Wall Street's Candidate//Romney: Likes to fire people//Disses 45 million Americans.

Mitt Romney is the chosen candidate of Wall Street. The same people that sold trillions of dollars of crappy real estate debt, caused the worst recession in 80 years, got bailed out by the public, fight any kind of oversight on their sneaky financial practices that regularly drive the nation into deep recessions, take millions of dollars in bonuses...and ignored all that public money have a favorite candidate, who has been quoted recently saying the following:

and here is the real Mitt Romney:

"I like to fire people"

"I'm not concerned about the very poor".

There are about 45 million Americans under the poverty level. They don't have money parked in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Luxembourg to minimize their taxes. They don't get special deals and favors from Goldman Sachs. And all those unemployed, underemployed, and soon to be unemployed are going to be very unhappy learning that Mitt Romney's favorite financial firm is going to fire Americans and send the jobs to Singapore

No matter what GOP candidates preach...the same result keeps popping up. Take care of Wall Street---they will end up paying for Mitt's campaign...and screw the rest of America.

 

That quote was taken out of context.Romney was alluding to insurance companies that try not to pay.So he said,"If I don't like my insurance company I'll get rid of them,I like to fire people."

 

Actually both quotes are wrong. What Romney actually said, without context was:

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me"​

Even without context, to take the opposite position of this statement one would have to say something like,

"The government should prevent you from being able to fire people who provide services to you"​

That position is obviously a complete loser. Its pathetic that the liberal media has glommed onto the misquote, nevermind context. They are not only bankrupt of ideas, they are morally bankrupt. One of the many reasons Obama's reelection chances are looking like this:

 

The moral of this story is that quotes can not only be misquoted by people trying to defame you,but also by people trying to defend you.

 

...and here is another Mitt Romney quote...alluding to the stranglehold and ties he has with big corporate America and specifically Wall Street:

Corporations are people said Mitt. Incredibly wealthy corporate robber barons are funding Romney's campaigns and the onslaught of attack ads that are decimating his competitors.

Mitt believes corporations are people. Oh my...tell that to the millions of Americans laid off by big corporations that now have hoarded more cash and more profits than at any time in history as reported in 2010 and a year later we see that corporations hoarded even more cash while refusing to hire

Mitt is the ultimate spokesperson for Wall Street's sales job on the American public while it hoards cash, lays off Americans and outsources jobs.

...and week after week he keeps coming up with these phrases that reveal his true colors as a mouthpiece for the scoundrels that brought you the worst recession in 8-9 decades.

 

Oooo... Evil Wall St. Where are those Occupy Wall St. Protesters when you need them? Oh yes,thats right. They have been arrested en masse for trespassing, vandalism, destruction of private and public property. No need make burning an American flag a crime, which they also did.

It is going to be comic to watch the next 9 months of Obama supporters running against the "Do nothing congress", half of which is controlled by the Democrats, and trying to gin up "grass roots" angst from the dregs of society. Occupy is only slightly more popular than Charles Manson.


Oh, and Earlpearl, I know you know this, but just in case you drank to much this morning, let me remind you. For tax purposes, the subject of that conversation, Corporations are people too. It has been that way for more than a century. Most of US case law is built on the concept.

Anyway, carry on. Maybe if you mindlessly repeat idiotic talking points, you can distract peopel from the fact Obama has added 7 Trillion dollars to the National Debt in three short years, while lining the pockets of his cronies with billions. Maybe you can convince the 5 million people who still don't have jobs that things are better because of Obama. Maybe you can convince the millions of underemployed people, working in jobs they are overqualified for, earning a fraction of the wages they should be earning, that Mitt Romney is the source of all their problems. Good luck

 

Earl - the opening post attempts to nail Wall St for a praCtice where they were largely a victim. I was posting in here about the unsustainable real estate lending before the crash of 2008... And that was not Wall Streets doing, or at least they were a relatively latecomer to the game, not the kingpin.

As i said then... It was a practice in which most of America bore complicity... Buyers getting houses they knew they couldnt afford, agents helping them do it, appraisers playing along to stay on the "approved" list, loan officers skirting even the flimsy guidelines in place, managers of loan companies signing off on bad loans, their bosses pressuring them to do it and threatening underwriters if they werent "business friendly", the guys on Capitol Hill creating "programs" to aid buyers that would have constituted a felony the year before, Fanni and Freddie driving the bus for those programs, the justice dept threatening and fining lenders that didnt make bad loans by suggesting racist motives.

The whole damned thing was then bundled together on the idea that a partial interest in a huge package of terrible paper was a great way to diversify risk. That did involve Wall Street, but they had a host of complicit players to thank for the fiasco. They by no means did the whole thing alone or even started the snowball on its course.

The major player in the mess was the cozy relationship between a bunch of bought and paid for legislators, major lenders like Countrywide, and the guys at freddie and fannie. Without the "programs" they created, the rest could never have happened.

Check the term "Friends of Angelo" and you'll find the names of a stack of legislators and supposed watchdogs that were paid off in favorable loans. Check who got campaign donations from countrywide and subsequently helped pass or protect the programs that initiated the collapse. Check which legislators were in bed with Fannie and Freddy... Some financially, at least one literally. Theres a correlation.

Bottom line, wall street isnt filled with angels, but laying that one at their feet ignores the history of the problem, as well as provides unmerited cover for the people most at fault.

Just sayin'. ~ Rob

 

@O_nation Every time I see the wonder boys of the extreme right blame obama for everything bad that ever occurred...I like to go to the facts: I like this factual graph about where the miserable huge debt comes from When you actually look at where the debt comes from rather than blame obama for every bad thing that ever occurred you see that by far the vast majority of this miserable debt comes from Bush, the GOP in Congress and the expensive bills they passed with no efforts to ever pay for them.

The graph makes it easy to see how to reduce the debt:

1. Eliminate the Bush tax cuts
2. End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. One was ended.
3. Cut defense and cut domestic programs.

And what is unseen is grow the economy.

 

Of course, but that wont stop some folks running for office from blaming those with money in this country for all that ails us. In the 40's they used to blame the Jews, but that has gone out of vogue in America. Wall St. will do nicely.

@Earlpearl: Why are you working at making me question if you have any experience in business at all. Seriously, in the real world, have you ever presented a change in revenue collected as an expense on your income statement? Ever?

Let me explain it to you. Changing the tax rate effects revenue, not expenses. One might argue that a reduced tax rate reduces revenues collected, though there are other factors involved, including the general health of the economy. That said, it is often argued that lowering the tax rate stimulates economic activity, increases GDP, and actually creates MORE net tax revenue.

No matter how you slice it, it is impossible to estimate the difference in tax revenue from tax cuts. Higher taxes may very well have kept the economy stagnant after 9/11, putting us into an Obama like depression much sooner.

I can appreciate the need to change the topic from the misquote you opened this thread with, and the false allegation that Corporations are not treated as people for tax purposes, but you are stooping to new lows. Some other "problems" with your graph include:

• Failure to list any Afghanistan/Iraq expenditures for the Obama admin.
• Failure to peg the new Healthcare entitlement at the 1.5 Trillion dollar estimate the CBO gave it (and that will prove to be very low)
• Failure to mention the massive hike in the baseline federal budget under Obama
• Failure to attribute the 350 billion in TARP funds spent by Obama.

Basically, your graph is a lie, put out by an opinion journalist working for the NY times, and redistributed here for our consumption. Please don't feed the people crap. It stinks. It doesn't taste good. It isn't productive.

 

Rob: Just as you saw a real estate crisis developing through your efforts in the 2000's I too saw one develop in the during the 1980's and result in the recession from around 1989 to the early 1990's. I wrote about that one a lot and provided a tremendous data set that graphically shows how stupid and shortsighted the lending and real estate world was during the latter part of the 1980's that led to the crash. I provided this data set several times in digital point....http://www.fairfaxcountyeda.org/sites/default/files/publications/my11rer.pdf The data for Fairfax County is a microcosm of overbuilt office environments everywhere in the nation.

Actually everyone had all that demand and supply data because it was the fundamental information that fueled the industry. Developers, brokers, the lenders and the government agencies that oversaw the lenders all had that kind of information.

Look at the graph on page 2. Starting in 1984 when vacancies hit 10%...all logic dictated that lending and development should have been cut back. The reverse occurred. Development exploded.

While the following sequence of misery had occurred earlier in Texas and some other SouthWest states due to even earlier and a relatively higher percentage of overbuilding here is what occurred nationwide in early 1989 which precipitated a nationwide recession.

1. Lenders took back and called in their loans on underperforming and non-performing loans
2. All liquidity was removed from all buildings.
3. The commercial real estate industry totally stopped working.

The feds under the Resolution Trust entity started taking over financial institutions and commercial real estate. They owned lots of it. In some areas a majority.

These days the right wing political hacks call it socialization. Nobody was screaming that term then because first Reagan and then Bush the first (two Republicans) were the Presidents when all this sh1t hit the fan first in the SouthWest then the rest of the nation.

But the fact was the feds stepped in and took over everything. The commercial office market was in depression...and because of these horrendous hits...the rest of the nation went into recession.

I saw all of it first hand. I was a broker, I leased and sold commercial space. I had made and worked on land sales for development, I worked in the office with the best land sales people (for office development) in the entire Washington DC market...and we were seeing virtually every land deal. I invested in property...and I became the "real estate guy" for short periods for 2 Savings and Loans that participated in the crazy lending/over development fiasco of the 1980's. I wrote about it a number of times here before.

Apart from the miserable hits I took...the worst part was seeing some loans made and approved for development by the local lenders. They were nuts. At some point around 1984...there wasn't an office building development deal in the entire DC region that made sense. Vacancy rates were huge and growing. Rental rates weren't covering it at all...the deals only made sense under a Ponzi scheme kind of thinking (develop the building and sell it for a profit to a sucker (probably a foreign investor ).

So I suspect you saw similar things in the residential market during the earlier days of the past decade when the residential real estate market exploded. I know I got a whiff of it around 2004-2005 when getting to know someone who was working in a mortgage office that was selling crappy assed loans. The office was making ten tons of money easily...and I knew nobody makes that kind of money in real estate that easily unless they are lying and cheating (on an everyday basis ).

I don't believe the blame the dems and fannie and ginnie bullshit story. Here is why.

There is an endless line of repeated bs about CRA (community reinvestment act--first started under Carter) being the reason for crappy residential loans.

Here is the amazing hard FACTS. Nobody has ever generated a single list of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or more CRA loans and shown they sucked.

There are no such lists. You know why? You can't turn up CRA loans. There is a lot of research done by people responding to the endless attacks that CRA caused the current crisis. You know what those heavyweight studies say...that tried to figure out if CRA loans were the root of the problem???

You can't find and document CRA loans in long lists. Its an astonishing bullshit political hoax by the Right Wing Political Blow hard society..trying to shift the blame from the commercial market places.

If you can document the CRA loans that turned miserable and led to the crisis....DO SO!!! I've searched and searched for that data. Its not there because one can't list and document the loans.

I read a lot of stuff. I like this heavyweight research on the topic: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/community/cra/cra_lending_during_subprime_meltdown.pdf

Complicated stuff....hard to read.

But here is what it comes down to.

1. The research was presented in 2008.
2. It describes how you can't "find" CRA loans..but they went to huge efforts to generate data on "possible" or "probable" cra loans. They were able to identify loans made by banks that were regulated by CRA..and also loans made by financial institutions (IMC's) that were not subject to virtually any kind of regulation or oversight. Read it.
3. They investigated the results on about 240,000 loans made in California in CRA type neighborhoods during 2004-2006. hey that is a big number...and California is one of those worst case examples...where the "shit hit the fan" the worst.
4. They identified something very interesting about that huge volume of loans made into low income regions.....A lot of those loans were made by financial institutions that were TOTALLY EXEMPT from CRA regulations...and most government oversight. These are Independent Mortgage Companies (IMC's).

5. What did they find? The loans into regions that promote CRA--areas with more poor people, or areas with either/or lots of blacks or hispanics...the types of folks CRA tried to address....THE MAJORITY OF THE LOANS THAT TURNED OUT BAD WERE THE ONES MADE BY IMC's...the independent mortgage companies that were set up to not be regulated in any way whatsoever.

Read it. Its hard data. Its not unsubstantiated BS.

yep...among the millions of crappy loans that turned the economy sour...there were loans made into poorer neighborhoods. The one's that turned most sour were the loans made by financial institutions that were pretty immune to any kind of government oversight.

In other words...financial crooks were given free reign over unsuspecting consumers.

So the lenders were out there screwing over people. Specifically lenders that were immune from government oversight.

Now here is the part about Wall Street. Wall Street was selling billions of collateralized loans to private investors back in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. Instead of banks holding the loans....the IMC's referenced above...made the loans..then wall street packaged and resold the loans to private investors and institutions...

There is a total of about $8.5 trillion in mortgage backed securities held by investors. That is a huge outrageous number.

While much (a majority) of those loans confirm to GSE (government guaranteed loans--good old fannie and freddy ) by 2005, 2006.. a majority of loans going into securitized loan packages did not confirm to Fannie or Freddie guidelines. They were loans generated by the unregulated IMC's, that could do anything they wanted.

Finally when it comes to government oversight to essentially stop the widespread predatory lending that spread across the nation, the Bush administration essentially was 100% hands off during the run up of the crisis in the early and mid 2000's.

Specifically when state attorney generals wanted to go after the dirty lenders the Bush administration stopped the individual states in their tracks back as early as 2003: http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_42/b4104036827981.htm

That was a stunning event, especially in retrospect. Back as early as 2003 state after state wanted to go after predatory lenders. It was widespread. Ultimately 50 (that is ALL of them) different states attorneys wanted to prosecute the private lenders.

The Bush administration stopped them dead in their tracks via the Office of Thrift Regulation and the Office of the Currency.

People can rant and blame various congressmen etc...but when the opportunity was there to protect borrowers and ultimately the entire economy...the Bush administration blocked the process and additionally blocked states rights.

Frankly....if a highly politically charged extremist right wing wasn't so intent on selling its political message and gaining power...the population of the US would get a much clearer picture of what went wrong with the economy...and how to fix it.

 

LoL. All we need to do is silence the people who take issue with dishonest graphs like the one you presented in this thread. That will help us clarify the picture.

Jesus Earl, you wrote a friggin essay.

 

Actually I was in RE in the 80's too David... so I got to see it both times too. [See footer of quoted post.]

The post I quote below was written here in DP in early September 2008, talking about the reasons the RE market crashed. Little did I know the stock market was going to follow it in a few weeks for the same reason... as the bundled sub-prime loans from the RE crash took their toll.

Note the mention of the Nehemiah program. That one was literally a rebuilt version of "Up-for-Down"... which is a tactic I'd seen people jailed for only now it was a federal program.

As for the Freddie/Fanny connection... it was very real. The programs for sub-prime mortgages, the interest-only stuff, speculative balloon mortgages and ARMs, various other unsound practices... all very much a part of the RE fall, and the RE market took the stock market with it. You can spend a minute on You-tube and find clips of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, et al running interference for those institutions.

What I saw and what the timeline suggests is the Wall Street crash originated from crooked political deals involving legislators, lenders, and the mortgage regulatory guys.

Notice the difference between Pelosi's statements in 2008 criticizing the GOP for failing to regulate the offending bodies, vs the full court press by the Democrats years prior in the hearings on Fannie/Freddy... during which Barney Frank and friends insisted the was no safety issue, and Democrats described the issue in question as "riskless".

The record indicates the Dems were pushing high risk vehicles as low risk programs. Check for yourself.

[video=youtube;hxMInSfanqg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxMInSfanqg[/video]

 

According to Earlpearl, and the President, Wall St. is the enemy. Yet Barack Obama has collected more money from Wall St. than any president in history. In 2008, Goldman Sachs was Obama's second largest contributor at over a million dollars. Also on the list were JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup Inc, Morgan Stanley, all at well over half a million dollars a piece.

Rolling the clock forward to 2012,

We hear on a daily basis how evil Wall St. is, and especially Bain Capital, the demon spawn of the evil one, Mitt Romney. Yet here, in black and white, we can see how Wall St., and more specifically Bain Capital, is funding Barack Obama's reelection campaign while at the very same time the President and his minions paint them as the source of America's problems and the reason not to elect Mitt Romney.

While the charade is all very entertaining, I often find myself wondering how Democrats live with their own rank hypocrisy.

 

Looking at you guys arguing who is the biggest thief and crook is quite funny. When are you going to learn that there is no difference between a Republican or a Democrat president? They are all going to screw you as much as they can and the only thing that they are arguing about is what is the most effective way to screw average Joe. Both parties represent the same class, what they are arguing about is if the future capitalism should be modeled after China and European governments or should be similar to Russia, Mexico and Iran. Democrats represent the first group and Republicans the second but Americans are fu*ked anyway.

 

That's only part of the story. Wall Street is playing both ends - they love both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

Notice how all the major news outlets (who are part of Wall Street) have anointed Romney while throwing darts at the other Republican nominees. They did the same for Obama in 2008.

Mitt Romney, as President, would only be marginally better than Obama. But only marginally.

Neither Romney nor Obama really give a rat's ass about the poor. They are only puppets of their parties. Their only concern is satisfying the people that gave them millions.

I oddly find myself agreeing with gworld. With the caveat that each party promotes their party line candidate. That's why independent thinkers like Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich can't get elected.

 

You are still dreaming. Think of a Bus which is going from NY to LA. In this bus there is a passenger who is running all the time opposite to the direction which the bus is going, where do you thing the passengers will end up, in NY or LA?
The momentum of social, economical and political events is going to make sure that average American is fu*cked and more and more a totalitarian regime installed that can deal with social unrests which will be the result of people getting more and more desperate. Who is the president will make no difference except possibly for the fact that police is going to use rubber bullets or real ones.

 

Rob: I liked your quote. My experience was in the commercial markets not the residential market. I bought some residential properties quite a while ago. I'm pretty debt averse. I put down healthy deposits...and all my residential deals were predicated on positive cash flow projections, market analysis, work to get the properties rented, and cross my fingers that things go right. All my work was predicated on strict cash flow analysis before taxes...and incidentally minimizing mortgage debt. Debt is dangerous if things don't work right. Always has been...always will be. I wasn't in the residential markets when the crazy financing games were being played in the early 2000's. But no money down, interest only loans, variable rate mortgages are all high risk games. I'm averse to them.

Now as to the video. Its a choreographed recreation by a political hack. Its Hollywood bullshit that cherry picks pictures to paint a political perspective.

First time I was watching it..about 2-4 minutes in...I thought...if I was a Black American...an African American...I'd say its time to go back to Black Power/Afro's/Raise fists and raise hell. The man is trying to f*ck us again. One Black member of Congress after another were highlighted.

What is more symbolically racist??? Then it attacks a woman (Pelosi) and a Gay Man (Frank).

First Blacks, then a woman, then a Gay guy. I believe there is a pattern there in atacking minorities.

Now I'll go back to the single report I linked to: http://www.frbsf.org/publications/community/cra/cra_lending_during_subprime_meltdown.pdf

Here are some differences between that and the Hollywood version of that video:

1. The report provides hard researched facts and data!!!!

2. The data shows that the unregulated IMC's, that didn't have to conform to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or were subject to CRA oversight created lots more shitty crappy loans that went bad than the financial insitutions that were regulated under CRA and tended to underwrite loans conforming to Fannie mae, etc guidelines.

Businesses did it. They did it on their own. They created the scenario you wrote about in September 2008. Lets not pollute the facts with Hollywood recreated fantasies by videographers with a political bend. Look to facts.

Do you want to see more of those reports like the long factual, hard data research I sourced? There is more of them out there. I did a lot of searching over a long period of time. All those different hard data reports come up with the same conclusions.

1. They actually look at a lot of hard data.
2. They find that you cannot direct access CRA loans
3. They develop research methodology that differentiates loans from different institutions
4. They find that the Independent Mortgage Companies....the ones that generated loans not in conformance with more stringent guidelines established by fannie, freddie, and not subject to government encouraged CRA efforts....were the financial institutions that created the bulk of the mess!!!!! Businesses free of regulation went hogwild giving out crappy high risk loans..so they could generate huge fees.

It very interesting to read the research. One finds that the CountryWides and the Citibanks, and a lot of other large financial institutions created Independent Mortgage Companies, that were free of regulation, then went into neighborhoods with lower income people and flooded those areas with crappy loans that went bad!!!!

That is sh!tty. Its a part of the American experience chasing after the almighty dollar. Its why there should be regulation so it doesn't turn into a national financial crisis.

 

That is the will of the nation so let them do it

 

Are you using software to make auto random posts?

 

So none of those Democrats ever said any of those things. Wow. The voice over is incredible, don't you think? I mean its flawless! It really makes it look like they actually said those things!

So the video, which is a complete fabrication, was created by racists, homophobes and wife beaters! Incredible! How did I miss that! Here all this time, I thought someone was just using the power of recorded video to bring back the words of some of these representatives to haunt them. I had no idea their motivations were purely racist/sexist/homophobic. Good catch! Nothing more shameful than race baiting.

Your report drills in to one small portion of the entire ball of sh*t. You present it as if to say, "Look, Look, this particular part of the ball of sh*t stinks worse than the rest of it!". I think Rob's analysis was pretty much spot on. The whole mess had guardians and participants of every political stripe, gender, race, sexual orientation, and financial status.

It amazes me how some people read the 9-11 commission report and come up with different conclusions based on their own belief system. Its a bit like the graph you presented earlier in this thread. Facts and reports can be made to serve whatever political agenda you want them to, and your reputation for independent analysis does not exactly precede you. Sorry pal.

Hehe, it reminds me of the thousands of people standing in line for, and kicking each others asses for Section 8 housing. All part of the American experience.

Seriously though, in your opinion. What regulation needs to be fixed? Additional licensing of mortgage brokers? Reinstate Glass-Stegal repealed by Clinton? Run 100% of all loans through Fannie and Freddie, instead of the 90% of the mortgage market they back right now (A preview of what will happen as the "Government healthcare option" takes hold in the market)? Whatever that regulation is, can you explain why Obama hasn't instituted it yet? I liked your support for getting rid of carried interest, so I really am curious to hear your opinion on this.