Let’s not forget, both President Clinton and President Bush bragged about how a record number of American’s owned (meaning occupied under a mortgage) a home. Free markets would never have created this crisis. Government created this crisis.
“In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.” (Read more from query.nytimes.com)
We must win the intellectual debate. This crisis was caused by government, not by freedom. The solution is more freedom, not more government.
“In fact, much of AIG’s problem was caused by credit default swaps and regulation. After Hank Greenberg was ousted from AIG, the company began to get heavily involved in the credit default swap market. That market was growing in large part because of banking regulation. . .
Banks around the world operate under rules that determine how much capital they must hold in reserve. The rules say that a riskier the assets held by a bank, the larger the reserve they have to maintain. One way to reduce the riskiness of your assets was to buy insurance on them. This created a huge demand for credit default swaps as a kind of regulatory arbitrage, banks trying to comply with regulations while maximizing their own profits. Let’s use an example. Say you are running a bank in Europe. You have a bunch of deposits you want to invest, and you want to invest those in assets that will give you the highest return with the lowest risk. If you buy a bunch of high-yield loans, that is counter-productive. Even if you earn more for each dollar you invest, the reserve requirements will tell you that you can’t invest as much. Now if you throw a credit default swap on, which you can buy cheaply from AIG, you can invest more of your depositors money in highly rated securities. In effect, you get extra-credit for the swap when calculating your reserve requirements.
But isn’t it insane for banks to keep buying insurance policies from a company that obviously couldn’t pay them back? After all, AIG sold $527 billion of these. There’s no way it could make good on even a tiny fraction of them. But bankers didn’t see it that way. They didn’t expect to ever collect on the insurance policies. The main reason they bought them was because the regulations rewarded them for buying them, allowing them to hold less money in reserve and invest more.” (Read more from businessinsider.com)
See Also: from Haaretz
“Despite the state’s formal commitment not to expand West Bank settlements, a government agency has been promoting plans over the past two years to construct thousands of housing units east of the Green Line, Haaretz has learned. . . .
The plans propose the initial construction of 550 apartments in Gva’ot, located near Alon Shvut in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, followed by construction of another 4,450 units at a later stage. At present, Gva’ot is inhabited by 12 families. The neighboring settlement of Bat Ayin, which has about 120 families, is slated to receive another 2,000 apartments, according to the plans.”
See Also:
“A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of ‘actively pursuing the illegal annexation’ of East Jerusalem.
The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority’s credibility and weakening support for peace talks. ‘Israel’s actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making,’ says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem.
The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel’s legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: ‘Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications.'”
Israel’s Foreign ministry says: “The Israeli Army is a cautious, professional, accurate and ethical organization. Israel does not target innocents, yet must fight terrorists who willingly shield themselves behind their own population in their ongoing campaign to kill and maim Israeli civilians.”
US Tax dollars at work:
24th February 2009
Khoza’a, Khan Younis , Gaza Strip: Palestinian farmers, accompanied by international Human Rights Workers (HRWs), were fired upon by Israeli forces in the village of Khozaa, near Khan Younis, this morning. The farmers and HRWs were attempting to work on land around 300m from the Green Line.
Since the 18th January 2009, in the area next to the Green Line known as the “Buffer Zone”, eight Palestinian civilians have been shot by Israeli troops. Three of them have been killed – including one child.
18th January 2009
At approximately 10:40, IOF troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at Palestinian civilians who were checking their homes and agricultural land following the declaration of the ceasefire. As a result, Maher ‘Abdul ‘Azim Abu Rjaila, 23, was killed by a gunshot to the chest and shrapnel to the limbs.
20th January 2009
At approximately 13:00, IOF troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, east of Khan Yunis, opened fired at Palestinian houses in al-Qarara village. As a result, Waleed ‘Abdul Rahim al-Astal, 42, was wounded by a gunshot to the right foot.
23rd January 2009
At approximately 01:00, IOF troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at Palestinian civilians who were checking the destruction of their houses in Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis. As a result, Nabeel Ibrahim al-Najjar, 40, was wounded by shrapnel from a gunshot to the left hand.
25th January 2009
At approximately 16:00, IOF troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel opened fire at houses and streets in Khuza’a village, east of Khan Yunis. As a result, Subhi Tafesh Qudaih, 55, was wounded by a gunshot to the back.
27th January 2009
At approximately 10:00, IOF troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, east of Khan Yunis, opened fire at a number of Palestinian farmers who were farming agricultural land belonging to the Abu Daqqa clan, nearly 600 meters away from the border. The farmers lay down to avoid being shot. When the shooting stopped, the farmer stood up to leave the area, but IOF troops opened fire at them. One of them, 26-year-old Anwar Zayed al-Buraim, was killed by a gunshot to the neck.
14th February 2009
On 14 February, IOF shot dead a Palestinian child while he was herding animals in the east of Jabalia town in the northern Gaza Strip
At approximately 12:00, the body of Hammad Barrak Salem Silmiya, 13, from al-Qerem area east of Jabalia town in the northern Gaza Strip, was brought to Shifa’ Hospital in Gaza City. The child had been shot in the head. According to his family, IOF troops fired at him while he was herding animals in the east of Jabalia town. His body was found at approximately 11:30.
18th February 2009
At approximately 10:30, IOF troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, east of Khan Yunis, fired at a number of Palestinian farmers and 6 members of the International Solidarity Movement, as they attempted to leave the area having worked on their land for 2 hours in full view of the Israeli forces. As a result, a farmer, 21-year-old Mohammed Rezeq al-Buraim, was wounded by a gunshot to the left foot.
24th February 2009
Later on the sameday that this video was filmed, the Israeli Soldiers shot 17 year old Wafa Al Najar from Khoz’a. Wafa was 70 metres from her home, and and 800 metres from the border fence. were 3 shots, a neighbour who was 900 metres away says they were fired from two army jeeps and he saw a soldier shooting from the top of one. The first two bullets hit the ground beside Wafa. The third destroyed her kneecap, and she collapsed to the ground.
“The bills would require such a burdensome complexity of rules, inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes to sell locally – a fruit stand, at a farmers market – no one could manage it. And THAT is the point.” (Read more from godlikeproductions.com)
Open your eyes, my socialist-leaning friends. Government is the problem. Liberty is the solution. Government is not the thin red line defending us from greedy monopolies. Government is the creator and enforcer of monopolies. More regulation and government aren’t the solution, they are the problem.
“The ‘food safety’ bills in Congress were written by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc. All are associated with the opposite of food safety. What is this all about then?
In the simplest terms, organic food and a rebirth of farming were winning. Not in absolute numbers but in a deep and growing shift by the public toward understanding the connection between their food and their health, between good food and true social pleasures, between their own involvement in food and the improvement in their lives in general, between local food and a burgeoning local economy.
Slow Food was right – limit your food to what comes from your region and from real farmers, and slow down to cook it and linger over it with friends and family, and the world begins to change for the better.
And as we face an unprecedented economic crisis, and it is hard to be sure what has value, one thing that always does is food. Which is why the corporations are after absolute control over it. But what obstacles to a complete lock on food do they face? All the people in this country who are ‘banking’ on organic farming and urban gardens and most of all, everyone’s deepening pleasure in and increasing involvement with everything about food.
Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.
Those are things we not only all want, but things we are actively getting involved in, and things we very much need. And where they are truly good, they are growing.
The international financial corporations which have wreaked havoc around the world with astounding nonsensical ‘solutions’ that are destructive of everyone but them, are brothers to the international agribusiness giants (Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.) which are just as aggressively after their own form of ‘taking.’ Just seeds, animals, water, land.” (opednews.com)
There are many things morally and constitutionally reprehensible about foreign aid, i.e. forceful government seizure of citizens’ private wealth for redistribution to foreign countries. Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto makes a very strong case.
Ron Paul also cites a Hudson Institute study which found that in 2006, private, altruistic Americans gave well over three times as much foreign aid as the government. Were the government to stop the unconstitutional practice of foreign aid and allowed to keep more of our money, the amount of foreign aid would likely go up, not down.
To capture the magnitude of [private] giving, the Center for Global Prosperity, at the Hudson Institute, has launched the first Index of Global Philanthropy. This in-depth study of U.S. private giving to the developing world combines existing surveys with original research to reveal the true magnitude of American generosity.
U.S. private giving to poor countries—at least $71 billion in 2004—was more than 3 1/2 times U.S. “official” foreign aid. What this shows is that Americans like to give abroad as they do at home—privately—while Europeans assist people overseas as they do domestically—mainly through their governments.
In fact, U.S. private giving abroad comes close to the amount of official foreign aid from all donor nations combined. Private giving and volunteerism by U.S. foundations and other non-governmental organizations, such as CARE, World Vision, and Catholic Relief Services, top $13 billion.
There’s more to be said. Not only do private citizens give more, but I’d bet the house that dollar-for-dollar their money accomplishes more. The people administering private charities sleep on floors, eat local food, and are motivated by compassion, whereas the bureaucrats administering our government’s altruism need armored SUV’s, thousand-dollar office chairs, computers, and bilingual staffs. Careerism inevitably plays a greater role in their motivation. Government altruism also has many more political strings attached that private charity.
Were we in charge of our own money not only would more of it go to charity, it’d be spent much more efficiently.
There is a battle raging for the Republican Party between the conservatives who believe in conservative values (small government, non-intervention, individual liberty) and the neo-conservatives, who are neither conservative nor neo. Guys like Rush Limbaugh are party hacks at best, rationalizing whatever policy Republicans propose regardless any principles.
I hope my liberal friends see past the latter category into the former.
Government cannot create jobs, they can only redirect jobs. They must destroy jobs in the private sector by way of taxation, inflation or debt, in order to create jobs in the public sector. Jobs based on economics are sacrificed to create jobs based on politics. There is no more thoroughly discredited theory than that of socialist, centrally-planned economies, yet between people’s desire to have government solve all their problems, and the hubris of politicians, these long-discredited ideas again rise from the grave.
The Keynesian central planers benefits from a rhetorical advantage. We can see public works being built, banks receiving bailout checks, or money falling from Ben Bernanke’s helicopter. Meanwhile, it remains difficult for the Austrian economists, free marketers, and liberty lovers to wake the masses to the vast quantities of goods and services sacrificed in order to create the public works, bailouts, free money, or for that matter, foreign wars. This requires thought and imagination.
For now, the Keynesians have won. The result is already a circus of greed, lies and opportunism, as ignorant government bureaucrats attempt to demonstrate economic prowess, and businessmen attempt the bend the laws to their favor. Try to enjoy the show. It’s only beginning. Had we done nothing, the incompetent people would have gone out of business, and the responsible ones, the ones who’d been saving and investing wisely would have had the opportunity to buy out their assets. After a few years of pain, we’d again find ourselves on sound footing. Instead the circus has come to town:
Kentucky Progress is reporting: Congressman Ron Paul’s son Rand is going to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Jim Bunning if Bunning ultimately decides not to run, he said Thursday night.
The Houston Chronicle / AP has also picked the story: FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Yet another Republican is considering a run for U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning’s seat.
“A fund run by Joe Biden’s family was jointly branded with one of Allen Stanford’s funds. Allen Stanford is charged with $8 billion in fraud. The Biden fund has cut ties with Stanford’s companies af… A fund run by Joe Biden’s family was jointly branded with one of Allen Stanford’s funds. Allen Stanford is charged with $8 billion in fraud. The Biden fund has cut ties with Stanford’s companies after learning about the allegations against Stanford.” (Read more from sodahead.com)
The crooks have been in charge for a long time. Every once in a while, a little sunlight shines into their mansions, and the cockroaches scramble for the shadows. The best thing we can do is give these crooks as little of our hard earned money as possible.
Jim Rogers continues to provide the most lucid explanations of our financial crisis I can find.
“There’s no such thing as too big to fail”:
“I expect to see civil unrest in the U.S.”:
On the future of agriculture, gold, inflation:
“They’re ruining the U.S. economy, they’re ruining the U.S. government, they’re ruining the U.S. central bank, and their ruining the U.S. dollar.” “You’re watching the destruction of New York as a financial center and the destruction of the us as the world’s most powerful country.”: