Archive for the ‘loans’ Category
The Obama Plan to Redistribute Housing | Libertarian Party
www.lp.org10/29/11
First Obama tried to redistribute wealth before he was President, by leading the charge to force banks to make loans to lower income Americans who could not afford to own homes (through the Community Reinvestment Act). …
Applying Obama's “redistribution of wealth” to school grades …
usamericanfreedom.com11/19/11
That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan”. …

Obama and the liberals could perhaps have achieved both growth and redistribution, but they chose only the latter, and they will pay heavily for their error on Tuesday!
Will Obama change direction after the elections?
No He won’t!
During his election campaign Obama said:
“What people really want is fairness”.
“They want people paying their fair share of taxes”.
“They want that money allocated fairly”.
Redistribution Of Wealth
People thought it sounded good and they voted for him, but they didn’t know that he would immediately attempt redistribution of wealth, and he went for it full throttle in spite of the recession.
What the vast majority of Americans believe in however is economic growth, and they understand full well that the threat of having more and more money taken away as you get richer and richer is simply a demotivator.
The result, motivation went down, small businesses stopped hiring and unemployment went up and stayed up; and in some states it’s still getting worse.
Then Came ObamaCare
With motivation down, the Obama administration then committed another horrendous error of judgment – they rammed ObamaCare down a mostly unwilling nation’s throat.
Obamcare essentially subsidizes health insurance for low and middle-income groups and attempts to recover the cost by taxing high-earners even more, which in turn lowers motivation and causes people to hunker down instead of trying to grow their businesses.
And what makes it even worse is that low and moderate-income workers now feel no need to earn money because they can now maintain the same standard of living with even less effort.
Obama’s Response?
Seeing popularity wane both for him personally and for his policies Obama set out a stand and tried to sell the public his unwanted wares.
Expanding health care coverage was somehow going to somehow drive down costs.
Handouts to state and local governments became a stimulus package.
Climate change legislation became a “green jobs” bill, and so on.
When the voters didn’t buy his arguments his response was to tell them that, “They are confused and not thinking clearly” and that one statement will cost him dearly.
You don’t tell people that you want to vote for you that they are basically stupid if they don’t understand you, do you?
Harry Reid just said something equally stupid and it might cost him re-election in Nevada, “He saved the world economy!”.
Doesn’t he know that Oblamer is the One?!
Could Obama Have Played It Differently And Maybe Won?
Yes, he could have!
Obama could have embraced at least two policies that would have enhanced both equity and economic performance simultaneously, and some of them might well have bridged the ideological divide.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Loan guarantees should not have been provided for Fannie and Freddie because they shifted risk from participants in real estate transactions to taxpayers, and the caused capital to flow into the industry under very favorable terms.
Creating the guarantees allowed mortgage lenders, realtors, homebuilders, developers, securities traders and others to reap enormous gains during the boom, only to later dump their losses on taxpayers during the ensuing bust.
Cutting off all federal support for Fannie and Freddie would have sent a completely different message.
It would not only have greatly enhanced equity, but would also have helped steer investment away from ever more conspicuous McMansions and into productive endeavors like building newer, more-efficient factories, all of which would have stimulated economic growth.
* “McMansion” is an originally pejorative term used to describe a large house, particularly in the United States, that is constructed using modern labor-saving techniques and materials
The Tax Code
Another area that was ripe for reform would have been the loophole-ridden tax code.
Today, the proliferation of carve-outs means that only around 40% of personal income is taxed!
The loopholes should have been removed as much as was possible and the tax base broadened, after which the Obama administration could have slashed rates, enhanced equity, and provided a huge stimulus to the economy.
Instead, the administration did exactly the opposite; it added even more loopholes and promised to raise rates!
Right now we have a situation where similarly situated families often face vastly different tax burdens depending on their ability to game the system, and it also means that investment is steered away from companies that are adept at building better products, to those with the knack for lobbying.
Will Obama Move The Goal Posts?
Obama was a member of the New Party (communist) just 13 years ago, and he was no teen.
Michelle is a Black separatist of the worst kind as her Princeton thesis shows.
Obama is on record as saying that he’d rather be a great one term President than an ineffectual two termer, so we can sadly expect him and Michelle to continue to try and force their socialist/communist on America!
China and US Try to Make Trade Progress to Save Global Economy …
dgriffith401.wordpress.com12/16/11
“The one thing that we can be certain of, among all the uncertainties, is that the global economic recession caused by the international financial crisis will be chronic,” he was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news …
How The U.S. Is Quickly Becoming A Third World Country (Part 1 …
seekingalpha.com11/22/11
… 3rd world status. Economic data indicate a harsh reality that obviates mainstream political debate. The evidence suggests that, without fundamental reforms, the U.S. will become a post industrial neo-3rd-world country by 2032. … According to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. trade deficit with China alone caused a loss of 2.8 million U.S. jobs since 2001. Falling Real Wages and Household Incomes. Workers earning more dollars are actually poorer in terms of …
Major financial crises have occurred many times in the United States, and the one in 1929 wasn’t the first, and the present one won’t be the last.
The earliest one on record was in 1792, and there were several crises in the 19th century and also in the 1980′s
In short, recession cycles should be understood to be a normal part of living in a world of inexact balances, one in which there is an attempt to balance supply and demand.
The present world-wide economic crisis, which was caused by the United States wasn’t simply a result of unexpectedly large losses in subprime mortgages or because many of those loans were securitized in complex bonds.
In retrospect, it would seem that the major contributor to the collapse, was what are known as repurchase agreements, which are commonly known as repos.
A repo is a form of short-term borrowing for dealers in government securities. The dealer sells government securities to investors, usually on an overnight basis, and buys them back the following day.
For the party selling the security, and agreeing to repurchase it in the future it is a repo, and for the party on the other end of the transaction, the one who is buying the security and agreeing to sell in the future, it is a reverse repurchase agreement.
Repos are classified as a money-market instrument and they are usually used to raise short-term capital and the Fed uses repos to manage the aggregate reserves of the banking system.
The size of the repo market continually varies so it’s impossible to state its actual size, but it’s generally thought to hover around the $10 trillion mark at any given time.
Banks rely heavily on repro loans, and what caused the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, was that the repo market panicked because of rising doubts about subprime securities, and loans suddenly became more expensive, or totally unavailable.
So What Can Be Done?
The Obama administration has a plan to protect the country and the world from the next financial crisis, and it can basically be divided into three parts.
1) Stiffer Capital Requirements
Some banks and other financial institutions would be considered too important to fail, because their collapse would pose a threat to the country’s financial stability.
Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and similar institutions would I imagine, be on the government’s most protected species list.
The companies on the list would face stiffer capital requirements in the form of shareholders’ investment, with the idea being that greater capital would provide a larger buffer against losses and a crises.
It might be of interest to note however, that at the time of writing that none of America’s biggest banks are any longer in the top three world-wide.
The top three banks in the world by market capitalization are;
1) Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
2) China Construction Bank
3) Bank of China
Citibank and Bank of America are not even on the list of the top twenty.
Two Canadian banks, Royal Bank of Canada (RY) and Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) have recently made it to the list.
Australia also has two banks listed, and in addition to the Chinese banks, the importance of emerging markets is confirmed by the presence of Itau Unibanco Banco Multiplo (ITU) and Banco Bradesco (BBD).
The problem with the administration’s protected species plan, is that the very largest financial institutions in America, would effectively become protected and pampered wards of the state and they would most likely squeeze out the smallest ones and lenders would compensate by raising their interest rates or by only lending to the safest borrowers.
2) The Policing Of Unethical Lending Practices
The administration foresees the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that would police what appear to be unethical lending practices, and ensure that loan documents for mortgages, auto loans and other types of consumer credit are comprehensible.
* The Securities and Exchange Commission would still retain power over the stock markets.
3) Changing The Rules
Financial firms that issue securitized bonds such as bundles of mortgages, auto loans and other credits, would be required to hold 5% of the bonds themselves, the thinking being that this would cause sellers to examine loans more carefully.
In early 2007, when the problems of subprime mortgages and repos first emerged, few if any regulators foresaw the coming meltdown, so the question needs to be asked, “should we trust government regulators instead of bankers, traders and money managers?”.
Due to their past failings, it would seem that we shouldn’t.
The dangers of overregulation should generally not be ignored or minimalized, but especially so in the U.S. whose economy is anchored on risk-taking and expansion.
We don’t yet know exactly what will cause the next financial crisis in the U.S. but its roots are already clearly foreseeable.
By 2019, the U.S. federal debt is expected to be $11 trillion and right now, the Chinese, who are presently supporting the U.S. economy are already preparing a retreat from the dollar.
China has now called for the creation of a new currency to eventually replace the dollar as the world’s standard, and is proposing, if not demanding, a sweeping overhaul of global finance that truly reflects the developing nations’ growing unhappiness with America’s role in the world economy.
If China decides to pull the plug, which is increasingly likely, we will soon understand what caused America’s upcoming financial collapse, but many will say that they didn’t see it coming.
