Community Reinvestment Act

[U2Bono269]

I've been thinking a lot about similar things lately, what with my own family's financial and employment situation. I guess I should put it out there that I consider myself a moderate, I'm registered as an independent, but I find myself siding with Democrats 80% of the time. I don't think you can trace the issues to any one thing or any one person or any one party. It's a fundamental issue that lies beneath the politics and goes down to the people, to us. We don't hold our politicians accountable for their awful decisions, and we in turn make awful decisions ourselves and expect the awful politicians to rescue us and it's a vicious downward spiral. It's a monster that we allowed to exist. And what's scary is that no one will ever do anything about it because we've become so entrenched in this web of crap that it's almost invisible.

It really makes me upset sometimes to think about it. I'm still in my 20s, and I feel like my opportunity to be successful was gone before I even left college. When Romney's tax returns came out I was flabbergasted. The man makes $15,000 more in one day that my wife and I made last year combined. I work my ass off, sometimes putting in 60 hour weeks as a special ed teacher in a special ed school. My wife is also a teacher who is unable to find a position and tutors about 8 hours a week, at the most. I try to imagine what's going to happen to us in the long term and I can't help but think that the attitudes we and our lawmakers have at this point in time is counterproductive to any sort of real positive growth. I'm coming to accept that there are no real opportunities for us out there and we're going to spend the next decade slogging along in a big swamp of mortgage and student debt.

I agree that we need to throw them all out of washington and start over...I'm not saying with a new government structure or a new constitution (though that could stand some updating), but the people at the center of it are corrupt and our government needs a fresh start. If people and corporations (I don't believe they are the same thing at all, and I think the idea is ludicrous) can declare bankruptcy and start over, then we need to declare that our government is fundamentally "bankrupt" and needs to start over too.

[decraew]

I've been thinking a lot about similar things lately, what with my own family's financial and employment situation. I guess I should put it out there that I consider myself a moderate, I'm registered as an independent, but I find myself siding with Democrats 80% of the time. I don't think you can trace the issues to any one thing or any one person or any one party. It's a fundamental issue that lies beneath the politics and goes down to the people, to us. We don't hold our politicians accountable for their awful decisions, and we in turn make awful decisions ourselves and expect the awful politicians to rescue us and it's a vicious downward spiral. It's a monster that we allowed to exist. And what's scary is that no one will ever do anything about it because we've become so entrenched in this web of crap that it's almost invisible.

It really makes me upset sometimes to think about it. I'm still in my 20s, and I feel like my opportunity to be successful was gone before I even left college. When Romney's tax returns came out I was flabbergasted. The man makes $15,000 more in one day that my wife and I made last year combined. I work my ass off, sometimes putting in 60 hour weeks as a special ed teacher in a special ed school. My wife is also a teacher who is unable to find a position and tutors about 8 hours a week, at the most. I try to imagine what's going to happen to us in the long term and I can't help but think that the attitudes we and our lawmakers have at this point in time is counterproductive to any sort of real positive growth. I'm coming to accept that there are no real opportunities for us out there and we're going to spend the next decade slogging along in a big swamp of mortgage and student debt.

I agree that we need to throw them all out of washington and start over...I'm not saying with a new government structure or a new constitution (though that could stand some updating), but the people at the center of it are corrupt and our government needs a fresh start. If people and corporations (I don't believe they are the same thing at all, and I think the idea is ludicrous) can declare bankruptcy and start over, then we need to declare that our government is fundamentally "bankrupt" and needs to start over too.

I really sympathise with those sentiments.

The game, if I can call it that, is heavily stacked against common people, even more so after Citizens United.

[thebigspendur]

Oh I know it's in general more complex. But it all comes down to: "Don't spend it if you can't afford it"

Governments get into trouble because they spend more than they have, companies get into trouble because of this and people get into trouble because of this.

It's not that simple.

The housing mess goes back to the 1970s. People were flipping houses and making very big money on that and a whole industry employing 10s of millions of people depended on housing prices going only one way. Markets were manipulated and schemes devised to keep it going and more people got even richer and it kept going until even the flimsiest of schemes didn't work any more. These days we only here about all the folks at the end of the cycle who lost everything. We don't hear about all the people who made a mint and laughed all the way to the bank.

I know many think the Govt is the root of all evil and it's too big and over-regulating but the fact is if the Govt had stepped in and said "you want to buy a house you need 10% down minimum and meet minimum income guidelines and proof of income or no house for you" this housing mess would have stopped dead in it's tracks.

So it's really a lesson to be learned about our economic system and what happens when markets are allowed to self regulate and the resultant boom bust cycles.

[decraew]

I know many think the Govt is the root of all evil and it's too big and over-regulating but the fact is if the Govt had stepped in and said "you want to buy a house you need 10% down minimum and meet minimum income guidelines and proof of income or no house for you" this housing mess would have stopped dead in it's tracks.

So it's really a lesson to be learned about our economic system and what happens when markets are allowed to self regulate and the resultant boom bust cycles.

Yeah, but regulation of financial markets is Un American !
And dontcha ferget it !!

[gssixgun]

Rather Timely


Are You Kidding Me

[Kantian Pragmatist]

I can totally sympathize with the guy in that video. He, and most of the rest of us, are quite right to feel like we're getting screwed with no lube. The middle two quintiles, of the population by income pay greater than 50% of that income in taxes and government fees, once all state and local taxes and fees are accounted for. The vast majority of small-business owners live in those middle quintiles, and they have it even worse because of mandatory insurance and reporting and safety requirements. The average Republican is right to feel like the government is too big in just this sense: they contribute too much to it and don't get nearly enough in return.

But he's quite wrong to suggest that the problem can't be solved by raising taxes on those who make over $250 thousand a year. First of all, I get the sense that this guy, like way too many American citizens, doesn't know the difference between income and revenue. Many, probably most small businesses have revenue greater than $250 thousand a year. Very very few of them post that much as profit. And that's what income is for a business: profit. It's what you get when you subtract out of your revenue all the money you spent and are continuing to spend on getting that revenue in the first place.

He's also quite wrong to suggest that there's not enough money being made by the wealthiest incomes to plug up the deficit and begin paying down the debt. The wealthiest 6 and a third percent of income makers capture 1/3 of all income generated in the country. The total amount of income generated in the country in 2010 was $14.58 trillion, one third of which is $4.86 trillion. A 50% tax on these 6.36% would generate $2.43 trillion. The total Federal Budget in 2011 (which is bigger than the 2010 budget), excluding Social Security and Medicare, which have their own funding streams and neither of which are currently contributing to the deficit, is $2.038 trillion, a difference of almost $400 billion on the surplus side. And that's without taxing anybody else anything except for their State and local taxes and the payroll taxes that pay for SS and Medicare, which in most states and locales combine to be less than 25% of income.

Economists have been warning for quite some time, since the 70's at least, that the US was going to be entering a period of slower or flat growth. They knew that it was going to be impossible to both maintain a middle class lifestyle for the bulk of the American population as well as the vast fortunes generated by the very wealthiest capitalists and investors. They knew that someone was going to have to take a haircut, and the very wealthiest Americans made damn sure it wasn't going to be them. They bought politicians and dispersed propaganda that enabled them to shift their tax burden onto others (the middle-class, the poor, and the government budgets), while changing the rules to insure that they kept their money or made money no matter what.

You want a fast, easy, and relatively painless way out of our current economic malaise? Have the Feds buy up all the outstanding mortgage, student loan and credit card debt from the banks that currently hold it, forgive that debt, monetize the Federal Debt and raise taxes on the wealthiest 10% to the rates they were at during Eisenhower's administration. Do this at the same time you put in place effective rules and police in the market and the problem is largely solved. The poor people who took out loans they couldn't afford to pay back are victims in this too, because they were told and convinced that they could afford that debt by the people who should have known better: the banks.

[Crotalus]

I know many think the Govt is the root of all evil and it's too big and over-regulating but the fact is if the Govt had stepped in and said "you want to buy a house you need 10% down minimum and meet minimum income guidelines and proof of income or no house for you" this housing mess would have stopped dead in it's tracks.

The part you are missing here is the banks were BULLIED into making these bogus loans. That's what the CRA was all about. The government inspected those banks to make sure they were doing so and threatened them if they didn't. They did what the government told them to and today Obama is crowing about how he is getting even with the Wall Street fat cats by extorting another 26 billion out of them for tricking all those poor people into taking out loans that they could never repay.

The Bush administration tried to stop what was going on in 2002 and was stopped from doing so by the Democratically controlled Congress.

Term Limits is the only long term answer. Also, if Congress spends more than they take in, they shouldn't get a paycheck that year.

Obama hasn't submitted a budget since he's been in office. We have no idea where all these TRILLIONS are going except when we hear news stories about Solyndra Solar and Fisker Electric cars when they go bankrupt after wasting hundreds of millions. At the same time when Obama was asked about those "shovel ready jobs" the last trillion was for he laughed about it saying, "I guess those jobs weren't as shovel ready as I thought".

Either Obama is a total idiot, or his wrecking of our economy is deliberate. I think the latter.

[Crotalus]

This video shows that even if you take ALL the money from the rich, it won't be enough.

Excellent Video on the Tax-the-Rich Mentality.flv - YouTube

[gugi]

Term Limits is the only long term answer.

Why would one need term limits or start a civil war instead of simply voting the people in power out of office? I've posted this many times, but the real approval ratings of congress are pretty much where they've always been at 90%.
My take on it is that the only reason is that people like the gentleman on the video are only good for talking the talk. Until 50%+1 of the american voters look at the mirror and start acting there's not going to be any change whatsoever.

Obama hasn't submitted a budget since he's been in office.

I've got two words "Kool Aid".

[gssixgun]

You want a fast, easy, and relatively painless way out of our current economic malaise? Have the Feds buy up all the outstanding mortgage, student loan and credit card debt from the banks that currently hold it, forgive that debt, monetize the Federal Debt and raise taxes on the wealthiest 10% to the rates they were at during Eisenhower's administration. Do this at the same time you put in place effective rules and police in the market and the problem is largely solved. The poor people who took out loans they couldn't afford to pay back are victims in this too, because they were told and convinced that they could afford that debt by the people who should have known better: the banks.

that is all I can type as I am laughing too hard at that well thought out solution especially the blame the banks part HA !!!!