The American Spectator

Chris D. | 6.16.09 @ 7:41PM

Are you insane??? It was Clinton and his Wall Street friends who de-regulated the whole she-bang to allow banks to lend to anyone with a pulse! The right should be proposing this regulation instead of letting the market be run by the hands a few tyrants. America is about the little guy, the consumer, the single dad who can work his way up to CEO. NOT this prep school Ivy-League crap perpetuated by the Right AND the Left.
Keep America for Americans and rope in the banks, insurance giants and all major corporations and regulate them AFTER THEY FAIL. Keep $$$ for us NOT them.

Marc| 6.16.09 @ 8:10PM

You notice how the LA Times leaves out, with the exception of one brief sentence, any hint of opposition to this outrageous overreach of government? And even in that one sentence they make it sound as if those unamed "business groups" would be all for this if the economy was doing better. The only critics they do quote are those who think this plan doesnt go far enough!

Ran| 6.16.09 @ 9:30PM

Obama's policy is not "Hope and Change." It is rapine and plunder. It is "progressive" in the sense of metastasizing.

With 40% of adults identifying today as "conservative" and a significant portion of the available 35% of "independents" who are shopping for a conservative option, the numbers are there for a little electo-therapy. But we can to do better than elect another Reagan... we can take Congress as well.

Blacque Jacques Shellacque| 6.16.09 @ 10:51PM

Obie claims that his aim is a "light touch".

Personally, I think the guy is full of crap.

AdolfObama| 6.16.09 @ 11:02PM

I think we are witnessing an extreme power-grab that only a Dirty Chicago politician would have the balls to push through. The watering down of the dollar is okay with the Obama camp as they are enriching themselves with the billions of dollars that they freed up in a way so transparent nobody knows where it went... They will invest the dollar notes in something more stable for a minor loss right before they collapse the dollar and all their wildest mandate/huge government dreams will come true. Conspiracy theory? Perhaps...But, I cannot imagine I am the only one that has noticed this president is hell-bent to bankrupt the country. What he is doing to business and the financial markets is outrages to a point that even a far-lefty will understand is entirely irresponsible. I have always thought I could never have my faith in this country reduced to the level that I have treasonous thoughts about our president which was very popular in the Bush hate camp. Yet, I think this president didn't grow up loving his country in the same way I did and I suspect the majority of this great land still sees it such and this will eventually be the undoing of this very bad political agenda.

Missy| 6.16.09 @ 11:42PM

Thomas Sowell had Obama pegged--TOTUS is a megalomaniac.

Daisy| 6.16.09 @ 11:53PM

As an attorney for ACORN, Obama helped create the fiscal meltdown that he's used to nationalize the banks and the auto industry. Today, he compared our present health care system to GM.

What's next?

The Progressives have planned this Marxist takeover for a long time.

JamesJ| 6.17.09 @ 9:07AM

Chris D, what are you talking about? Clinton didn't "deregulate" the mortgage system. He used the arm of the law to force Banks to make loans to people that couldn't pay it back.

Bob| 6.17.09 @ 10:14AM

Again, Vadum and company -- and the rest of you, for that matter, neither understand the latest crisis or understand the CRA. The CRA was passed in 1977. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were added to the bill in 1992 under Bush41. It was the Gingrich congress that revised the bill and Phil Gramm that reduced oversight in 1999 with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill. But significant expansion of CRA did not occur until the creation of derivatives of CDO's occurred on Wall Street as a result of Phil Gramm's activities in deregulating (e.g., non-regulation of non-bank financial companies). I could go into a long discourse on securitization, but I won't do that here. Fannie and Freddie only held about 30% of subprime mortgages -- the best of them. The ones with the highest default rates were held as derivative securities gaining investors high interest rates in unregulated entities like Bear Stearns and Lehman guaranteed by the default swaps of AIG. The role of CRA in this crisis was relatively small. Even Bush43 pushed the industry to provide cheap mortgage money to unqualified individuals. Perhaps the biggest problem was that mortgage originators were not forced to keep some of the risk. Therefore, the originators didn't care if they were giving poor mortgages because the risk could be sold off to others. As long as housing prices continued to rise, people didn't worry about defaults as repossessed homes could be sold for the amount of the loan. The problem came when housing prices dropped. It was this Ponzi scheme aspect that brought this house of cards down, not the CRA.

So, guys, get a clue....

Here's a full reference on the CRA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Bob| 6.17.09 @ 10:27AM

In addition, Vadum, the misinformation in your post is rampant. BOTH Democrats and Republicans played a huge role in this crisis. But it was GLB and deregulation that made things like default swaps unregulated. The FDIC has done a great job at managing bank failures and all this legislation is trying to do is to expand the FDIC process to they types of companies that failed. This isn't a grab for power, but a way to prevent something like this from happening again. So please tell the truth here and don't lie to the readers. If you don't understand the detailed financial aspects of this problem, I'd be happy to get on the phone and take you through it in detail -- after all, I worked in the industry.

That said, I don't like the solution recommended by Obama because it gives the Fed too much power and they don't have the right people to monitor this type of financial activity. The issue is NOT the executive branch and their influence, but the Fed and its influence.

Sassy| 6.17.09 @ 5:59PM

Yeah, but the Republicans didn't take over the Banking and Auto industries, Bob. They didn't try to socialize health care, either. As a good RINO you should know this. Troll.

Bob| 6.17.09 @ 6:26PM

Sassy, if you've read my comments, you'd see that I was against the TARP (first done by Republicans), against most of the stimulus plan, and against the auto bailouts. But you are so blind to the truth that you believe anyone that looks for the truth must not be conservative in any sense. As for health care, I'm again a fiscal conservative. We pay close to 18% of GDP for health care. In order to be competitive with other countries, we must get that back down to about 10%. With my 35 years of business experience, I don't believe that you can predict the success of ANY plan because of the law of unintended consequences. What I've called for is test marketing of different programs for a number of years to find out the truth about costs and consumer/employer behavior.

Yes, I am a proud fiscal conservative and social libertarian and I take your unthinking badging of me as a RINO with honor. Thank you. As to the charge of "troll", you wouldn't understand what that means.