''twas Wall Street greed what done it, some folks say, when it comes to explaining the spectacular housing meltdown of recent years, which had its roots in a great many astonishingly risky loans.Do read the whole article at the above link but also remember that I've covered this before:
Other folks suggest that the federal government just may have played something of a role in inducing, even strong-arming, banks to take risks they otherwise would have avoided. Specifically, the Community Reinvestment Act and related policy pressures are pointed to as culprits, part of a government effort to extend home-ownership in lower-income neighborhoods. Now comes a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that says, quite bluntly. that the CRA played a major role. In the academic world, mealy-mouthed delivery of even powerful conclusions is the norm, so it's refreshing to see authors Sumit Agarwal, Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, Amit Seru answer the title's question, "Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?," with the clear, "Yes, it did. ... We find that adherence to the act led to riskier lending by banks."'
I have wanted to blog about the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) for some months now but have been cautious of doing so for obvious reasons. However the vitriol being spewed out, by the usual suspects in the left wing media, at the banking community has really pissed me off. So here we go, as Forbes tells us:In February 2009:
"The CRA forces banks to make loans in poor communities, loans that banks may otherwise reject as financially unsound. Under the CRA, banks must convince a set of bureaucracies that they are not engaging in discrimination, a charge that the act encourages any CRA-recognized community group to bring forward. Otherwise, any merger or expansion the banks attempt will likely be denied. But what counts as discrimination?I know this is not the agreed narrative but it is the truth.
According to one enforcement agency, "discrimination exists when a lender's underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants." Note that these "arbitrary or outdated criteria" include most of the essentials of responsible lending: income level, income verification, credit history and savings history--the very factors lenders are now being criticized for ignoring."
I have blogged many times about the Community Reinvestment Act and how it was one of the key factors in creating the US housing bubble as well as its effect on UK housing finance. You should read my earlier articles - here, here, here, here (in October 2008) the links to Barack Obama and here the links to UK policy.In March 2009:
I raise the matter today because Christopher Booker in The Telegraph yesterday wrote
"It is all very well for President Obama to vent his anger on all those US bankers who continued to claim billions of dollars in bonuses while expecting Washington to bail them out after the sub-prime mortgage scandal brought the banks to their knees. But conveniently overlooked has been the curious part Mr Obama himself played in the sub-prime debacle.
At the heart of it was a 1995 amendment to the Community Reinvestment Act which legally required banks to lend money to buy homes to millions of poor, mainly black Americans, guaranteed by the two biggest mortgage associations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And no one campaigned more actively for this change to the law than Mr Obama, as a young but already influential Chicago politician.
It was this Act which, more than anything, helped to create the US housing bubble, well beyond the point where it was obvious that hundreds of thousands of homeowners would be likely to default. And in 2005 no one more actively opposed moves to halt Fannie Mae's reckless guarantees than Senator Obama, as he was by then. As the official records show, no senator received more donations from Fannie Mae than he did (although Hillary Clinton ran him close). Thus no US politician arguably did more to promote the sub-prime disaster than the man now expected to pick up the pieces, Rather like Gordon Brown, really. "
I couldn't have put it better myself and somehow I doubt that this story will get anywhere near the BBC where the Obamamessiah is beyond criticism and will remain so so long as he follows the BBC approved line.
'A very interesting article in the New York Times should be read here. It's from 30 September 1999 that's whilst Bill Clinton was President and in the light of the current sub-prime crisis it is quite enlightening:
"In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' "
Read the whole article and wonder at how the MSM and especially the BBC have just ignored this angle on the banking crisis. Anyone would think they had an agenda...'
"In the years between 2003 and 2010, Labour spent a staggering £171bn on tax credits, contributing to a 60% rise in the welfare bill," Mr Duncan Smith said.
He also accused previous Labour governments of boosting tax credit payments ahead of the last two general elections in "an attempt to gain short-term popularity".
"It knew what it was doing - this was a calculated attempt to win votes," he said.
An interesting article on BBC -
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20873180
As yet no Labour response, but one will be up soon I am sure. I wonder how they will deny what is demonstrably true? This Labour policy of giving state money to as many people as possible rather than reducing taxes, always struck me as a way of buying votes...
Hold on, if Egypt has a land border with Gaza then wasn't Egypt blockading Gaza just like Israel is accused of. Fortunately the BBC set the record straight in the next line:The article is headlined 'Gaza construction convoy crosses from Egypt' and begins 'Egypt has allowed a shipment of construction materials to enter the Gaza Strip from its territory for the first time since 2007.A convoy of trucks carrying thousands of tonnes of supplies donated by the Gulf state of Qatar entered Gaza via the Rafah border crossing on Saturday.'
'Egypt had previously followed import restrictions imposed by Israel.'It's incredible how powerful Israel is/was, they managed to force Egypt to blockade Gaza.
'Statistics provided by the UNHCR at the end of 2010 put the total number of refugees in the world at 15.4 million – of those, 4.82 million Palestinians. Of the 10.58 non-Palestinian refugees, 3.05 million are from Afghanistan and 1.7 million from Iraq.
However, the UNHCR does not include in its refugee figures Internally Displaced Persons, and in that category it placed a further 27 million people in 2010 – mostly from Libya, the Cote d’Ivoire, Somalia and Sudan. UNRWA, of course, does not count Palestinian refugees living under Palestinian rule in the Gaza Strip (1,167,572 in January 2012) or the Palestinian Authority-controlled territories (727,471 in January 2012) as repatriated refugees or IDPs.
Uniquely, those Palestinians remain refugees because unlike the UNHCR, which constantly strives to reduce the number of refugees and DIPs and which in 2010 repatriated 197,600 refugees to their countries of origin and resettled 98,800 more in other countries, UNRWA has not made any effort since its establishment to reduce the number of Palestinian refugees either by resettlement or by ending the hereditary status of refugees of Palestinian origin. And of course like the Arab dictatorships which Lindsey German and her fringe organization support, she has nothing to say against the manipulation and exploitation of Palestinian refugees for political purposes.'
'British Economic Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Bromsgrove, Sajid Javid, is a self-made man. The son of a bus driver, he grew up attending British state schools and won a place to study economics and politics at Exeter University. 21 years ago, he became active in Britain’s Conservative Party. In 2010, Javid would be elected to the British Parliament as a member of the Conservative Party after working his way up the latter with his own hands. He is a secular Muslim who married a Christian woman and also happens to be a supporter of Israel.
As a member of the British Parliament, he recently addressed an audience of 700 people at the Conservative Friends of Israel business lunch in order to vocalize his support for the Jewish State. There, he stated, “If for some reason, I had to leave, with my young family, and I was told that I must go and live in the Middle East, where would I decide to go? […]There is only one place I could possibly go: Israel, the only nation in the Middle East that shares the same democratic values as Britain and the only nation in the Middle East where my family would feel the warm embrace of freedom and liberty.”'
'Head of water resources at the Environment Agency Trevor Bishop said: "A longer-term drought, lasting until Christmas and perhaps beyond, now looks more likely.
"We are working with businesses, farmers and water companies to plan ahead to meet the challenges of a continued drought.
"While we've had some welcome rain recently, the problem has not gone away and we would urge everyone - right across the country - to use water wisely now, which will help to prevent more serious impacts next year."'
'Ed Balls (one of our own – although his dad owns his own zoo and he was born in Tory Norwich, Ed moved to the midlands industrial city of Nottingham and developed the beautiful northern accent he uses to destroy Osborne across the dispatch box.) Ed Balls is an economic genius. When he was economic advisor to Gordon Brown he came up with what has to be the most successful economic policy ever adopted in this or any other country. And we have Labour and Ed Balls to thank for it.
Based on George Monbiot’s undisputable theory that people on benefits are more profligate with their money you take three million people in work and put them on the dole. You then increase their benefits, sit back and watch your economy grow. Ah – say the cynics – but what about the three million jobs that nobody is doing anymore? And that’s where Ed’s genius comes to the fore. You sign up to the EU freedom of movement charter and bring in three million Eastern Europeans to do the jobs.
Everyone’s a winner! The Eastern Europeans are happy because they start a new life in a prosperous country; the three million out of work Brits are happy because they get to sleep in late and watch Jeremy Kyle; and the country is happy because our economy grows faster than China’s.'
Almost 200 senior BBC managers have received payoffs of more than £100,000 each in the past three years, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The National Audit Office is to examine the scale of severance packages at the corporation after MPs raised concerns that leaving the BBC was like "winning the lottery".'
"I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has, over the years, become more or less established practice... as we approach the terminal period of the year — calendar, of course, not financial — in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, Week Fifty-One — and submit to you, with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation — indeed confidence — indeed one might go so far as to say hope — that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible to being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average."As Sir Humphrey put it so memorably in Yes Minister.
An interesting acronym used by Boeing. It's part of Boeing's project to put wifi in planes.
You can read more in the LA Times -
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-73756022/
Yes Boeing are using potatoes instead of people, insulting to all except Ian Hislop. The acronym is SPUDS!
Thanks to Jon Worth @jonworth for the spot on Twitter
'Our attitude to truffles is changing. Now, they are all around us – in upmarket grocery shops, at weddings, parties, restaurants. But they’ll always be a luxury. One measure of how quickly India is changing – in food and wine terms, at least – is our attitude to truffles. When I first
wrote about truffles, most readers of Rude Food knew very little about them. They associated the term ‘truffle’ with those round chocolates and were not sure how it was pronounced. Was it ‘troofle’ or ‘truffle’? (It is, of course, the latter.)
Now, just five or six years later, truffles are all around us. Upmarket grocery shops in our metropolitan cities sell bottled truffles and truffle sauces. Chefs reach for their bottles of truffle oil at the slightest provocation. Truffles are served at top weddings and parties. And restaurants import white truffles every autumn when the season begins in Italy.
I’ve always been something of a truffle devotee. So, five years ago, I would go to Italian restaurants carrying my own truffles (and usually, a truffle slicer) so that I could grate them over eggs, pasta or risotto.
Strictly speaking, the chefs would have been within their rights to refuse to let me eat my own truffles. But, in reality, most were so thrilled to see fresh white truffles, that nobody ever refused. (If I had asked to be able to use my own Kraft cheese, on the other hand, I’m sure they would have thrown me out.)
But these days, you don’t need to take your own truffles. Let’s take the example of Travertino, the swish Italian restaurant at the Delhi Oberoi.
Many years ago, when I first took a white truffle to the restaurant, the Italian chef was so delighted that he tried to devise a special truffle menu while the Indian chefs all lined up to smell and feel the truffle because they’d only read about fresh white truffles but had never actually seen them.
Two weeks ago, the same Travertino was serving an elaborate truffle feast, supervised by a Michelin-starred chef from Italy, and the hotel’s own Soumya Goswami. The Oberoi chefs were shaving fresh white truffles on to thin, crispy pizzas at Threesixty, the all-day dining restaurant located next door to Travertino. Nobody thought of truffles as being such a big deal any longer.
In fact, I think I’ve probably eaten more truffles in Delhi this season than I’ve ever eaten in my life. The Princess’s two parties for her husband’s birthday turned into truffle fests as guests ate alarming quantities of the finest Piedmont truffles with pizza bianca, risotto, tagliolini or simply grated over fried eggs.
The Princess was being extraordinarily generous. But even those of us who did not benefit from her largesse had many opportunities to eat truffles elsewhere.
At Sevilla, the Mediterranean restaurant at Delhi’s Claridges (now back on the gastronomic map), I had a truffle dinner with the hotel’s general manager, Oliver Martin: baked eggs with white truffle, pasta with truffle and then finally, truffles freshly grated on Japanese wagyu. Nor was this a special treat for me: the truffles were on the Sevilla menu.'
'Swearing at police is not a crime because officers hear foul language “too frequently” to be offended, a judge has ruled.There's something that defenders of the police position re Andrew Mitchell would do well to think about.
...
Overturning Denzel Cassius Harvey's conviction, Mr Justice Bean said officers were so regularly on the receiving end of the "rather commonplace" expletive that it was unlikely to cause them "harassment, alarm or distress".'
"If all the Jews gathered in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide. . . . It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."Pretty clear? Is Hezbollah interested in 'just' destroying Israel or in killing all Jews?
The four European members of the United Nations security council are drawing up a strong joint condemnation of recent Palestinian acts of terrorist incitement amid growing international censure.
The unusual statement, expected this week from the UK, France, Germany and Portugal, follows blunt criticism from the US of official PA radio broadcast of songs explicitly encouraging
Palestinians to engage in deadly suicide bombings against Israelis.
Western leaders were especially incensed that such incitement was aired a mere two days after ‘Palestine’ was granted observer status at the UN. The statement also condemned recent videos broadcast by Hamas, on Al-Aqsa TV, describing the killing of Jews as “a religious act in worship of Allah”.
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, urged Palestinians not to approve such broadcasts, saying that if they continue “it would make a negotiated two-state solution very difficult to achieve”. Government sanctioned calls to murder civilians are “illegal under international human rights law”, he added.William Hague taking a stand against Palestinian incitements to terrorism, yeah right.
Stephanie Harris 10 Dec Dear Sir/Madam Thank you for your further email. With regard to publication of the Balen report, the BBC did not wish to publish this internal report and fought against its disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, as you are aware. The reason for this was that we regarded it as a crucial point of principle to protect our journalism. The BBC maintained that the report was held for the purpose of journalism and was therefore not disclosable under the Act. Repeated court rulings agreed with this position which was endorsed by the Supreme Court. We were forced to defend our position because free and impartial journalism is vital to viewers and listeners. If we are not able to pursue our journalism freely and have honest debate and analysis over how we are covering important issues, then our ability to serve the public effectively will be diminished. This was one of the reasons that Parliament enacted the "journalism" designation for Public Service Broadcasters in the first place. I hope this explanation is helpful. Meanwhile, I will await the outcome of the Trust’s deliberations in relation to your substantive appeal. Yours sincerely Stephanie Harris Head of Editorial Compliance & Accountability, BBC News
'From the BBC Archive 'Tomorrow's World' collection: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/index.shtml Michael Rodd makes a call with an experimental cordless mobile phone. It's 1979 and time for the telephone to go mobile. In this report from a longer programme, Michael Rodd (pictured above) examines a British prototype for a cordless telephone that allows the user to make calls from anywhere. Also included at the end of this item is a rather nice out-take as Rodd also experiences the first mobile wrong number.'Fascinating, quite fascinating.
Eating and drinking lots at xmas is to be expected, be aware that alcohol can effect peoples judgement and behaviour http://t.co/k5u78Z1j -- Thames Valley Police (@ThamesVP)People will eat and drink a lot at Christmas - No shit, Sherlock
'The State Department said Saturday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion, but did not specify when that happened or the circumstances surrounding the incident.Hmm, convenient?
She will not testify this week before House and Senate committees about the Sept. 11 attacks on Benghazi as scheduled, congressional sources said.'
'Think about it from the Palestinian Arab leaderships' perspective. If Israel gives them free treatment, they win. If the children die because Israeli hospitals cannot afford to provide free care for them, they simply publicize this and they win even more.
"The Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated, and tortured forever… , and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due. No petty arguments must be allowed to divide us. Where Hitler failed, we must succeed."
'They don’t play the song on the radio
They don’t show the tits on the video
They don’t know that we are the media
They don’t know that we start the mania
Your Eyes don’t want to see what I’m making you
Your ass is off its seat and I’m shaking you
Walking down the street I’m the lady – ah -
Showing off my map of Tasmania
Soft and sweet and shaped like a triangle
Some girls want no shape and they shave it all
That’s so whack, it hurts with the stubble
Walking ’round and look like an eight-year-old
Soft and sweet and shaped like a triangle
Some girls want no shape and they shave it all
That’s so whack, it hurts with the stubble
Walking ’round and look like an eight-year-old
I say grow that shit like a jungle
Give ‘em something strong to hold onto
Let it fly in the open wind
If it get too bushy, you can trim
They don’t play the song on the radio
They don’t show the tits on the video
They don’t know that we are the media
They don’t know that we start the mania
You Eyes don’t want to see what I’m making you
Your ass is off its seat and I’m shaking you
Walking down the street I’m the lady – ah -
Showing off my map of Tasmania
My map is symbolic
It get drunk a lot
Hey, does that make it an alcoholic?
Call it M.O.T. for short
Let’s take this bottomless case straight to the court
Freedom down there, i swear, do you see me smirkin’?
Do you see me wearing a merkin ?
Get in the formation let start
Triangle jerkin’
Triangle jerkin’'
"The best number is 73.This passage appeared in the 73rd episode in the entire Big Bang Theory series.
Why?
73 is the 21st prime number.
Its mirror (37) is the 12th and its mirror (21) is the product of multiplying 7 and 3.
In binary, 73 is a palindrome, 1001001 which backwards is 1001001."
12 days back from holiday and her Out Of Office is still turned on...I am on holiday until Monday 19th November 2012 and will respond to your query on my return
'Journalists need to be courted, wooed, educated and trained. Complaints against media must be lodged and legal claims brought. Until Israel enters the fray of world opinion, its world beating army could yet again find itself sitting uselessly on the sidelines.'
'Greece 'most corrupt' EU country, new survey reveals'Staggering.... "No shit, Sherlock"
'Michael Walzer,... argues that "When Palestinian militants launch rocket attacks from civilian areas, they are themselves responsible – and no one else is – for the civilian deaths caused by Israeli counter fire. But … Israeli soldiers are required to aim as precisely as they can at the militants, to take risks in order to do that, and to call off counterattacks that would kill large numbers of civilians … Still, minimizing does not mean avoiding entirely: Civilians will suffer."
http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/an-open-letter-to-jewish-campus-professionals-and-educators
"Having sex with your biographer is more fun than having sex with your autobiographer”David Petraeus, 2012
