We already knew Dubya wasn't progressive, but thanks for the reminder.
"We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man"
C.S. Lewis
Take that President Obama
We already knew Dubya wasn't progressive, but thanks for the reminder.
It is the responsibility of every American citizen to own a modern military rifle.
Do you right wing ideologues ever consider the road not taken? What would have been the results of letting the banks fail? Did you ever consider what an systemic failure would be like for ALL Americans, not just bankers? How many millions of jobs would have been ended by letting GM and Chrysler fail? How many small businesses that supply and support the auto industry would have been decimated? How would all those people suddenly added to the public dole have made things better?
Thankfully, enough adults intervened to prevent your child world from becoming reality.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
tinfoil (05-12-2011)
We have bankruptcy laws that allow for large business's to "fail" and reorganize...indeed that's specifically what they are for. I love how liberal chicken littles stand on the all or nothing analogies, as if there were not more moderate bail outs. Then there is the outrageous obamacare boondoggle wrong road~
Topspin (05-12-2011)
It wasn't partisan in that respect, because there were those on both sides who both agreed & disagreed.
However, it is extremely disingenuous to constantly complain about the pace of the recovery, as ID does, and still suggest that it would have been a good thing for, say, GM or the banks to fail. Even those who argued that side of the coin acknowledged that these events would have set the country back more, and taken longer to recover from. The only argument is that the "creative destruction" would be more beneficial down the road...
Topspin (05-12-2011), ZappasGuitar (05-12-2011)
It is safe to say that no one was enthused about Bush/Paulson's TARP. But responsible adults held their noses and took necessary measures to prevent a systemic failure. But what happened AFTER TARP? Liberals and Democrats got to work on regulatory reform. Republicans refused to participate and fought reform.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Why TARP was wrong
Arnold Kling
Timothy Geithner defends TARP.
Financial crises matter not because they hurt banks and bankers. They matter because they kill jobs, businesses and the value of retirement savings. To protect Main Street from the damage caused by a financial crisis, you must first put out the financial fire. That is precisely what the government did.
Except that it didn't. It restored confidence in the nation's largest financial institutions, by declaring them too big to fail. But it in no way restored confidence in the biggest financial market, the market for mortgage-related securities. That market is still in agony. The latest problem is the "foreclosure scandal." Mike Konczal breaks it down. It seems to have nothing to do with borrowers not deserving to lose their homes and everything to do with problems in determining who exactly has the right to foreclose on them, given the complex chain of ownership created by securitization.
The process known as "shadow banking" is still in a state of paralysis, as far as I can tell. I am not saying that government could have fixed it, or that fixing it would have been a good idea. But I do not agree that TARP fixed the financial system. The operation was a success, but the patient died.
The biggest problem I have with TARP is the heedless way in which leaders abused power. The TARP was enacted in order to "unclog the financial system" by buying toxic assets. Who knew that the biggest toxic asset clogging the financial system was General Motors? In the end, hardly any TARP funds were used for the purpose that it was created, which was to buy mortgage-related assets.
From Geithner's point of view, he made great sacrifices by doing something unpopular that achieved great results. If that becomes the historical verdict, then next time leaders want to ratchet up their arbitrary use of power, they will view Geithner as their role model.
Too big to punish: Banks cut a deal on robo-signing scandal.
By the Editorial Board | Posted: Tuesday, April 12, 2011 9:00 pm
The 2008 financial crisis introduced most Americans to the concept of “too big to fail.” Now comes a not-unrelated corollary: “too big to punish.”
Federal banking regulators have begun signing deals with 14 mortgage-servicing companies — some of them arms of “too big to fail” banks — that would enable the servicers to avoid as much as $20 billion in fines for finagling foreclosure documents.
The consent agreements would end the government’s investigation into the so-called “robo-signing” scandals that erupted last fall. Mortgage companies acknowledged that they’d been processing home foreclosures without obtaining documents that established the provenance of the loans.
In most cases, that was because the mortgage companies had sold the loans, which then were chopped into pieces and sold as mortgage-backed securities. Determining precisely who owned the loans in default was problematic, so companies solved it by forging documents and signatures.
The consent agreements, in effect, will require the companies to promise not to do that again. The servicers will have to stop foreclosing while loans are in the modification process. They must promise to stop bouncing consumers from one office to another and establish a single point of contact.
But they may not have to pay a dime in fines. And, more significant, they won’t be required to try to work out mortgages that might be saved.
Getting a timely deal was important. More than 4 million homes are in the foreclosure process; many of them have been in limbo during the “robo-signing” negotiations. This has created uncertainty in the housing market.
But getting the right deal would have been better. Such a deal would have required banks to work out any loan that still could be salvaged by reducing principal to the point at which a homeowner could afford the payments.
That basic concept — don’t borrow more than you can afford — was widely ignored in the housing boom. The obverse was ignored, too: Don’t lend a customer more money than he can reasonably be expected to pay back, even if you can make a killing flipping mortgage securities.
With the housing market still depressed and the prospect of more foreclosed properties coming onto the market, it would seem to be in everyone’s best interest to salvage what can be salvaged. But with one in four homes under water — worth less than what is owed on it — workouts could get to be expensive, so banks avoid them if possible. And now financial regulators have made it possible.
The precipitous action by U.S. banking regulators — the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. — undercuts a parallel effort by the 50 states’ attorneys general to reach a settlement with the mortgage industry.
The Obama administration’s mortgage modification program, enacted in 2009 with funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, has been a huge disappointment. The idea was to help up to 4 million homeowners by 2012. About 540,000 have been helped so far.
Neil Barofsky, who is stepping down as TARP’s inspector general, called the program “poorly designed, poorly managed and poorly executed."
TARP helped the big banks get healthy in a hurry, but it failed many homeowners. And now, with the consent agreements, the Obama administration is letting the banks off the hook yet again.
And once again, ID thinks she's arguing a point by cutting & pasting the opinions of others...
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