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...
H/T: Fellow Webloggin contributor Bookworm.
That actually didn’t make my eyes pop too much. My head was already spinning from reading an article put out by Prof. Thomas J. DiLorenzo of the Mises Institute this spring. The subject is one of my favorites: Capitalist free-enterprise markets, mixed in with wonderfully progressive anti-capitalist ideas in unsanitary laboratory conditions, with disastrous results, which are then blamed on…capitalism. And, as one might anticipate, the topic specifically under discussion was this bursting housing bubble.
“Liberal” economists are overjoyed by the bursting of the housing bubble, for it provides them with what they believe is another “market failure” story. “Most analysts see the sub-prime crisis as a market failure,” Robert Gordon gleefully declared in the April 7 online edition of The American Prospect magazine, edited by Robert Kuttner.
Gordon does not define what an “analyst” is, and does not cite any survey to support his claim. One suspects that his opinion is based on an informal survey of his like-minded, left-wing friends.
The liberalism we know and love. It spends half its time making messes, the other half of its time instructing us to believe liberalism is blameless for the creation of them.
Anyway, what made my head spin was this paragraph…
The government also “streamlined” the regulatory requirements for CRA loans in 1995, allowing — and indeed pressuring — banks to make such loans without the benefit of many traditional credit-worthiness criteria, such as the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, savings history, and even income verification! Instead, the Fed told banks that participation in a credit-counseling program, many of which are federally funded, could be used as “proof” of a low-income applicant’s ability to make his mortgage payments. [emphasis (bold) mine]
It’s not that it was news to me that the strong-arming was going on. It’s that I didn’t understand it was this bad, and I think most people don’t understand this.
We hear so much, now that the time has come to pay the piper, about this stuff called “oversight.” The oversight was there from day one. If there’s one thing governments in general don’t have a problem doing, it’s overseeing things.
The issue really is — any time you oversee something, you have to have a goal in mind. Goals, I notice, are very seldom discussed when people talk about oversight. And what a good thing it is to avoid any discussion of them with regard to the government overseeing the private sector; wouldn’t it be a silly thing to say, that the private sector needs oversight from the government so it can receive all the wisdom, pointers, tips & tricks on how to turn a profit and stay liquid?
I’ve lived long enough to see a lot of “oversight” put in place, especially at the federal level. I’ve not yet seen anyone discussing oversight from a government agency for the purpose of helping a private-sector company in any industry to achieve solvency.
Nor, come to think of it, have I ever heard of anyone making an income by attending a credit counseling session.
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