Quote:

---

Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Buttigieg is right about why Democrats keep failing to pass their big plans. He said:

This is the conversation that we have been having for the last 20 years. Of course we need to get money out of politics, but when I propose the actual structural democratic reforms that might make a difference — end the Electoral College, amend the Constitution if necessary to clear up Citizens United, have DC actually be a state, and depoliticize the Supreme Court with structural reform — people look at me funny, as if this country was incapable of structural reform.

---

He is the clearest and least political thinker running. He thinks of Problems as things to be solved and defeated, and not "who will gain?" Trump is the exact opposite. If Trump wins we'll have 20 more years of reality tv presidents and 20 years of media over coverage. Buttigieg is the other direction.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
What if Fox News covered Trump the way it covered Obama? It would look like [the way the rest of the MSM covered Obama].

FIFY

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
The Democrats Need to Get Their Act Together
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-democrats-need-to-get-their-a
ct-together

I found the first two series of Democratic presidential debates painful to watch, and I don’t think it was simply the result of the format or of the questions asked. It was because in their preoccupations, I don’t think the Democratic candidates have developed the message and the language that can win the White House for the party.

Medicare for All has all the problems of past plans: it threatens higher taxes; and it comes across as another welfare program in which the middle class will have to subsidize the non-working poor….Trump’s nativist attacks against immigrants from South of the Border and his administration’s inhumane treatment of asylum seekers has had the perverse effect of pushing the Democrats toward a virtual endorsement of open borders….Senator Elizabeth Warren and several candidates, while bemoaning growing economic inequality, called for increases in legal immigration based on family reunification, which in the past has brought millions of unskilled workers into the labor market who compete for jobs with unskilled native-born and first-generation Americans.

….Trump has played upon a politics that could be described as “white supremacist.”…But in responding to Trump’s racism, Democrats have been using these terms in every other sentence – and add to that Senator Gillibrand’s high-toned blast against “white privilege.” In doing so, they are implicitly attacking not merely Trump but his past supporters and — even more important — people who are queasy about the Democrats for one reason or another. The terms also suggest that white voters have little to complain about, a message that won’t play very well in November 2020.

I also fear they think that in reiterating these terms — or in promoting reparations — the Democrats think they are courting black voters. In my experience — and I hope this won’t seem like some kind of weird racism — black adult voters are among the most sophisticated in the electorate. You could see it in Virginia after the various Democratic presidential candidates fell over each other to call for Governor Ralph Northam’s resignation for a 36 year old yearbook photo of questionable origin that had been publicized by a rightwing website angry about the governor’s stand on abortion. Virginia’s black Democrats, cognizant that Northam had not run a racist administration, or had a record of racism as a legislator, continued to back him. You see it in the continued African-American support for former Vice President Joe Biden in spite of Senator Kamala Harris’s attack against him for his decades-old stances on busing. Biden’s support might disappear, but again I think it is based currently on a reasoned assessment of who among the candidates is best equipped to get rid of Trump.

More at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-democrats-need-to-get-their-a
ct-together

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

---

Quote:

---

From now on, Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote, and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
At least we can say that David Frum knows who he is.

Whether or not he's genuine? The jury's still out on that.

I recommend that he give all of his money away and live under a bridge a while to contemplate what he's done.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?

---

Probably right around the same time the Democrats lost touch with reality.

Anybody who can ask me why I vote GOP after watching the Democratic debates currently going on is not somebody worth debating.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?

---

Probably right around the same time the Democrats lost touch with reality.

Anybody who can ask me why I vote GOP after watching the Democratic debates currently going on is not somebody worth debating.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

---

Two things:

Why would anybody watch the debates? I never watch them for more than a minute because those have always been ridiculous until after the Convention. The craziest candidates, the ones that never will have a chance, say the darnedest things to get noticed. But it doesn't work. It simply underlines who is not Presidential. They might not even be sane. See Trump. That guy gave off the stink of a crook and a liar from the first time he wrote a book. But to get a whiff of insanity, you had to see him "debate". That guy literally is a nincompoop on taxes, the economy, nuclear weapons, international trade and always has been. But so are the people who voted for him, which explains why they do not do very well, financially.

And what was the second thing? The Democrats did not lose touch with reality and did not crash the economy in 2008. It was the Republicans who crashed it. Signym tried to blame the Democrats today, here:
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=63212&mid=10809
47#1080947

Warren Buffett pointed out to 6ix that between 1945 and July 2016 that the S&P 500 fell 5% to 9.9% 56 times, 10% to 19.9% 21 times, 20% to 39.9% nine times, and 40% or more three times. Yet Buffett has made billions in the stock market. He is pointing to the fact that 6ix understands nothing useful about the stock market, much like Trump knows nothing useful about, well, any subject. Go vote for Trump, 6ix. As for me, if the market crashes because of Trump, it will be a wealth creating opportunity to buy low. Much later, sell high, making a fortune.
www.fool.com/slideshow/warren-buffetts-advice-stock-market-crash/?slid
e=2

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

I'm going to guess that a post full of more feels and baseless assumptions is not made on fff.net today.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

---

Quote:

---

The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis of the United States says that Republicans were responsible for the 2008 Crash.
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf

According to the Final Report, between 2001 and 2007, mortgage debt rose nearly as much as it had in the whole rest of the nation's history. Around the country, armies of mortgage salesmen hustled to get Americans to borrow more money for houses—or even just prospective houses. Many salesmen didn’t ask borrowers for proof of income, job or assets. Then the salesmen were gone, leaving behind a new debtor holding new keys and perhaps a faint suspicion that the deal was too good to be true.
www.history.com/news/2008-financial-crisis-causes

Ronald Reagan signed a law allowing banks to engage in trading profitable derivatives that they sold to investors. These mortgage-backed securities needed home loans as collateral. As more and more banks got familiar with what the law allowed, the derivatives slowly at first, then very quickly, created an insatiable demand for more and more mortgages.

Hedge funds and other financial institutions around the world owned the mortgage-backed securities. The securities were also in mutual funds, corporate assets, and pension funds. The banks had chopped up the original mortgages and resold them.

Why did stodgy pension funds buy such risky assets? They thought an insurance product called credit default swaps protected them. A traditional insurance company known as the American International Group sold these swaps. When the derivatives lost value, AIG didn't have enough cash flow to honor all the swaps.

The first signs of the financial crisis appeared in 2007. Banks panicked when they realized they would have to absorb the losses. They stopped lending to each other. They didn't want other banks giving them worthless mortgages as collateral. No one wanted to get stuck holding the bag. As a result, interbank borrowing costs, called Libor, rose. This mistrust within the banking community was the primary cause of the 2008 financial crisis.
www.thebalance.com/2008-financial-crisis-3305679

The Federal Government had the power to stop banks from selling very risky securities that were falsely rated as safe as AAA bonds, but because Republicans controlled the government for 8 years, the banks were not stopped until it was too late -- trillions of dollars in mortgage backed derivatives were defaulting.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

---

Quote:

---

The 2008 Financial Crisis

Before the financial crisis of 2008, there was more money invested in credit default swaps than in other pools. The value of credit default swaps stood at $45 trillion compared to $22 trillion invested in the stock market, $7.1 trillion in mortgages and $4.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury. In mid-2010, the value of outstanding CDS was $26.3 trillion.

Many investment banks were involved, but the biggest casualty was Lehman Brothers investment bank, which owed $600 billion in debt, out of which $400 billion was covered by CDS. The bank’s insurer, American Insurance Group, lacked sufficient funds to clear the debt, and the Federal Reserve of the United States needed to intervene to bail it out.

Companies that traded in swaps were battered during the financial crisis. Since the market was unregulated, banks used swaps to insure complex financial products.

---

Quote:

---

Why did stodgy pension funds buy such risky assets? They thought an insurance product called credit default swaps protected them. A traditional insurance company known as the American International Group sold these swaps. When the derivatives lost value, AIG didn't have enough cash flow to honor all the swaps.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The thing that made all of this possible was Bill Clinton's Commodities Futures Moderinization Act, which deregulated CDSs.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
To give just three examples:
- the Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not.

---

Quote:

---

- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other regulators could have clamped down on Citigroup’s excesses in the run-up to the crisis. They did not.

---

Quote:

---

- Policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train. They did not.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
To give just three examples:
- the Securities and Exchange Commission could have required more capital and halted risky practices at the big investment banks. It did not.

---

Under Clinton, the US allowed lower capitalization rates, and in fact allowed banks to calculate their own rates to be competitive with BASEL II. "The IRB approach uses risk parameters determined by a bank’s internal systems in the calculation of the bank’s credit risk capital requirements. The AMA relies on a bank’s internal estimates of its operational risks to generate an operational risk capital requirement for the bank." That was a big OOPS. https://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/basel2/FinalRule_BaselII/Fi
nalRule_Draft.pdf "our results imply that much of the decline in CRE risk premiums ... was associated with weaker regulatory capital requirements." https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/2015/wp150
4.pdf

Quote:

---

- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other regulators could have clamped down on Citigroup’s excesses in the run-up to the crisis. They did not.

---

Aside from the fact that many lenders / financial institutions proved so unstable they were ready to fall like dominoes, WHAT WAS IT SPECIFICALLY about Citigroup that, all on its own, caused the Great Recession?

Quote:

---

- Policy makers and regulators could have stopped the runaway mortgage securitization train. They did not.

---

Policy makers would have had to write new policies, for regulators to regulate to them. Regulators just can't look at something and say - I don't like it. But the policymakers under Clinton already wrote the policies. see above


And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 1KIKI:
It wasn't the mortgages.


It's that they were packaged and sold as assets instead of debts; and re-packaged and re-sold; and re-re-packaged and re-re-sold, and re-re-re-packaged and re-re-re-sold, and so on. And every time those packages got sold / bought the value got inflated roughly 10X till they'd ballooned to not even remotely resemble the original mortgages they were based on. Because the housing market and commercial markets were hot, and firms wanted to rake it in as fast as they could as long as the gravy-train was running.

Nobody ever said you had to be smart to be greedy.

If the Federal government had simply covered everybody's mortgages - just gave the money away directly to the borrowers - then the whole edifice built on top of them would have been secured, and it would have been far, far cheaper then securing those ridiculous monstrosities the investment banks created.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SECOND:
There was a much more direct and cheaper solution – do not allow government regulators to be controlled by the financial industry. It’s right there in the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report:

---

Quote:

---

These policies were put in place and promoted by several administrations and Congresses—indeed, both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush set aggressive goals to increase home-ownership.

In Washington, four intermingled issues came into play that made it difficult to acknowledge the looming threats. First, efforts to boost homeownership had broad political support—from Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and successive
Congresses—even though in reality the homeownership rate had peaked in the spring
of ????

He finally took his warnings to the highest level he could reach—Robert Rubin,
the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors and a former
U.S. treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and three other bank officials.
He sent Rubin and the others a memo with the words “URGENT—READ IMMEDIATELY” in the subject line.

In ????, President Bill Clinton announced an initiative to boost homeownership
from ??.?? to ??.?? of families by ????, and one component raised the affordable housing goals at the GSEs. Between ???? and ????, almost ?.? million households entered the ranks of homeowners, nearly twice as many as in the previous two years.
“But we have to do a lot better,” Clinton said.

In December ????, in response, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of ???? (CFMA), which in essence deregulated the OTC derivatives market and eliminated oversight by both the CFTC and the SEC.

In November ????, Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), which lifted most of the remaining Glass-Steagall-era restrictions.


In ????, President Bill Clinton asked regulators to improve banks’ CRA performance * while responding to industry complaints that the regulatory review process for compliance was too burdensome and too subjective. (* The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is a federal law enacted in 1977 with the intent of encouraging depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. The CRA requires federal regulators to assess how well each bank or thrift fulfills its obligations to these communities.)


Initiated by Congress in 1992 and pressed by HUD in both the Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations, the U.S. government’s housing policy sought to increase home ownership in the United States through an intensive effort to reduce mortgage underwriting standards.

FHA was tasked with insuring loans to low-income borrowers that would not be made unless insured; banks and S&Ls were required by CRA to show that they were also making loans to the same group of borrowers; mortgage bankers who signed up for the HUD Best Practices Initiative and the Clinton administration’s National Homeownership Strategy were required to make the same kind of loans.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, your attempt to blame 2008 on the GOP and deflect crticism from Bill Clinton is wrong, wrong, wrong, and has been demonstrated to be wrong three times already, using the very report that YOU cited. So give up, already; you're just burying yourself deeper.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Presidents of BOTH parties kept rolling that ball forward, INCLUDING Bill Clinton.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SLOPPY SECONDS:
... you, and the GOP, would insist the GOP did not crash economy, but rather Clinton is to blame because he signed a law ten years earlier.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 1kiki:

And constantly LYING about what people post is why you're a used asswipe, and nobody credits a fucking thing you post.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 1kiki:

I just want to point out that I think we're in a stock market bubble. Before that was a bank / investment bubble. Before that was a housing bubble. And before that was the dot.com bubble. And before that was the S&L bubble.

Without real overall growth, government needs these bubbles to create good economic averages. Without the bubbles averaged in, the actual dismal state of the real economy would be exposed.

EVERYONE in government since the 70's wants to keep those bubbles frothing!

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 1kiki:

And constantly LYING about what people post is why you're a used asswipe, and nobody credits a fucking thing you post.

---

1kiki, you are getting testy.

In the 1990's I built safety shutdown systems for petrochemical plants. The people on duty when a plant exploded tended to shade the truth, doing their worst to avoid culpability for what happened. Lied, or at least misdirected, in other words.

But the control room records told the real story. Did the people on duty correct themselves when their story disagreed with the story the control room recorders showed? No, but they did get testy that their stories weren't being believed.

You are not really interested in the real story, are you, 1kiki? You are committed to your fake story. You know what the real story says about the GOP.

The real story is Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
In the US, unlike in other developed countries, the minimum wage is a political issue. That means it gets raised irregularly and unpredictably. And that causes a bunch of problems for American workers and businesses.

Every other developed country with a minimum wage has some sort of commission or formula to determine what the rate should be. Some countries consult with business leaders and union representatives, and nearly all of them involve economic experts. And they review it every year or two. In the US, though, it’s in the hands of politicians.

And that goes about as well as you’d expect.
Republicans against, Democrats for, wage raise stymied.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump tweeted:

Biggest crowd EVER, according to Arena people.

---