Let's Nail This Guy!!!

San Jose stalker, soon to be punching bag in prison...

Holy Cow!!!

This is one of the silliest and strangest photos I've ever seen.

And please do click to comments link below this article to submit your favorite pun or caption.




If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

$100,000 To Pelosi's Husband Through Her PAC

The leader of the most ethical congress shines in her example of ethical superiority by funneling money from her PAC into her husband's business. I'm getting confused about to whom this moniker of "culture of corruption" applies...

Wash Times EXCLUSIVE: Pelosi paid husband with PAC funds

Big Media would try to bury this anyway, but again a Democrat lucks out since the news cycle is already brimming with our imminent demise as a country, what with the financial world crumbling and all. Oh, and that whole campaign thing.

Quotes:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she voted to ban last year.

Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker's "PAC to the Future" over the PAC's nine-year history.

The payments have quadrupled since Mr. Pelosi took over as treasurer of his wife's committee in 2007, Federal Election Commission records show.

More hypocrisy at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Obama Fights Back. Gently.

Oh man, major props to LGF for finding this gem on The Onion.


Obama Runs Constructive Criticism Ad Against McCain

WE Told You The Dems Hold Most of The Blame

Look in the archives links to the left, and you'll see about half a dozen articles on how the Dems set up this whole failure.

Again, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are organizations that were started by the government, spun off privately, and have always existed with an implicit guarantee that we the tax payers would always back them up if they failed. Well, they failed.

Fannie and Freddie provided all of the capital necessary to make all of these loans. Then they criminally lied to cover up their terrible accounting methods, they went after anyone who was a critic and represented a danger to their power, and then embarked on a gambit to increase the number of loans, by about $400 BILLION, that they gave to under-qualified borrowers, in the name of "affordable housing". Let's hear Nancy Pelosi address that part!

They failed because they had billions in income to buy the votes of Republicans and Democrats to keep them alive while they lied about their bad habits and bad balance sheets. But it was the Democrats who killed the efforts of oversight and disallowing Fannie and Freddie to buy all of these terrible loans and forcing them to increase their capital base. An example of that: if your home was worth $200,000,  do you think it would be safe to take out a $10 million loan against it? That's what Frank Raines is asking for when he states in the video below that Fannie Mae really only needed about 2% capitalization against all those trillions of "riskless" mortgages that they owned.




More at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Why Rangel's Crimes Are So Bad

One of the most powerful Democrats in Congress continues to abuse his power, months after multiple scandals have been discovered.

I love this NY Post pic to the right - his taxpayer-provided Cadillac, picking him up at his luxury, yet rent-controlled apartment.

The NY Post reports that Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel is still using a rent-controlled apartment as campaign headquarters, which is against the rules.

Months ago, the day after the news came out about his 4 rent-controlled apartments, Rangel raised nearly $1.3 million in contributions.

Now, PublicSchoolReview.com lists Harlem's median household income at about $15,000.

This is why this man is so repugnant. He's one of the most powerful politicians in terms of being able to craft new tax laws. He can raise millions with barely an effort, which makes him a perma-incumbent. And his district comprises constituents that are way below the poverty level, yet he chooses to take 4 apartments that could have gone to families less fortunate than him, and he gets all 4 of them WAY below market value. 3 of them have been turned into one big flat, and 1 is still campaign headquarters.

I hope the NY Post investigates WHY he's getting this break in rent. Could it be that the landlord gets anything in return for that? No, couldn't be...

Thomas Sowell neatly documents all of the problems with rent control in his books. And Rangel personifies it in the most disgusting and imperious way: when rent control is present, people buy more than they need. It's that simple, and it occurs every time you have rent control. Rent control allows Fat Cats like Rangel to use 4 times more than they would've otherwise, depriving other consumers of that resource (in this case, real estate).

Read more on all of Rangels recent scandals.

More at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

$700 Billion Figure: Pulled Out of Thin Air

Wow, major kudos to LittleGreenFootballs.com for finding this story.

Forbes reports this:

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Full story at Forbes here.

Bailout Deal Done?!?!

WSJ reports that the deal is done.

Good video report here.


Interesting debate here among George Will, Newt Gingrich, and others.

Those of you who want to dig in...
Full Text of the Bill Here.

Quotes from WSJ:

The $700 billion program would effectively nationalize an array of mortgages and securities backed by them -- instruments whose deteriorating value has clogged the nation's financial system.

Lawmakers finished writing the bill late Sunday, after which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declared it "frozen," meaning no changes would be made. The bill leaves many mechanics of the operation up to the Treasury. Among these are the crucial issues of how the U.S. government would decide which assets it will buy and how it would decide what to pay for them. The legislation leaves the Treasury 45 days to issue guidelines on those procedures. The bill awaits votes in Congress starting on Monday.

At the bill's core is Mr. Paulson's concept of buying impaired mortgage-related assets from financial firms -- giving them cash to replace the toxic debts that have put them in danger or dissuaded them from lending. The plan is to help the firms restore their capital bases as well as the trust that enables them to borrow and lend at reasonable terms. Without this, officials worry that the credit markets, the lifeblood of the economy, would grind to a halt.

More meltdown at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

The Debates: Round 1

You can see the debate right here, in the comfort of cyberspace.

Buzz Lightyear Crosses English Channel

You've got to be kidding me - this stuff actually works???

A Swiss man has actually flown over the English Channel in a jet-pack.

To me, the above photo looks like a pose and then Photoshop work.

But here is video of the flight. Nuts.


More wackiness at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Democrats HAVE ALREADY BEEN BAILED OUT

Big news today about the bailout of the finance industry.

But what didn't make the news is that the Democrats have already had their financial bailout. They've already received multiple millions in illegal gains, shady deals, kickbacks, and contributions from all kinds of financial companies.

Yes, I'm sure Republicans have done similar things, but since Big Media covers every single detail of those things, and ignores these, we'll focus on these...


Senator Chris Dodd - Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee
$225,000 from AIG (who was recently bailed with U.S. tax dollars)
$165,000 from Fannie Mae (bailed out as well)
$70,000 from Bank of America
$21,000 from CountryWide contributions
$75,000 in savings from Countrywide "VIP" loan program, where he still receives a special rate on his mortgage
$4.3 million from Securities and Investment firms
$1.4 million from insurance companies
$1.3 million from Real Estate companies
$860,000 from commercial banks

TOTAL: $8.1 from financial companies
Now that Fannie and AIG have been bougth with tax payer dollars, I'm sure Chris Dodd will return the contributions he received from them, since we the people have now financed them.

References: BofA money, sweet loan deal, contribtutions,




Senator Barack Obama
$250,000 From Tony Rezko and associates (has not returned all of it)
$126,000 from Fannie Mae (bailed out by tax payers)
$366,000 from Lehman Brothers (now bankrupt, shareholders are out tens of billions)
$10 Million from Securities and Investment firms
$6.5 million from Real Estate companies
$4 million from "miscelaneous finance" companies
$2 million from commercial banks

TOTAL: $23 million

References: Rezko, contributions



Senator Harry Reid - Senate Majority Leader
$700,000 real estate profit when he changed federal laws to help a lobbyist
Unknown amount of contributions from those who made millions when he used federal power to let them buy land
$800,000 from real estate companies
$500,000 from securities and investment firms
$337,000 from insurance companies
$272,000 from commercial banks

TOTAL $2.6 million (does not include $3.6 million from lawyers and casinos)

References: contributions, criminal real estate profits,


Charles Rangel - Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee
$250,000 - savings from 4 rent-controlled apartments, for last 5 years
$75,000 tax-free rental income from vacation condo (illegally gained, is now paying taxes on it)
$15,000 worth of tax-payer-funded parking for vintage Mercedes (again, wrongfully gained)
Unknown amount of capital gains from real estate sales
$1.3 million from Insurance companies
$1 million from securities and investment firms
$650,000 from real estate companies
$440,000 from commercial banks

TOTAL: $3.73 million (not including unresolved taxes he's not yet paid)

References: contributions, rent scandal, lots of other scandals, lots of other unpaid taxes


Let the good times (for the fat cats) roll, at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

OK To Make Racist Remarks, As Long As You're Alcee Hastings

You know what they say in Florida: "Racism - it's not just for bitter gun-toting Americans any more."

A Florida Congressman, Alcee Hastings, yes, paid by your tax dollars, said the following statement at an annual meeting of the National Jewish Democratic Council, referring to Sarah Palin:

“Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through.”

Let's flip this on its head and see if it sounds racist...

"Any black politician who plays basketball will let anything happen to white and Asian people. So just think that through."

Any republican who said this would be rightly castigated and censured, and if they were a leader or chairperson, they'd be removed, no questions about it.

But this member of congress says this, and what's the outrage? CNN headlines it as "Florida congressman points to Palin to rally Jews to Obama". "Points to Palin to rally Jews"??? That's like saying white supremacists merely point to blacks to fire up their club members.

Their story doesn't even think to suggest this might be an offensive or racist remark. In fact, it notes that the largely Jewish audience erupted in applause and laughter.

So let's send the racist, race-baiting, race-mongering Alcee Hastings our thoughts, here.




Let's STOMP OUT RACISM, here at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Meltdown Blame: Under Clinton, Welfare Qualified As Income For Loans

I guess you could call this, "Who's To Blame: Part IV".

The other parts are:

THE CREDIT MELTDOWN: Who Is To Blame?

and

We Really Can Put Most of the Blame On The Dems

and

Dems Dissemble Today, Yesterday They Fought For Fannie


Now, Ann Coulter weighs in with an astonishing claim:

"Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact."

Remember, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - created to make mortgage markets more liquid - were proved in a government study to not really lower interest rates at all. So what then is their reason for existence? Democrats increasingly claimed "affordable housing".

More Quotes from Ann:

...the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress "mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers.

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration...

In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.

Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them! The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.

Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.

More P. Diddy Reality at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Site o' The Day: Celeb Ads For Obama!!!

This site is always great...

Sweetness and Light presents: Suggested McCain Ad - Question Authority

teaser sample:

FLASH: McCain Suspends Campaign, Delays Debate

Come on, it's campaign season; campaigns never end.

Still, this was a good move by McCain: a savvy political move that still puts the country first. Well done.


Story at the WSJ: McCain to 'Suspend' Campaign Amid Crisis, Return to D.C.

Quotes:

"It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration's proposal. I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time," the Arizona senator said in statement issued by the campaign. "Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington."


He also called on the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday's debate, the first of three scheduled, and he asked President Bush to convene a meeting with congressional leadership, including both himself and Sen. Obama.

More crises at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

John Bolton Speaks Out Against Monkey Boy

The Great Monkey Boy of Iran recently spoke at the UN. Again.

Let me guess at the gist of his speech: "Those vile pig-dogs want to keep us from our peaceful dream of wiping Israel off the map."

Here's something to think about as a real possibility in the future... Iran gets nukes. Iran gives one to Hezbollah suicide terrorists. Said terrorists load it on a boat, and motor up to the shores of Tel Aviv. Boom. No Tel Aviv. Boom, boom. Israel answers back. The world tries to avoid premature Armageddon...

This is a distinct possibility. And yet the UN and Europe are drunk on leftist ideology, complacent in their immorality, and resolute on doing absolutely nothing to make the world safer. Barack Obama thinks he'll miraculously solve this problem by personally talking to the Monkey Boy leader. Apparently, Mr. Obama has something to say that no one else has thought to say before to the terrorist state.

And now, here's Johnnie...




More eschatology, here at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Obama: Much Closer To Ayers Than He Admits

Would you vote for John McCain if he started his political career in the house of, and later worked in the same neo-nazi educational foundation with, a man who tried to kill hundreds of African Americans? Do you think that might be a newsworthy story? How about if that same guy bombed a black church and then today still said "We didn't do enough?"

Yet, Obama did the same thing with a man who tried to kill that many U.S. soldiers, and who actually did bomb the Pentagon. But that story must be suppressed by Big Media. Can't even talk about that. Nope.

Bill Ayers was and is a 60's-era terrorist radical. He himself said he had hoped to murder hundreds of U.S. Soldiers with one of his bombs - he was a bomb designer. Instead, 3 of his terrorist cohort were killed making that bomb. Bad instructions I guess.

That same angel of a guy later would work with Obama on educating kids to be 60's radicals and hate the U.S. Read on...

In a WSJ opinion piece, Stan Kurtz provides more details of the association of Obama and Ayers. Obama worked closely with Ayers, and indeed launched his political career from Ayer's house. I guess that's what Obama means when he says Ayers is just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood."

And, Obama has tried to hide the fact that he led an educational foundation that pushed radical anti-U.S. propaganda. I guess he didn't have space in his two autobiographies for that.

Quotes:

The (Chicago Annenberg Challenge) CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

Here is the article's author on Fox, explaining this ugliness...
(their embed code didn't work.)

And an encore performance of this ad...



And this one...


Let's get radical, at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Dems Dissemble Today, Yesterday They Fought For Fannie

dis·sem·ble
transitive verb
1 : to hide under a false appearance
2 : to put on the appearance of : simulate

As discussed here, we know that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the key enablers of this credit meltdown - the fuel that stoked the flames. They enabled nearly half a trillion dollars in the bad kind of loans. We know that democrats in lock-step blocked the chance for the Senate to even vote on overhauling Fannie and Freddie right before they went on a subprime buying spree 3 years ago when it could have helped. We know that Republicans and Democrats are to blame, but Democrats have been by far the fiercest supporters of these GSE's.

Now, Thomas Sowell adds his points to the topic, here and here.

Sowell has some great quotes from the same Democrats who are now blaming "Wall Street greed" and George Bush. Chuck Schumer is trying to convince us that the "lowly mortgage" has brought us to this, as if no people were invovled. It turns out, Senator Schumer was involved, and he even tried to make things worse by expanding Fannie's and Freddie's abilities to make loans.

Article Quotes:

Saints are no more common on Capitol Hill than they are on Wall Street. We can only hope that the political "solution" does not turn out to be worse than the problem.

Probably most members of Congress don't know the details yet-- and many may still not know the details when the time comes for them to vote on this bailout.

Ninety percent of the people on this planet would exchange their economic situation for ours in a minute. The media love hype, and have been dying to use the word "recession" all year but nothing has happened that meets the definition of a recession.

The American economy is growing, not declining. Our unemployment rate is up to 6 percent but there are countries that would be delighted to get their unemployment rate down to 6 percent. Our inflation rate is up a little but many countries would love to get their inflation rate down to where ours is.

For years the Wall Street Journal has been warning that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking reckless chances but liberal Democrats especially have pooh-poohed the dangers.

Back in 2002, the Wall Street Journal said: "The time for the political system to focus on Fannie and Fred isn't when we have a housing crisis; by then it will be too late." The hybrid public-and-private nature of these financial giants amounts to "privatizing profit and socializing risk,"

But liberal Democratic Congressman Barney Frank criticized Professor Mankiw, citing "concern for housing" as his reason for supporting Fannie Mae. Barney Frank said that fears about the riskiness of Fannie Mae were "overblown."

Just last year, Senator Charles Schumer advocated legislation to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their already huge role in the mortgage market.

Many people have trouble even forming some notion of what such numbers as billion and trillion mean. One way to get some idea of the magnitude of a trillion is to ask: How long ago was a trillion seconds?

A trillion seconds ago, no one on this planet could read and write.

Whenever there is a lot of the taxpayers' money around, politicians are going to find ways to spend it that will increase their chances of getting re-elected by giving goodies to voters.
The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not.
As recently as July of this year, Senator Dodd declared Fannie Mae and Freddie "fundamentally strong" and said there is no need for "panicking" about them. But now that the chickens have come home to roost, Senator Dodd wants to be sure to get some goodies from the rescue legislation to pass out to people likely to vote for him.

More Dems Dissembling, here at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Quote of The Day

"Whenever there is a lot of the taxpayers' money around, politicians are going to find ways to spend it that will increase their chances of getting re-elected by giving goodies to voters."
- Thomas Sowell

More Wisdom at The Pantheon Journal.

We Really Can Put Most of the Blame On The Dems

Well, the Jury is in. Kevin Hasset astutely points out in 2005, a serious bill to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was proposed, but the Democrats wouldn't even allow a vote on it. Not even a vote! This bill would've disallowed all of the bad loans that Fannie and Freddie were to buy in the years hence. The crisis could have been avoided.

So are there any individuals to blame? Yes: Frank Raines, CEO of Fannie Mae at the time and current economic adviser to Barrack Obama; Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, ardently defended these corrupt companies. A lot of other top Democrats are to blame as well. And yes, Republicans too, but at least they all voted to reform Fannie while the Dems, to a person, voted no to.

So this is not a failure of capitalism or Greenspan's fault (read on, you'll see Greenspan also warned against disaster), though it is being portrayed in the media this way. This is not George Bush's fault - he opposed Fannie and Freddie from the start of his administration and even refused to put government officials on the boards of those companies, as a way of taking away implicit government support.

Look at this quote from a CNBC article from 2007:
"The administration of George W. Bush has said the combined $1.4 trillion investment holdings of the two government-sponsored companies are dangerously bloated and should be curbed."

This is a problem caused by Democrats starting and then protecting at all costs Fannie and Freddie.

Who are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and what do they do?
Put simply: they buy mortgages from the lenders who originate them. This frees up the lender to go lend again and again, knowing that they'll be able to sell their loans to Fannie or Freddie. This creates "liquidity" - the ability to convert an asset into cash by selling it in a functioning market.

The very reason for the panic right now is that all the buyers dried up - no one wanted to buy these bad loans, either from the lenders or from Fannie or Freddie. After that, Fannie and Freddie, and even several other lenders who instantly went out of business in 2007, were on the hook to guarantee these bundles of loans.

I'm sorry - what part of free-market capitalism has Government Sponsored Enterprises like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They weren't created by markets, but by the Government. That's called social engineering, not capitialism.

And now we know that Fannie and Freddie were buying these bad loans all while paying their CEO's $100 MILLION or so for about 7 years of work. All that money, as noted before, gave Fannie and Freddie increasing power as they bribed their way into permanence through millions in campaign contributions. And they also intimidated anyone who stood in their way, and this is documented behavior.

It's amazing how many of these bubbles occur because of outright lying. Speculators lying on their loans, stating it's a primary residence when it's only a flipper investment. Fannie and Freddie lying about how much in profits they had. If they hadn't lied, just maybe the investment world would have taken a closer look at all of the bad loans they were buying, and everyone could have slowly gotten out. Also, as you'll see below, the whole worst part of the crisis - these last few years - would have never occurred if the Democrats hadn't blocked efforts to reform Fannie and Freddie. Again, the Dems wouldn't even allow a vote on it. Now that's democracy for the little guy, isn't it?

Now, on to some enlightening quotes from some articles...

How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis: Kevin Hassett explains that the Republicans tried to reign in Freddie and Fannie, but the Dems blocked it. Thus, with Fannie and Freddie buying all of these bad loans, the cycle just continued until massive defaults started occuring on home loans.

The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.

Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street's efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.

Over the years, it added up to an enormous obligation. As of last June, Fannie alone owned or guaranteed more than $388 billion in high-risk mortgage investments. Their large presence created an environment within which even mortgage-backed securities assembled by others could find a ready home.

The problem was that the trillions of dollars in play were only low-risk investments if real estate prices continued to rise. Once they began to fall, the entire house of cards came down with them.

Some might say the current mess couldn't be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie ``continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,'' he said. ``We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.''

In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn't become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee...

Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that's worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers between now and Nov. 4: Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S.190, the bill that would have averted this mess.

And here are some quotes from a great article at the WSJ: Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess, where the authors point out that this buying of subprime loans was all in the name of "affordable housing", which was a clever survival scheme invented after Fannie Mae's accounting scandal.

Many monumental errors and misjudgments contributed to the acute financial turmoil in which we now find ourselves. Nevertheless, the vast accumulation of toxic mortgage debt that poisoned the global financial system was driven by the aggressive buying of subprime and Alt-A mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The poor choices of these two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) -- and their sponsors in Washington -- are largely to blame for our current mess.

How did we get here? Let's review: In order to curry congressional support after their accounting scandals in 2003 and 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac committed to increased financing of "affordable housing." They became the largest buyers of subprime and Alt-A mortgages between 2004 and 2007, with total GSE exposure eventually exceeding $1 trillion. In doing so, they stimulated the growth of the subpar mortgage market and substantially magnified the costs of its collapse.

If the Democrats had let the 2005 legislation come to a vote, the huge growth in the subprime and Alt-A loan portfolios of Fannie and Freddie could not have occurred, and the scale of the financial meltdown would have been substantially less. The same politicians who today decry the lack of intervention to stop excess risk taking in 2005-2006 were the ones who blocked the only legislative effort that could have stopped it.

And here is an interview with Peter Wallison, on the whole mess and his insider's view of the meltdown. Fannie Mae successfully put him out of a job when they refused to do business with the company whose board he was on, because he was critical of Fannie Mae.



Wallison explains the history of Fannie and Freddie (New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson), how Fannie intimidated its critics, and how he saw a long time ago that Fannie's business model was unsustainable.


And finally, some perspective from Larry Kudlow...

Well, it’s time for some perspective. The world is not coming to an end. The stock market has tumbled, but it’s still over 10,000. In late 2002 it was 7,500 and in mid-1982 it was 750. Are things really that bad?

With home prices falling, foreclosures and defaults are at the root cause of the run against all manner of mortgage-related bonds held by the banks. But as investment guru Don Luskin points out, foreclosures today are less than 3 percent. During the 1930s they were 50 percent. Or how about the unemployment rate? Today it’s 6.1 percent. Back in 1982 it was near 11 percent and for most of the 1930s it was over 20 percent.

As the oil bubble pops the underlying inflation rate is somewhere between 2 and 3 percent — quite unlike the double-digit hyperinflation of the 1970s. Home prices themselves have fallen between 10 and 20 percent, but they’re still about 50 percent higher than at the start of the decade.

And there are constructive policy measures that can help fix the market’s problems.

Investor Zachary Karabell writes persuasively in the Wall Street Journal that “mark-to-market accounting in the aftermath of the Enron scandal makes no sense at all.” Many banks have taken huge losses on mortgage-backed securities and their derivatives because the SEC insists on mark-to-market. But Karabell asks: Why knock down these bond values, sometimes by as much as 100 percent, when the underlying home values embedded in the mortgages have only dropped 10 to 20 percent? And in the long run, the housing market will recover, as it always does.

More keen analysis at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Site o' The Day: Panoramic Photos

compliments of your tax dollars...

Library of Congress Panoramic Photographs

Some samples...

click to images to enlarge

Photograph of San Francisco in ruins from Lawrence Captive Airship, 2000 feet above San Francisco Bay...; 1906

Miles Glacier, Alaska, Childs Glacier, Alaska.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Pollster: McCain Will Win Because of Experience

Very interesting story at NewsMax: GOP Strategist: McCain Will Win

[hat tip: LGF reader links]

A pollster, Kellyanne Conway, with an uncanny ability to call elections says McCain will win.

And not based on polling numbers, but based on what the polls tell her about the issues that are important to voters. And leadership and experience, she thinks, are important to voters this time around. So all those popularity contests don't matter.

Quotes:

In the past, Conway’s predictions have been eerily accurate. In the 2004 presidential race, she won the Washington Post’s Crystal Ball Award. Nine days before the election, she predicted the precise outcome in the popular vote — 51 percent for George Bush and 48 percent for John Kerry.

"I look at what the polls say about attributes. I noticed in 2004 that George W. Bush led John Kerry by double digits for eight straight months on the question of who is more likely to take a position and stick with it." Conway decided that in the 2004 election, such consistency was “treasured currency to voters.” After all, it was the first presidential election since the 9/11 attacks. “There’s so much uncertainty in the world,” she reasoned. “I didn’t believe people wanted to invite more uncertainly and insecurity in their national leadership.”

Fast forwarding to 2008, Conway says voters still want those attributes of steadiness, consistency, and principled leadership in their president.

“Now instead of focusing on likeability in the campaign, we’re seeing a focus on leadership,” she says. “Instead of covering biography, we’re covering experience. Instead of only hearing about hope, we’re talking about the Hanoi Hilton again. In other words, we’re talking about what credentials really matter to most voters.”

Conway notes that a lot of polls ask about likeability: With whom would you rather go to the baseball game? With whom would you rather have a beer? Who would you rather have watch your kids for a couple of hours on a Saturday?

“I’m thinking, with three kids under the age of 4, some Saturdays I’d take any of the candidates,” Conway says. “But these polling questions are not the way the average American looks at the presidential candidates. The average American is more focused on leadership than likeability. And more focused on qualifications than quality of speakership.”

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Video Of Truck Used In Islamabad Bombing

It looks to me like that first explosion is the suicide bomber taking his own life.

It then appears that the psychos get "lucky" - the ensuing fire seems to be what sets off the rest of the blast, which isn't shown in the video (camera would be destroyed instantly anyway).




More here at Hot Air.



Here's video of the early news of the bombing...




More at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Rangel: Fat Cats Get Perks, Write Laws They Won't Obey

Charlie Rangel - poster boy for the Democrat's "most ethical congress in history". Remember the mantra of Nancy Pelosi - the "culture of corruption" charge against the Republicans, which helped the Dems take back the majority of Congress 2 years ago?

Now, Pelosi will not remove Rangel from his Chairman position on the Ways and Means committee.

The Ways and Means committee, the most powerful in congress, is in charge of writing pretty little laws like "imputed income". I have a personal example - did you know that you get taxed for having life insurance? Somehow, those wonderful lawmakers think that you are getting "imputed income" if your employer allows you to buy more life insurance through them, more then their standard coverage. That's right, you still have to pay for it, as I do. It's just that the IRS will TAX YOU ON THIS. Let me get this straight - I pay for extra life insurance in case I die, and receive no income from it right now (in fact, I'm out money), but the government taxes me on it.

Back to today's story, Rangel has had his Mercedes parked for free in a government parking spot - it's been sitting there apparently in a non-op condition (I bet that means he doesn't even have to pay registration fees!). The problem is this parking spot is a free perk, and therefore imputed income of $100 a month. But Rangel hasn't paid taxes on it.

Just to recap - the most powerful lawmaker in terms of writing tax laws does not follow the laws he keeps on the books. Remember, when liberals want to prop up an all-powerful, far-reaching government it's not because they want to share power with you. Quite the opposite.

Rangel has now called out the big guns - Lanny Davis. No one covers better for a liar than Lanny Davis - just ask the pathological and documented serial liars, the Clintons.

HAS ANY MAJOR MEDIA OUTLET COVERED THIS STORY??? Yep, they've got Republican Ted Stevens all over the news as his trial starts. He's accused of not reporting hundreds of thousands in gifts.

Rangel has admitted to not reporting at least $75,000 from his posh vacation rental alone. Where's the trial?

What does it take to get Rangel's story into Big Media's news cycle?

Here are a list of potential crimes he's committed recently:

• Did not disclose at least $75,000 in rental income from a vacation rental he owns
• Did not pay income tax on free parking space
• Violated Congressional rules by leaving his car on federal property for 4 years, getting free parking, saving thousands on a parking space
  
• Had 4 rent-controlled apartments, using one of them as a campaign office, which is not allowed. Also his high income level should preclude him from ever being able to have a rent-controlled apartment, but he's combined 3 of them into one huge luxury flat.
• Has admitted to so many "errors" on his tax returns for the last 2 decades, he's hired a forensic accountant. He's gotten away with so much, only a few years worth of crimes could be investigated, since most fall out of the window of the statute of limitations.
• There are likely lots of other real estate profits for which he's not reported the income

Only the NY Post is on top of this. See these stories:

TOW-NAILING CHARLIE 'PARKER'

WAGING WAR ON CHARLIE

Some quotes from these articles:

According to his congressional disclosure reports, Rangel paid $3,894 a month in 2007 for four apartments in Lenox Terrace, a 1,700-unit luxury complex often described as Harlem's most prestigious address.

The market rent for such units is between $7,465 to $8,125, according to the Web site of the building's owner, the Olnick Organization.

Although Rangel gave up the unit he used as an office, the other three are used as a sprawling residence by him and his wife, Alma.

-------------------------

There's sure plenty to look at.

Start with his four rent-stabilized apartments in Harlem and his failure to report $75,000 in apparently taxable rental income from a Caribbean beachfront villa.

Then there is his apparent failure to report income from the sale of:

* A home he owned in the District of Columbia.

* A Harlem apartment (though its value had allegedly doubled over two years).

* And a condo in Sunny Isles, Fla., apparently at a $60,000 profit.

-------------------------------

BELEAGUERED Rep. Charles Rangel holds one of the most influential jobs in America - chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Mere membership on Ways and Means is one of the most sought-after slots on Capitol Hill - and with good reason. The committee has the near-exclusive power to block or initiate any change to the tax code - in other words, it chooses who will pay how much in taxes and what income levels deserve tax credits.

In 2007 alone, that gave its members oversight over nearly $2.6 trillion in federal revenue.

In a wonderful show of how only liberals are tolerant and care for people, Rangel said this of Sarah Palin (full story here):

Rep. Charles Rangel yesterday slammed GOP veep nominee Sarah Palin as "disabled."

Asked by Channel 2's Marcia Kramer if Democrats are afraid of Palin, Rangel said, "You got to be kind to the disabled."

"You got to be kind to the disabled?" a surprised Kramer pressed.

"Yes," Rangel answered.

Kramer asked, "She's disabled?"

"There's no question about politically," Rangel said. "It's a nightmare to think that a person's foreign policy is based on their ability to look at Russia from where they live. It is insulting to Americans."

Palin, 44, the governor of Alaska, has a baby son, Trig, who has Down syndrome.

Throw out the corrupt Fat Cats at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

FBI SEARCHES HOME OF TEEN OF DEM LAWMAKER

What a strange story this is turning into - it's own little Watergate.

FBI SEARCHES APARTMENT IN PALIN HACKING CASE

The FBI searched the residence of the son of a Democratic state lawmaker in Tennessee over the weekend looking for evidence linking the young man to the hacking of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press on Monday.

A hacker last week broke into one of the Yahoo Inc. e-mail accounts that Palin uses, revealing as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate. The McCain campaign confirmed the break-in and called it a "shocking invasion of the governor's privacy and a violation of law."

60,000 For Palin Rally????

The Republicans really do have a rock star now...

Video is here:






And full story is here.

Quotes:

The Villages, a vast, upscale planned community north of Orlando, has about 70,000 mostly adult residents -- many of them military retirees -- who vote reliably Republican in statewide races. Tens of thousands inched along roads into the picturesque town square of the complex, where they stood in sweltering heat for about four hours as local GOP officials and a country band revved up the crowd.

"Sa-Rah! Sa-Rah!" they chanted at every mention of her name, applauding loudly and waiving tiny American flags that were distributed -- along with free water bottles -- by local volunteers. The fire chief estimated the crowd at 60,000.

"Americans are caught in kind of a perfect storm between high taxes, high gas prices, greed on Wall Street and a shortage of courage in Washington," she said. "But we need new leadership in Washington -- we need serious reform on Wall Street."

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

McCain Goes Populist With Latest Ad: Foundation

Well, Wall Street greed explains part of it. I guess politicians can't mention the greed on the part of the home buyers, who artificially drove up housing prices by buying homes they couldn't afford.


Also, what is greed? John McCain has never seen this by Milton Friedman (back for a command performance)...



If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Obama Back In The Lead Of Electoral Map

Barack Obama has made significant gains in the last week or so in his prospects for winning the electoral college count, and thus the election.

RealClearPolitics has the full map and stats here.

It would very much seem that Ohio and Florida are must-win states for McCain. Losing either just gives Obama too much of a lead. Likewise, if McCain carries Pennsylvania, where the polling shows a tight race, it would seem to be over for Obama (unless he in turn takes Ohio or Florida, obviously).

There are 11 toss-up states, 6 of them leaning towards Obama, giving him 71 electoral votes.

Only a 5-point swing would do it for McCain, giving him 270 votes, the minimum needed to win.






Here is the map with no toss up states (states leaning one way are counted that way).




As you can see, it's close.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Terrible Attack In Pakistan

I hate to report on every single attack that occurs around the world, because I don't think it's helpful.

But this latest multiple-bomb attack in Pakistan is quite harrowing. A minimum of 40 people dead, many trapped. The building is gone - a gas pipe ruptured and the building burned and seemed totally gutted. A huge crater was left in the ground in front of the hotel from the bomb blast - and at least one witness said there were multiple blasts.

Quotes:

Mir said someone saw the hotel gates rammed open by a small car, followed by an explosive-laden truck, which detonated. Babar said initial reports said only that a small truck laden with explosives broke through the gate.

But the hotel manager said the blast went off outside the gates of the hotel, which is near the compound that contains the parliament building, the prime minister's house, the Supreme Court and the presidency.

More photos and news here at CNN.

And Now, Time for a Moose Hunt, Alaska Style

The Gov. would be proud.

Almost no moose were harmed in the making of this photo.

[photo from a friend -rb]

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Are Bailouts The Answer?

Two excellent articles by Alan Reynolds and William Isaac, respectively.

Both of these articles, and others I've read, expound on the terrible effects of "mark-to-market" accounting rules.

One analogy from the WSJ: Imagine you owned a home on Galveston island right before Hurricane Ike was to hit. If you had to sell the house right then, the value of it would be greatly depressed. But the house will be worth much more just days later.

Apply that to the current situation with AIG, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, etc., and you have a self-feeding death spiral. Yes these companies caused their own problems. But having to temporarily and drastically mark down the value of assets they hold kills their credit rating and their agreements with lenders - which simultaneously squashes their ability to raise cash and makes lenders and customers demand their money back. That's not so much a death spiral as it is falling off a cliff.

So marking down these mortgage instruments now is liking selling your house right before a hurricane.

These two articles are the best I've seen in explaining what is happening and how federal bailouts may just make the problem worse...

Reynolds discusses WHY BAILOUTS SCARE STOX.

Salient quotes:

In essence, these bailouts give bondholders more protection than they'd otherwise see - at stockholders' expense.

It's probably true that "something had to be done" in the case of AIG, the nation's largest insurance company with operations in 130-plus countries. But doing something could have meant doing something else - such as offering a secured bridge loan while AIG engaged in some orderly asset sales.

Left alone, financial markets usually work out the best possible deals among competing interests. Whenever the feds have gotten involved, by contrast, they've taken sides in the tension between stockholders and creditors - invariably throwing stockholders overboard.

So mortgage-backed securities are illiquid: They can't quickly be converted to cash without taking a big loss. Firms holding too many hard-to-sell but solvent securities may likewise be illiquid, but not truly insolvent. Mark-to-market, in other words, is artificially turning a big problem into a disaster.

So let's be careful about looking to more government regulation as the solution - and ponder the unintended consequences of "bailouts" of foreign creditors at the expense of domestic stockholders.

Mr. Isaac ponders, How to Save the Financial System.

Quotes:

At the outset of the current crisis in the credit markets, we had no serious economic problems. Inflation was under control, GDP growth was good, unemployment was low, and there were no major credit problems in the banking system.

The dark cloud on the horizon was about $1.2 trillion of subprime mortgage-backed securities, about $200 billion to $300 billion of which was estimated to be held by FDIC-insured banks and thrifts. The rest were spread among investors throughout the world.

The likely losses on these assets were estimated by regulators to be roughly 20%. Losses of this magnitude would have caused pain for institutions that held these assets, but would have been quite manageable.

The biggest culprit is a change in our accounting rules that the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the SEC put into place over the past 15 years: Fair Value Accounting. Fair Value Accounting dictates that financial institutions holding financial instruments available for sale (such as mortgage-backed securities) must mark those assets to market. That sounds reasonable. But what do we do when the already thin market for those assets freezes up and only a handful of transactions occur at extremely depressed prices?

If we had followed today's approach during the 1980s, we would have nationalized all of the major banks in the country and thousands of additional banks and thrifts would have failed. I have little doubt that the country would have gone from a serious recession into a depression.

Again, we must take three immediate steps to prevent a further rash of financial failures and taxpayer bailouts. First, the SEC must suspend Fair Value Accounting and require that assets be marked to their true economic value. Second, the SEC needs to immediately clamp down on abusive practices by short sellers. It has taken a first step in reinstituting the prohibition against "naked selling." Finally, the bank regulators need to acknowledge that the Basel II capital rules represent a serious policy mistake and repeal the rules before they do real damage.

Understand more, at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

Blue Tarp Land Rover

Highway 280, California, Friday morning...

I love the fact that this guy can shell out the bucks for this high-end Land Rover, but not the Thule rack.  A blue tarp and bungee cords will do just fine, thank you.

More blue tarps at The Pantheon Journal.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.

THE CREDIT MELTDOWN: Who Is To Blame?

To sum it up simply, home buyers bought a lot of homes they should not have been buying. Lenders pushed terrible loans that later jumped much higher in monthly payments owed. Lending companies kept this up to keep profits up vis a vis their peers. Fannie and Freddie bought these loans from the lenders. Fannie and Freddie vastly over-extended themselves to do this, at our expense. U.S. and foreign investors bought baskets of these loans by the zillions.

Suddenly, those who couldn't ever afford the house they bought started to show it by not making payments and then by getting foreclosed on. All of a sudden, trillions of dollars of loan baskets (CDO's, etc.) were of unkown value, because they couldn't be sold due to their terrible credit profiles and non-payments by the home owners.

Now, banks, investment banks, and invisble funds spun off and operated invisibly as off-balance companies to larger, big-name companies - all of them had hundreds of billions of losses, at least on paper. Enron-scandal accounting rules now force these companies to "mark to market" the value of their loans. But, as dicussed here, there was no market for these things, and thus no real value for the time being. But since the companies had to mark them down anyway, this terminally damaged their credit status and ability to get financing, not to mention in some cases causing a run on the bank in question by the customers of that bank. Stocks of these companies then crashed, making credit matters even worse for them.

At risk of the whole credit and financial system freezing up, the feds have stepped in, and here we are.

Jonah Goldberg has a piece that nicely sums up what just happened in the financial meltdown, and who is to blame. From the NY Post, WASHINGTON BREWED THE POISON.

Quotes:

Franklin Raines, the Clinton-appointed head of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2004, made it his top priority to make mortgages easier to get for people with poor credit, few assets and little money for a down payment.

The Clinton administration re- interpreted the Community Reinvestment Act to politicize lending practices. Under the CRA, the feds forced banks to prove they weren't "redlining" (i.e., discriminating against minorities) by approving loans to minorities and various left-wing "community groups," bad risks or not.
Sen. Phil Gramm called it a vast extortion scheme against America's banks. Still, the banks were perfectly happy to pass the risky loans to Raines' Fannie Mae, which was happy to buy them up.

That's because Raines was transforming Fannie from a boring but stable institution dedicated to making homes more affordable into a risky venture that abused its special status as a "government sponsored enterprise." Fannie bought the bad loans and bundled them together with good ones. Wall Street was glad to buy up these mortgage securities because Fannie was deemed a government-insured behemoth "too big to fail." And others followed Fannie's lead.

In 2005, John McCain sponsored legislation to thwart what he later called "the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole."

Barack Obama, the Senate's second-greatest recipient of donations from Fannie and Freddie after Dodd, did nothing.

Meanwhile, Raines made $52 million of his $90 million compensation package thanks in part to fraudulent earnings statements.

If you like this article, click the buzz button below.