Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
“From 1995 on, there was an incredible push by the Clinton and Bush administrations in every way they could — CRA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and other ways — to increase the homeownership rate,” says Russell Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University. “What that did was to push up the price of housing, and that made it imaginable to lend money to people you never would have lent money to, on terms you wouldn’t have done before.”
In particular, Fannie Mae began to aggressively promote homeownership using the Community Reinvestment Act to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them. Fannie went to bankers and said, make as many CRA loans as you can; we’ll buy them and take them off your hands. “Our approach to our lenders is ‘CRA Your Way,’ ” top Fannie executive Jamie Gorelick told the Mortgage Bankers Association in 2001. “Fannie Mae will buy CRA loans from lenders’ portfolios; we’ll package them into securities; we’ll purchase CRA mortgages at the point of origination. …”
Fannie promised to buy billions and billions of dollars worth of CRA loans because it was under pressure to do so from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which in turn was under pressure from Congress, which set ambitious quotas for low- and moderate-income loans.
The policy ended in a lot of people losing their homes. Now, Johnson’s bill would ensure more of that by applying CRA’s lending requirements not just to banks but to non-bank institutions like credit unions, insurance companies, and mortgage lenders. It would also make CRA explicitly race-based by, in Johnson’s words, “requiring CRA exams to explicitly consider lending and services to minorities in addition to low- and moderate-income communities.”
Republicans on the Financial Services Committee strongly oppose the plan. “Instead of looking to expand the number of institutions that must abide by CRA regulations, I think we should reassess the role this and other government mandates played in the financial collapse and consider scaling it back,” California Rep. Ed Royce said at the hearing.
It’ll never happen now, but I’d be all in favor of a litmus test for voters that says you cannot vote for a member of Congress unless you can demonstrate your capacity to understand: Things that happen, have a cause-and-effect relationship to other things that happen. We’ve got a lot of people voting who seem to think every single event in life is just either a “gosh darn” or an “oh goody!” — isolated and separate from all other events. Rather like objects in a parade. Clown; float; juggler; guy on unicycle; dancing bear; guy on stilts; life’s just a series of pleasant and not-so-pleasant surprises. There are no side-effects, and in fact there are no effects…apart from that which was primarily intended. Minimum wage goes up, people make more money; guns are outlawed, guns go away; rent controls are imposed, people pay less rent. Niiiiiiice and simple.
We’ve got a lot of harsh words for people like me, coming from both sides, who “see things only in black and white” and fail to capture something called “nuance.” How I wish we had a similar stigma against people who think everything we want to have happen in life, can be made to happen by simple decree. For their own good, I think, they should be gettin’ theirs. Stop them from voting. They don’t really want to make any big decisions anyway. They cannot accept the responsibility.
And if such a restriction were ever to be put into effect, somehow, I envision a Congress that has maybe twenty democrats in it. Tops.
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Another excellent post Morgan. I agree completely with the last 3 paragraphs. It’s sort of what many of the the Founders had in mind, i.e., voters had to be ‘stake holders’ (land owners) with interests beyond just being here.
- franklaughter | 09/22/2009 @ 07:30To add to what franklaughter added, we are not born with wisdom; owning land (and convincing someone else that your word is gold) can only be done by the demonstrably wise.
Remember that these problems may be centuries old, and that we are not a rich country – our people may be relatively rich, but that’s different.
I personally detest any argument that begins with “We are the most prosperous country in the world, we should be able to afford (this givaway)….” The ones saying it usually aren’t able to give or are exempt from being one of the givers, and they shouldn’t be taking from the prosperous people. At least in the Catholic church, they put up and don’t shut up.
- wch | 09/22/2009 @ 10:04Wouldn’t it be wonderful to turn that around?
“We have the bossiest liberals in the entire world, they should be able to boss each other into following their own rules.”
- mkfreeberg | 09/22/2009 @ 10:16