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Today’s quote is from a movie: “In my life I find that memories of the spirit linger and sweeten long after memories of the brain have faded.”
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My Dog Skip
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The quotation doesn’t actually make sense. It doesn’t seem to mean anything.
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I see where the new minimum wage is $6.55/hr. Yesterday, there was a thread about jobs. During the summer (circa 1948), I worked in a box factory for 50 cents/hr. It wasn’t good, but not bad for a high school kid either.
I recently received an e-mail showing the menu of a F. W. Woolworth (dime store) lunch counter in the fifties. A baked ham & cheese sandwich was 60 cents. A “jumbo banana split”, 39 cents. A Coke cost five cents, penny tax. (That’s 20% folks.) coffee a nickel. The point I’m making here is there was no real benefit in Cokes being so cheap, nor is there benefit in a minimum wage of $6.55. These increases are just tools of the unions and politicians to make them appear to be helping someone. It only drives jobs overseas.
Bottom line: Someday, you younger people here will see a minimum wage of $655.00, but you won’t benefit from it. It only helps the Chinese economy.
“Paper money eventually reverts to it’s intrinsic value”
And you will still be using petroleum!
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Here’s a quote I found in a book I’m reading now, which really made a lot of sense to me– “The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows what to say, and a wise man knows whether to say it or not.”
Blessings!
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Pauline,
Yesterday you talked about using your economic stimulus check to buy your son a car and hoped that the experience would help him learn how to manage his money. And that he was in the process of getting his first job.
Knowing you, you’ve probably already thought of this, but when we did the same for our sons, part of the deal was that they had to develop and stick with a budget (taking Larry Burkett’s advice, we referred to it as a “spending plan”). When our dil needed a car (before they were married), we did the same for her. Those financial lessons have really served them well. They are all three young adults now and at age 24, son and dil were able to buy a house (with no help from us). Of course, we helped them develop their budget and worked with them to set it up and manage it each month (and, if they are computer-savvy, they will enjoy using excel for this real-life application). Just thought I’d share this experience.
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#2
Try…
I don’t remember the idea, but it sure still feels good.
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Kyle, it made a little sense to me because I had a mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s. She may have forgotten the facts about a person, but she would still get a smile on her face when making up facts about them. Who they had been to her — whether they’d been positive or negative — stayed with her. Does that make any sense?
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Joe B.: Enjoy your virtual iced coffee!
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llama
I think maybe you weren’t blogging the other day when I posed a question to you, so I’ll repeat it here. Several people attempt to answer it, but only were re-stating that it was the fault of the congress, the lefties, and/or Bush. I’m not looking for who is at fault, I’m trying to understand the business model that allowed the problem. Here it is:
Exactly why is Fannie Mae in deep doo-doo? I thought that what they did was buy tons of mortgages from banks all over the place, bundled them into disparate lots, and sold them to investors. If that is the case, how did they get into trouble? Were they stuck with bundles they couldn’t sell? Or do they not actually sell them, but rather sell “shares” in them? Or is this not what they do? Thanks in advance for any explanations.
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Mommy, Fannie insures the loans, and if “she” has to pay up too often……
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NJL: I still don’t exactly “get” it. Does she not SELL them (bundled)? If so, what is the point of insuring them?
An interesting note, last year I almost took a job there. I was majorly interested, as they are one of the only mainframe shops around, anymore, but the commute would have been dreadful (Baltimore to wherever they are in Virginia). While I was making up my mind, they imposed a hiring freeze, so the decision was out of my hands. Looking back, I guess that was the “beginning of the end” for them.
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MomOfFour at #4 (how did you do that?!) — you reminded me of something I read earlier this morning: “The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable….”
I included that verse piece here: Mischief
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Mommy, I confused myself. I’m so sorry. I was thinking of FHA loans. FHA insures. Here’s a quote from a real estate course textbook on Fannie:
“FNMA is a privately owned corporation that provides a secondary market for mortgage loans. It raises money to purchase loans by selling government-guaranteed FNMA bonds at market interest rates. Lenders sell [their] loans to FNMA even if they continue to service them, [and are paid a fee for the sale]. FNMA is the largest purchaser of mortgages. FNMA will only purchase certain types of loans and sets its criteria, [so if FNMA goes along with a new mortgage product, it sets an industry standard.]”
So, I guess if they took on some of these more risky products, they have some loans they can’t sell. What bank would buy a loan today without auditing it? I guess the bundles, which I understand have a variety of loans, some risky, some not, are not easy to get rid of. I’m not a big investor, but I wouldn’t want to buy those bonds to help FNMA out.
(I don’t really do mortgages, I’m not an underwriter, and sometimes I get those things mixed up. Sorry. Hope this helped.)
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Kylre A,
Does this quote mean you don’t have to have a functioning brain order to be spiritually sweeter?
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#4 MOMOFFOUR,
A smart man knows what to say when he doesn’t say it and a wise man knows what to do instead.
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Thanks, NJL. It was my suspicion that they were more selling “shares” in the bundles rather than actually selling the bundles. When I interviewed there last year, the presented it as selling the bundles and even pointed out that it was a solid business model. Of course, that was an IT manager, who may have just been spouting the party line.
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Well, I always overheard at the bank that Fannie’s requirements had to be met. I don’t know if Fannie approved riskier, no doc products, but even if not, the banks let people have ARMs that on their face were good loans. No one could predict where the interest rates would be on change dates, so people took those loans not knowing their future payments. There’s at least one more major change date coming from the loans of the last few years (1,3,5), so we’ll see.
As an aside, my old judge is planning to move, and we did an analysis of his neighborhood (a somewhat wealthy one), and in the last two months, people got even more than the listing price and the days on the market were less than 30 days. I still think it comes down to how people live. If they are careful financially, they’ll survive, barring losing a job or another catastrophe. But if they abuse credit, that’s when they go into foreclosure. It’s a rough time.
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I am not sure that I understand the difference between the “spirit” and the “brain” or how those two entities could have separate memories.
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Mommy,
Actually, what FNMA does as I understand it, is to help create a secondary mortgage market by buying and securitizing mortgages. That is, they buy mortgages, directly from originators such as banks or mortgage companies, and pool together mortgages with similar characteristics. They then sell shares in this pool, which is secured by the mortgages, to investors.
They can also engage in swaps, where a bank has, say $100MM in mortgages that it owns and is servicing. It sells the principal balance of the mortgages to FNMA, and in return recieves a $100MM security, backed by those mortgages. It can then choose to hold that security, sell it on the open market, or use it as collateral to borrow and acquire more funds. It can be attractive to a bank to do this, rather than write down mortgages that have become less valuable because they are below current market rates.
(Note in the above, that ownership of the mortgage is different than ownership of the “servicing rights”. That’s the right the bank has to collect your payments, pay your escrow, do all the paperwork and accounting, and pass through the payments to the mortgage pool. It’s transparent to the borrower that their mortgage has been sold to FNMA. They send in thier monthly payment at say 8% interest to their bank. The bank keeps a servicing fee of say 0.25% and passes the principal and 7.75% interest through to Fannie Mae. You would only notice if your bank sold that servicing right to another bank, who then took over the actual mortgage servicing.)
If you think about Fannie’s cash flows above, their are a few ways they can get into trouble.
First, there is the price they have to pay to acquire mortgages. There’s room for error there, but not much, because Fannie has lots of loans, and a good understanding of what the loans are worth today. They, in other words, do a pretty good job of underwriting mortgages.
But once they’ve paid that price, and the loan is on their books, they then need to turn around and sell the security they’ve created. There’s more room for uncertainty here. With all the uncertainty surrounding sub-prime mortgages, as well as alternative mortgages (like no-asset verification or no-income verification, or reduced documenation – and by the way these are not all the same as sub-prime!) the market’s appetite for these securities has gone down.
Although most of the mortgages Fannie and Freddie buy are of high quality, to a big extent, all mortgages have been tarred by the sub-prime brush. Much of the sales of FNMA MBS’s are to foreign governments and investors. In the past, the perception has been that as GSE’s (government sponsered enterprises) these securities were nearly as good as government debt. However, reality is they are not “backed by the full faith and credit” of the US government. Purchasers now are discounting the value of the securities, due to greater perceived risk. The end result is less liquidity coming in to FNMA.
Finally, as NJLawyer mentions, there’s an implicit insurance and an explicit guarantee provided by FNMA. When a borrower defaults, FNMA still guarantees that it will make payments to the holders of the mortgage backed securities. They actually charge a small “guarantee fee” to the security holders for this insurance which hopefully covers their expected default expenses. If it doesn’t, then they can lose cash.
A somewhat dated (1992) but still useful book by Frank Fabozzi and Franco Modigliani (1985 Economics Nobel) is Mortgage and Mortgage-Backed Securities Markets It’s a little dry, but very readable.
There are also some good articles on FNMA and on the risks associated with it here:
Investopedia
and
Boon or Boom
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Thank you, Thomas; very comprehensive explanation.
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Mommy, Sorry I was busy for a few days.
Fannie Mea (1938) and Freddie Mac (1970)were both created by congress as government sponsored entities to make loans and guarantee them under their charter but, their main function for their creation was to supply liquidity to the secondary mortgage market and to act as a market maker.
In 1938 Fannie Mea was created to be the market maker in the secondary market for home mortgages originated by lenders in the primary market. What a market maker does is buy and sell mortgages, especially when no one else will (supplying the liquidity) because of an imbalance in the market. The market maker steps in and buys or sells, in order to keep the market functioning smoothly and properly without huge ups and downs.
In 1968, congress created Ginnie Mea as an offshoot from Fannie Mea, also a government sponsored entity but, instead of it being spun off as a privately held company like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mea, Ginnie Mea is part of HUD. Ginnie Mea was created to do the government guarantees on mortgages that Fannie Mea used to provide before Ginnie Mea was created. Ginnie Mea also guarantees mortgage loans that had nothing to do with Freddie or Fannie too and not all Freddie and Fannie loans have Ginnie guarantees either.
In 1970, Freddie Mac was created to act in exactly the same role as Fannie Mea to reduce Fannie’s monopoly as the market maker for the secondary mortgage market and to reduce risk if the one and only private market maker for mortgages in the secondary market failed or got into financial trouble.
Fannie and Freddie Guarantee nothing today – not one mortgage. The guarantees, if there are any, are all held by Ginnie Mae a US government owned entity. What this means is that Fannie and Freddie are privately held public companies with zero guarantees held by the US government for their mortgage backed collateralized bonds they sell to private investors, institutional investors and foreign governments.
The US government had no obligation whatsoever financially for anything these two privately held companies did but, the government is backing the guarantees that Ginnie Mae holds.
This of course, is not at all what the MSM presented as facts to the American public – but we know they lie for DNC all time as the Democratic propaganda machine. Gennie and Freddie weren’t even mentioned because it might confuse the weak minded Americans and get in the way of their lies.
But, according to them as they reported on it every day, the entire housing mortgage industry was going to collapse somehow anyway and the government had to step in and save Fannie from collapsing, by nationalizing it, so the entire financial markets of the evil Capitalist America would not evaporate, the sky would fall and we would all be dead.
This is straight out of the Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Marx, Stalin and Mao textbook. Lets see how true it is by looking at the facts.
Fannie and Freddie were not guaranteeing anything so they had no financial exposure there. Freddie and Fannie did have financial exposure for the interest payments on any of the mortgage backed collateralized bonds that they had sold to investors. Freddie and Fannie are the largest hedge funds in the world and they used derivatives on the security markets to cover; or hedge; this exposure reducing this exposure to a minimum.
Obviously this in not what got Freddie and Fannie (and by effect Ginnie) in a pickle financially. So what did them in? What if, as market maker in the secondary mortgage market, they were forced by the government to buy toxic loans from primary mortgage originators, many criminally flawed, when no one else would? That is their purpose as market maker.
What if after being forced to buy these supposedly toxic mortgages Freddie and Fannie could not sell their mortgage backed bonds to investors because the loans backing them were supposedly toxic and no one wanted to buy these bonds at any price? There was no market maker in the secondary bond market for Freddie and Fannie to dump these bonds on.
Put yourself in Fannie and Freddie’s shoes. Even though the government does not own any share of your private company, they do not guarantee anything that you do but you are forced by the government to buy all primary loans no matter how toxic as the market maker when no one else would and you cannot sell them to anyone else because they are supposedly toxic. How long would you have any cash left in your bank in this situation before you were totally bankrupt and the stock in your private company totally worthless in the market? But that is not the worst of it by far.
I will post again to let you know the really horrible lies and rest of the story. It makes the Democrats who raped and pillaged Bears Stears look like Girl Scouts.
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I posted this on yesterday’s WV, but not till 11:00 last night . . .
For those who pray, I’m traveling [today] (a couple of hours) and will see the lady with cancer and her family. In order to be discreet with family matters, I haven’t said it before, but this is a member of my “extended family” and not “just” a friend. At any rate, from the best that I understand, she has been told she is terminal, and from what I heard last week it is probably too late for surgery to help. So pray that I will love this family well as I see them [today and tomorrow]. All her children are adults, but it still can’t be easy to go through this. (She’s only about 50.)
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SAD NEWS Christopher Laurie was killed yesterday, he was on his way to Church.
Statement on the Death of Christopher Laurie, Son of Pastor Greg Laurie
July 24, 2008
Christopher Laurie, son of Pastor Greg Laurie and Cathe Laurie of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, died this morning in a car accident in Riverside. A resident of Huntington Beach, Laurie, 33, served as the art director at Harvest Christian Fellowship for the past three years.
In addition to his parents, Christopher is survived by his wife, Brittany, and daughter, Stella, as well as his brother Jonathan. Christopher and his wife are expecting another daughter in November.
Memorial plans for Christopher are pending. More information will be posted to the Harvest website as details become available.
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llama,
Thank you, I suspected something just about as you described, and now understand why I couldn’t find it clearly defined in any of the articles I’d read. Looking forward to your next installment.
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I am sorry to hear about the death of Christopher Laurie, and hope for the best for his family.
You now enter the satire zone, improperly inserted into this message.
Fannie Mae did not have a head for money, and should have let a man handle it for her.
Unfortunately, Freddie Mac blew his money on drink and women, just as you might expect a man to do.
This message brought to you by Cliches and Stereotypes R Us. (C) 2008 by the Random Institute of Misinformation. This message not sponsored by any candidate.
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The online Wall St. Journal has a good read from Andrew Klavan today.
What Bush and Batman Have In Common
http://tinyurl.com/5b4w6g
From the link;
There seems to me no question that the Batman film “The Dark Knight,” currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society — in which people sometimes make the wrong choices — and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.
George Bush=Super Hero
LOL! Who knew!
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The rest of the story about Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie,
Freddie and Fannie were buying mortgage loans from primary lenders that were already packaged up in the same interest bundles that were either already Ginnie guaranteed or not. As example, Countrywide Financial would take all the Ginnie guaranteed 30 year loans that they originated a say 6.5% interest and sell them to Fannie at a discount. The discount was built into the original loan so the home owner pays for it. This discount also assumes that some of the loans would default as well.
So Fannie was buying loans at a discount from originators, worth more than what they paid for them plus, a default amount was built in too. So, if everything was normal Fannie made a profit at that level. Fannie would take all the 30 year Ginnie backed 6.5% interest (or a total that averaged that) mortgage loans that they had purchased from all the primary lenders and bundle them in a bond to sell to investors.
Fannie would guarantee, for a fee, that the face amount of the bond and interest would be paid to the investor who bought the bond from Fannie. Please note that this is not a government guarantee like Ginnie would give on the loan that Countrywide would originate. But, Fannie was selling their guarantee for a fee (additional profit) and they could then also put a lower interest rate on the bond they sold to the investor, than the interest rates on the loans Freddie owned to back the bonds.
In effect, Freddie made a potential profit 3 ways. Buy buying the original loan at a discount, buy charging a fee for their private guarantee and by taking a cut of the interest spread by selling an implied government guarantee when in reality none existed legally. Investors assumed that the government would never let Freddie, Gennie or Fannie ever fail for any reason so they were willing to take less interest for this safety.
So what happened to cause the 70 year perfect record of Fannie to go down the toilet in the blink of an eye?
The democrats in congress forced Freddie and Fannie to give loans to minorities with marginal credit because they claimed that these people were being discriminated against by loan originators. These questionable borrowers who could not quality normally were offered previously non conforming loans as far as Freddie and Fannie were concerned – you know, the ones that had huge adjustable rates, no down payments, were for 120% of the inflated appraised values, interest only loans, etc – the loans that were sure to go into failure but eh only ones that these borrowers could afford.
Loan originators knew they could just dump these risky loans on Freddie and Fannie by hiding them in bundles and that they would eventually be passed on to the Freddie and Fannie bond investors. Bond rating agencies had no problem giving these AAA ratings because they were guaranteed at least by Freddie and Fannie and sometimes by Ginnie and everyone knew that none of these would ever be allowed to fail because of their assumed Government guarantee.
When everyone knows that no matter what they do the government will step in to bail them out and make them hole, then the abuses are magnified. Everyone realizes that, since there are no stiff penalties for improper behavior, then you get improper behavior.
Borrowers know they can never pay the loan back but they borrow money anyway. Appraisers will value property at what ever it takes to make the loan work, without even looking at the property, rather than evaluating what the property is worth. Loan originators create all kinds of new, once non conforming, loans to get these marginal borrowers qualified at all costs. Home flippers think they are investors and a house is like owing commercial property when it is really supposed to be no more than a home that they can hopefully afford and actually live in. Banks forget all about the risk they are taking when they make a loan and no longer care if the borrower is qualified and have forgotten that private residential real estate is never considered net worth of the borrower. Everyone forgets that there are bubbles created when ever people think that there is no risk involved in their actions and they forget that what goes up must come down
And sure enough, the socialists will step in and save everyone from everything, stop any pain or consequence by forcing the 50% of Americans that actually pay taxes and are totally innocent, to assume all the losses, future risk and pick up the tab as political socialist criminals transfer the wealth of these now poor but fine people to those that do not deserve it, created the problem, were criminals and Socialist voters of course. It got so bad, these idiots allowed loan originators to give no down, interest only, 120% value home loans to illegal aliens that did not have any jobs at all – and no one cared. Still, none of this caused Freddie to hit the skids. I know you won’t believe me but it got worse.
Once the crisis hit and everyone knew how bad it was, hat was happening and why, the democrats in congress forced Freddie and Fannie to raise the maximum amount of the loans they would accept and to continue to accept all the bad paper coming their way as a market maker regardless of its quality. In short, the Democrats forced these two private companies that the government had no financial interest in to fail. Why? Well that would be another post because, even though you think it can’t, it gets worse.
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Thanks Llama, well done!
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CherylD, I hope you see this, but you have my prayers. This isn’t easy for you either.
I feel sad about Christopher Laurie. The Last Lecture professor also died today. Both men leave small children behind.
Thomas and Llama, thank you for those lessons. No one has ever explained it all that well to me!
Llama, I don’t have a problem with the new legislation if it is just forcing banks to modify or refinance for people and put their mortgages into 30 year mortgages, but you are frightening me that it is more than that. When you have the time, please explain — because I’m fearing now that it will be getting worse and I need to know in plain language what’s going to happen.
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The worst of it,
This situation allowed the socialists to have the government take Freddie and Fannie over and nationalize the nations secondary mortgage market, But it was a two’fer. They also kept their poor democratic voters who held almost all of these horrible loans, from actually losing their homes to foreclosure. I wonder who they will vote for next time around?
Yep, the non specialists that actually pay taxes and keep up with their mortgage payments as difficult as they are, have now been taxed by socialists to redistribute wealth from their pocket to poor people who are socialists but are too poor, out of work, illegal aliens or just plain criminals who cannot pay their mortgages for what ever reason. But, even that is not the worst of it.
For 70 years, Freddie made a killing in profits and was one of the most successful and profitable private financial companies in the country. Since it was nearly a risk free business, it was like printing money. Everyone knew what the loan default rate was, originators made qualifying loans that were conventional, conservative, fit the default model and there were plenty of buyers and sellers in the market to keep it a level playing field. Freddie and Fannie only had half the market between them.
Freddie, Fannie and Ginnie, either, owned originating loans as collateral for their bonds or guaranteed them as the case may be to the tune of $6 trillion – which was about half of the $12 trill on mortgage market. Ginnie held about $2 Trillion in government issued guarantees, leaving $4 trillion in Freddie and Fannie loan and private guarantees.
3/4 of 1% of this total was assumed to eventually go into default and this amount of risk was covered in the discount they received from the primary loan originators. Freddie and Fannie hedged the remaining assumed risk and the cost of this was covered in their guarantee fees the bond holders paid them a fee for. So lets look at the real facts.
Only 1.5% of all Freddie and Annie loans are in default today. This represents a potential uncovered loss of 3/4 of 1% of $4 trillion or $30 Billion dollars. Obama will spend more than that the first second after he becomes president and you won’t even know where it went and won’t find out it came from your pocket until it is too late and you get blamed for stealing from yourself. Freddie alone has more than that in bank right now – even after all of their losses. So why are they in such big trouble?
It is simple. They are being forced to cover every mortgage in the market today, since no one else will touch them, and they still can’t sell any paper to create cash flow, Pretty soon they will be dead broke. The people forcing them to do this are the same ones who what to steal their business and nationalize it – a democratic congress. The same people who forced Bear Stearns into bankruptcy, forced huge loses on their share holders and then guaranteed the purchase of the cratered Bear Stearns for a song by a rival. And then they had the audacity to open the discount window for any other investment bank to borrow against so they don’t go bankrupt too. These people ar criminals and it is no wonder they are being sued to high heaven by Bear Stearns stock holders
But they are not done. After these socialists nationalize the banking industry, hatch them as they try to tax the profits of the evil oil companies, who already pay more taxes than anyone in the USA. Watch as they give this huge tax windfall to alternative energy companies to help finance their green buddies they are in bed with.
These alternative energy companies will eventually force the oil companies out of business with legislative help and do so with oil companies own ‘excess’ profits. This is anti American at best. How would you feel if you owned an oil company and were being taxed by government Marxists so they can give your money to your competitors that they are in bed with, so that these companies can put you out of business with your own money, while making sure you have no money left to try to convert to an alternative supplier of energy as a business model yourself?
Watch what they do the drug companies, and other evil health care insurers, rich doctors, medical device suppliers and anyone else they can destroy to nationalize their business and promote their Marxist ideology.
As you can see, these socialists have no self control, no shame and can never be satisfied.
Never trust them with your life or money because they will steal all of your money and then kill you if you won’t be their slave.
But you asked for it and you are about to get it in spades. Remember President Carter? He was a wanna be Marxist. These guys are the real deal.
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These marxists even make FDR, the ‘King’ of all American socialists, look way more Republican than Reagan.
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Should we know who Greg Laurie is??
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Mommy,
He has had many, many crusades, has reached out and preached to millions to share the LORD Jesus Christ. He’s very well known on the West Coast.
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Here is the LINK to Pastor Greg Laurie and “Harvest Crusades”
http://www.harvest.org/crusades/
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#26
I am confused.
What is the difference between George Bush and Batman?
Is it that one is real and one is a comic book? No, Batman is real.
Is it that one gets his hands dirty and the other just gives noble speeches?
No, George Bush gets his hands dirty.
Well, we will keep working on figuring it out.
Remember, the Radical Agnostic Party endorses John McCain. Endorsement slogan: We haven’t suffered enough yet.
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Oh yeah. I wouldn’t ask GM, Ford or Chrysler what the Socialists did to them either but you can take it from me it wasn’t pretty. Before them look what they did to steel companies. The list is endless.
By the way as an investing lesson, the smart money sold their Fannie stock, bought huge piles of Fannie puts on the option market while snapping up as much Fannie debt (bonds) as they could afford for a penny on the dollar. Yep, people in the know made a fortune, and they gave some if it as a tip for services rendered to the DNC and Obama campaign as a Quid Pro Quo.
Check yourself and see if hedge funds, investment banks, wall streeters, financial institutions, loan originators, other lefty investors and other rich celebrities that invest in hedge funds are at the very top of the DNC and Obama donor lists.
Ask if Citywide gave special loan status to a dozen Democratic senators and even Obama himself.
Ask yourself who is profiting from all of this as everyone else gets screwed.
Then ask yourself why you allowed this to happen and why you will not stop what will happen. I can answer that for you. Because you are too lazy and even if you weren’t lazy you couldn’t stop it anyway? Well, that is the way losers think and you deserve to get bent over the sofa if you think like that.
Throw the bums out as soon as possible and never ever vote for a socialist again – you have learned your lesson – again. Pay no attention to what they say but watch very very closely what they do instead.
Never ever forget Jimmy Carter, like you did this time – again.
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http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11751139
What were George Bush and Republican legislators doing over eight years, much of which time they controlled both the White House and the Congress. Besides preparing for natural disasters such as Katrina and for their well-planned, stunningly successful successful invasion of Iraq? Could they have perhaps mobilized public opinion to reform Mac and Mae while they had the chance?
What about the brilliant repackaging of subprime loans and the brilliant planning of institutions such as Citi and Bear Stearns, etc?
I think llama makes some good points about how Democrats have contributed to the present mess. However, he is so busy tossing his usual slogans and stereotypes about liberals and whackos and leftists that he seems unable to apply critical thinking to the other side of the aisle, and the majority of people here just clap and applaud at every cliche. The Republicans had eight years to demonstrate a better way. Now they will go back to do what they do best, assigning blame.
Agnostics for McCain! We haven’t suffered enough!
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Random Name-
I like your slogan.
Today’s Republicans have perfected the art of WHINING. Llama’s posts as a case in point.
Eight years later the Republicans leave us an endless war, record deficits, a devalued dollar, inflation, record oil prices, and a world that thinks we are arrogant incompetents. We can’t afford McSame.
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Republicans are embarrassed to be seen with Republicans?
Nine of 12 targeted Republicans running in the most competitive Senate races this fall are either skipping the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., or have not decided whether to attend.
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March 18, 2003
Fox News “O’Reilly Factor”
O’Reilly: “All right, Senator, if you were president, what would you have done differently in the run-up to this war?”
McCain: “Nothing.”
O’Reilly: “Nothing?”
McCain: “The president has handled this, in my view, skillfully.”
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The first of 200 ships idled by a massive oil spill began crawling down the Mississippi River Friday after the Coast Guard reopened the waterway to traffic, but it could be days before all of the ships are cleared.
A 100-mile stretch of the river has been shut down since Wednesday, when a barge split open in a collision with the Liberian-flagged tanker Tintomara. Roughly 419,000 gallons spilled into the fast-flowing waterway to commerce, and crews have sopped up about 11,000 — just a fraction of what the barge was carrying.
It wasn’t clear how much cleanup would cost, or what the economic impact on commerce will be. John Hyatt, vice president of Irwin Brown Co., a New Orleans-based freight forwarder, said he expected the total impact on shippers and receivers would quickly climb into many millions of dollars.
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Even the Mormons have had it with Bush.
WASHINGTON — Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson told Congress there’s a “compelling case” for the impeachment of President Bush, but that short of that, it should appoint a special commission to investigate egregious abuses of power.
Anderson, testifying Friday at a House Judiciary Committee hearing looking at the constitutional limits of the executive branch, detailed a litany of what he said were “heinous” human rights abuses, unprecedented power grabs and denials of due process.
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llama has posted some good posts on investing. (This is an irony- and sarcasm-free statement, so flame me for my previous post, llama, but not this one).
I do not believe in “socially-responsible” investing. (I do believe in socially-responsible purchasing, but that’s another discussion.)
Basically I believe in using evil/wickedness as criteria for investing. For example, although I generally do not invest in mutual funds, there is a fund called the VICE FUND that I could not resist purchasing: it invests in alcohol, gambling, tobacco, and defense stocks. (Unfortunately, they neglect sex and abortion.) They have done pretty well for me. The Christians here preach, but the people in the marketplace drink, gamble, smoke, and blow each other up. Death and taxes are inevitable, but evil appetites and urges follow not far behind.
PETROBRAS is drilling for oil deep off the Brazilian coast and SASOL is liquefying coal in South Africa, so between them they should help out with destroying the environment. I haven’t picked out a nuclear energy play yet, but it’s definitely on my radar to find.
My wife is a little leery of my cynical approach, but she is sliding in my direction. She put GENERAL ELECTRIC into her IRA, based in part on their terrible environmental record. However, GE has now cast themselves as the environmentally-friendly company of the future, building windmills and desalination plants hither and yon, so they may have undone themselves, now that Welch is gone. However, they are also into nuclear, so there may be hope (or lack thereof) yet.
But here’s my point about the mostly nonsensical right-left name calling on this blog.
Conservatives should put most of their efforts into making themselves better conservatives rather than putting so much effort into name-calling liberals.
Liberals should put most of their efforts into making themselves better liberals rather than putting so much effort into name-calling conservatives.
I would bet that in a management meeting at General Electric, they put most of their effort into trying to make themselves better robber baron capitalists (and stockholder pleasers) than they do casting insults about their competitors.
For that matter, at a tactical meeting at El Qaeda HQ, they put most of their effort into figuring out better ways to get mortar shells into the Green Zone and suicide bombers into the local police station than they do ranting about how awful Christians and Americans are.
Keep your eye on the target, not the decoy.
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Okay, I guess we should stop all commerce. There may be an accident, there may be pollution. Unbelievable how lefties think.
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I forgot the hand wringing. Lots of whining and hand wringing. (thanks for reminding me NJL)
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And NJL, welcome to the real world where there are accidents, and there is pollution.
So much so that John McSame had to cancel his campaign appearance
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Obama’s prayer at the Western Wall was removed by a rabbinic student. They say it looks like his prayer because the handwriting is similar. The Rabbi in charge of the Wall is upset because this act interferes with the relationship between a man and God. Here’s the prayer published by one newspaper:
“”Lord – Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will,” reads the note published in Maariv (the newspaper).”
If this is indeed Obama’s prayer, the seminary student should be ashamed of himself.
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Of course there are spills. That was my point — that’s the real world. You can’t avoid that unless you want to stop all commerce and tank the country — something lefties like to do.
I’m not handwringing or whining. It’s just stupid that you guys don’t take reality into consideration when you post these “anti-McCain” links.
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The oil spill stopped commerce. See the article.
Is that what you meant NJL?
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NJL-
I am not a leftie. I am a Libertarian and I support BOB BARR in 2008! I know you may be confused because the word liberty is the root, and liberty is no longer a Republican value. I am about as much of a loser leftie as I am brainless Bushie neo-con twit. Subtlety is difficult for you, I know.
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Okay, I guess we should stop all commerce. There may be an accident, there may be pollution. Unbelievable how lefties think.
And I get chewed out for being sarcastic.
Every type of system is going to have a cost. If we drill for oil everywhere, it will cost us. If we prohibit drilling for oil everywhere it will cost us.
As the old joke’s punch line goes, “Now that we’ve established that, now we’re just dickering about the price.”
We want some environment left. We want some protection against environmental disasters. We want some energy. We want some comfortable life style.
How do we decide where we draw the lines? NJL, I don’t want to start feuding with you again when I’ve only been back a short time, so please don’t take this as an attack.
I’m just saying that name calling about lefties and righties doesn’t solve any problems. We’re going to have some rules. We’re going to have some leeways.
Where do we put them?
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Random writes: “And I get chewed out for being sarcastic.”
You get chewed out for being condescending to people.
I agree with you that we want environment left, and quite frankly, I’ve never read a post by a Republican here that insists that the environment ought to be sacrificed, but they are realistic enough to know you can’t stop all commerce and keep the economy going, and no, all commerce wasn’t stopped. It’s a big country with a lot of commerce. Only a small area of the country was affected by those oil spills. It happens.
Godlumps, the only thing Bob Barr can do is interfere with the election. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance, nor do most of his ideas. If these ideas were held by a lot of voters, his name would be mentioned in the news. It is not.
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Godlumps, the only thing Bob Barr can do is interfere with the election. He doesn’t have a snowball’s chance, nor do most of his ideas. If these ideas were held by a lot of voters, his name would be mentioned in the news. It is not.
Can you say “Hit the nail on the head!”? LOL
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Godlumps
Don’t most conservatives have some Libertarian leanings? I know I do. Where I leave them is the idea that people should be left to their own devices as far as the way they act. I think people do better with rules.
I read that when you put a baby on a table, he stays in the middle and cries. If a railing is put around the edge the baby will hang over the edge and be happy. People do better with rules.
Also, “choice” is a Libertarian thing. I’m agin it. Rules are good. “Stay within the lines. The lines are our friends.”
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NJL-
Good morning yesterday. And thank you for asking.
He’s Bob Barr, and he’s running for president
Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images
Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr rankles some former GOP colleagues with statements such as this: “What George W. Bush has done to the fabric of our constitutional government, to separation of powers, to a government of limited powers is absolutely unforgivable.”
The Libertarian Party candidate thinks the GOP, which he once served with gusto, has run off the rails. Some Republicans worry their quirky former colleague will spoil McCain’s chances.
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Bob,
Most people around this site are died in the wool loyal bushies. They will follow him no matter the cliff.
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NJL,
If you think I am being condescending to people, explain how a particular post is condescending in clear, straightforward language. Hit and run little comments do not make your point to me.
I am glad that Republicans want to preserve the environment. Again, I would be interested in examples rather than insults about “liberals” and the “left.” It is difficult to write brief posts that are not insults, cliches, and generalizations. That it is difficult does not mean that it is nor worth striving for.
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GL
First, I always dislike calling another poster by other than his WMB moniker.
Second, your chosen moniker offends me. So, I will be using GL from now on.
As for most WMB poster being bushies, yes, I do like President Bush. I think some of his problems are because of what I consider to be conservative/libertarian views of his. Many of the laws he passes are things he is against but because of his belief in the separation of powers, when a bill gets some bi-partisan support, he signs it.
You see, Republicans not only talk getting along with the opposite party, we do more than just lip-service, we meet somewhere in the middle. Democrats/liberals, not so much.
Republicans need to change. We need to realize that giving a little bit of the rope to Democrats/liberals just gives them a chance to move their hands forward and keep on pulling. They are never satisfied with something being more on their side. They always move the bar so that the old middle is no longer in the same place.
Republicans/conservatives are required to keep on giving up more and their positions. Democrats/liberals get to keep on getting more and more of what they want. I really think George Orwell had it right in “Animal Farm.” All animals are equal but some animals are more equal.
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