McCain on the Mortgage Crisis

jimed14

slightofjeff wrote:

What's funny is, I actually get where Gramm is coming from. I went into that, either in this thread or somewhere else.

I think if people would just turn off the news and live their lives, most of us would realize they're just fine. I certainly don't feel like I'm living in the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." My grandparents, who lived through an actual Depression, would probably try to slap me if I claimed otherwise.

"I think if people would just turn off the news and live their lives, most of us would realize they're just fine."?

Really? I mean ... really? Let's all ignore what the rich and politicians are doing to us (no party ... all of them) .... let's just stick our head in the sand?

Let's not worry about wars being fought, gas prices tripling, national debt, the housing crisis ... it'll all just wash away cyclicly? REALLY?

Solat13

slightofjeff wrote:

I have a feeling you'll be voting with 2 percent of the country for the rest of your natural life ... not that there's anything wrong with that, of course

I hope you're wrong someday.

But I can't help but to agree.

ACCBootlegGoddess

slightofjeff wrote:

Honestly ... I don't think there really IS an answer. Politicans like to talk about changing this or that ... but the economy is it's own beast, and it just has to right itself on its own.

That's why Obama and McCain both have been downright incoherent on this issue of late. There isn't a good answer, but they have to pretend they have one. Nothing they do is likely to fix anything. You've just got to try to ride out the storm, and maybe try to figure out a way not to let these things happen again.

And also, IMO, for God's sake no more bailouts.

LOL You know what...I couldn't agree more.

Tho I will say this...I do think that whomever is in office needs to focus a little more on domestic policy then foreign policy. I'm not saying leave the troops out to dry or anything...just saying be say 60-40 domestic to foreign rather than like 80-20 foreign to domestic like GW.

digster

slightofjeff wrote:

I think if people would just turn off the news and live their lives, most of us would realize they're just fine. I certainly don't feel like I'm living in the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." My grandparents, who lived through an actual Depression, would probably try to slap me if I claimed otherwise.

People of vastly different backgrounds are facing vastly different circumstances, in vastly different parts of this country. I mentioned this before, but I don't understand how somebody's economic mindset would be that "well, I don't feel like I'm doing that much worse, so that must mean that most people elsewhere are OK, too." I mean, there's 300 million other people in this country; you can't just poll yourself. I'm sorry that I brought it up earlier and am repeating myself, but I can't get my head around that notion that if people would really just smell the fresh air they'd be fine, and that since you yourself are better off the country is as well. You have an individual story and pushing your story onto the economic stability of every other person in this country is a wrong move, and a disastrous way to view the state of our country.

jimed14

ACCBootlegGoddess wrote:

LOL You know what...I couldn't agree more.

Tho I will say this...I do think that whomever is in office needs to focus a little more on domestic policy then foreign policy. I'm not saying leave the troops out to dry or anything...just saying be say 60-40 domestic to foreign rather than like 80-20 foreign to domestic like GW.

Let me say this ... McCain, Obama, Barr, Nadar .... whomever it is ... if their total focus of domestic + foreign actually equals 100% ... well, we're ALREADY doing WAY better than we have it now!

Jan 20 cannot come soon enough.

slightofjeff

jimed14 wrote:

"I think if people would just turn off the news and live their lives, most of us would realize they're just fine."?

Really? I mean ... really? Let's all ignore what the rich and politicians are doing to us (no party ... all of them) .... let's just stick our head in the sand?

Let's not worry about wars being fought, gas prices tripling, national debt, the housing crisis ... it'll all just wash away cyclicly? REALLY?

That's not what I'm saying at all.

What I'm saying is, the 24-hour news cycle has a way of convincing us that things are worse than they really are.

I watch the news all day ... and I hear them tell me all this horrible news about the stock market ... and allegedly the economy is tanking ... and everybody is losing their jobs and their houses ... and .... Lehman Brothers just filed Chapter 11 ... and the government had to bailout AIG ... and ... and

It's all bad news, to be sure, but guess what?

Everybody I know is fine. Nobody has lost their job. Nobody has lost their houses. Most of us are doing substantially better than we were eight years ago. Where are all these destitute people I keep hearing about? I don't doubt there are some people out there who are hurting, through no fault of their own, and those people definitely need and deserve government assistance.

But to listen to the news, you'd think everyone is standing in a bread line. That just isn't the case, and it isn't going to be the case.

This is the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?" Really? My grandparents heard that and laughed their asses off.

But people hear it, over and over, and so it must be true. And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I've got money, but I'm not buying that new car or TV, because the economy's bad." And that just makes a bad economy worse.

I mentioned in a previous post a quote from Fred Thompson, back when he claimed he wasn't going to run for president. HE said something to the effect of "I'm not going to run, because I don't want to have to spend the next year crisscrossing the country, trying to convince people they are worse off than they actually are."

That's what I'm getting at here.

jimed14

I get your point ... but ... ignoring the issues is the exact opposite of what we should do ..

the issue is ... people need to EDUCATE themselves ... and we all know, sadly, that ain't gonna happen.

slightofjeff

digster wrote:

People of vastly different backgrounds are facing vastly different circumstances, in vastly different parts of this country. I mentioned this before, but I don't understand how somebody's economic mindset would be that "well, I don't feel like I'm doing that much worse, so that must mean that most people elsewhere are OK, too." I mean, there's 300 million other people in this country; you can't just poll yourself. I'm sorry that I brought it up earlier and am repeating myself, but I can't get my head around that notion that if people would really just smell the fresh air they'd be fine, and that since you yourself are better off the country is as well. You have an individual story and pushing your story onto the economic stability of every other person in this country is a wrong move, and a disastrous way to view the state of our country.

I do get that there are people who are hurting economically. I'm not trying to pump sunshine and say everything's hunky dorey.

But I do believe, for the vast majority of us, things aren't as bad as we're being told.

digster

slightofjeff wrote:

Everybody I know is fine. Nobody has lost their job. Nobody has lost their houses. Most of us are doing substantially better than we were eight years ago. Where are all these destitute people I keep hearing about? I don't doubt there are some people out there who are hurting, through no fault of their own, and those people definitely need and deserve government assistance.

My last post, cause it's late; although I respect your viewpoint I have no understanding of the opinion you're taking on the manner. Let me tell you about some people that I know; I work with some non-profit organizations, and much of my work involves getting out-of-work or homeless individuals housing and employment opportunities. These are not just the permanent homeless; alot of lower-middle class workers are now losing the grip. It's back-breaking because there are so many applicants, so many homeless in our city. And this is only one organization in one city in the entire nation. My best friend moved in with his new wife two years ago; they're now facing possible foreclosure.

These are the people I know; that I know all these people seems to refute your notion about the lack of destitute people and dire situations in this country. I'm not going to say that due to my personal experience, the majority of people in this country are facing significant difficulty; I will say that it goes against progress to assume that since you and yours are taken care of, so goes the nation. And I think the facts, figures, and testimonies of middle-class individuals throughout this country are proof. Unemployment has skyrocketed this year so far; they're not just making this stuff up. And I think it's best to trust the large numbers of middle and working class men and women in this country who claim to be facing significant difficulties, and not say that they're fooling themselves.

slightofjeff

McCain is finally listening to me . This from a speech in Iowa (why is he in Iowa?) today:

Senator Obama talks a tough game on the financial markets but the facts tell a different story. He took more money from Fannie and Freddie than any Senator but the Democratic chairman of the committee that regulates them. He put Fannie Mae's CEO who helped create this disaster in charge of finding his Vice President. Fannie's former General Counsel is a senior advisor to his campaign. Whose side do you think he is on? When I pushed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Senator Obama was silent. He didn't lift a hand to avert this crisis. While the leaders of Fannie and Freddie were lining the pockets of his campaign, they were sowing the seeds of the financial crisis we see today and enriching themselves with millions of dollars in payments. That's not change, that's what's broken in Washington.

...

Senator Obama has never made the kind tough reform we need today. His idea of reform is what his party leaders in Congress order him to do. We tried for bipartisan ethics reform and he walked away from it because his bosses didn't want real change.

...

When AIG was bailed out, I didn't like it, but I understood it needed to be done to protect hard working Americans with insurance policies and annuities. Senator Obama didn't take a position. On the biggest issue of the day, he didn't know what to think. He may not realize it, but you don't get to vote present as President of the United States. While Senator Obama and Congressional leaders don't know what to think about the current crisis, we know what their plans are for the economy. Today Senator Obama's running mate said that raising taxes is patriotic. Raising taxes in a tough economy isn't patriotic. It's not a badge of honor. It's just dumb policy. The billions in tax increases that Senator Obama is proposing would kill even more jobs during tough economic times. I'm not going to let that happen.

slightofjeff

digster wrote:

My last post, cause it's late; although I respect your viewpoint I have no understanding of the opinion you're taking on the manner. Let me tell you about some people that I know; I work with some non-profit organizations, and much of my work involves getting out-of-work or homeless individuals housing and employment opportunities. These are not just the permanent homeless; alot of lower-middle class workers are now losing the grip. It's back-breaking because there are so many applicants, so many homeless in our city. And this is only one organization in one city in the entire nation. My best friend moved in with his new wife two years ago; they're now facing possible foreclosure.

These are the people I know; that I know all these people seems to refute your notion about the lack of destitute people and dire situations in this country. I'm not going to say that due to my personal experience, the majority of people in this country are facing significant difficulty; I will say that it goes against progress to assume that since you and yours are taken care of, so goes the nation. And I think the facts, figures, and testimonies of middle-class individuals throughout this country are proof. Unemployment has skyrocketed this year so far; they're not just making this stuff up. And I think it's best to trust the large numbers of middle and working class men and women in this country who claim to be facing significant difficulties, and not say that they're fooling themselves.

This is pretty much what I'm getting at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202415_pf.html

The numbers just don't bear out Obama's claim that we're in the worst economy since the Great Depression. But, unlike in other areas of public policy, saying it over and over might just make it come true.

digster

Well far be it from me to try to refute point by point, an economist who has the time and inclination to do this for a living. I'm a community organizer who's in danger of being let go in the next few days (but this is all mental, right?). Some things he said, though struck me not as outright lies, but avoiding some facts to better make his point. For example,

His quote:
"In a new working paper, economist Edward Leamer of UCLA's Anderson School of Management shows that changes in the unemployment rate, payroll jobs and industrial production almost precisely explain every recession as officially determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. At present, only the unemployment rate exceeds the recession threshold. The other two factors are far from it. According to Leamer's paper, we'll only fall into recession "if things get much worse.""

These points may technicially be true, but he omits some points. For one, our economy is not and cannot be measured by the same barometers of Great Depression-era America. Industrial automation has skyrocketed since that time period so many years ago. The signs of a depressed economy may have used to be that industrial production would drop along with unemployment but since companies, particularly factories and assembly lines, need less workers due to automation, those two attributes of a recession can be less irrevocably tied. One can go down without the other, and due to automation (and illegal immigration, gloablization, etc) is it that surprising that unemployment has skyrocketed without the industrial production of our country taking an equally massive hit?

About wages; he mentions that wages have not decreased during the Bush administration, and he's right. But where he mentioned inflation earlier in his article to make a point that supported his argument, he forgets to bring it up here, because it largely renders his argument entirely invalid. Wages have gone up, but inflation has outran these wage increases. Using hypothetical numbers, what good is touting a $2.00 increase in wages as a success when inflation has increased most goods by $5.00 to $10.00? I could paint a rosy picture of the economy also if I chose to ignore the facts that did not agree with my hypothesis.

His quote:
"Turmoil" in the debt markets? Sure, but we've seen plenty worse. According to the FDIC, there have been a total of 13 bank failures in 2007 and so far into 2008. There were 15 in 1999-2000, the climax of the Obama-celebrated era of Clintonian prosperity. And in recession-free 1988-89, there were 1,004 failures -- almost an order of magnitude more than today. Since the Great Depression, the average number of bank failures each year has been 94."

My final point is this quote. Again, he may be technically telling the truth but he is stretching it to a nearly obscene point. I'd expect that from a politician, but I don't want to hear it from an economist trying to give a sober and realisitc analysis of the state of the economy. He says that the number of banks that have fallen this year compared to decades past (again, this goes to my point that trying to compare the stability of the economy today to the past using the same rules is kind of foolhardy) has been miniscule, and I'm prepared to take his word at the numbers. However, do you think these "dozens of bank failures" that have occurred were constantly giants like Bear Sterns, AIG and Lehman Bros.? He gives me no evidence to assume that the bank closings he's speaking about in years past are not Bear Sterns-esque examples but closings of the First Bank of Poughkeepsie branches. That these bank failures of the past were not accompanied by 1000-point drops in the Dow like the most recent bankrupcies and bailouts have been leads me to believe it's the latter, and him failing to mention that makes me call into question his stats.

Basically, his analysis is that the economy is in good shape is only if you apply the same measuring sticks of today to the Great Depression, which even to my feeble economic mind seems laughable. The world has turned upside down several times since then; we may have to re-examine how we gauge economic prosperity.