The banks had the homes as collateral. What no one anticipated was the rapid devaluation of the properties.

I did. Years before. Give loans to ten million people that will leave you an empty home your collateral isn't going to be worth shit.

They knew what they were doing which is why they kept the servicing and the best tranches and sold off everything else.

You keep the servicing and the best loans and as servicer you will still be paid by investors when home is empty. In fact you will be paid a lot more than you would managing a good loan.

We didn't vote "the Republican party into the White House"
Just like we didn't vote the Democrat party in.

We voted BUSH into the White House. He's a great candidate and a likeable guy.

We voted OBAMA into the White House. He's a great candidate and a likeable guy.

In my opinion this election was once again NOT about the issues...but who we think was the guy we would like to have a beer with. :(

And Obama won that hands down. Just like Bush did.

When Bush won re-election against John Kerry, it wasn't about ideas...it was because Kerry was stiff and looked like he had a Frankenstein head. Bush meanwhile was loosey-goosey and confident and just looked at ease in his own skin.

Same thing this year. Romney was too vanilla and too stiff. Obama is smooth, confident, and feels great in his own skin.

Nobody voted an entire party into the White House. Obama does not 100% represent the Democrat party. Yes, their leaders will fall in line publicly for the sake of politics.

And Bush in no way represented the Republican Party 100% either. His spending spree was the exact opposite of what fiscal conservatism is.

EDIT: And no....we were not "brought down to our knees" during the second Bush term. What the fuck world were you living in? Unemployment was at record lows. The market was at record highs.
The crash came during the last few months of his term. He took over in a mini-recession as the tech bubble busted. And then there was 9-11
But Bush did show some good leadership in the months after 9-11...and the economy and the country did great after that.

If not for the wars, we wouldn't be running a deficit. And if not for the housing market collapse (I don't know how many times you need to be told this to understand it), the economy would still be good.
And Bush did not cause the housing market to collapse and the economy with it. Congress during the 1990's passed the bills that led to our current economic problems.

We didn't actually vote Bush in the first time. We voted Gore in. We did the second time. I don't know why but we did.

And Obama actually only won the vote by 61,173,739 or 50.5% to 58,167,260 or 48.0%

And yet, you have people in this thread calling it a "landslide" and "lost BIG" because it's the electoral vote that counts.

Reality is...Obama won a little over half. Which means about half the country voted the other way. :)

I really think that all 50 states should be required to dole out their electoral votes based on the popular vote.

As it stands now...if a candidate wins the popular vote by ONE vote in a state...he gets 100% of the electoral votes.

That's just wrong.
And if it were changed...you're right, Al Gore would have won in 2000. (god help us, we'd all be riding bicycles and have no electricity so we would be "green", while he would still be riding in limousines and flying private jets. lol )

I know Romney is a rich guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth but I thought he was more likeable than Obama. Barack Obama isn't really known for being a friendly guy, even in his own party he's known for being standoffish and cool.

Bush is a much more friendly guy, another guy born rich.

Obama is the first president in my lifetime who IS 'one of us'. Pretty much just a regular guy like millions of others who grew up to be a Yuppie.

in hindsight of course it's all so simple... the whole setup was a lot more complicated than just banks lending out money to some deadbeats, there were numerous different parties involved, everyone from mortgage brokers, to investors, to other bank, and of course the government had a hand in all this too... no one knew what the default rates would be, no one knew what the property prices would be, etc... the whole venture turned out to be a bit more risky than everyone thought...

lending money to people on craigslist isn't actually as stupid as you make it sound, it's not unlike lending money to a bunch of people with a pipe dream or sob story on prosper.com... some default, some pay it back, but at the end of the day you should end up with reasonable return on your investment... 1000s of people lend on there, and I actually considered doing the same myself...

so if I was to lose money by lending on prosper.com, you would consider me "fucking stupid"?

Yeah, that's what I've read that all the people in his cabinet say about him too. But he is very good at being "likeable" onstage in front of a crowd. And that's what really counted.

Yep riding bicycles and 3000 people wouldnt of died. We wouldnt of went to war. Yeah if Gore won it would of been awful. lol By the way obama won by more than bush did for this second term and your pundit buddies called it a mandate.

Are you as upset over the 2000ish coalition forces that died in Afghanistan? And the number is still rising daily. Or do you believe Gore would've just looked the other way after 9/11

If you lent all of your money on prosper, then yes. If you were lending to the point you need a bailout, yes. That would make you fucking stupid.

My pundit "buddies"
Tony where do you get this stuff?

As for the Bush vs. Kerry election...here are the numbers:

Bush: 62,028,285 50.7%
Kerry: 59,028,109 48.3%

And I think it was being called a mandate because the Republican Party (not Bush) was in firm control of both the Senate and House.

Unfortunately for all the sheep...neither Republicans or Dems really give a damn about the citizens. So the Republican Congress just began filling the pockets of their cronies. Just like the Dems are doing now.

Disgraceful how things are done in Washington...which is why I can't fathom why you or anybody else could possibly be in favor of giving them more money to steal. :(

I think Gore probably would have went into Afghanistan too. And I think it would have been just as huge of a mistake.

Hindsight is 20/20 though.
And using hindsight, I'd say it's safe to presume that our country overreacted to 9-11.

The actual guys who did it...were all dead (it was a suicide mission).

We should have quietly sent a team in to kill Bin Laden, and went forward with putting steel doors on the pilots cabin. Maybe even had a few months of extra security at airports.

Instead we invaded an entire country. :(
And then used that precedent to pre-emptively invade another country.

And of course we now are all searched like criminals 11 years after a handful of nutjobs used box cutters to take over the pilots cabin on some airplanes.

And my guess is...we'll still be searched for the rest of our lives. It'll never end. And not because it makes us "safe". But because the TSA is now a giant bloated bureaucracy.

He's a lady on the street and a freak in the sheets. I thought that is a good thing?

We voted a Republican into the White House (Bush) and then we voted a Democrat in. Period.

But isn't that always the case?

We we not brought down to our hands and knees while Bush was in the White House? It didn't happen while Bush was office? It didn't happen at the end of eight years of Bush in the White House?

Who's fault was it? Obama's? Clinton's?

During the last year President Bush we lost 2.6 million jobs.

No we were not "brought down to our hands and knees" by Bush.
We were brought down by the housing market collapsing which brought down the banks and triggered an economic collapse brought on by bills passed in Congress during the 1990s that created the housing bubble.
Stop pretending you don't know that.

And we didn't lose 2 million jobs during the "last year". It was more like the last couple of months when the housing market crashed in Sept. of 2008

You're just acting like you don't know this right?

I agree. And I can totally relate to Obama on that.
While most people have trouble speaking before an audience, I'm just the opposite.

I get a little closed off from people one-on-one, but I feel far more at ease speaking to crowds.

I'm guessing Obama is the same way.

No I believe it wouldnt of happened. Richard Clarke warned them and it was ignored.

You are mistaken sir they lost control in 2004 during the second term election of W. Your pundit friends were saying it was a mandate for Bush. The reason I say pundit friends is because atl music radio blows so I will listen to talk in the car any type of talk. At night its all right wing talk here and they use the same exact phrases.

I guess he could be compared to Jobs with his personality. Mesmerizing in front of an audience, an ass in private.

Bill Clinton was warned. He had two golden opportunities to take out bin laden and he
passed.

Everyone was warned that there was going to be a terrorist attack prior to 9/11. The only problem was no one knew, who, what, when or where.

You are way off on that. The Republicans gained even more seats and held complete control over the House and Senate in 2004.

It was the election of 2006 that changed that. Remember? Nancy Pelosi became the first woman Speaker that year when the Dems took over in 2007 and Harry Reid became Senate Majority Leader

You need to start googling this shit up before you argue your points. :) The Republicans trounced the Dems in 2004 elections.

But by 2006 the country was ready for change and the Dems regained control of both houses.

I agree those kinds of changes take time and happen gradually. People thought a 5 day work week was ridiculous when it was first implemented. People thought letting women vote was a terrible idea. People thought blacks counted as 3/5ths of a person. The fact that what I am suggesting is not 'more of the same' is exactly what makes it so important. We do not have a temporary economic problem. We do not have a job loss overseas problem. What we have is globalization and industrialization with a technology base that continually accelerates.

The gap in time from the wheel to fire to bronze was insanely long compared to the gap between computers to the internet to everyone having a handheld always on device. The number of people that used to be needed to provide food, clothing, shelter and basic security for all of us was many times the size of the number needed to do it now. We are in one of the worst droughts in recorded history, at a time when the whole world is in financial crisis and yet you won't find a single kind of food missing from supermarket shelves. We accomplish that with many less farm workers, many less farms and much less arable land than we used to use. Think about that. We used to need several people to open a brick and mortal storefront and staff it... now I can open a dozen internet storefronts a day by myself and never hire a single cashier, stock-boy, shipping agent, billing department, HR personnel, etc... The nature of production has fundamentally changed, especially regarding the monotonous labor-intensive tasks that suit many people as their best possible form of employment.

We have 'extra people' in our society. Our medicine is too advanced for massive plagues to wipe out a big percentage of us at once. Our wars are fought with drones and small skilled teams... if you ever sent 100K soldiers out onto the battlefield a few tactical nukes, biological warheads and other mechanical weapons would wipe them all off of it. Wars of attrition are a thing of the past. That's a massive decrease in the number of people who exit our planet compared to what used to take place every few decades. Population growth is highest among the poorest and least educated parts of our society. If you play video games it's akin to having a great game without any gold sinks or durability loss on items... the game fails because you don't need to produce at a fast rate anymore...

So long as we fail to address the ACTUAL problems, we are just throwing a fresh coat of makeup on a two dollar whore and trying to tell the world she is Jacqueline Smith. Reality is the makeup already isn't working now and will work less and less and less as the whore gets older, less healthy and more expensive to maintain. The real 'battle' here is what do we do with all the extra people? Start a war and kill them off? Wait for a plague? Seriously figure out how to create moon colonies and other sci-fi solutions? Stop subsidizing elder care and let only wealthy people reach their maximum potential age? Go to a 4 day work week to 'create jobs' for people we don't need? Give tax credits to convince some parents to stay home and raise their kids better while creating jobs for others who we don't actually need?

It sounds far fetched... and at the time so did ending slavery, letting women vote, imposing a 5 day work week, and all the other social engineering that we have done in the past to evolve our society. :2 cents:

All true but for one key point you are forgetting... Obama, Romney, the Dems and the GOP are all funded by exactly the same people. Yes, the Unions favor one over the other and the Koch brothers favor one over the other... but for the most part they get the same money from Goldman Sachs, the Billionaires and the meaningful CEOs. That crowd sits down together often enough and so do the politicians behind closed doors.

My strong suspicion is that a deal has already been cut, including detailed policy changes AND the way in which the deal will be announced, packaged, sold to low ranking politicians and to the public. Obama, Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Pelosi, and their cronies already have the deal in their pocket in pencil. They may even have discussed Obama making outlandish requests for 1.6T in taxes just so they could save face by saying "we got him down to 900B and that was the best we could do."

If I'm right it will be capped deductions, a much smaller tax increase than you expect, a buffet rule, roughly equal budget cuts (mostly from the military) AND they already know the details but don't want to make it seem like the GOP caved too easily or that Obama wimped out.

They all have the same masters. We no longer have a true 2 party system. :2 cents:

I was specifically referring to personal income tax rates, not corporate.

Maybe in a Hollywood script sort of way, but I think you give these people entirely too much credit. The way obamacare was handled is more likely how things really are. Basically a bunch of people who really dislike each other,but still think they are doing the right thing as far as their voting base goes and maybe in a few cases as far as the country goes.

Dude, I wasn't hassling you at all. We actually agree on most things. I was getting to the big lie that's been running for 30 years: that lower taxes for the very rich encourages job creation and a robust economy.

That idea has been shown to be false, yet the the very rich - via 1)their mostly republican shills and 2)their outsized ability to manipulate the media - have continued selling this lemon.

If they were smart Monday afternoon they would hold a press conference and say "We have come to an agreement" and put it to rest and give the people some security in knowing what to expect instead of running this shit up for dramatic value and waiting until the last minute.

This has been brewing for 3+ years... the fiscal cliff is a remnant of the debt ceiling debacle. The Axelrods and McConnells of the world aren't standing around with their hands in their pockets having no idea what will happen in either case after election day happens. Them 'hating' each other is like two NFL teams 'hating' each other... they can try very hard to win a game but they are all actually on the same team when it comes to anything meaningful on a career basis. The players association has their allegiance much more than their coaching staff, fans or current team owner. Congress and the White House are much the same.

We both remember when Farve 'let' Strahan tackle him to set the all time single season sack record, and their other examples of that sort of cronyism. That's the kind of meta-camaraderie that makes Congress and Citizens United so dangerous. They say they are on different teams, they say they represent different regions... but in reality they will all lay down and allow the other side to sack them because they are one team with a common agenda that supersedes their interests in actually representing We The People.

Deadbeats huh.. You do realize that it wasn't "dead beats" with no jobs buying these homes that were foreclosed on don't yea? In fact it was places like Texas where everyone had to have their McMansion same with FL, NV ect..ect and all over the US. Places like Cali had people buying absolute shit holes for a million bucks or more because the property values were inflated as fuck.

It wasn't dead beats with no jobs, that bought homes for $200k to a million five.. ect..ect

No. If the public was smart you would be right. Keep in mind, the public watches the Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives on Bravo. The public can't name 30 states on a map of this country if you take the State names off it and ask them to point to them. The public watches debates to see who 'won' by making a snarky zinger... not to see who was right or who lied the most.

Intelligent people would welcome an immediate result and accept the terms of a true compromise. The public has a very small minority of intelligent people. Most people are idiots and this show is being scripted for the masses unfortunately.

What we have now is a society that placates stupidity and takes advantage of dumb people who are willing to vote against their own interests. What our society ought to do is educate dumb people to the limit of their capacity and protect them (from others and from themselves).

We are not far off from Idiocracy:
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...iQtt4jzMtwZih_

And most idiots crave a soap opera more than a solution. :2 cents:

Couple things.

"Obamacare" as you call it, is actually a republican plan (written by the Heritage Foundation) that has been kicking around for 20 years. Oh and BTW, it's exactly the plan Romney enacted in Massachusetts. Of course, they won't tell you that on Fox:disgust

Perfect example of what's so comical about the right-wing propaganda machine calling President Blackenstein a 'socialist'. The 'socialist' thing to do would have been to go for a Single Payer system, which he didn't.

Second thing: "but still think they are doing the right thing as far as their voting base goes and maybe in a few cases as far as the country goes."

I completely disagree with you here. IMO, 98% of our nationally elected officials (US house of reps, senate & president) are nothing more than servants of the people who paid to get them elected, ie. huge money interests. Here's the key thing: it's not just 'commit to what we want and we'll fund your campaign.' The next step is 'as long as you play ball, once you leave office you can count on cushy employment in our industry'.

It's called the Revolving Door, and it's very well documented. Look it up, you'll see.

Watched something on the History Channel today about Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan. The same things we are arguing over today in politics people were arguing over back then.

The rich have always manipulated and corrupted politics. Money buys access and power. Always has, always will.

It's political suicide to mess with entitlements.

Seriously,you think you have some profound wisdom? What you just labored over is not a secret. MSNBC has been broadcasting these exact sentiments for the last several years.

Yeah you're right on that one.
I guess I was projecting myself as the public.
I would love for them to say
Hey, we worked it out. Here's what's going down.

I liked that series.
Crooked motherfuckers! :thumbsup

I do believe that they will come up with a solution. I don't believe for a moment that these people are that clever. I know some of these people personally. I have had two state senators at my house. I knew senator Proxmire very well and for nearly 10 years I was an active member of the Aspin(Les) institute. From my experience,these people are dedicated to a cause, but were definitely not that clever.

wow! great pithy, non-substantive response. fyi, i don't watch msnbc. i do my own homework. see sig.

and btw, i'm willing to bet that they don't say what i said about 98% of their 'team'

Of course, they won't tell you that on Fox

And you were expecting a serious response?