Biggest bungle of the Obama admin? Operation Fast & Furious?

[Virote_Considon]

I suspect that the governments like the bloody drug wars in Mexico for several reasons.

1) It gets rid of a lot of drug dealers, thousands are shot, many quit because of risk and many don't get involved because of the risk.

2) It gives the government more reasons to clamp down on gangs and use tactics that otherwise could't be used.

3) It costs the gangs insane amounts of money/resources to fight these huge wars.

I dunno about the government, but these are sure as hell some of the reasons that I like the drug wars!

You really think they thought this?
I see agenda written all over it, personally...

And I see tinfoil, but then again I'm looking at your head.

How many times have you heard of a economic recovery brought about by the Government by means other than reducing taxes and regulations?

Great Depression.

Obama knew in March... Holder knew in May?

Then CNN compares Holder's testimony to what President Obama said in MARCH to CNN Espanol about the operation. "I heard on the news about this story that -- Fast and Furious, where allegedly guns were being run into Mexico, and ATF knew about it, but didn't apprehend those who had sent it."

How would Obama know before Holder??? Unless... someone is lying?

Obama must have been behind it because he saw it on the news!

Twice: Italy in the '30s and Germany in the '30s.

Replace "Italy in the '30s" with "The rest of the world hit by the Great Depression in the '30s". Italy wasn't really hit very hard at all by the Great Depression so there wasn't that much of an economic recovery needed then, and its fairly highly regulated economic measures were in place long before it (the Great Depression) started.

 

[kochman]

It wasn't a bad idea for the other 70 years it was being done. All that made it a bad idea was deregulation of other areas of finance.

The deregulation hurt, but so did the government insisting that the loan standards be lowered while continuing to deregulate!

And, who signed that specific deregulation? For the record? Oh yeah, Bill Clinton.

 

[Cutlass]

The deregulation hurt, but so did the government insisting that the loan standards be lowered while continuing to deregulate!

And, who signed that specific deregulation? For the record? Oh yeah, Bill Clinton.

That so-called "pressure" to make loans more available to low income earners increased the number of American households in owner occupied housing a grand total of 1.6%. And that 1.6% was more likely to remain solvent on their mortgages than the higher income people that the regulations did not apply to at all.

Clinton did sign some of the legislation Republicans pushed to deregulate. But no one piece of deregulation is responsible for what happened. A 30 year trend to deregulation set the stage for economic collapse. And the worst of that deregulation happened during the Bush years.

 

[kochman]

That so-called "pressure" to make loans more available to low income earners increased the number of American households in owner occupied housing a grand total of 1.6%. And that 1.6% was more likely to remain solvent on their mortgages than the higher income people that the regulations did not apply to at all.

Clinton did sign some of the legislation Republicans pushed to deregulate. But no one piece of deregulation is responsible for what happened. A 30 year trend to deregulation set the stage for economic collapse. And the worst of that deregulation happened during the Bush years.

Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act, which made this all possible. This is the piece of legislation that was THE problem, allowing asseyors and investors to be the same entity basically.
The act was repealed with 92 votes in the Senate, proving it to be quite Bipartisan, not only Republican as you like to make it sound... Since Clinton signed it... it's really hard to blame Bush for that...

That 1.6% you are talking about... it's hardly accurate. It is base value of the loan.
The problem is, the loans we are talking about are the balloon loans (which gave a much higher return, on paper, than a standard 30 year mortgage)...
The banks were operating on the expected revenue (meaning the original loan plus outrageous interest)... then selling to each other, etc.
So, 1.6% is the amount of initial loans, but that 1.6% grows disproportionately... and all over the world bankers were buying into these scam investments, because they were greedy... and because Fanny & Freddy were being backed by the US Gov... so they didn't seem that risky in the end!

 

[Cutlass]

1.6% is the number of American households that went from living in rental property to living in owner occupied property as a result of all the so called "pressure" to make more loans to the lower class. So very little change.

As for the deregulation, yes the bill Clinton signed was a significant problem. But to pretend that it is most of the problem only demonstrates your lack of information concerning the problem.

Conservatives and libertarians won. They got most of the Democratic party to think that conservative/libertarian economic policy wasn't an utter load of crap. This doesn't change the responsibility of the Democrats for becoming conservative and buying into all the fraud the Republicans were selling. But it was the Republicans who sold the fraud in the first place.

 

[kochman]

1.6% is the number of American households that went from living in rental property to living in owner occupied property as a result of all the so called "pressure" to make more loans to the lower class. So very little change.

As for the deregulation, yes the bill Clinton signed was a significant problem. But to pretend that it is most of the problem only demonstrates your lack of information concerning the problem.

Conservatives and libertarians won. They got most of the Democratic party to think that conservative/libertarian economic policy wasn't an utter load of crap. This doesn't change the responsibility of the Democrats for becoming conservative and buying into all the fraud the Republicans were selling. But it was the Republicans who sold the fraud in the first place.

That 1.6% represents a much larger percentage when shown as a percentage of anticipated income, due to balloon mortgages. Also, that 1.6%, pretty much 100% of it was destined to fail... unlike previous mortgages, which were generally reliable.

I love that this bipartisan repeal, you still manage to try to obfuscate and blame only the Republicans for the idea. It was almost universally supported.

I don't at all think that this one act was alone responsible, but it allowed the risky investment and fuzzy math in the balance sheets... and is primarily responsible...

In other words, both parties completely sold out to big banking... completely. Signed by a democrat president... who couldn't have stopped it anyway, but had no interest in stopping it!

All I am trying to do is get you to acknowledge this was a bipartisan failure... not a Republican failure that Democrats were tricked into supporting, as you try to make it seem.

 

[dIZZyBlIZZy]

All I am trying to do is get you to acknowledge this was a bipartisan failure... not a Republican failure that Democrats were tricked into supporting, as you try to make it seem.

Definite failure on the party of both parties (or party politics in general), but wasn't the community reinvestment act authored by Barney Frank?

 

[kochman]

Definite failure on the party of both parties (or party politics in general), but wasn't the community reinvestment act authored by Barney Frank?

Yes, I believe it was... which was were the banks were pressured to make guaranteed loans...

The bankers are responsible because they should have realized the risk was too high... but they didn't bother because the Fed was behind all the high risk mortgages...

In other words, if you are a banker, and you've got a federal guarantee, you are going to take the risk! Right?

Government intervention at its worst!

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

That never happened. There was no law or no regulation and no pressure by government at any time to make unsound loans. The law is actually the opposite of that.

You are completely giving an apologetic excuse to protect the guilty.

Okay, well if we cannot agree on simple fact then I suppose we cannot have a reasonable argument now can we.

Great Depression.

The recovery from the great depression was caused by millions of people with GI paychecks coming home to a country that had ceased building cars, houses, etc... for several years. There was demand and it was filled and filling the demand created jobs. Ah the power of a free market. Now you can argue that FDR helped to lessen the Depression, while don't think he helped, I am willing to admit I might be wrong. But the Government was not the primary factor.

As for you comment on F&F, Something is not right if the President learning about a DoJ op and the Attorney General learning about it have that big of a gap. Does Holder just lock himself in a room and isolate himself from the outside world? Now I can not believe that Obama new about this before March, because for the President to undertake such an action would be unthinkable, but Holder received five memos starting last year, so their is no way he could have missed it.

 

[Ajidica]

Ah the power of a free market.

Wow, a contradiction in the exact same paragraph.

with GI paychecks

So essentialy you are saying the free market is at work when the government engages in a massive stimulatory/anti-unemployment plan designed to take advantage of a massive number of people entering the workforce while at the same time preventing a recession caused by decomission.
I never knew central planning could be so free-market.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Wow, a contradiction in the exact same paragraph.

So essentialy you are saying the free market is at work when the government engages in a massive stimulatory/anti-unemployment plan designed to take advantage of a massive number of people entering the workforce while at the same time preventing a recession caused by decomission.
I never knew central planning could be so free-market.

No what I am saying is that when a bunch of people have money and there is demand for goods then goods will be made. There was no central planning involved. Those people were working for pay, they were not living off of redistributed income from already employed people. Money earned and money taken at gunpoint from your neighbors are not the same thing.

 

[Cutlass]

Money in the hands of consumers is what matters. Taking money from consumers and giving it to the rich never improved an economy.

 

[Ajidica]

There was no central planning involved.

So a government-organized plan to avoid a post-war recession by stimulating industry and creating a system where people are slowly released back into the workforce to prevent a shock recession is not central planning?

 

[JollyRoger]

No what I am saying is that when a bunch of people have money and there is demand for goods then goods will be made.

Thus why the Earned Income Credit helped the Clinton boom along.