Volkskrant: "deze tijd vraagt om linkse ideeën"

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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Je ontkent het weer... je brengt het onderwerp over kritiek zelf naar voren en je ontkent dat die kritiek ook een hele duistere zijde heeft.

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:


De kritiek op links is toch dat links teveel tolerantie wilde bevorderen.. ?

Nu ineens beweer je het tegendeel.. De kritiek is ook dat links teveel pro-homo en provrouw was..

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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Wie zijn die mensen ...noem eens namen ? Ik ken homo's en vrouwen die idd in de laatste 40 jaar
representaten waren ...Die beschouwden zich met recht de voorhoede van de homo- en vrouwenbeweging.
Jij springt in dit topic op de barricades prohomo en provrouw...Op zich is dat prima...maar dan ga je anderen die hetzelfde doen (blijkbaar bedoel je 'heel links') denigrerend benaderen en dat is puzzelend.

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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Je diepere drijfveer is dat wel oprecht? Of is het toch een poltiekcorrect show voor kritiek/haat op bepaalde andere groepen ?

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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Ga je weer.... jij bent de zelfbenoemde emancipatoir van homo's en vrouwen
Natuurlijk valt een kleine groep mensen die binnenshuis op homo's kankert niet op...
Het valt nog steeds niet op omdat ook als de groep nu veel groter is het nog steeds binnenhuis gebeurt.. Niet het kankeren binnenshuis...maar de houding van de pubers naar homo's vallen op...
Nu betrek je vrouwenmishandeling met name.... terwijl het eerder ging om de attitude tov vrouwen in het algemeen ... maar ook dat valt idd niet op als vrouwen zelf niet naar buiten treden en als de groep die jij verkettert vroeger stukken kleiner was.. Nu is die groep groter en valt het meer op... en is er meer reden voor maatschappelijke interesse/ophef/hetzevoevering daarover.

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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no-can-do... dit is een discussieforum .. blijf dan weg..

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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En ik zei daarop dat "lef"niet nodig is.. er is en was niks heldhaftigs aan migranten te bekritiseren..
Vooral de laatste 6 jaren is kritiek nationale volksport

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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Ik lees je wel... jij leest mij ook... ik ga alleen niet mee met je gedachtengang... wees blij... anders zou het maar een saai forum zijn

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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citeer me dan goed ... citeer alles ... en leg dan ook goed uit wat je bezwaar is...
zo is het slappe was

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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Wederom verklaar je jezelf tot de ware verdediger van tolerantie (so très pc)...en een andere mening accepteer je niet als een variant op hetzelfde streven..
Ik ben vóór tolerantie tussen bevokingsgroepen en tov van andersdenkenden, andere leefstijlen, andere groepen dan de dominate mainstream.
Toch grappig nu eens het verwijt te krijgen dat ik niet politiekcorrect genoeg ben.

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Op zaterdag 25 oktober 2008 11:50 schreef Bluesdude het volgende:

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Nee blij ben ik niet... met een beetje meer eerlijk terugkijken hoe ik me hier al jaren opstel kun je niet veel aversie tegen homo's van mijn kant bedenken.

En handig als je kunt insinueren dat jouw opponenten vrouwen- en homohaat verbloemen...stiekem leuk vinden.. en tegelijk diezelfde mensen verwijt dat zij die vrouwenstrijd en homostrijd monopoliseren en ten onrechte zich de ware voorhoede verklaren.
Overigens ..heb ik nooit beweerd dat ik zo in de voorhoede op de barricade sta voor die groepen...noch is dat bewering van heel links..
Heb ik jouw racist genoemd dan ? Ik heb in al die jaren Fok heel weinig mensen racist genoemd, maar mensen met een wat broeierige houding , met ranzige kritiek tov bepaalde bevolkingsggroepen die zien dat soms in mijn teksten. Het staat er gewoon niet...maar mensen moeten blijkbaar een schuldgevoel projecteren of een slachtofferrol bevestigd zien..
Toegegeven... ik kan scherp formuleren en dat helpt natuurlijk niet mee die broeierigheid te legitimeren en in rustig vaarwater te brengen.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:02 schreef Klopkoek het volgende:
Wat een kankermongool.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:05 schreef Scaurus het volgende:

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Ik krijg steeds meer gevoel dat linkse mensen geen liefhebbers van nauwgezette argumentatie zijn.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:10 schreef DrWolffenstein het volgende:
Dat beloofd wat.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:10 schreef DrWolffenstein het volgende:
Hij heeft gewoon gelijk hoor.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:15 schreef Scaurus het volgende:

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Dat hele gemekker over 'rechts/links did it' is belachelijk en lachwekkend tegelijk.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:02 schreef Klopkoek het volgende:

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Wat een kankermongool. Des te debieler dat een fatsoenlijke krant dit gewoon afdrukt.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:24 schreef DrWolffenstein het volgende:

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Het is trouwens wel typisch dat je weer allerlei vervoegingen met het woord "kanker" gebruikt. Speel je nou de tokkie of ben je het? Zeker omdat je ook geen fatsoenlijk Engels schrijft houd ik het op het laatste.

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The CRA Scam and its Defenders

"Liberal" economists are overjoyed by the bursting of the housing bubble, for it provides them with what they believe is another "market failure" story. "Most analysts see the sub-prime crisis as a market failure," Robert Gordon gleefully declared in the April 7 online edition of The American Prospect magazine, edited by Robert Kuttner.

Gordon does not define what an "analyst" is, and does not cite any survey to support his claim. One suspects that his opinion is based on an informal survey of his like-minded, left-wing friends.

Gordon is a defender of the federal government's 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) under which the Fed and other financial regulators have pressured/extorted banks into making more loans to less-than-creditworthy borrowers than they would normally be willing to risk. As such, Gordon believes in the following propositions:

1. runaway greed ("market failure") on the part of lenders is the cause of the subprime crisis;

2. these same greedy lenders routinely ignore billions of dollars in potential profits in lower-income communities because of their systemic racism, stupidity, or both — hence the need for the CRA; and

3. no government agency, especially not the Fed, had anything to do with either the creation or bursting of the housing market bubble and the subprime crisis.

(If you think I'm establishing a straw-man argument, read Gordon's article for yourself.)

The first two propositions flatly contradict each other, whereas the third is unequivocally false. Fed policy — which is not even mentioned by Gordon in an article that is ostensibly about the cause of the subprime crisis — is the cause of the boom-and-bust cycle that has caused the housing bubble and its bursting. Not "market failure" but Fed policy.

Gordon is incensed that a few "analysts," including myself and Professor Stan Liebowitz of the University of Dallas, have argued that the bursting of the housing bubble has caused the chickens to come home to roost, so to speak, after thirty years of government policy pressuring banks to make tens of billions of dollars in bad loans to people with low (or nonexistent) credit ratings. Neither Liebowitz nor I have argued that every last bad loan out there is a CRA loan, but Gordon implies that we do in a rather feeble attempt to construct a straw-man argument.

Gordon cites Fed bureaucrat Janet Yellen as the source of a "killer statistic" that absolves the government of all guilt: "Independent mortgage companies" which are not covered by the CRA made many more "high-priced loans" to borrowers with bad credit than did CRA-regulated banks, she says. Well, so what? Even if Yellen is correct, that does not mean that CRA-regulated loans have not caused tens of billions of dollars in defaults.

Moreover, Yellen and Gordon don't seem to understand what an "independent mortgage company" is. Many of these companies are like the one in which my next-door neighbor is employed: they are middlemen who arrange mortgage loans for borrowers — including "subprime" borrowers — with banks, including CRA-regulated banks. Some killer statistic.

By ignoring the role of the Fed in creating the whole housing-market mess, Gordon's pronouncement that it is entirely a result of "market failure" is laughable on its face. He also flatly denies that CRA lending has had anything to do with why so many uncreditworthy borrowers have defaulted now that the Fed-generated housing bubble has burst. This, too, is an untenable position.

When the CRA was created during the Carter administration, the administration also funded with tax dollars numerous "community groups" that have helped the Fed, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other federal regulatory agencies to enforce the act. Under the CRA, if a bank wants to make virtually any change in its business operations — merging, opening up a new branch, getting into a new line of business — it must first prove to regulators that it has made "enough" loans to the government's preferred borrowers. The (partially) tax-funded "community groups" like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) can file petitions with regulators that stop the bank's activities in their tracks, perhaps defeating them altogether. The banks routinely buy off ACORN and other "community groups" by giving them millions of dollars as well as promising to make even more dubious loans.

In order to try to diversify the risk of these loans, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company ("Freddie Mac") pioneered the "securitization" of bundles of these high-risk loans so that they could be sold on secondary markets. Such "securitization" exploded during the 1990s as a result of government regulation. As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke himself stated in a March 30, 2007 speech entitled "The Community Reinvestment Act: Its Evolution and New Challenges" (published online by the Fed),

Securitization of affordable housing loans expanded, as did the secondary market for these loans, in part reflecting a 1992 law that required the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to devote a large percentage of their activities to meeting affordable housing goals. (p. 3)

In 1994 the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act loosened up the regulatory barriers to bank mergers. Consequently, said Bernanke, "As public scrutiny of bank merger and acquisition activity escalated, advocacy groups [like ACORN] increasingly used the public comment process to protest bank applications on CRA grounds." In other words, there was a burst of additional legalized extortion perpetrated by the Fed and its pet "activist organizations" beginning in the mid-1990s. As a result, says Bernanke, "banks began to devote more resources to their CRA programs." What an understatement.

Also in 1995, the US Treasury Department created the multibillion-dollar "Community Development Financial Institutions" fund to "provide banks with access [i.e., taxpayers' dollars] to new opportunities to finance community economic development" as "encouraged" by the CRA, said the Fed chairman.

The government also "streamlined" the regulatory requirements for CRA loans in 1995, allowing — and indeed pressuring — banks to make such loans without the benefit of many traditional credit-worthiness criteria, such as the size of the mortgage payment relative to income, savings history, and even income verification! Instead, the Fed told banks that participation in a credit-counseling program, many of which are federally funded, could be used as "proof" of a low-income applicant's ability to make his mortgage payments. In other words, federal bank regulators required banks to make bad loans based on nonexistent credit standards.

In his April 26 New York Post article on the CRA entitled "The Real Scandal," Professor Liebowitz explains how the government's Fannie Mae Foundation singled out one bank in particular as the role model for all other banks in America in terms of its commitment to CRA lending: Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, had committed to $600 billion in low-income or "subprime" loans as of 2003. Today, Countrywide is essentially bankrupted and has been merged with Bank of America.
How Capitalism Saved America

The myth that the CRA would not be harmful to bank-industry profits was hidden for years by the Fed-created housing bubble, which allowed for easy refinancing of all the bad debt. "[The] CRA increased lending and homeownership in poor communities without undermining banks' profitability," Robert Gordon proudly proclaims. But now that the bubble has burst, all those unqualified borrowers — whom the government calls "subprime," as though their credit ratings are only a tiny, tiny smidgen below "prime" borrowers with the very best credit ratings — are defaulting on their mortgages in droves.

Bank profitability has been extremely "undermined," to put it mildly. The bursting of the Fed-generated housing bubble is the reason why the CRA scam was not exposed until now, despite having been in operation for some thirty years.

Thomas DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College and a member of the senior faculty of the Mises Institute.

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Nederland is een eenpartijstaat. Die partij, de PvdA, heeft een aantal dependances: CDA, VVD, D66, et cetera. De Partij wint altijd de verkiezingen.

Alle dependances van de PvdA zijn voor de verzorgingsstaat, herverdeling van inkomen, het afschaffen van de soevereiniteit ten faveure van internationale samenwerking, milieuzorg, pacifisme. Alle partijen passen binnen het sociaal-democratische paradigma.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:02 schreef Klopkoek het volgende:
Wat een kankermongool. Des te debieler dat een fatsoenlijke krant dit gewoon afdrukt.

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In early 1993 President Bill Clinton ordered new regulations for the CRA which would increase access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities. The new rules went into effect on January 31, 1995 and featured: requiring strictly numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating; using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks.

The new rules, during a time when many banks were merging and needed to pass the CRA review process to do so, substantially increased the number and aggregate amount of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers for home loans, some of which were "risky mortgages. Banks set up CRA departments, a CRA consultant industry was created and new financial-services firms helped banks invest in packaged portfolios of CRA loans to ensure compliance. Established and new community groups began marketing such mortgages. The Senate Banking Committee estimated that as of 2000, as a result of CRA, such groups had received $9.5 billion in services and salaries. As of that time such groups also had received tens of billions of dollars in multi-year commitments from banks, including ACORN Housing $760 million; Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America $3 billion; a New Jersey Citizen Action-led coalition $13 billion; the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance $220 million. The number of CRA mortgage loans increased by 39 percent between 1993 and 1998, while other loans increased by only 17 percent.

The CRA was public policy that DROVE the market. To cast a blind eye that obvious econic fact and simply blame "the profit motive" is ludicrous.

It is equally ludicrious to blame Wall Street and investment banks when what they did was buy up the risky mortgages that became so prevelant in the market place.

Granted, no one intened to lose money, but, to lay blame on capitalism when the real source of the problem was government in the first place indicates to me a fundamental lack of economic understanding.

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 16:52 schreef Yildiz het volgende:
En nogmaals mijn vraag, als de CRA zo slecht was, en als de NYT er vóór Bush al over publiceerde, waarom deed Bush er dan niets aan? Is Bush daarmee dan ook maar eventjes links geworden?

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Op zondag 26 oktober 2008 11:02 schreef Klopkoek het volgende:

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Wat een kankermongool. Des te debieler dat een fatsoenlijke krant dit gewoon afdrukt.