A123 Systems - Yet another one bites the dust by AURaptor

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A123 Systems - Yet another one bites the dust

POSTED BY: AURAPTOR
UPDATED: Saturday, October 20, 2012 11:35
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Friday, October 19, 2012 7:26 AM

KPO

Sometimes you own the libs. Sometimes, the libs own you.

Quote:
retty much everyone but rabid Liberals knows that there were many causes of the sub-prime mortgage crisis

Ha. You haven't been listening to the rabid conservatives on these boards...

It's not personal. It's just war.

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Friday, October 19, 2012 7:40 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Originally posted by kpo:
Quote:
retty much everyone but rabid Liberals knows that there were many causes of the sub-prime mortgage crisis

Ha. You haven't been listening to the rabid conservatives on these boards...

It's not personal. It's just war.

No kidding - according to the rabid conservatives here, the entire financial meltdown and crisis was caused by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. Somehow. They seem completely unwilling or unable to say exactly HOW those two managed to collapse the global economy, but they're steadfast in their resolve that it was all their fault, even if they can't point to exactly how it happened.

Apparently, Dodd & Frank went around to every bank in the world and forced them to hand out loans to people with no income & no jobs or assets (what became known in the industry as "NINJA" loans), forced people who could pay into adjustable-rate mortgages they didn't want and didn't ask for, often switching them at closing (a tactic knows as "strong-ARMing" the borrower), and more.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd did that, all by themselves. At least, that's the story painted by rabid conservatives.

So I'll ask again, like I keep on asking, even though I never get an answer...

Which part of the 1977 Affordable Housing Act, exactly, did Dodd & Frank write, which led directly to this collapse? What clauses, what articles, what sections and subsections and amendments? Where in the law does it state that all banks will be forced to give loans to people and companies which they know will never be able to pay them back? Where does it require those banks to leverage their capital reserves at 30-, 40-, or even 100-to-1? Where does that law require banks to invest in Collateralized Debt Obligations or Credit Default Swaps or Derivatives?

I'm asking because I can't find it, and obviously these folks have a much more clear understanding of the law and the certainty that such things are there, so they must be able to point them out with no problem at all.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

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Friday, October 19, 2012 9:24 AM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:Also noting that pretty much everyone but rabid Liberals knows that there were many causes of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, so trying to blame Bush alone is...well...pretty much a rerun of what Liberals have been doing for the past 3 years or more.

Hello Mr. Strawman, so nice to see you again.

Where did I blame Bush alone for anything? I understand there were multiple causes of the mortgage crisis, the biggest one being the banks themselves. Next being the Bush administration and the Democratically controlled congress reducing regulations, which started under Clinton and the a GOP congress, and not ensuring regulators were doing there jobs.

Here is the thing. While Obama had two years to clean this up doing it in that amount of time was a near impossible task with the overall state of the economy. See it is easy to fuck things up, and you can do it really really fast. So to think that after a decade to letting things get so out of whack that anyone even with full support of congress could fix things in a couple of years is stupidly sanguine.

Obama never did have full support of congress. Even while the Dems had control of the house and the senate not everyone in his party was with him. Add to that the GOP who forced the Dems to get 60 votes to do anything in the senate and he hardly had full support early on. Now he has even less.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
A warning to everyone, AURaptor is a known liar.

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Friday, October 19, 2012 4:28 PM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by m52nickerson:

See it is easy to fuck things up, and you can do it really really fast.

Another case in point: The Gulf of Mexico and Deepwater Horizon.

And of course, Rappy was braying like an ass for months on end about the fact that Obama hadn't cleaned up the entire Gulf fast enough.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

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Saturday, October 20, 2012 3:41 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"I'm noting that after two years of the Obama administration trying to fix the economy, banks are still failing at a pretty good clip."

Which has slowed down exponentially. But don't take my word for it, see the list at the bottom.

BTW there were TWO crises under sugar-daddy georgie.

The first, which most people don't remember was a financials crisis in EARLY 2008, where the government intervened in Bear Stearns to try to prop up the tottering system (but left Lehman Brothers to stagger and finally collapse after laundering a Federal Reserve loan through JPMorgan Chase).

WIKI
Bear Stearns
In March 2008, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York provided an emergency loan to try to avert a sudden collapse of the company . The company could not be saved and was sold to JP Morgan Chase for $10 per share, a price far below its pre-crisis 52-week high of $133.20 per share, but not as low as the $2 per share originally agreed upon by Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase.
Lehman Brothers
In August 2007, Lehman closed its subprime lender, BNC Mortgage, eliminating 1,200 positions in 23 locations, and took a $25-million after-tax charge and a $27-million reduction in goodwill. (after filing large quarterly losses in 2008 ...) Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on September 15, 2008. According to Bloomberg, reports filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan) on September 16 indicated that JPMorgan Chase & Co. provided Lehman Brothers with a total of $138 billion in "Federal Reserve-backed advances" . The cash-advances by JPMorgan Chase were repaid by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for $87 billion on September 15 and $51 billion on September 16.
END WIKI

It looked like sugar-daddy georgie was trying to prop up the system in order to make good his escape out of office in mere months. But that was not to be -

WIKI
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is a program of the United States government to purchase assets and equity from financial institutions to strengthen its financial sector that was signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush on October 3, 2008 . It was a component of the government's measures in 2008 to address the subprime mortgage crisis.
The TARP program originally authorized expenditures of $700 billion.
END WIKI

But that mere $0.7 TRILLION dollars is a gross underestimate of total Federal bailout, mostly through the Federal Reserve, and most of it under sugar-daddy georgie's administration, hidden from Congress and the Treasury department, and voted on by exactly no one.

"Explosive Bloomberg Report Details Fed’s Monster Bank Bailouts: $7.77 Trillion

In a monster report for its January issue, Bloomberg Magazine compiled previously secret Fed data on the size and scope of the bank bailouts during 2008-2009. Among other things, we learn that the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner (previously head of the New York Fed) secretly loaned over seven trillions dollars to arguably insolvent banks and financial institutions to keep them afloat, while concealing the scope of the lending from Congress and even members of the Treasury Department charged with allocating TARP bailouts."

That Bloomberg report says in part this: "The amount of money ... dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year."

But despite propping up institutions, because borrowers/ consumers were left hanging out to dry, the crisis rolled forward -

WIKI
The ongoing foreclosure epidemic, of which subprime loans are one part, that began in late 2006 in the U.S. continues to be a key factor in the global economic crisis, because it drains wealth from consumers and erodes the financial strength of banking institutions.
END WIKI

In other words, the crisis began under sugar-daddy georgie's administration and rolled out across the country and around the globe. As I posted earlier, it was like a tsunami which doesn't happen in a fraction of a second but sweeps across the landscape over time, in a series of waves.

After drastically rising under sugar-daddy georgie's administration bank failures peaked (barely) under the second year of the Obama administration and have rapidly dropped since then. So if you wish to blame Obama for the bank failures in 2010, and even 2011 and 2012 go ahead. But note that the crisis which spawned these bank failures was a product of sugar-daddy georgie's policy of maintaining a housing bubble to hide the essential weakness in the economy. And that weakness was caused by his disastrous policies of cutting taxes especially on the wealthy, increasing spending as 'emergency' appropriations and keeping it off the books, borrowing from the Chinese to fund the imbalance, and forbidding states' attorneys general from prosecuting illegal lending so that he could feed the bubble longer.

2012 - 41 -44%
2011 - 93 -59%
2010 - 157 +12%
2009 - 140 +467%
2008 - 30 +1000%
2007 - 3 percent +increase/ -decrease from year before +infinity
2006 - 0
2005 - 0
2004 - 4
2003 - 3
2002 - 11
2001 - 4
2000 - 7
1999 - 8
1998 - 3
1997 - 1
1996 - 6
1995 - 8
1994 - 15
1993 - 50
1992 - 181
1991 - 271
1990 - 382
1989 - 534
1988 - 470
1987 - 262
1986 - 204
1985 - 180
1984 - 106
1983 - 99
1982 - 119
1981 - 40
1980 - 22
1979 - 10
1978 - 7
1977 - 6
1976 - 17
1975 - 13
1974 - 4
1973 - 6
1972 - 2
1971 - 7
1970 - 7
1969 - 9
1968 - 3
1967 - 4
1966 - 7
1965 - 5
1964 - 7
1963 - 2
1962 - 1
1961 - 5
1960 - 1
1959 - 3
1958 - 4
1957 - 1
1956 - 2
1955 - 5
1954 - 2
1953 - 2
1952 - 3
1951 - 2
1950 - 4
1949 - 4
1948 - 3
1947 - 5
1946 - 1
1945 - 1
1944 - 2
1943 - 5
1942 - 20
1941 - 15
1940 - 43
1939 - 60
1938 - 74
1937 - 75
1936 - 69
1935 - 25
1934 - 9

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Saturday, October 20, 2012 4:38 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

bump for Geezer

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Saturday, October 20, 2012 5:11 AM

KWICKO

Kiki, one thing that really strikes me and stands out in that list is the sheer number of banks failing in particular years and crises.

Look at 1988-89, the "S&L Crisis" of the 80s under Reagan/Bush I. Peak of 534 banks failing in '89, over a thousand in the two-year crisis period of '88-89, compared to the crash of 2008, where we say just over 300 banks collapse during the peak period, but which cost our economy so much more.

So it's not just the NUMBER of banks, but the SIZE of the banks. I looks like there were fewer banks failing, but they were so much larger that it magnified the impact on the economy, and it went global.

But if Geezer wants to go by the number of banks failing as an indicator of how a President is doing on the economy, then wow - how fucking shitty WAS Reagan as a leader? THOUSANDS of banks were collapsing, hundreds per year for almost his entire tenure and into Poppy Bush's term. Nearly 3,000 banks failed under Reagan and Bush.

Why on Earth would anyone ever listen to a conservative about anything to do with the economy? Reagan nearly tripled the national debt, exploded deficits, and STILL the entire banking industry nearly collapsed on his watch.

So then Dubya tried to mimic Reagan, and actually did even a worse job.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

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Saturday, October 20, 2012 6:51 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Just a caveat: The crisis didn't start in the USA. If you listen to the people across the pond, the first whiff came in 2007 in the UK. The banking problems were across the entire western world- risky lending into a bubble, low capital reserves, opaque investment products backed up by phony insurances etc.

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Saturday, October 20, 2012 8:13 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

As for Europe, Yanis Varoufakis has the best explanation, which I paraphrase as this: it didn't matter if the government was spending freely or was prudent, once the governments took over the profligate loans made by private banks it ALL became public debt.

So public spending isn't the driver of government debt in Europe, instead the insolvency of private banks overwhelmed government resources and created massive public debt.

This is, once again, an example of privatizing profit and socializing losses.

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Saturday, October 20, 2012 11:35 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

bump for Geezer

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