mortgage mess
mortgage mess: Page 1
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Brown-Whitman 10/02/10 debate: a very disturbing view of California's future - 10/05/10
It's a good thing I didn't watch Saturday's Jerry Brown / Meg Whitman debate in the California governor's race: I might have ended up defenestrating the TV. The debate provides a very disturbing preview of the Quebec-style future of California and ultimately the U.S.
The Economist in 2004: "More Mexicans, please" (promoted home loans to illegal aliens) - 12/14/09
I haven't looked into how much of the mortgage mess is due to financial institutions giving mortgages to low-wage workers, including illegal aliens from Mexico; for that, see Steve Sailer. Some but not all of it was, making the June 10, 2004 article from The Economist called "More Mexicans, please" (no author given; economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2752598) a cautionary tale about a) giving in to corruption, and b) trusting The Economist:
NATIVISTS in Texas and Arizona may still want to keep Mexicans out of America, but in the mid-west, far from the border, a growing...
Obama home mortgage bailout open to illegal aliens - 02/25/09
From this:
Illegal aliens can apply for mortgage relief under the Obama administration's $275 billion [home mortgage bailout] plan, according to immigration experts and a group the government will use to help homeowners modify loans.
..."There is no legal prohibition against illegal immigrants owning homes," (Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies) said, "and in most cases mortgage lenders will accept a taxpayer ID or a Matricula Consular card issued by a Mexican Consulate office as identification to illegal immigrants from Mexico."
Chad Buchanan, a...
"Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions and Counting" - 02/16/09
The article "Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions and Counting" (link) is from Nov. 28, 2008 and thus before the trillion/multi-trillion dollar stimulus plan:
it's a complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees, loans, swaps and other market mechanisms by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other offices of government taken over roughly the last year, based on government data and news releases. Strictly speaking, not every cent is a direct result of what's called the financial crisis, but they're all arguably related to it.
The bulk of the sum falls under...
Who or what precipitated the financial crisis? (Soros? China? a setup to elect Obama? Did it just happen?) - 02/10/09
Someone needs to snug their tinfoil hat down tight and try to figure out who or what got us into this financial mess. Did it just happen, or was it a deliberate plan in order to make money or help Obama get elected? Consider the attached video featuring Rep. Paul Kanjorski saying the following:
CBO: predicts "slow recovery in 2010", non-disastrous recession *without a stimulus* - 02/09/09
On January 8, 2009, Robert Sunshine, Acting Director of the Congressional Budget Office, offered "The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2009 to 2019" (PDF link, via this) in testimony before Congress. While the situation described sounds bleak, it's far from disastrous. In fact, they suggest that - without having to enact a stimulus - we'd have a "slow recovery in 2010".
So, while we'd go through some pain for a year or two, we'd come out of OK and without having to spend around a trillion dollars. Why not just grit our teeth for the next couple of years, perhaps taking a few...
The $78 billion rip-off: Treasury overpaid for bank assets (TARP) - 02/06/09
From this:
The Bush administration received assets that were worth $78 billion less than the amount it invested as part of the massive infusion of capital into the country's banks, congressional investigators have found.
The investigators concluded that the Treasury under the federal bailout had invested $254 billion into companies but the preferred stock it got in return had a market value at the time of only $176 billion, or 69 percent of what the government paid, according to a congressional oversight panel report scheduled to be released today.
Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the...
Bailout: banks wanted thousands of foreign workers as they laid-off Americans (H-1B) - 02/01/09
From this:
Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.
The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual...
"Housing Push for Hispanics Spawns Wave of Foreclosures" (Joe Baca, Hispanic Caucus) - 01/04/09
From this, much more at the link:
California Rep. Joe Baca has long pushed legislation he said would "open the doors to the American Dream" for first-time home buyers in his largely Hispanic district. For many of them, those doors have slammed shut, quickly and painfully.
Mortgage lenders flooded Mr. Baca's San Bernardino, Calif., district with loans that often didn't require down payments, solid credit ratings or documentation of employment. Now, many of the Hispanics who became homeowners find themselves mired in the national housing mess. Nearly 9,200 families in his district have lost...
UCLA professor Stephen Bainbridge deletes comments showing how he was wrong - 09/28/08
UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge recently tried to debunk illegal immigration's role in the mortgage crisis. Along with issuing smears, his only data points in support of his position came from data that was over a decade old. Not only didn't he tell his readers that the data was incredibly out of date, but he deleted two comments pointing out that the data he was using was woefully out of date.
One of the comments he deleted was from me:
Bainbridge should be embarrassed: for relying on data that's over a decade old (h/t a previous comment). And, all to support illegal activity, to show...
Stephen Bainbridge, Matt Yglesias embarrass themselves in support of illegal immigration (minorities, bailout) - 09/28/08
A few days ago, Michelle Malkin offered "Illegal immigration and the mortgage mess" (link).
Now, if there's one thing that the corrupt on both the right and the left can agree on it's that illegal immigration is the best thing since 8ulova watches.
Thus it is that UCLA Professor Stephen Bainbridge [1] offers "They Make You Embarrassed to be a Conservative" in which he ironically embarrasses himself (link):
...the raving of people like Malkin and Krikorian [2] should be taking place in a padded room in Arkham Asylum not in the public discourse... Put simply, the freezing up of the credit...
Arizona Republic almost does expose on Western Union - 03/19/06
Chris Hawley of the AZ Republic offers the somewhat surprising article "Wire firm a force in debate over immigration".
It's surprising because in a rare move for the AZ Republic it comes close to reporting the actual truth. They come close to implying that Western Union and their parent company First Data are profiting off illegal immigration, are encouraging illegal immigration, and are corrupting our political system.
...In recent years, Denver-based First Data has openly campaigned for immigration reform, which could legalize millions of undocumented workers, and has created a $10...