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...
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the economic malaise taking place right now is healthy.
“Noting the rising unemployment, Geithner said what the economy “is going through is a very necessary and healthy adjustment as [Americans] go back to living within their means.”
Well at least he didn’t say “Let them eat cake.”
Couple this with Obama saying that his economic plan is working as he intended and you get what this administration is all about.
Obama was for everything that sent us into this recession. Since he took power he’s doing whatever he can, legal or not, to make things worse.
Well, on a certain level Geithner is right: It’s healthy to live within your means, and to be fair about it, America over the last several years hasn’t been a model of this kind of thing.
I just think if the Obama administration was here to deliver us from this kind of prodigal living, it would have been honest of them to promote themselves that way. I think the typical Obama supporter had a vision that the strong leadership of our Holy Administration was going to elevate the national standard of living, not diminish it to make it “healthy.”
There is something else, though. One of the comments on the linked piece brings to our attention an editorial in Investor’s Business Daily which is quite edifying. The subject is why we are in the mess we are in. All together now? WALL STREET GREED! Right? Right?
Many Americans are unaware of the causes of the greatest economic calamity of our lifetime. A new congressional report details how government politicized housing, wrecking the economy.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California, ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has released a report that every American should read.
The analysis details how powerful Democrats in Congress insisted that government-subsidized housing be geared to serve the purposes of social justice at the expense of sound lending.
Here are some highlights of Issa’s blow-by-blow account:
• With an implicit subsidy to American homeowners in the form of reduced mortgage rates, Fannie Mae and its sister government sponsored enterprise, Freddie Mac, squeezed out their competition and cornered the secondary mortgage market. They took advantage of a $2.25 billion line of credit from the U.S. Treasury.
:
• The [Clinton] administration complained that in 1989 only 7% of mortgages had less than a 10% downpayment. By 1994, it wanted that raised to 29%.• Reduced underwriting standards spread into the entire U.S. mortgage market to those at all income levels.
• A complete decoupling of home prices from Americans’ income fed the growth of the housing bubble as borrowers made smaller down payments and took on higher debt.
• Wall Street firms specializing “in packaging and investing in the lowest-quality tranches of mortgage-backed securities, profited hugely from the increased volume that government affordable lending policies sparked.”
• Wall Street firms, homebuilders and the GSEs used money, power and influence to block attempts at reform. Between 1998 and 2008, Fannie and Freddie spent over $176 million on lobbyists.
Whoopsie. Yeah, it was greed alright. But greed…for votes…from politicians. The natural forces of the marketplace were defeated, and once again, ya gotta pay the piper later if you don’t pay the piper on the spot.
And once again, once we are obliged to suffer the natural consequences of defeating the marketplace, the blame goes — to the marketplace. In the eyes of the weak-minded, anyway.
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Yeah, it’s sad. The Greedy Capitalist Narrative™ , for some reason, is more fun for people to swallow than “The Guy I Voted For Screwed Me.” The only place I’ve heard the Government Interference and Unnatural Market Forces explanation given a fair hearing outside of the net … Fox News.
And of course we know, they lie all the time.
The other liars said so, so it must be true.
- philmon | 07/15/2009 @ 07:40[…] In fact, Number One kind of reminds me of our Treasury Secretary’s asinine comments from a week ago. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2009 @ 18:35