Columnist and author Thomas Frank finds it “cosmically correct” that James K. Glassman (in photo), the co-author of “Dow 36,000,” will be the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. “This great Wall Street optimist will oversee the remnants of an administration whose members once pooh-poohed the ‘reality-based community,’ who thought voluntary compliance was a good way to regulate industry, who took almost no action to deflate the mortgage bubble, who anticipated being greeted in Iraq as liberators,” Frank wrote.
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38 Comments
Come on Brownlee, the mortgage bubble was created almost entirely at the hands of the Dim’ocrats. The Bush administration warned the Democrat congress over and over about the impending danger to the economy.
And we were in fact greeted by the majority in Iraq as liberators.
And as far as a ‘reality-based community’ concept, well this country was founded on ideals that became reality through hard work and sacrifice.
Boxlock20 = bush apologist
He lives in a fantasy world.
What’s a matter Blaidd_, ya got nothing to support what you say? I certainly do. A simple search supports the comments I put forth, you seem to have nothing but ad hominem attacks to offer.
Typical of a loser, one who knows it and is accustomed to losing.
I hardly think your “search” conssited of anything more than internet based rightwing sources.
That’s the trouble with you Cons. If the facts don’t conforn to your reality, you make up your own “facts”.
Of course if someone calls you on the carpet about it you just cry “hominem attack”.
If you want to see a true loser, then look in a mirror.
“Blaidd_Drwg69″ –
No need to bother with taking “Boxlock20″ seriously.
It’s like that old saying about trying to teach a pig to sing: “…it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
As with most WE Blog CONs, “Boxlock20″ is adept at cutting-and-posting stuff he doesn’t read. (Either that, or he believes Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States from January 20, 1777 to January 20, 1781.)
Produce or shut up Blaidd_!
I can fill the day with references to the Dim’ocrats irresponsible part in the the mortgage bubble and what it has done to the world.
They acted like incompetents, and talk about ignoring a ‘reality-based community’ concept….they certainly did in that.
Don’t take comfort in the support the Monkey gives, he’s is no more valuable or accurate than what his nic suggests….the reasoning of a chimp.
Here Blaidd_, here is what you get with the Monkey giving you support, this is his most photogenic side. I think that’s what his face looks like.
http://tbotcotw.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/monkeybutt.jpg
I love it.
Ol’ “Boxlock20″ is ready to cut-and-post all day!
He might even include some cut-and-posts he’s actually read!
And look:
What’s the topic of this thread?
The Bushie who predicted that “Dow 36,000.”
Ol’ “Boxlock20″ goes the route ol’ “Regular” says he hates: deflecting the topic in hopes he can get the thread off on the tangent.
Shrub chose an apologist to run his presidential library.
It’s likely to become the site of Fantasy Land at a Disney park.
Speaking of irony, the topic of the article was derived from an article titled a “A Liberal Thanksgiving” by a liberal author “Thomas Frank”.
Liberal Thanksgiving? Are libs going to politicize everything?
Liberal horn dog.
Liberal kool-aid.
Liberal boodoggle
oh wait…
Took a liberal schitt this morning and wiped my O’BAMA.
Ol’ “Regular” contributes –
“Took a liberal schitt this morning and wiped my….”
With or without the diaper?
Hey Phillip, where’s your Hemingway-like black and white photo portraying the tough, yet civilized literary demeanor of the man, Thomas Frank?
Yes, the one you usually post with his latest (insert: irrelevant liberal inanity) brilliant writing.
“Fill the day” Boxlock20.
“Fill the day” Boxlock20″.
Why Blaidd_, you are too ignorant to read and understand the most obvious of things.
“It’s like that old saying about trying to teach a pig to sing: “…it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” It would be wasted effort with either you or the Chimp.
What the Chimp never understands is that his opinion’s are of little to no value, typical egotist, and that cut and pasting published and recognized sources lends credibility is why it’s done. As in references.
But again….that pig or chimp can’t sing.
“bush institute”?
Are they FINALLY gonna lock those people up? Better late than never I suppose.
Better than some Chicago thugs that Obama has in socialist adminstration. Bush man here if you don’t like it TS.
Boxlock20
Posted November 28, 2009 at 8:47 am
“cut and pasting published and recognized sources lends credibility”
——————————–
Boxlock all but admits that he’s got ‘nuthin other than RW sound bites.
I might be able to take Frank seriously if in the same paragraph he referenced Obama put a Wall Street crook who is a tax cheat in charge of the treasury of the United States. Since this didn’t happen then it is just more left wing noise.
Everyone with a brain knows what started the housing bubble. Even Bill Clinton has admitted that the dims played a big part in this. The following shows his part in the beginning of this debacle.
“Bill Clinton and the Housing Bubble
Commenter Fallsmeadjc makes a fair point. Bill Clinton might have left office before the worst of the financial sector’s excesses. But he wasn’t blameless in hyping the housing bubble:
In 1997 Congress made the first $500,000 of capital gains on the sale of a home tax-free for a married couple and $250,000 tax-free for a single person. This gave real estate a distinct advantage over other capital investments and distorted investment decisions from that time on. I’m sure you could find a graph that would show the beginnings of the housing bubble in 1997. I’m not blaming the entire crisis on this tax change or on the Clinton Administration but it definitely constituted a significant Governmental puff into the housing bubble.
This wasn’t only Clinton, of course. Ceaselessly pushing homeownership has been a bipartisan preoccupation in America. For readers who want a fuller picture of this, I’d recommend Alyssa Katz’s forthcoming book, Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us. In fact, her book is so good on this point that I e-mailed to ask her thoughts. She wrote:
Clinton’s mea culpa on derivatives deregulation is welcome, and I don’t think he’s wrong that the left has placed undue blame on Glass-Steagal repeal. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was not a primary cause of our current economic miseries.
But on [the Community Reinvestment Act], Clinton conveniently brings onstage and then demolishes the straw man conjured by the right: that CRA required banks to lend to non-credit worthy customers (it doesn’t) without copping to what his administration actually did do, which was to set ludicrously high quotas on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s obligations to buy mortgages made to low-income people or securities based on such mortgages. From that point on, the explosive growth of subprime lending and the Wall Street mortgage-backed securities market became inevitable.”
To ignore facts just shows either stupidity or a head in the sand mentality. Take your choice. This didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t start when Bush took office.
Both parties share the blame and Frank is one of the most uninformed authors I have ever seen. Never researches anything just regurgitates the left talking points so his sheeple readers will read his book. Never challenge a liberal mind I always say.
“Never challenge a liberal mind I always say.”
Probably a good idea for you. You might get caught switching nics, lying, or just plain wrong.
Oh wait…
Actually, “okobserver” –
Many of your criticisms of President Clinton are valid.
They belie 8 years of CONs attacking him as a liberal, however. And a bunch of us liberals objected to his “triangulation” strategies.
But you negate all CON arguments we cannot mention the Shrub/Cheney legacy of foreign policy disasters, economic disasters, and general incompetence.
Oko–
Where is Bush’s “mea culpa?” Especially since it happened after 2006, five years after Bush was (almost) elected president?
Oops . . . Bush doesn’t have to say he’s sorry, because nobody in their right mind could believe he was in charge of anything . . .
BTW, OKO, your source with the unpronounciable name is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Most loans that fueled the mortgage melt-down were not to poor people that couldn’t afford houses–they were to ordinary people that were told by bankers and mortgage brokers to RE-FINANCE! on the fake “equity” that their rising home prices had created.
When you give people free money, they will take it.
But it’s typical of the Fundy-CONs that they would have to ignore all the evidence to pin this problem on the poor and gov’t responses to the poor.
As Ghandi said famously . . . “Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
But thanks a lot for the thread, Mr. Brownlee.
I always wondered what happened to the wack-o who wrote that book . . .
“Boxlock all but admits that he’s got ‘nuthin other than RW sound bites.”–Blaidd_
Not at all, I use what supports what I want to get across.
Blaidd_ “all but admits that he’s got ‘nuthin”…at all!
At the risk of exceeding the con two syllable explanations (fannie,freddie, acorn);from The Nation:
“Remember the “ownership society,” fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? “We’re creating…an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property,” Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush’s greatest legacy, remembered “long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah.” Yet in Bush’s final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society’s undertaker.
“Boxlock20″ shares –
“I use what supports what I want to get across.”
And it works!
I’m convinced Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States from January 20, 1777 to January 20, 1781.
Thanks for enlightening me!
The author only missed by about 30,000 points, usually they’re spot on!
#
Boxlock20
Posted November 28, 2009 at 7:43 am | Permalink
Here Blaidd_, here is what you get with the Monkey giving you support, this is his most photogenic side. I think that’s what his face looks like.
http://tbotcotw.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/monkeybutt.jpg
==-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Shame on you, Boxlock20. You made baby Jesus cry.
Those who doubt the Democrats pushed the US into the housing crisis in the past, need only look to present day events, to see the Democrat Solution to the Housing Crisis is to do more of the Same, that got us there in the first place:
NATIONAL MORTGAGE NEWS:
FHA Loosens Appraisal Policy
Effective immediately, the Federal Housing Administration will no longer require two appraisals on higher-balance loans for properties located in declining markets.
This is an example of a clear pattern formed by Obama & Co:
1. Announce the Roll-out of a New Program To Save America
2. Not have any detailed plans or realistic roll-out timeframes
3. Making unreasonable demands on private business to roll-out the program ANY WHICH WAY THEY CAN. (Just for show, so Obama can claim he did something)
4. Failure: Spending more Gov’t Money wihtout solving any problems.
(You suppose Obama enrolled at Harvard, then self-declared that he graduated with honors, without actually going to school?)
Obama Administration Announces New Plan to Help State & Local Housing Agencies
Administration Will Provide Mortgage Help to Hundreds of Thousands of Homeowners
By MATTHEW JAFFE
Oct. 19, 2009
The Obama administration today announced a new effort to help battered state and local housing agencies provide mortgage help to hundreds of thousands of homeowners.
The administration said the new plan will help keep mortgage rates low, and increase resources for low and middle income borrowers to buy or rent homes.
“This initiative is crucial to helping working families maintain access to affordable rental housing and homeownership in tough economic times,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in a statement. “Through the years, many low and moderate income Americans have been well served by state and local HFAs, but the housing downturn has hit these organizations too.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/obama-administration-announces-mortgage-plan/story?id=8864497
3 Weeks Later, Obama Housing Plan a Bust!
Assistance Limited For HFAs – Purchase Program Oversubscribed
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
By Peter Schroeder
WASHINGTON — Treasury Department officials are warning state and local housing finance agencies that the Obama administration’s recently unveiled temporary bond purchase program is oversubscribed and that agencies will likely receive less assistance than they requested as a result.
The officials issued the warning late last week and asked the HFAs to identify their peak years of issuance from 2004 to 2008 for both single-family and multifamily issues to help determine how much they should receive under the relief program. The agencies had to provide that information to the Treasury by noon on Monday, including Cusip numbers or other ways to verify the information.
The scale-back comes after Michael Barr, Treasury assistant secretary for financial institutions, last month declined to put a dollar amount on the program and instead told reporters it would be sized to “meet demand.”
“We felt it is important to build estimates for the program from the ground up,” Barr said during an Oct. 19 press conference when the temporary New Issue Bond Program, or NIBP, was announced. Barr said at the time that there would be some form of ceiling on the size of the programs, but did not give any specifics.
http://www.bondbuyer.com/issues/118_212/hfa-1003449-1.html
Housing Crisis Solution: Let’s Make More Risky Loans
Hedge Fund Wants Additional Help for Mortgage Investors
By Kate Berry
Mortgage investors say they need more protection from further home price declines than the government is currently offering them in return for allowing loans to be modified.
The Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program, which pays incentive fees to servicers that rewrite loan terms, includes extra payments to investors that consent to modifications in declining housing markets. These payments, for as much as $5,000, are meant to compensate the investor for the risk that the borrower will end up defaulting again and the home will be foreclosed on and sold into an even more depressed market.
But Magnetar Capital LLC, an Evanston, Ill., hedge fund, is lobbying for the government to provide much greater downside protection for holders of private-label mortgage-backed securities and whole loans.
NATIONAL MORTGAGE NEWS
Here Daniel, here another shot of Monkeyhawk best, most photogenic side.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/giant-monkey-butt
And by the way Monkey-butt, that wasn’t even the cut and paste I used….you can’t even get that right and that’s all you seem to have anymore.
I think I made baby “Boxlock20″ cry.
You wish Monkey….and that’s all you’ve got anymore, a ridiculous childish wish.
Just keep smiling though like you are in the pic above….it’s your best side.
Another Bash Bush topic?
Lame.
How about a current political figure, like say, Geithner.
Is it appropriate for a Tax Cheat to now head up the Treasury and the IRS?