Real life has been interferring with my online time lately (I hate it when that happens). But I just had to stop by to note this chortle-wortht item: a list of post election stock market returns which reveals that the Hanging Chad Fracas had less of a negative impact than the Specter of ObaMarxism:
Year Dow S&P Nasdaq President elect
2008 -5.05 -5.27 -5.53 Barack Obama
2004 +1.01 +1.12 +0.98 George W. Bush
2000 -0.41 -1.58 -5.39 No decision: G.W. Bush v Al Gore*
1996 +1.59 +1.46 +1.34 William Clinton
1992 -0.91 -0.67 +0.16 William Clinton
1988 -0.43 -0.66 -0.29 George H. W. Bush
1984 -0.88 -0.73 -0.32 Ronald Reagan
1980 +1.70 +1.77 +1.49 Ronald Reagan
1976 -0.99 -1.14 -1.12 James Carter
1972 -0.11 -0.55 -0.39 Richard Nixon
1968 +0.34 +0.16 --- Richard Nixon
1964 -0.19 -0.05 --- Lyndon Johnson
1960 +0.77 +0.44 --- John Kennedy
1956 -0.85 -1.03 --- Dwight Eisenhower
1952 +0.40 +0.28 --- Dwight Eisenhower
1948 -3.85 -4.15 --- Harry Truman
1944 -0.27 0.00 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1940 -2.39 -3.14 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1936 +2.26 +1.40 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1932 -4.51 -2.67 --- Franklin Roosevelt
1928 +1.20 +1.77 --- Herbert Hoover
ObaMarxism - the most depressing post presidential election effect since records were kept - sounds about right to Moi.
Hats Off to Orson Scott Card (author of one of my favorite books, Enders Game)! What a refreshing bit of decency and intellectual honesty (read the Whole Thing):
This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)
Isn’t there a story here? Doesn’t journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren’t you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?
I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. “Housing-gate,” no doubt. Or “Fannie-gate.”
Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.
In the fullness of time, one of the things that will be most noted about this election is the Mainstream Media’s biased and dishonest reporting aimed at protecting and promoting Obama.
I note the double standard of the ObaMarxist Press Corps digging up Joe The Plumber’s tax $1,183 tax lien and the total pass them have given Charlie Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, regarding his failure to report rental income for umpty umpteen years.
How heartwarming that the Secular Left believes in an Afterlife afterall.
Courtesy of Gay Patriot, a state by state wrap-up of OBAMACORN voter fraud
In my post on the complicity of Democratic officials in vote fraud, I addressed problems in just one state. As I began work on a larger post, exploring how such chicanery could help Obama steal the election, I realized I had such a wealth of information, it would be easier simply to list the stories state by state, providing links to the relevant articles.
You’ll note that most sources are local papers and news stations or blogs, few are national media or the leading dailies. That is, while local media and blogs are covering this, the national media is downplaying it or downright ignoring it.
Remove Connecticut and Texas and the list above reads like a list of the swing states in this election. Will the media notice how widespread is this fraud?
Yes, isn’t it interesting that this massive campaign to ensure the civil rights of The Dead and The Imaginary is focused on swing states.
There is a great deal of hyperventilating fingerpointing and populist pablum spewing regarding the current financial meltdown. I’m not surprised by Obama’s perfunctory attacks on The Greedy Rich, but am disappointed that McCain-Palin have neglected to bell the cat. Given the highly partisan state of the MSM, I doubt that the public will learn the proper lesson, but one can always hope that enough will be enlightened so that it will not be completely lost. Perhaps the internet will perform the role of Irish Monks during the Dark Ages.
For posterity, the article The Road To Slack Lending Standards, contains The Smoking Gun of the Boston Fed encouraging banks to loosen up lending standards:
Crucial to this change was a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study which concluded that although lender discrimination was not as severe as suggested by the newspapers, it nevertheless existed. This, then, became the dominant government position, even though subsequent efforts by other researchers to verify the Fed’s conclusions showed serious deficiencies in the original work. One economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who looked more deeply into the data, for instance, found that the difference in denial rates on loans for whites and minorities could be accounted for by such factors as higher rates of delinquencies on prior loans for minorities, or the inability of lenders to verify information provided to them by some minority applicants.
Ignoring the import of such data, federal officials went on a campaign to encourage banks to lower their lending standards in order to make more minority loans. One result of this campaign is a remarkable document produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in 1998 titled “Closing the Gap: A Guide To Equal Opportunity Lending”.
Quoting from a study which declared that “underwriting guidelines…may be unintentionally racially biased,” the Boston Fed then called for what amounted to undermining many of the lending criteria that banks had used for decades. It told banks they should consider junking the industry’s traditional debt-to-income ratio, which lenders used to determine whether an applicant’s income was sufficient to cover housing costs plus loan payments. It instructed banks that an applicant’s “lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor” in obtaining a mortgage, even though a mortgage is the biggest financial obligation most individuals will undertake in life. In cases where applicants had bad credit (as opposed to no credit), the Boston Fed told banks to “consider extenuating circumstances” that might still make the borrower creditworthy. When applicants didn’t have enough savings to make a down payment, the Boston Fed urged banks to allow loans from nonprofits or government assistance agencies to count toward a down payment, even though banks had traditionally disallowed such sources because applicants who have little of their own savings invested in a home are more likely to walk away from a loan when they have trouble paying.
Of course, the new federal standards couldn’t just apply to minorities. If they could pay back loans under these terms, then so could the majority of loan applicants. Quickly, in other words, these became the new standards in the industry.
The “Change” theme has bugged me for awhile - and it finally clicked when I saw the picture of Obama’s plane:
In the classic Faustian sense, Obama is promsing CHANGE (take your pick if you Believe In It, or just Need It). Consider the film “Bedazzled” (or the classic Twilight Zone episode featuring Julie Newmar), and wonder how you’ll feel when you look down at your crotch and discover that The Devil has given you a teenie weenie.
I can just picture President Obama grinning in a condescending fashion and saying “I promised you change, but you never asked what kind of change”, as he furthers the the U.S.’s transformation into a Socialist Distopia.
Race is arguably the biggest issue in this election, and it’s one that nobody’s talking about.
The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain couldn’t be more well-defined. Obama wants to change Washington. McCain is a part of Washington and a part of the Bush legacy. Yet the polls remain close. Doesn’t make sense…unless it’s race.
Time magazine’s Michael Grunwald says race is the elephant in the room. He says Barack Obama needs to tread lightly as he fights back against the McCain-Palin campaign attacks.
I’m going to file this under yet more Liberal Elitism. The good people who are supporting McCain couldn’t possibly have an intelligent or informed reason for doing so - they must all be bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles while fondling a Confederate Flag.
I’m really getting tired of this condescension - but do not find it at all surprising.
