Jindal - Another one bites the dust?

[WhoWee]

Are you aware of the timeline and events that led to the drop on wall street. Recall that the crash began to occur when Congress refused to pass the bailout bill the first time.



Yes, and a meteor could hit the planet, but that has nothing to do with the current problems. Fix the source of the problem and the rest will take care of itself. The stock markets will remain volatile until the credit and housing markets are stable.

I really find this all quite amazing. The Republicans have all but destroyed the world's economy but people still defend their model. Reminds me a bit of defending bloodletting or astrology - in spite of the evidence, we still find the faithful.

GM announced a $9billion loss and reported they've burned through $6billion in taxpayer funds...and their stock went up...from $1.77 a few days ago to $2.59 the last time I looked...a 46% gain in a week. I guess the market thinks they'll be getting more "assistance".

 

[WheelsRCool]

EDIT: CRAP, I typed up a long post and the computer lost it on me! (ARGH!). Oh well will be back in a bit.

 

[WhoWee]

I really find this all quite amazing. The Republicans have all but destroyed the world's economy but people still defend their model. Reminds me a bit of defending bloodletting or astrology - in spite of the evidence, we still find the faithful.

When you say "their model"...are referring to American Free Capitalism?

 

[mheslep]

Are you aware of the timeline and events that led to the drop on wall street.

Yes, in detail

Recall that the crash began to occur when Congress refused to pass the bailout bill the first time.

No.

June - Market hovers around 13000.
June, July - Housing prices continue to fall, oil is $140/bbl. Housing directs increasing attention Fannie and Freddie w/ frequen articles appearing over concerns on their five trillion dollar mortgage book; their stock falls steeply all summer.
Sept 8 - Fannie/Freddie seized. 11,000
Sept 15 - Sept 17 Lehman Bro. files Chap 11., AIG 1st help. 11,400->10,600
Sept 18 - Paulson/Bernanke ask Congress for large bailout 10,750->11,000
Sept 24 - 1st tentative bailout agreement announced, later to fail. 10875
Sept 29 - House defeats bailout. 11,000 -> 10,500
Oct 3 - Congress approves bailout plan 10,500 -> 10,300.
After the plan is approved, we get:
Oct 6 - Oct 10 10,000 -> 8,500. More credit locks up.
Oct 13 - Injection of bailout into major banks 8,700

Yes, and a meteor could hit the planet, but that has nothing to do with the current problems.

Raising taxes at the height of a recession will have nothing to do with the current problems? On what model is that based? Hoover? Obama has proposed much more than just a roll back of Bush era taxes. Now on the table, for this year, are Bush roll back, additional income taxes, dividend taxes, carbon taxes, capital gains taxes.

 

[Astronuc]

EDIT: CRAP, I typed up a long post and the computer lost it on me! (ARGH!). Oh well will be back in a bit.

Use a text editor for longs posts, e.g. TextPad, or MS NotePad or WordPad.

Sometimes before I hit submit, I'll do a Cntrl+a (Select all) and Cntrl-c (Copy), just in case.

 

[mheslep]

NEW YORK - Wall Street set aside some of its worries about the financial system Thursday as governments stepped up efforts to help struggling banks.

Stocks rose moderately, extending a back-and-forth pattern shown throughout the week. ...

Apparently the AP took a long lunch, stocks http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI", DJ down 89 pts for Thursday, and more for the week so far.

 

[hokie1]

Sorry. I'm not on Rush Limbaugh's mailing list.

The facts of the matter are that the Republicans have systematically undermined regulatory oversight and let the thieves into the larder. They have violated the very understanding that the founding fathers had about the need for checks and balances. And now Bush and Cheney are skulking in retirement. History will clearly lay the blame at their feet, despite the most earnest efforts of people like Limbaugh to write it differently.

Limbaugh. Oh that's funny. Here I thought you were just an uneducated liberal. I didn't know this was a tongue in cheek comment. Very funny.

Of course you knew that 2 Democrat presidents ago the airline industry, the trucking industry, and the rail industry were deregulated. And you knew that at the end of that presidency people had 21% mortgages and were unable to make payments. Then under Clinton the telecoms were deregulated and electric utilities were deregulated. California is still paying for that! Clinton must be skulking with Bush and Cheney.

And don't forget about Clinton deregulating banking and finance. That was a biggy coming on the heels of the Savings and Loan deregulation. All of those overstated earnings being used by corporate officers to make tidy windfall profits all thanks to Bill Clinton and his Democratic cronies in Congress.

History is history and you either lied about it or have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Astronuc]

Apparently the AP took a long lunch, stocks http://www.google.com/finance?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI", DJ down 89 pts for Thursday, and more for the week so far.

The Dow 30 were up this morning. They opened at 7,269.06, which was up from yesterday's close of 7,191.48. They peaked around 10:48 at ~7400 before drifting down to close at 7,182.08.

Bank of America (BAC) and JP Morgan Chase (JPM) were up, but Citigroup (C) was down. Even GE rebounded to $9.10, which is a real bargain. At $1.24 annual dividend, that an annual return of 13.70%. All of those folks with their spare $thousands and $millions should be soaking up GE.

NASDAQ was down 33.96, or -2.38% to 1,391.47.

 

[mheslep]

The Dow 30 were up this morning. They opened at 7,269.06, which was up from yesterday's close of 7,191.48. They peaked around 10:48 at ~7400 before drifting down to close at 7,182.08.

Bank of America (BAC) and JP Morgan Chase (JPM) were up, but Citigroup (C) was down. Even GE rebounded to $9.10, which is a real bargain. At $1.24 annual dividend, that an annual return of 13.70%. All of those folks with their spare $thousands and $millions should be soaking up GE.

No concerns about the financial side of GE? Good as that yield is, that is still a stock not a bond. Unlike the bond, one can't just sit on it until maturity and the dividend is not fixed like a bond rate. Immelt et al can change it when they like. Thus selling the stock in the future is a consideration.

GE, In millions:

Cash from Investing Activities -40,901.00 -40,901.00 -69,504.00

http://www.google.com/finance?q=GE
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your buy recommendation but I am curious about the considerations.

Edit:
Dear Sir,
I'm very sorry, but I must decline to renew my subscription to The Astronuc Stock Picker news letter. Not that I can necessarily do any better.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123575953983996113.html#mod=testMod"

General Electric Co. has decided to cut its quarterly stock dividend by two-thirds to 10 cents a share as the conglomerate looks to save $9 billion a year and maintain its top-tier credit rating...GE shares were trading off 4.5% at $8.69 on the New York Stock Exchange.

 

[WheelsRCool]

Okay, bit of a looong post here:

Regarding the OP and Jindall,

1) We're one month into the Presidency of President Obama. No one knows who the Republicans are going to put forward.

2) don't judge a candidate solely by how they appear. Yes, how a candidate looks and sounds counts a lot, which IMO doesn't say a whole lot about the masses, but also count substance. Jindall is a smart guy, look at his credentials.

Yes, and a meteor could hit the planet, but that has nothing to do with the current problems. Fix the source of the problem and the rest will take care of itself. The stock markets will remain volatile until the credit and housing markets are stable.

I really find this all quite amazing. The Republicans have all but destroyed the world's economy but people still defend their model. Reminds me a bit of defending bloodletting or astrology - in spite of the evidence, we still find the faithful.

There is a lot of mis-understanding about this whole issue of deregulation, oversight, prosperity, etc...this argument that this crises was caused by "Republican deregulation" is, I would not say 100% incorrect, but definitely not correct either, and far too simple over a very complex thing. This implication that the deregulation from the Reagan era was bad and needs to be reversed shows a lot of lack understanding about just what resulted from said deregulation I think.

On a side note, if one looks, it is not the mostly unregulated major private-equity firms and hedge funds, which have been criticized as being "unregulated banks" by some, that have collapsed; it was the highly-regulated investment banks. Some of the private equity/hedge fund firms are turning out to have been shams, and some have had to be liquidated due to too much exposure to the housing crises, but I mean the big ones aren't all collapsing like flies on Wall Street the way the major investment banks have.

But deregulation accomplished an incredible amount of things:

Finance: Finance is one of the most important, if not THE most important, thing required for a capitalist, free-market economy to generate prosperity and wealth for its citizens. It is literally the throat of any thriving free-market, capitalist economy. A free, functioning financial sector of an economy is absolutely vital to generate good economic growth and wealth for the citizenry, and it is precisely because the United States has this type of financial sector, because of a very developed financial market infrastructure, that the U.S. economy consistently kicks the crap out of the rest of the world economically. Remember, no matter how brilliant or talented an entrepreneur is, they cannot make their ideas work without access to finance. Finance is what allows people to get their ideas turned into companies and so forth. Thus finance is very important.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of misconceptions about finance, such as that it is a tool solely of the rich, that it solely benefits the rich, and that finance is an evil profession. There is some partial truth to this, but only when the financial market infrastructure is under-developed, thus making it where access to finance is far more limited. When this happens, finance does literally become a tool of the rich that mostly benefits the rich, but that is simply because limited infrastructure limits how the risk can be spread. Thus, no one will finance any individual or enterprise unless said individual or enterprise has a lot of capital to provide collateral for the lender. What rich person in their right mind will lend millions of dollars to a single person with no collateral? With a well-developed financial market infrastructure, however, all of these incentives change, as there are suddenly many new creative ways to finance individuals who themselves do not have much collateral, by spreading the risk over a wide amount of different things. This thus makes finance far more accessible to the middle-class and poor, which allows for a lot more wealth creation.

Heavy regulations prevent this. They are essentially a boot on the throat of the country's economy, on its financial sector. When this happens, wealth creation is far more limited as far fewer individuals can gain access to finance. Prior to deregulation, we saw this in how building a fortune took far longer. Throughout most of the twentieth century, when finance was far more limited, ntrepreneurs often had to scrimp and save for years just to start their business, and then once started, building it was a slow, steady process. You would have to grow it store by store, truck by truck, and plow the earnings back into the business. Becoming a wealthy entrepreneur before forty was virtually unheard of (it could happen, but very rarely; if Ray Kroc had been in his twenties when he started McDonald's, he'd have become very wealthy, very young). IPOs were rare and few. Most people became employees. You went to work for a big, bureaucratic corporation and began working your way up through the bureaucracy. Creating your own company was a lot less common and much tougher to do.

With deregulation, however, all this changed. Suddenly, access to finance became much more democratized; the boot was taken off the throat of the economy. Also deregulation of the technology sectors added this as well. Suddenly, there was all this opportunity for innovation and wealth creation, and a lot more access to finance to do it. Advanced technology and much wider access to finance, thanks to deregulation of the financial markets, led to an explosion of new wealth (and thus job) creation. People could become wealthy far more quickly as well. An individual could come up with an idea, build the business, and sell it oftentimes all within five to ten years, and become wealthy. Building extreme wealth (hundreds of millions) could take anywhere from ten to twenty years.

All of this is because of the much wider availability of finance that resulted from deregulation. In places like Europe, however, such access to finance still doesn't exist. They over-regulate their financial markets and economy and also tax their citizens to death. They punish success and reward failure and laziness, and as a result, their economies consistently remain in the toilet in comparison to the United States. Over the past twenty-eight years, we have seen more wealth created than was created by humanity over the previous two-hundred years. We have seen an extreme explosion in job creation and a significant rise in the standard of living for everyone. iPods, cellphones, Internet, computers, laptops, etc...all thanks to deregulation of finance and technology.

Remember, finance is one of THE most important tools for wealth creation and for allowing the lower-earners to be able to rise up in society. If you want to start a business, you have to be able to finance it initially until you get rich, in which case then you can bankroll your second one, but even then, financing may still be required. When finance is limited, as is the case in nations with under-developed financial market infrastructures, there is kind of a glass wall between the rich and the poor and middle class. The poor and middle-class cannot rise up easily even if they have the talents and know-how because finance is so limited. But a well-developed financial market infrastructure that makes finance cheap and available to entrepreneurs allows anyone with the skill, talents, and drive to become rich.

And it is also the above reasons why capitalism struggles to get going in Third World countries, because one has to develop such a financial market infrastructure, along with a political and banking and media infrastructure, etc...all of which takes time and is difficult. America itself is still in a sense experimenting with this.

Corporate Efficiency and Shareholder Accountability: A second thing that resulted from deregulation was corporate efficiency and shareholder accountability. Prior to deregulation, American corporations were far more bloated, bureaucratic, inefficient, and wasteful. And shareholder accountability was a side joke. Corporate CEOs ran their publicly-owned corporatins oftentimes like their own little kingdoms, and they cared about the four big P's: Power, Pay, Perks, and Prestige. Shareholder accountability wasn't much discussed, or cared about. Corporate bureaucrats cared much more about golf, their private jets, and all the other nice perks they got.

People think corporate CEOs are corrupt today, they need to take a look at how they were back prior to deregulation. Things like CEO pay and so forth were much more hidden from the public. Deregulaton changed all of this. The deregulation of the financial and banking sectors launched a revolution in finance and corporate governance, in which suddenly big corporations had to work at becoming efficient and profitable, or else they would go out of business, or be taken over via a hostile takeover.

It smashed through the old Republican establishment of Wall Street (yes, the old-line big business Republican establishment HATED Ronald Reagan's financial market deregulation and resisted it at every turn. Rudy Giuliani was one of the main prosecutors of these financial types when the old-line establishment launched a war with them). It got rid of all the lethargic, lazy, inept corporate managements as well.

We saw the rise of the so-called corporate raiders, who played a big role in this. They are often portrayed as scoundrels who went and took good, profitable companies and ripped them apart, selling them off for profit, and putting all of the employees out of work. The reality, however, is a good deal different. Corporate raiders would rarely go after a corporation that was streamlined, efficient, and profitable. They looked for the ones that were big, bloated, and inefficient, the ones that they could greatly improve shareholder value for.

One strategy for this was to gain control of a company, load it up with a lot of debt, and thus force the corporate board to focus on paying down the debt, and thus on being profitable. Without much debt, corporate CEOs oftentimes went on huge spending sprees, making bad and costly acquisitions which did not work right and messed up the company. This all stopped with loading up the companies with debt. Sometimes it also meant taking a corporation and selling off all of the different divisions as the entire corporation itself was pretty much unsalvageable. But the divisions themselves could make good individual companies. Thus the people in the different divisions kept their jobs, while the upper-management itself lost their jobs.

While both of these types of strategies meant streamlining of corporations and firing people here and there, it also meant that the corporations became far more streamlined, efficient, profitable, and large. And this meant the people not fired saw their wages increase more so because the productivity of their work increased, which drove up wages. These processes led to American corporations becoming the most streamlined, efficient, profitable, and largest in the world.

This is also likely why American corporate CEOs have seen their pay amounts skyrocket so much higher than their European counterparts. Because European corporations are not nearly as large, productive, efficient, etc...as the American ones, and thus their CEOs command much less money to run them. But when you need someone to head a multi-billion corporation in the U.S., you need to pay them a lot of money (if you want someone to run a $100 billion corporation, paying them $50 million a year is small potatoes).

Corporations also became far more accountable to their shareholders. Things like CEO pay and so forth became much more widely available to the public. This isn't to say corporate governance is perfected or there is no corruption anymore, far from it. But things improved a great deal from what they were.

 

[WheelsRCool]

Universities and Corporations Feed Each Other: This one many don't realize, but a key factor also in the superiority and dominance of the United States of America is our universities. The reason being because our universities get so much money. They are not like the ones in Europe and around the rest of the world which need to rely much more on government or funding. American universities get tons of money from corporations and wealthy alumni, which then allows them to have the best facilities and to conduct cutting-edge research, which then leads to more advancements, and thus wealth, and also entrepreneurs who spring forth.

This creates a feed-back loop, because the American universities, being the best in the world, with the best equipment and labs and facilities, then produce all sorts of research and products and inventions and entrepreneurs as well, which contributes to the dominance of American corporations and also lots more entrepreneurship, which then leads to more wealth giving to the universities from said entrepreneurs, alumni, corporations, etc...

Another thing is that when a country, or continent, has a lot of very intelligent scientists and engineers, but those scientists and engineers cannot get the equipment and facilities to conduct their research, they are going to head to the country that has these resources, which is the United States of America. The same goes for entrepreneurs. Thus in addition to having superior universities, we also pluck all of the top talent from the other nations to take advantage of those universities.

The Europeans, who love to punish success, reward failure, tax their individuals and businesses to death, and regulate them to death, enjoy no such advantages. Their corporations are big, slow, inefficient, bureaucratic, and bloated, everything ranging from Airbus (which they subsidize) to their private equity firms. Their big corporations are limited in competition from aspiring upstarts because entrepreneurship is more hamstringed, meanwhile wealth creation is little. But in low-tax, low regulation, free-enterprise-loving, entrepreneurial America, it allows us to kick the world's butt in wealth creation. Or at least, it did. With this new administration, which is going to raise taxes, increase regulations, and dramatically increase the size of government, we may be heading for status as a second-rate economic power it seems, unfortunately.

Private Charitable Giving: Private charity giving skyrocketed because of all of this resultant wealth creation. And not just among wealthy people. The American people are the most charitable in the world. That is because we do not punish success by stealing people's money for wealth redistribution and encourage wealth creation.

Anyhow, back to the topic of deregulation, thus to make the blanket claim that deregulation was bad and thus needs to be undone is simply wrong and ultimately dangerous IMO. This however does not mean that certain areas of the financial markets may not be too unregulated, however many areas may also simply need RE-regulation, and others less regulation, for example, repeal of the grossly over-burdening Sarbannes-Oxley regulations.

The important thing is to keep in mind all of the good things that have come from deregulation when trying to fix any possible bad things about it. Messing with the financial markets is like performing throat surgery. You've got to be really careful about what you're doing.

Also, there seems to be a major confusion regarding regulation and oversight. Regulation is not oversight. It can be one form of oversight, but regulation unto itself does not always increase oversight. As we saw with shareholder accountability, deregulation actually increased oversight in that sense. Some seem to think we went from having adequate regulations to no regulations over the financial markets. This is simply untrue. The financial markets are very regulated. We went from having grossly-over-burdening regulations to lighter, more efficient regulations, which freed up capital and entrepreneurship.

Right now, the SEC simply doesn't have the manpower to oversee all of the data being put forth from the current regulations. In other words, the regulation itself is plenty adequate, but the oversight is not. Oversight and regulation, we again see, are not the same thing. There are also other examples in which government increased regulations over certain industries, only to see oversight itself not improve one bit.

There also is a bad misconception that when conservatives call for little to no government regulation, they are calling for no oversight. Oversight is most definitely needed, but it does not need to come from the government. Sometimes it does, but many times it doesn't. Oversight encompasses many things, and the more developed a nation's financial market infrastructure, the more oversight there will be from a variety of sources.

Similarly, when conservatives call for limited government, they are calling for just that: limited government. Conservatives are not anti-government, per se. They understand government is required, and they thus stand for good government that is limited in scope and power and ability; the same goes for regulations. Conservatives understand that light, efficient regulation is required. You try to be as laissez-faire as possible, but regulations are still required. You just try to keep them as light and efficient and un-burdening as possible.

The Left operate on the assumption that the free-market can work fine, as long as the government guides it (as if government could possibly know how to guide or "fine-tune" an economy, especially one as complex as the modern U.S.) and as long as all industries operate under the (supposedly) watchful eye of government regulation. The reality is such regulation hamstrings entrepreneurship, helps big corporations by limiting their competition from upstarts, thus allowing them to dominate their industries, and oftentimes doesn't increase oversight at all.

To return to that pre-phase of high regulation and high taxes and a welfare state would be disastrous and turn us into a second-rate economic power overnight.

But what is needed and to take a good, hard look at the whole thing. The SEC I would say probably needs more power and ability to be a watchdog of the financial markets, as the financial markets DO need regulation, it just needs to be light and efficient regulation.

Regarding the exact causes of this crises, they are various, and the notion that Republicans stood hardcore against any and all regulation is wrong:

1) Fannie/Freddie: The Bush Administration tried repeatedly to increase regulations on these two quasi-governmental institutions. The Democrats resisted them every step of the way, one person in this being Barack Obama, who was the second-largest recipient in campaign contributions from this.

Some Republicans I believe were even accused of being racist for questioning Fannie Mae so much when it was headed by Franklin Raines.

2) Federal Reserve - The Federal Reserve made a big mistake it turns out in having cut interest rates so low, which fueled the housing bubble.

3) Certain legislation, such as the Community Reinvesment Act, which made banks have to loan to people they should not have.

4) Lack of proper oversight (not necessarily regulation, but oversight).

The facts of the matter are that the Republicans have systematically undermined regulatory oversight and let the thieves into the larder. They have violated the very understanding that the founding fathers had about the need for checks and balances. And now Bush and Cheney are skulking in retirement. History will clearly lay the blame at their feet, despite the most earnest efforts of people like Limbaugh to write it differently.

I disagree, considering the above. And I think President Bush will likely be seen as one of the main men who worked to try and prevent a certain aspect of this crises. President Bush also kept us out of that ridiculous Kyoto Protocol and cut taxes in the early 2000s to pull us out of recession; if we'd followed the Leftist model of higher taxes and Kyoto as they wanted in the early 2000s, we might have gone into a deep recession right then, along with infringements on our national sovereignty.

Of course you knew that 2 Democrat presidents ago the airline industry, the trucking industry, and the rail industry were deregulated. And you knew that at the end of that presidency people had 21% mortgages and were unable to make payments. Then under Clinton the telecoms were deregulated and electric utilities were deregulated. California is still paying for that! Clinton must be skulking with Bush and Cheney.

Airline and trucking deregulation were overall pretty good. Trains I have no idea about as AMTRAC is nationalized I believe...? Trucking exploded because of deregulation. The airlines were fine through the 80s and the 90s, I don't know what is wrong with them right now, but I think one thing that makes travel bad is that the airport security is nationalized, which makes it slow and inefficient and devoid of all common-sense.

Deregulation of telecoms created an explosion of innovations and new technologies in that industry as well, as for electric utilities, in California anyhow, that is a mis-conception that they were deregulated and everything went haywire. They actually were re-regulated, and the regulations included price controls. The utilities couldn't charge what was required from the citizens, and supply-demand got all messed up, and you saw things like rolling blackouts.

In the end, the citizens ended up paying the real price for these utilities anyhow through the blackouts and also because they had to be bailed out.

Regarding President Clinton, he tried to govern as a Leftist in his first two years, which lost him the Congress. He declared, "The era of Big Government is over," to which he then went about trying to get a huge government spending package passed. After he lost the Congress, he governed from the center and we saw a period of low taxes, NAFTA completed, fiscal conservatism, and welfare reform.

 

[Astronuc]

The key question becomes - what is reasonable regulation?

It doesn't do any good to regulate (impose sanctions) after the fact, i.e. after the money disappears and people go without. We see than now.

There are hints of irregularities or even illegalities that contributed to the current problem, but good luck in trying to prove it.

Someone told me about an FBI warning in 2003 that there was widespread mortgage fraud, but apparently there was no concerted effort to root it out. That was when Freddie Mac had to restate their overstated earnings.

There were alarm bells going off in 2003 that there were problems in the economy - yet there was no effort to tell the markets to be more cautious. Easy/cheap money encouraged people to take more risk or essentially violate the law.

. . .
When a CNBC host asked Paulson what he thought the losses would be, he said, “We didn’t sit there and figure this out with a calculator.” In truth, there’s no way to know, because the ultimate number will depend on what happens with the housing market, and on what activities Fannie and Freddie undertake at the direction of their new owner: you! Estimates, which depend on whether you talk to a G.S.E. friend or foe, range from as low as $30 billion for Fannie to well over the $100 billion the government has allocated to each G.S.E.

But a few things are clear. One is that the argument that Fannie and Freddie caused our entire economic calamity is absurd. Yes, the volume of bad mortgages that Fannie and Freddie bought may have blown the bubble bigger than it otherwise would have been. But to put the blame entirely on Fannie and Freddie is to exempt all the other players, including the mortgage originators who sold subprime mortgages and Wall Street, which packaged up the bad mortgages and sold them to investors around the globe.

Another thing that’s clear is that the critics were both right and very wrong about Fannie and Freddie. Yes, their executives and shareholders made fortunes in the glory years, and, yes, taxpayers are now bearing the brunt of whatever losses there are. Just as critics always warned, it’s “the privatization of profits and the socialization of risks.” But what the critics missed is that that wasn’t unique to Fannie and Freddie. It turns out our entire financial sector was operating under that same premise—and to a far greater degree than Fannie and Freddie.
. . . .

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/fannie-and-freddie200902

As the mortgage market evolved, and finance grew more sophisticated, Fannie and Freddie came to make their money in two ways. One was supposedly conservative: they were paid a small fee by the mortgage-makers to guarantee that the homeowner wouldn’t default. And for most of their history, they wouldn’t buy just any loans, but rather loans that conformed to certain size limits (thereby excluding so-called jumbo loans, more than $417,000) and fairly strict credit standards. Then they repackaged these loans into what are known as mortgage-backed securities, and sold them to other investors. The new investors were willing to take the interest-rate risk, but didn’t have to worry about evaluating each and every homeowner’s ability to pay—a task of enormous proportions—because Fannie and Freddie guaranteed that. Today, this is the $3.7 trillion in mortgages Fannie and Freddie guarantee.

The other way Fannie and Freddie made money was when they began to repurchase their own mortgage-backed securities, and to buy similar securities that were created by Wall Street without the G.S.E. guarantee, and hold them in a portfolio. Then Fannie and Freddie pocketed the difference—what Greenspan called “the big fat gap”—between what the mortgages yielded and the companies’ own cost of borrowing funds. This was an immensely profitable business: Wall Street analysts estimated that it provided up to three-fourths of Fannie’s and Freddie’s earnings, and today the portfolio business comprises most of the $1.5 trillion in mortgages that Fannie and Freddie own.

Fannie and Freddie took advantage of cheap capital. There perhaps should be more regulation on that.


AMTRAK is a government-owned corporation.

 

[LowlyPion]

Jindall is a smart guy, look at his credentials.

Look at his speech again.

Last night he wasn't as smart as he was inept. That performance can't be useful to his ambitions - long or short term. His overly simplistic examples were poorly considered and were delivered in an unfortunate condescending sing-song cadence that looked sophomoric. The shame of it is that he evidently practiced that speech and never picked up on how bad he was, or how silly his examples were.

Coupled with his hypocritical stance on stimulus funds, hiding out at Disney World until the fall out of his speech is old news looks like the only smart thing he has done.

 

[mheslep]

...Coupled with his hypocritical stance on stimulus funds, ...

There it is, the strangle hold of the left. 'You were enabled only by the good graces of the state in the past, without the state you would be nothing now. Your current old-speak notions of federalism, or self reliance, or individual responsibility are quaint, hypocritical and ungrateful'.

 

[LowlyPion]

Uh-oh. The simplistic heroic vignettes that Jindal offered up weren't entirely true?

But now, a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/jindal_admits_katrina_story_was_false.php

The Government get out of my way homily romanticized and regurgitated for self serving ends?

Oh Bobby. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

 

[mheslep]

Uh-oh. The simplistic heroic vignettes that Jindal offered up weren't entirely true?

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/jindal_admits_katrina_story_was_false.php

The Government get out of my way homily romanticized and regurgitated for self serving ends?

Oh Bobby. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

You posted to quickly, Politico posted a retraction.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0209/Jindal_aide_Story_was_set_after_Katrina.html?showall
'During Katrina' has to be stretched to mean during the flooding and rescue operations some days after the physical storm, but otherwise there is no factual contradiction to the Governor's tale in any respect.

 

[LowlyPion]

You posted to quickly, Politico posted a retraction.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0209/Jindal_aide_Story_was_set_after_Katrina.html?showall
'During Katrina' has to be stretched to mean during the flooding and rescue operations some days after the physical storm, but otherwise there is no factual contradiction to the Governor's tale in any respect.

That's not a retraction. That account is also linked referenced and excerpted from in the story I posted.

As to what Lee may have said or not ... he's conveniently passed away as far as Jindal's account is concerned and can neither confirm nor deny Jinal's role in the episode.

 

[mheslep]

That's not a retraction.

Clearly

UPDATE: I'd initially misunderstood Sellers to be saying Jindal and Lee didn't meet while rescue efforts were still underway.

is a retraction.

 

[LowlyPion]

You posted to quickly, Politico posted a retraction.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0209/Jindal_aide_Story_was_set_after_Katrina.html?showall
'During Katrina' has to be stretched to mean during the flooding and rescue operations some days after the physical storm, but otherwise there is no factual contradiction to the Governor's tale in any respect.

You're the one missing the point. How could I have posted too quickly when the link that you cite for that (of a subsequent retraction) was already a part of the article that I posted?

As it stands talking about the events the week after the storm is not nearly as dramatic as the heroic image Bobby apparently would have hoped to have impressed people with as being more immediate. His conceit is no worse of course than Hilary claiming to be ducking bullets in Bosnia.

In the race for 2012 it's likely moot, as Jindal looks to have delivered such a condescendingly simplistic monologue trying to inflame the base as to have turned even Conservatives numb. Fudging a few facts isn't likely to matter or be remembered as he reacquaints himself with lowered expectations.

 

[LowlyPion]

Meanwhile, another Jindal faux pas:

Alaskans fume over Jindal volcano-monitoring gripe
...Jindal appears to have exaggerated by tenfold the $140 million he said was destined for the nation's volcano observatories.

Nearly all of that amount -- included in the stimulus bill for funding U.S. Geological Survey projects -- will go to other USGS functions nationwide, such as repairing facilities and mapping, said John Eichelberger, who heads the agency's Volcano Hazards Program in Reston, Va.

Only about $14 million will be spent on "monitoring volcanoes," mostly in Alaska, he said.

http://www.adn.com/news/politics/story/702875.html

 

[LowlyPion]

And still more commentary on Jindal from Ed Rollins:

ROLLINS: I would say this was a good night for Sarah Palin.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/president-obama/gop-strategist-jindals-speech-was-painful-and-a-good-night-for-sarah-palin/

Egads. Surely the Republicans won't be that desperate for another shellacking in 2012.

 

[Cyrus]

I saw an interview with Jindal on 60 mins today, and the more I learn about him, the less I want to know.

a.) he's a creationist that wants to teach Intellegent Design in classrooms
b.) He turned down harvard medical school and law school. (Probably should have stayed in school and learned about evolution...)
c.) He legally changed his name to 'bobby' because he liked the character from the brandy bunch growing up.....talk about sucking up to voters with a crock of BS.
e.) He's ashamed of his indian culture, so he says he's JOHN Q AMERIKUN HOW YALL FOLKS DOIN?
f.) His wife is hot.
g.) His wife is hot.

This guy comes off as a sack of crap, even for a politician. He's like palin, probably a really nice guy to know. Not to run things.

 

[Cyrus]

Plus, this guy needs to eat some food...

 

[Werg22]

I saw an interview with Jindal on 60 mins today, and the more I learn about him, the less I want to know.

a.) he's a creationist that wants to teach Intellegent Design in classrooms
b.) He turned down harvard medical school and law school. (Probably should have stayed in school and learned about evolution...)
c.) He legally changed his name to 'bobby' because he liked the character from the brandy bunch growing up.....talk about sucking up to voters with a crock of BS.
e.) He's ashamed of his indian culture, so he says he's JOHN Q AMERIKUN HOW YALL FOLKS DOIN?
f.) His wife is hot.
g.) His wife is hot.

This guy comes off as a sack of crap, even for a politician. He's like palin, probably a really nice guy to know. Not to run things.

What's surprising is that he earned his bachelor degree in biology, so he should be well informed on the principles of evolution.

Anyways, the guy's got nothing on Obama.

 

[mheslep]

I saw an interview with Jindal on 60 mins today, and the more I learn about him, the less I want to know.

a.) he's a creationist that wants to teach Intellegent Design in classrooms
b.) He turned down harvard medical school and law school. (Probably should have stayed in school and learned about evolution...)
c.) He legally changed his name to 'bobby' because he liked the character from the brandy bunch growing up.....talk about sucking up to voters with a crock of BS.
e.) He's ashamed of his indian culture, so he says he's JOHN Q AMERIKUN HOW YALL FOLKS DOIN?
f.) His wife is hot.
g.) His wife is hot.

He passed by law school to attend Oxford on a Rhodes. I don't think what this country needs is yet another Yale lawyer to go along with the one million it already has.

This guy comes off as a sack of crap, even for a politician...

Interesting, I had the same opinion of this unsubstantiated post.

Gov. Jindal seems to have turned the corner on corruption in a state that most thought hopelessly stricken with it. By most reports he's real, he's smart, he's honest, and doesn't to much preening in the mirror. Maybe w), x), y), z) are reserved for those character traits.

 

[Werg22]

He passed by law school to attend Oxford on a Rhodes. I don't think what this country needs is yet another Yale lawyer to go along with the one million it already has.
Interesting, I had the same opinion of this unsubstantiated post.

Gov. Jindal seems to have turned the corner on corruption in a state that most thought hopelessly stricken with it. By most reports he's real, he's smart, he's honest, and doesn't to much preening in the mirror. Maybe w), x), y), z) are reserved for those character traits.

And what do you make of his beliefs in exorcism and his advocacy for the teaching of intelligent design in schools?

 

[turbo]

And what do you make of his beliefs in exorcism and his advocacy for the teaching of intelligent design in schools?

Jindal not only claimed to have exorcised a demon from a female friend - he also claimed in a conservative Catholic journal that the procedure cured her of cancer. So much for his "intelligence".

 

[LowlyPion]

So he ridicules the railroad part of the stimulus package, and then the state will still apply for a portion of the funds?

Louisiana to seek New Orleans-Baton Rouge passenger rail line from federal stimulus pot that Jindal called wasteful
by Robert Travis Scott, The Times-Picayune
Saturday February 28, 2009, 8:00 AM

BATON ROUGE - Louisiana's transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president's economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night.

The high-speed rail line, a topic of discussion for years, would require $110 million to upgrade existing freight lines and terminals to handle a passenger train operation, said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/louisiana_to_seek_new_orleansb.html

 

[Cyrus]

He passed by law school to attend Oxford on a Rhodes. I don't think what this country needs is yet another Yale lawyer to go along with the one million it already has.
Interesting, I had the same opinion of this unsubstantiated post.

Gov. Jindal seems to have turned the corner on corruption in a state that most thought hopelessly stricken with it. By most reports he's real, he's smart, he's honest, and doesn't to much preening in the mirror. Maybe w), x), y), z) are reserved for those character traits.

lol, ok...whatever you say there buddy. A guy who supports ID and has claimed to perform an exorcism while curing cancer seem's like a nutjob to me.

 

[hokie1]

Aside from voting against slavery Lincoln didn't have that productive a legislative career. Writing noteworthy legislation is a rather curious metric to judge a leader. What legislation did Washington initiate before becoming President?

Education is a must.

To begin with Lincoln did not vote against slavery in the executive branch, not legislative.

Writing noteworthy legislation is the most important metric for a person in the legislative branch of government.

Washington was not a legislative member of Congress. He was in the military. He would be measured by his leadership in the military before his election.

A person can be judged by their history. A job seeker fills out an application or resume to apply for a job today. If your job was in the legislature then your work as a legislator is the metric.

How silly to suggest that your work experience is a "curious metric."

Yet another flip-flop in decision making! Are you going to claim that Obama has never flip-flopped? He just flip-flopped again and this time it is on earmarks.

 

[Karl G.]

Of course, Jindal promotes teaching a 'balanced' version of creationism and evolution in the classroom. See the Scientific American.

 

[LowlyPion]

Jindal apparently undeterred by his disastrous speech after the President's speech to Congress, will place himself in jeopardy once again tonight speaking during/before Obama's prime time Press Conference. I sense another unfavorable comparison. Though given how pitiful his reviews were last time I doubt he can do worse than before.

Louisiana governor again speaking opposite Obama
By BEN EVANS – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will again carry the Republican mantle opposite a primetime appearance from President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h93PuGaXuabIlsfIefGAw_780GdQD974HUT02

Jindal so far has not shown himself to be even a Douglass to Obama's Lincoln.

 

[Phrak]

Obama is now responsible for all the market dynamics that were handed to him after 8 years of negligence. Didn't you get the memo?

Come on, Turbo. It was hardly neglected. The prime rate didn't just go down on it's own. It may have been bad policy, but not neglect. Any negligence in efforts to cool the stock market occurred in 1994-2000. I don't recall any legislation passed in those years to prevent a market bubble. People were too enamored with their capital gains to chill-down that which put $dollar$ sign in their eyes.

 

[rootX]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW...gle.com/?hl=en&tab=wv&feature=player_embedded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Republicans need to have some one like the above guy if not Obama.

 

[Phrak]

Writing noteworthy legislation is the most important metric for a person in the legislative branch of government.

We're talking law students and interns, right?