An informative video, about 10 minutes or so, that gives description to the roots of the current financial crisis in the USA. And yes, I did say crisis.
Ron Paul fans should appreciate this video. And it has good music.
The frames move a bit quickly so I recommend hitting the pause button on to read the ‘white’ frames, you’ll see what I mean, completely.
Let me take a wild guess ahead of time…shiftless colored folk?
Roll the tape and…Bingo!
From UCLA Law Professor Steven Bainbridge, a non-racist conservative (yes, there are some).
[quote]They Make You Embarrassed to be a Conservative
Some of my fellow conservatives are not only embarrassing themselves during the financial crisis, they’re embarrassing the rest of us who share that label. E.g., Mark Krikorian, who poses the question of whether there’s a cause and effect relationship between WaMu’s failure and its affirmative action policies. Worse yet, is Michaelle Malkin, who somehow manages to conflate the financial crisis with illegal immigration:
" You’ve heard a lot about Fannie/Freddie and the minority lending shakedowns, but you haven’t heard most commentators/analysts on either the left or the right talk about the massive illegal alien mortgage racket — a topic I’ve reported on for the past five years. That’s because fault lies at the feet of the crime-enabling banking industry and the ethnic lobbyists and the illegal alien-enabling Bush administration."
There’s a lot of room for legitimate criticism of the bailout and there’s a lot of room for partisan point-making to ensure that the public remembers that the Democrats bear more than their fair share of the blame for this mess, but the raving of people like Malkin and Krikorian should be taking place in a padded room in Arkham Asylum not in the public discourse.
Put simply, the freezing up of the credit markets doesn’t have anything to do with either affirmative action or illegal immigration, and people who believe it does are on a par with the conspiracy theorists who think fluoridation is a Chicom plot.
When you look at the data, it’s true that minorities are slightly over-represented in the sub-prime mortgage market. Yet, whites (non-minorities) received 72.5% of subprime mortgages. Blacks got 16.2% of subprime mortgages, which isn’t all that different from the 12.4% of the general population that blacks comprise. The Hispanics about whom Malkin is so hysterical got only 6.2% of subprime mortgages, significantly less than their 14.8% of the general population. But you don’t find an analysis of that data at blogs like those of Malkin or Krikorian.
Update: Although that data is about 10 years old, the pattern continues to hold:
ComplianceTech, a provider of technology and business intelligence for consumer lending institutions and government agencies, has released an industry report indicating that the majority of subprime-rate loans originated in 2006 were made to non-Hispanic Whites and upper-income borrowers (conventional, 1st lien, 1-to-4 family, owner-occupied, home purchase and refinance).The findings are contrary to the way subprime-rate lending has been portrayed. Frequent media portrayals and congressional dialogue refer to subprime-rate lending as a minority and low-income issue. Findings in the report are based on data submitted by lenders under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) analyzed with the data-mining tool LendingPatterns(TM).
Most subprime loans continue to be held by whites. Having said that, it is true that there is evidence of pricing disparities between white and minority borrowers. What’s striking, however, is that “black and Hispanic borrowers were far more likely to be steered into high-cost subprime loans than other borrowers, even after controlling for factors such as income, loan size and property location.” One might not unreasonably infer that discrimination drove much of the ethnic disparities in this market. Indeed, the data indicate that black homeowners who received subprime mortgage loans were much more likely to be issued a higher-rate loan than white borrowers with the same qualifications. (See 1693 PLI/Corp 655, available on Westlaw.) Indeed, it appears that many minorities who would have qualified for prime loans were unnecessarily channeled by predatory lenders into more expensive subprime financing. The Malkin case simply doesn’t hold water. [/quote]
Bill Maher had a cute anti-racist rant on the New Rules. (Available for download, here–right-click for MOV file.) He doesn’t want everybody to think that all white people are shiftless and lazy like these CEOs.
The video is ridiculous.
Ron Paul would rip the shit out of it.
Listening to his recent radio interviews he wouldn’t blame Carter. He blames the bankers.
This whole crisis has been planned for ages.
It’s all designed to consolidate power.
The video says change is on the way.
So they are expecting Nadar to win then?
McCain and Obama will offer NO CHANGE.
The same old shit will be discussed on these boards about the false left/right paradigm, while bombs are dropped on countries that can’t defend themselves.
There may be a different rhetoric between the two ‘candidates’, but the people in power (not bush) aren’t stupid enough to allow democracy to exist.
They can’t lose - their man always wins.
America and the UK need a political revolution.
Speaking of great Republican Ideas , along the lines of Supply Side…etc…Let’s say that we had gone ahead an privatized our Social Security…where would we be now?
Well, you could read FactCheck’s analysis of Obama’s Social Security Whopper to find out the following:
[quote=“FactCheck.org”]In Daytona Beach, [color=#0000FF]Obama said [/color]that “if [color=#0000FF]my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would’ve had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week[/color].”
[color=#FF0000]That’s not true[/color]. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by McCain in 2005 would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to invest any part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. All current retirees would be covered by the same benefits they are now.
Obama would have been correct to say that many workers under age 58 would have had [color=#8000BF]some portion [/color]of their Social Security benefits affected by the current market turmoil – if they had chosen to participate. And market drops would be a worry for those who retire in future decades. But current retirees would not have been affected.
The private accounts would have been voluntary. Anybody fearful of the stock market’s risk could simply stay in the current system.
[color=#0000FF]Obama’s reference [/color]to “casino culture,” disappearing “nest eggs” and gambling with “your life savings” [color=#0000FF]are also misleading exaggerations[/color]. Only a little under one-third of any workers’ total Social Security taxes could have been invested (a maximum of 4 percent of taxable wages, out of the total 12.4 percent now paid, split equally between worker and employer.)
Speculation in individual stocks would not have been permitted. Workers would have had a choice of a few, broadly diversified stock or bond funds.
While McCain has voted in favor creating private Social Security accounts in the past, and endorsed Bush’s 2005 proposal (which never came to a vote in Congress), he is not making a strong push for them as part of his campaign.[/quote]
A Subprime Parable[/quote]
We should blame the dead babies in China for being hungry enough to drink bad formula.
Just saw that vid. My gawd but how banally simplistic that picture is: blame Carter, blame Clinton for making mortgages affordable to people that couldn’t afford them. WRONG! 
Still, I guess it’s comforting to tie it to something tangible like being able to afford a house. The fact is it’s much more complicated, it’s about turning debt into something tradeable, effectively bonds.
But if you want a simple answer, you simply have to ask which president had two terms to fix it, didn’t, and now has the worst economic crisis in recent history blow up on his watch? Now this might be forgivable if it was completely out of the blue, but it wasn’t. People have been warning of this very possibility for quite sometime. History will be the final judge. Mark my words.
HG
The fact that they were building a bubble was already being talked about well before I left finance, IE in 2002-2003.
That’s 5 years ago, where warnings about the unusustaniability of the whole thang have been rather public.
5 years in which Bush and Greenspan could have defused this. Instead put everything on ignore, and here we are.
When you say president Hoover, you think incompetence, I guess that it will be the same with George W. Hoover Bush.
Well, you could read FactCheck’s analysis of Obama’s Social Security Whopper to find out the following:
[quote=“FactCheck.org”]In Daytona Beach, [color=#0000FF]Obama said [/color]that “if [color=#0000FF]my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would’ve had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week[/color].”
[color=#FF0000]That’s not true[/color]. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by McCain in 2005 would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to invest any part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. All current retirees would be covered by the same benefits they are now.
Obama would have been correct to say that many workers under age 58 would have had [color=#8000BF]some portion [/color]of their Social Security benefits affected by the current market turmoil – if they had chosen to participate. And market drops would be a worry for those who retire in future decades. But current retirees would not have been affected.
The private accounts would have been voluntary. Anybody fearful of the stock market’s risk could simply stay in the current system.
[color=#0000FF]Obama’s reference [/color]to “casino culture,” disappearing “nest eggs” and gambling with “your life savings” [color=#0000FF]are also misleading exaggerations[/color]. Only a little under one-third of any workers’ total Social Security taxes could have been invested (a maximum of 4 percent of taxable wages, out of the total 12.4 percent now paid, split equally between worker and employer.)
Speculation in individual stocks would not have been permitted. Workers would have had a choice of a few, broadly diversified stock or bond funds.
While McCain has voted in favor creating private Social Security accounts in the past, and endorsed Bush’s 2005 proposal (which never came to a vote in Congress), he is not making a strong push for them as part of his campaign.[/quote][/quote]
Before we take the dive into election politics…who said what about who’se plan…let’s just examine whether having privatized accounts makes any sense at all? If it voluntary, then it does not really address the future funding issue at teh core of this reform, unless a lot of people opt out. If it a supplimentary investment savings program, you can pick up market risk and returns with other vehicles like 401ks. Social Security is supposed to serve as a final safety net, not be your primary retirement fund. Markets do, as we are reminded again by recent events, undergo broad and significant declines. At times, these declines can take some amount of time to recover - say 1968 to 1977 or 1986. even if they are short, that can be a long time for people looking for defined income to wait. Unless something fundamentally changes about the nature of financial markets, markets will continue to experience broad, periodic declines in the future. So essentially, we’ve not really solved one fundamental funding issue, and we’ve created another potential one. Of course, this is in the future, which is generally beyond the ken of most politicians.
For those born after 1950 who are not yet ready for retirement, do we ask them to make up the shortfall in their pension (really like a pension liability you owe yourself)? Do we hope that the value recovers by the time of retirement? Do we force them to make up the losses now? Or do we put them on a reduced benefit if the full value does not recover?
Democrats…in their own words back in 2004 
Republicans calling for more regulations…Democrats protecting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Even Bubba Clinton blames the Dems in Congress for resisting his efforts and the efforts of Repubs to strengthen regulatory oversight over FM and FM.
We are already way beyond Freddie and Fanny, Chewy.
The new victims will be Citi and the rest of the global finance system, if the Republicans don’t get their arses into gear.
Interestingly enough, the repubs are a bit like the KMT in one respect. They are willing to let things go to hell if they are not assured of winning what they want, IE McHoover in the white house.
So stop blabbing, Fanny and Freddy were not the root cause of this, and the democrats were not the only ones on the take.
A Subprime Parable[/quote]
We should blame the dead babies in China for being hungry enough to drink bad formula.[/quote]
Missed a few, haven’t we? Their mortgage broker tells them he can offer them a great deal at no money down and minimal payments, and don’t worry about the balance, because all the experts on Wall Street are telling him prices can only go up; their head of the Federal Reserve, in order to boost his Republican buddies re-election chances, tells them to switch to an ARM and calls for more innovative financing arrangements; and then a whole bunch of CEO “Masters of the Universe”, whiz-kid MBAs and high-flying lawyers take those mortgages and turn them into derivatives leveraged to the trillions.
So you see, it’s all the Garcia’s fault.
I hear Wachovia went under, or got bought out or something. They had my student loans.
Brah ha ha ha! EAT RED INK MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Just saw that vid. My gawd but how banally simplistic that picture is: blame Carter, blame Clinton for making mortgages affordable to people that couldn’t afford them. WRONG! Still, I guess it’s comforting to tie it to something tangible like being able to afford a house. The fact is it’s much more complicated, it’s about turning debt into something tradeable, effectively bonds.
But if you want a simple answer, you simply have to ask which president had two terms to fix it, didn’t, and now has the worst economic crisis in recent history blow up on his watch? Now this might be forgivable if it was completely out of the blue, but it wasn’t. People have been warning of this very possibility for quite sometime. History will be the final judge. Mark my words.
HG[/quote]
Hell, people in my class from the rating agencies were talking about it. That was in 2001
[quote]
A Subprime Parable
We should blame the dead babies in China for being hungry enough to drink bad formula.
Crass.
Missed a few, haven’t we? Their mortgage broker tells them he can offer them a great deal at no money down and minimal payments, and don’t worry about the balance, because all the experts on Wall Street are telling him prices can only go up; their head of the Federal Reserve, in order to boost his Republican buddies re-election chances, tells them to switch to an ARM and calls for more innovative financing arrangements; and then a whole bunch of CEO “Masters of the Universe”, whiz-kid MBAs and high-flying lawyers take those mortgages and turn them into derivatives leveraged to the trillions.
So you see, it’s all the Garcia’s fault.[/quote]
Though his point rings true to me, I didn’t think the author is touting this as the sole cause.
There is a piece from Jeffrey Sachs on today’s Taipei Times that has a quote that serves as a warning and gives light to the predicament described by the OP:
[quote]Fundamentalism seems to emerge in times of far-reaching change, when traditional social arrangements come under threat. The surge of modern US fundamentalism in politics dates to the civil rights era of the 1960s, and at least partly reflects a backlash among whites against the growing political and economic strength of non-white and immigrant minority groups in US society.
[/quote]
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2008/09/30/2003424619
It’s all part of the Shock Doctrine.