Hillary Clinton under investigation!

[McC]

(02-25-2016, 12:15 AM)fredtoast Wrote: So did everyone including Bush and the Republicans.

If they try to blame this on there Clinton's it will backfire on them.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are hurtling toward another possible taxpayer bailout, a development that could put an uncomfortable election light on the Clintons’ record of enabling the government-backed mortgage giants to engage in risky practices that led to the 2007 financial crisis.

There is growing consensus in financial circles that the seeds of the mortgage market collapse were sown during Bill Clinton’s presidency in the mid-1990s. That was when he helped push through changes that empowered Fannie and Freddie to give more mortgages to minorities and lower-income Americans, often at below-prime interest rates and with little down payments.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/20/hillary-clintons-ties-to-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-lo/?page=all

Yeah, why would anybody blame it on Bill?

[Vlad]

Had Hildebeest been a Republican she would have withdrawn from the race by now. You know it and I know it.

The last time I ever heard of a democrat of significance being forced to resign from anything was presidential hopeful Gary Hart.
Back during a time when democrats had principles and values too.

[fredtoast]

(02-25-2016, 12:36 AM)McC Wrote: Yeah, why would anybody blame it on Bill?

You obviously know nothing about the Washington Times.  It is one of the most conservative papers in the nation.

[McC]

(02-25-2016, 01:07 AM)fredtoast Wrote: You obviously know nothing about the Washington Times.  It is one of the most conservative papers in the nation.

So that means they're lying?

[fredtoast]

(02-25-2016, 01:43 AM)McC Wrote: So that means they're lying?

Yes.

They claimthere is a "consensus" yet no one is saying it except right-wing extremists.

I have already laid out all the reasons they are wrong.  You don't have to believe me, but just watch what happens if they try to run with this lie.  

[McC]

You're saying Bill Clinton did not push to ease the restrictions on Fannie and Freddie? The whole world knows he did. It was one of his proudest moments.

[fredtoast]

(02-25-2016, 02:33 AM)McC Wrote: You're saying Bill Clinton did not push to ease the restrictions on Fannie and Freddie?  The whole world knows he did.  It was one of his proudest moments.

This is getting ridiculous.  It seems like every thread consists of someone who does not read (or can not understsnd) what I write and then make up something out of thin air and claim I said it.

Go back and read my posts before asking a stupid question like this.

Start with this one.

(02-24-2016, 10:59 PM)fredtoast Wrote: In the 90's EVERYONE thought Fannie Mae was a good idea.   When Bush took office and the Republicans took control of congress they still agreed that promoting home ownership through programs like Fannie Mae was a good idea.  There may have been a few individuals ringing an alarm, but the main perty positions were in favor of Fannie Mae.

[JustWinBaby]

Bush was calling for more regulation of Fannie as early as 2002. He had other shortcomings with regard to the financial crisis, and not getting Congress to go along is a failure of leadership...but anyone who doesn't think the financial crisis wasn't bipartisan and with both Clinton and W's fingerprints on it is a partisan hack.

Clinton is much more highly thought of today then he was after leaving office. He was mostly viewed as someone who stayed out of the way (which would shortly be viewed as a failure with the internet bubble popping). I think it was the Australian prime minister who quipped during the 2000 recount that "I don't know what the fuss is all about...it's not like the American's are replacing Alan Greenspan"

[Yojimbo]

Poor people not being able to afford their mortgages is not what crashed the economy. Wall Street investment funds selling these bad mortgages bundled as "safe" investments when they knew they were crap, is what caused the crash. Don't buy the Wall Street boot lickers' garbage, they are just trying to rewrite history so they can go back to stealing your money while everyone is busy arguing about which political team is the best.

Back to the OP, yes I believe where there is smoke there is fire when there is legitimate investigating going on and not just political punditry. What I am interested in seeing from Hillary are those Wall Street speeches. 

[fredtoast]

(02-25-2016, 08:31 PM)Yojimbo Wrote: Poor people not being able to afford their mortgages is not what crashed the economy. Wall Street investment funds selling these bad mortgages bundled as "safe" investments when they knew they were crap, is what caused the crash. Don't buy the Wall Street boot lickers' garbage, they are just trying to rewrite history so they can go back to stealing your money while everyone is busy arguing about which political team is the best.

Lack of regulation of credit default swaps led to lots of institutional investors (managers of retirement funds) holding C rated crap investments when they were vsupposed to be limited to investing only in higher rated instruments.

People who wanted to "let the banks fail" did not get the point that lots of innocent people would havem lost their retirements as well.

Alos, lost of people who walked away from mortagages could afford them when they purchased the house, but they were not just going to stay on the hook for a $300K mortgage when the house was only worth $150K.

[*michaelsean*]

(02-24-2016, 10:59 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Yes, I am pretty sure they did.

In the 90's EVERYONE thought Fannie Mae was a good idea.  When Bush took office and the Republicans took control of congress they still agreed that promoting home ownership through programs like Fannie Mae was a good idea.  There may have been a few individuals ringing an alarm, but the main perty positions were in favor of Fannie Mae.

If the Republicans try to blame the economic collapse on something that was in place while they were in control for 8 years they are just making themselves look stupid.

And finally it is not correct to blame Fannie Mae when there were all sorts of other private lenders making risky unsecured loans.

No they lost the Senate and the House in 2006.

I'm not laying it all on Clinton, but without his actions and Rubin pushing him, the rest wouldn't have followed like it did.  The big banks like Goldman Sachs would have never been involved.  

[fredtoast]

(02-29-2016, 11:10 AM)michaelsean Wrote: No they lost the Senate and the House in 2006.

When the housing market was starting to collapse.

(02-29-2016, 11:10 AM)michaelsean Wrote: No they lost the Senate and the House in 2006.

I'm not laying it all on Clinton, but without his actions and Rubin pushing him, the rest wouldn't have followed like it did.  The big banks like Goldman Sachs would have never been involved.  

Freddie and Fannies existed BEFORE Clinton arrived.  

The change in regulations he proposed were pretty much supported by everyone including the Republicans.  

The Republicans controlled the Presidency and both houses of congress from 2000 until the housing bubble started to burst in 2006 and did nothing to change them.  

The Republicans will look foolish trying to blame all of the problems on the Clintons.

[*michaelsean*]

(02-29-2016, 12:43 PM)fredtoast Wrote: When the housing market was starting to collapse.


Freddie and Fannies existed BEFORE Clinton arrived.  

The change in regulations he proposed were pretty much supported by everyone including the Republicans.  

The Republicans controlled the Presidency and both houses of congress from 2000 until the housing bubble started to burst in 2006 and did nothing to change them.  

The Republicans will look foolish trying to blame all of the problems on the Clintons.

You said they controlled the Presidency and both houses for 8 straight years.  I was just informing you they didn't.

But Fannie and Freddie weren't the whole problem.  Maybe someone has, but I don't recall people trying to hang it all on the Clintons, but Bill did play his part.

[Mike M (the other one)]

Bryan Pagliano, who setup email server, will speak to the FBI in exchange for immunity.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/obamas-justice-department-gave-bernie-sanders-presidency_b_9372012.html

Bernie Sanders's path to the presidency was never going to be easy. After surging in the polls and consistently proving America's political establishment wrong, Sanders won Colorado and other states on Super Tuesday. He still has a path to win the Democratic nomination via the primaries, but Bernie Sanders just won the presidency for another reason: Hillary Clinton's quest for "convenience."

Bryan Pagliano, the person who set up Clinton's private server and email apparatus, was just given immunity by the Justice Department. According to The Washington Post, "The Clintons paid Pagliano $5,000 for 'computer services' prior to his joining the State Department, according to a financial disclosure form he filed in April 2009."

First, this can't be a right-wing conspiracy because it's President Obama's Justice Department granting immunity to one of Hillary Clinton's closest associates. Second, immunity from what? The Justice Department won't grant immunity to anyone unless there's potential criminal activity involved with an FBI investigation. Third, and most importantly for Bernie Sanders, there's only one Democrat in 2016 not linked to the FBI, Justice Department, or 31,830 deleted emails.


Follow the link for more. It's long, and I'm not going to rehash half of the email stuff all over again.

[Yojimbo]

(02-28-2016, 02:39 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Lack of regulation of credit default swaps led to lots of institutional investors (managers of retirement funds) holding C rated crap investments when they were vsupposed to be limited to investing only in higher rated instruments.

People who wanted to "let the banks fail" did not get the point that lots of innocent people would havem lost their retirements as well.

Alos, lost of people who walked away from mortagages could afford them when they purchased the house, but they were not just going to stay on the hook for a $300K mortgage when the house was only worth $150K.

I think we should have let the banks fail and spent the bailout money on paying out those retirements.

[JustWinBaby]

(03-04-2016, 06:35 PM)Yojimbo Wrote: I think we should have let the banks fail and spent the bailout money on paying out those retirements.

You do realize the taxpayer made a profit on the bailouts?  Everything was paid back, with interest, although I'm not sure if Fannie technically has.

Only thing the taxpayer lost money on was the autobailouts, but probably not if you factor in the unemployment and pension obligations we'd be on the hook for without it.

And two major investment banks WERE allowed to fail - people seem to forget that both Lehman and Bear Stearns went bye-bye before we had a global financial crisis requiring the bailouts.

[Yojimbo]

(03-04-2016, 06:41 PM)JustWinBaby Wrote: You do realize the taxpayer made a profit on the bailouts?  Everything was paid back, with interest, although I'm not sure if Fannie technically has.

Only thing the taxpayer lost money on was the autobailouts, but probably not if you factor in the unemployment and pension obligations we'd be on the hook for without it.

And two major investment banks WERE allowed to fail - people seem to forget that both Lehman and Bear Stearns went bye-bye before we had a global financial crisis requiring the bailouts.

My opinion on letting them fail is basically it would have hopefully had two effects. One, show the industry that practicing such risky behavior has consequences and two, would have lead to less concentration of money in so few banks.

[JustWinBaby]

(03-04-2016, 07:31 PM)Yojimbo Wrote: My opinion on letting them fail is basically it would have hopefully had two effects. One, show the industry that practicing such risky behavior has consequences and two, would have lead to less concentration of money in so few banks.

Well the heads of those banks took massive hits in bonuses and stock option value.  If you were way up at Lehman or Bear, you lost millions in equity you never get back.

As for "concentration of money", deposits are guaranteed up to $250k (maybe $500k now).  There's really no impact there and it's uncorrelated.

You have no idea how seriously banks take risk management.  The idea they were just taking foolish bets expecting a taxpayer bailout is just complete fantasy of demagoguing politicians looking to deflect their share of blame.

The source of the financial crisis was really the equity tranches most banks held on their prop desks, either as investment seeking yield or because no one would actually buy that shit.  But knowing the risk, they took out insurance on those bets in case markets went south.  The problem, whether incompetence or ignorance or both, is no one understood or maybe acknowledged the counterparty risk.  It wasn't actual cash or insolvency that caused the problem, but technical rules stemming from marking-to-market creating technical default....which means they had to unload assets to meet covenant requirements, which further depressed valuations.  If you could hold the paper long enough, i.e. someone who could print money and didn't play by the same rules (like the Fed), you were going to make a profit because the fire-sale had the paper trading well below its asset value.

Their models also incorporated a history of uncorrelated bets to reduce risk (i.e. diversification), but a lesson learned is that in a liquidity-driven financial crisis all assets become correlated and so instead of your loss being offset with a gain elsewhere, you lose TWICE as much.  They did manage their risks and hedge their bets - their models were wrong, in largely new and unexpected ways.

It's not the first time their models have been wrong and won't be the last.  The same sort of thing on a little lesser scale happened with the Savings & Loan bank (your mom & pop banks you're advocating for) in the 80's.  This was the infamous Michael Milken "junk bond king"....he went to jail, and now "junk bonds" are referred to as high-yield corporates and are a legit, major asset class and important source of funding for smaller companies.

[fredtoast]

(03-04-2016, 07:31 PM)Yojimbo Wrote: My opinion on letting them fail is basically it would have hopefully had two effects. One, show the industry that practicing such risky behavior has consequences and two, would have lead to less concentration of money in so few banks.

But if you let Lehman Brothers fail then millions of innocent people lose their retirement savings.  Industrial investors all over the world would have be holding worthless paper that was supposed to be backed by credit defualt swaps written by Lehman Brothers.

You let all the lenders that wrote credit default swaps fail without a bailout then it doesn't just hurt bankers.  It hurts EVERYONE.  We didn't bail out these financial institutions to save the institutions.  We saved the institutions to save millions of innocent investors around the world.

[JustWinBaby]

(03-05-2016, 07:02 PM)fredtoast Wrote: But if you let Lehman Brothers fail then millions of innocent people lose their retirement savings.  Industrial investors all over the world would have be holding worthless paper that was supposed to be backed by credit defualt swaps written by Lehman Brothers.

You let all the lenders that wrote credit default swaps fail without a bailout then it doesn't just hurt bankers.  It hurts EVERYONE.  We didn't bail out these financial institutions to save the institutions.  We saved the institutions to save millions of innocent investors around the world.

Technically deposits are insured up to $250k - banks pay for that insurance.  And Lehman and Bear weren't retail banks (I don't think), so they didn't have retail deposits.

Brokerages actually hold your certificate of ownership in stocks or bonds, so even if they go belly-up you still own that asset.

It's fair to say millions of retirees were hurt, directly, when their pensions or mutual funds took a hit on the CDS (not to mention indirectly with the entire markets tanking).  But those pension and mutual fund managers were not unsophisticiated, pedigrees from elite universities, blue chip funds and usually Wall Street - they knew exactly what they were buying...and part of the scam with credit ratings was so they could chase yield while skirting requirements they can't hold below certain rated paper.

Any decent Investment manager doesn't pay much attention to ratings from agencies - they do their own analysis and don't use ratings for much more than filtering their investable universe.

You're absolutely right that we had to 'bail out" Wall Street.  But it's not quite the same as, say, Chrysler in the 80's which was an actual failing business (that rebounded very nicely for some 15 years after).  Lehman and Bear may have been actually insolvent, but for the others it was mostly a technical default stemming from mark-to-market and not an actual shortage of cash.  But that's not to say the paper wouldn't have continued spiraling down if the Fed hadn't stepped in as a buyer of last resort.