want business to be totally unregulated, this is what happens when the government minds its own business and lets the bankers and the greed merchants run wild without legal supervision and regulation. Wall Street -- business generally -- is full of thieves that will lie and cheat to get ahead. That's why you need regulations.

I don't blame Bush as much for this...although he COULD have been more aware of what was happening. But, for those who believe that the market solves everything this catastrophe was absolutely unexpected. They were all blind to the possibility that this could happen. As was Herbert Hoover in 1929.

lmao wrote:

why didnt you just put up
moveon.org

For the record: the Annenberg Foundation's president and chairman is Leonore Annenberg, the founder's widow. Public records show she's given $2,300 to the McCain campaign, which announced on Oct. 8, that she has endorsed him for president.

Dawa wrote:

I am tired of reading it's the dem, it's the reps who caused the economic chaos, so here is a clear and honest iste, well I hope so, that will make you all agree...
Its Bush's fault

www.factcheck.org . . .