Jeebus! Anyone else wants Dan’s space to publish their political rants?

[Honestly, I do like to argue. And I appreciate that many readers know more than me about a lot of topics and can correct me when I'm wrong, or offer a viewpoint that is often at least as equally valid as mine in cases where we both might have differing views of the same thing.

I learn as much from people who comment as I do in researching the stuff I write. I totally disagree with the rant you are agreeing with, but I'm canning the "Realtosh" account and not any others because I learn lots from conservative readers who post their opinions and outlook, while Realtosh's long winded, off topic rants are really just trolls that expend too much of my time to refute. He can post them to his own blog if he so chooses. I appreciate you and others taking the opportunity to express your views succinctly and without the black-and-white, up-is-down off topic rambling. ]

Well now you’re talking. Nice post. I’d also like to hear a rebuttal of that.

Explain why the Democrats obstructed legislation that would have created appropriate regulation for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that would have curtailed FM/FM involvement in risky mortgage products. It was the liquidity caused by these quasi-governmental entities with the full backing of the Federal Treasury and the US taxpayer, that created this whole mess, that we’re now dealing with.

[No it wasn't. Republicans are trying to blame the poor for taking out loans they couldn't afford, but the problem is banks extending risky loans and then securitizing those debts and setting up unregulated fictional accounting methods for creating fake value and hiding debts. This is the same thing Enron was doing, which McCain supported as a gift to his (second) wife. McCain has pushed a deregulation agenda throughout his career.

The democrats retroactively screwed up the economy in two years while the all powerful Bush White House passively allowed them to do all this? Right. The Republicans have controlled the country over the last 8 years and obstructed Clinton in his second term with their hypocritical moralist bullshit. Suddenly the results of all their failed policies fall upon the democrats? Your hyperbolic nonsense would be entertaining if if wasn't so scary. ]

Why did Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac give so much money, to the tune of millions of dollars to US Senators and Representatives? These legislators have the power to set the rules by which FM/FM operated. (Now that it’s toolate, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac need a massive bailout, and are expected to be phased out of existence over the next few years.)

[So FM/FM gave money to Obama to get the Bush Bailout? What planet are you from?]

Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

1. Dodd, Christopher J S D-CT $133,900
2. Kerry, John S D-MA $111,000
3. Obama, Barak S D-IL $105,849
4. Hillary Clinton S D-NY $75,550
5. Kanjorski, Paul E H D-PA $65,500
6. Bennet, Robert F S R-UT $61,499
7. Johnson, Tim S D-SD $61,000
8. Conrad, Kent S D-ND $58,991

Includes contributions from PACs and individuals.
2008 cycle totals based on data downloaded from the
Federal Election Commission on June 30, 2008.
[source: opensecrets dot org]

(Furthermore, fully 16 of the top 25 recipients in the past 10 years are Democrats. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shared their dirty money with both Democrats and republicans, but they knew who they could count on for favorable legislation and for protection from sensible legislation.)

[Look at who everyone is giving money to, including Microsoft: the Democrats. Because its obvious the democrats are going to storm the Senate and very likely take over the White House. Why do you find this pattern of campaign donations difficult to understand? ]

The Democrats always resisted any any and all restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Reasonable restrictions would’ve prevented this mortgage collapse and the financial sector meltdown. This would be an example of appropriate regulation where it counts.

[More unsubstantiated misinformation. The economic crisis comes from deregulated markets where Republican greed got out of hand, not from Democrats working to put the middle class in houses. As a greed infatuated, blind Republicant all you can do is spin things around. The truth is pretty obvious. Bush's failed policies, supported overwhelmingly by McCain, have come to roost.]

All this talk on deregulation is so misleading. The last thing our economy needs is lots of new regulation legislation. It would be sufficient to cut out the loopholes by regulating all financial institutions with the same rules (similar to the London scheme of financial regulation), and to reverse the lax enforcement and to reverse the leverage limits increased by the SEC in 2004.

[You don't seem to understand that regulation is the rule of law. Markets can't operate without laws, which history clearly demonstrates. Republicans always create economic depression when given the opportunity to control the entire government because their greed is too insatiable, nearly as bad as their contempt for working people.]

Our mess was almost entirely caused by

1) Primarily that the Fannie Mae /Freddie Mac quasi-governmental entities provided the backing of the US taxpayer and with it the liquidity for risky mortgage securities that made this whole mess possible.

[Totally wrong. There is not any explicit US backing of the secondary mortgage market, and who knows what you have in mind with "risky mortgage securities." You're talking out your ass again. ]

2) SEC extended investment bank leverage from 12 to 1 to 33 to 1, making investment banks bets and debts larger, and their required capital reserves smaller. Wall St sliced and diced this risky FM/FM paper and spread it all around the global financial system.

[SEC relaxed regulations due to pressure from the Bush administration, Phil Gramm and John "fundamentally a deregulator" McCain. ]

3) Also hedge-funds were largely unregulated, holding only money of high-net worth individuals gave them a loophole since “rich folks didn’t need to be protected from their bad investments”. They could make bets of whatever risk without any regulation.

[SEC relaxed regulations due to pressure from the Bush administration, Phil Gramm and John "fundamentally a deregulator" McCain. ]

To avoid this mess we needed to have severely curtailed these quasi-governmental entities (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) ability to diversify into risky mortgage products, which McCain tried to limit, but the Democrats blocked.

[More bullshit. The SEC relaxed regulations due to pressure from the Bush administration, Phil Gramm and John "fundamentally a deregulator" McCain. ]]

We also need to make sure that rules are the same across the board for all financial institutions. There should not be special exemptions for investment banks, nor hedge funds. The SEC not only allowed investment banks to increase their leverage ratios but than were very lax in reviewing and investigating their activities.

Regulation should be more uniform across all types of financial institutions, and enforcement should not be lax.

[So now you're rooting for Obama? Maybe you should spend three days working on your note cards before you Palin it all out for us.]

But at the core, the reason why all these risky bets were made by so many was because of the implied guarantee of the US Treasury made by the FM/FM participation in this secondary market securitization of mortgages.

It’s still possible that we’ll make money on the $700 Billion bailout, but then have to turn around and pay most of it back to honor guarantees made by Fannie or Freddie. History will call this the Fannie and Freddie Bailout and Meltdown that nearly (I use the term nearly with a bit of hope not.) takes out the global finance industry and risks another Global Depression.

[Wrong.]

The same guarantees that helped safe mortgages cheaper, also helped risky mortgage be investable.

All these Wall St guys (and investors around the world) thought they had a sure deal.
1) Fannie Mae implied a federal guarantee
2) Wall St firms purchased insurance on these bets (investments) to hedge the risk. That’s what took AIG out. (It’s like double insurance.)
3) Housing values had never declined nation-wide since the Great Depression, so it made it seem that these bets were unlikely to ever sour and use either the federally-backed FM/FM guarantee or additional private insurance.

[Wrong. The problem was that the Bush administration didn't do anything to help create new jobs or industries or ways to grow the economy, so over the last 8 years since the tech boom nobody invested in anything outside of housing. And nobody thought that housing could ever go down. Bush beat out democratic plans to invest in clean energy because that was a threat to his big oil plans. McCain has the same ignorance in economic matters. He admits he knows nothing about the economy and what to do about it. All Palin knows how to do is tax record oil profits that burst out of the ground in Alaska. They're economic losers. The US can't afford another 4 years of irresponsibly ringing up China credit card debt at the hands of out of control Republicans trying to finance our children so they can topple regimes and make things go from bad (Iraq under Hussein) to worse (Iraq under warlords and fundamentalist clerics) ]

Being in essence backed by the federal government, these bets seemed so sure to the investment bankers, that they levered as much as their limited capital reserve restrictions allowed.

[Wrong, they were never backed by the government. They were simply not regulated because of the Bush/Gramm/McCain deregulation policies. Now the Bush Bailout is trying to finance our kids to pay for reckless profiteering by renegade maverick investors flouting the rules.]

Without the implied guarantee of the federal government these investments would’ve been seen for risky bets they were. Too bad the Democrats blocked every attempt to put reasonable controls on Fannie Mae at every turn.

[Repeating lies does not make them the truth.]

Seems like McCain had a better clue on how to prevent this mortgage mess than the Democrats, who are now screaming “deregulation, deregulation, the sky is falling.”

[McCain's own mouth reveals he knows little about economics. The day the market crashed he was repeating his idiot line about the "fundamentals of the economy being strong."]

It would take a bit of integrity for those individuals who received so much Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dirty money in political contributions to acknowledge that their obstructions of appropriate controls on FM/FM had a central role to play in creating the dynamic in which
1) mortgages wold get risky,
2) Uncle Sam would be on the hook for it, and
3) these otherwise risky bets would then be palatable for investors all across the financial markets.

It is easier to point fingers than to have serious reflection and self-examination.

[WTF? The Republicans - LIKE YOURSELF - are the ones scrambling to blame everyone else. Your hypocrisy and dishonesty are so over the top it is simply ridiculous. Obama and the Democratic congress have supported Bush's Bailout in efforts to resolve the prospects for economic ruin. Trying to blame them for Republican failed policies and then blame them for working to solve it under the plans set out by the president is jawdroppingly... well it's right up your alley. ]

Dan, care to join our rational discussion, rather than just fall into predictable ranting about it must be the Republicans fault because it would be easy to tar and feather them as the deregulation guys. Dan, I challenge you to resist the urge to just name call, help create a safe environment for much needed reflection and self-examination on the Democrat tendency to favor government solutions for all societal ills.

[You have proven yourself to be a lying coward who throws out names and accusations for hours and then when your rants are outed for the nonsensical rabid garbage that they are, you cry foul and try to make yourself out to be a victim. I asked you in a private letter to stop trying to monopolize the comments and shout down others with your rants. You do not participate in conversations, you only go on and on with your own ideas, and then attack anyone who presents something else. You don't really present criticisms or take issue with anything specific in my articles or in others' comments, you simply post up rambling rants that belong in your own blog. They're not comments, they're just essays you want to me to publish. Guess what? No more. I'm putting you in the Urban Bard file. I asked you nicely to stop shouting down everyone else with your unrelated stuff, now I'm canceling your content. Everything from your IP will be terminated as fast as I can terminate it. Sorry it has come to this, but when you ignore me, I ignore you. ]

Many voice their opinion but fewer have understanding and wisdom. We should strive to broaden our scope by learning from failed societies in history. What made this country great was its distrust of government by the limiting of its powers and enhancing personal liberty as expressed in the constitution. There is far more wisdom in the average man than most experts are willing to acknowledge. Only a people of self discipline will we be capable of self government. As morality declines, external rule and slavery will rise.

Have we lost so much integrity that we will also forfeit our right to self govern? We either master ourselves or we will become mastered. Are we really that ignorant that we seek external (governmental) solutions to all our problems?

[When you talk about "personal liberty," are you advocating the kind of civil rights that the Bush administration has taken away? And when you describe "self government" and "morality decline" are you repudiating the three trillion dollars of unaccountable spending of the Bush administration, its pushing of an illegitimate war that has killed 3,000 US soldiers, wounded tens of thousands of our soldiers, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, state sponsored torture camps, and so on?

If you're going to call me out for a "lack of excellence" in my comments on current events, please at least articulate what exactly you are talking about, because that's the conversation I'd like to hear.]

I agree. One walk downtown and you can see where our health care dollars are going. The largest buildings are insurance companies. They have rigged the game so that instead of spreading risk, they get to pick and choose who they cover and what they pay out.

The health care system is so clogged up because of these huge players that in order to fix it, it’s going to take tort reform, massive insurance reform, medical malpractice reforms, and a serious look at preventative care and laws to reign in false advertising by fast food, tobacco companies, and even the vendors in our kids’ schools. And there’s probably quite a few that I left out.

Dad, as far as Clinton having some special information that could have/would have prevented 9/11, why didn’t he make a stink? As with Kosovo, was he worried about his polling numbers? I question this whole concept because Clinton had Osama in his sights and decided not to take him out. So cheerleading about killing Osama, at least from Bill, seems a bit disingenuous.

Bush was our Jimmy Carter. No one can deny that. But to put the label on all repubs seems silly and shortsighted. There are repubs that are fiscally conservative and socially sorta liberal. Whatever the case, we do better with true moderates.

Lastly, this utopia that you speak of that’s just a democratic vote away – maybe we’ll get the chance to see just what the Dems are capable of, since they could have ample power to cram their agendas through congress. I’m not holding my breath. Robbing the productive among us to pay for the slackers doesn’t sound like a winning combo. Yes, that’s oversimplification, but if I’m going to get taken to the cleaners, my behavior will change. I will lay off, cut back, reduce benefits, etc. Whatever it takes to maximize my return for my time. Multiply this a few million times over. Economic hardship.

[Yes, it is an oversimplification to describe providing tax relief to 95% of middle class Americans as "robbing the productive to pay for the slackers." Do you think that the top 5% of the nation is "producing," and that 95% are slacking? Maybe you should reexamine who does the work, and who sits around on top of a pyramid of legal tax havens and loopholes while making money off money. The current economic crisis is rooted in deregulated sham inventions of the securities markets, not real productivity.]