Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Who or what caused this financial crisis? You'll never guess...

This video amazed me. I have not checked all the facts yet, but it seems to be something everyone should watch, and I think he's right that it might change your vote and your future.  Check it out... google the facts... let others know about this. You can't believe everything you read and watch on the internet, but this feels ligit. McCain / Palin has my vote more now than ever. We will make the USA a better place and not let these people get away with this crap. If this video does only ONE thing... and if you do nothing else... make sure you get out and VOTE!
PS: This video moves fast, so you probably want to have the pause button ready to read it all...

5 comments:

USMC 9971 said...

Here is the link to the new version of the video on YouTube. It was pulled due to a copyright complaint over the music.

Thanks for stopping by my blog! I'll be back to yours to check it out a bit more in depth later this week.

Anonymous said...

Interesting video, but a little research calls into question its primary assumption, because... according to Business Week, "most subprime loans were made by firms that aren’t subject to the CRA."

FWIW, the best explanation I've heard for how the sub-prime situation came about was a radio report called The Giant Pool of Money.

Matt's Blog said...

Thanks for the comment. Just an FYI about your Business Week article:
That article is incorrect in its premise.

In early 1993 President Bill Clinton ordered new regulations for the CRA which would increase access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities. The new rules went into effect on January 31, 1995 and featured: requiring strictly numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating; using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks.

The new rules, during a time when many banks were merging and needed to pass the CRA review process to do so, substantially increased the number and aggregate amount of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers for home loans, some of which were "risky mortgages. Banks set up CRA departments, a CRA consultant industry was created and new financial-services firms helped banks invest in packaged portfolios of CRA loans to ensure compliance. Established and new community groups began marketing such mortgages. The Senate Banking Committee estimated that as of 2000, as a result of CRA, such groups had received $9.5 billion in services and salaries. As of that time such groups also had received tens of billions of dollars in multi-year commitments from banks, including ACORN Housing $760 million; Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America $3 billion; a New Jersey Citizen Action-led coalition $13 billion; the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance $220 million. The number of CRA mortgage loans increased by 39 percent between 1993 and 1998, while other loans increased by only 17 percent.

The CRA was public policy that DROVE the market. To cast a blind eye that obvious econic fact and simply blame "the profit motive" is ludicrous.

It is equally ludicrious to blame Wall Street and investment banks when what they did was buy up the risky mortgages that became so prevelant in the market place.

Granted, no one intened to lose money, but, to lay blame on capitalism when the real source of the problem was government in the first place indicates to me a fundamental lack of economic understanding.

Anonymous said...

Hi Matt—I wrote a second comment on this post last week, but I don't see it here. It was the summary of everything I'd learned after starting down the path of the video you posted. Is it still in your moderation queue?

Matt's Blog said...

@marsh g. - Are you sure it wasn't a comment to the Sarah Palin interview post? I do not see anything in my moderation queue... (except for the one from 'usmc 9971' shown up above and the one you just sent asking the question).

Feel free to resubmit it, and I will definitely post it. Thanks for coming back to check out my blog. I look forward to more discussions.