Thursday, November 26, 2009

Opinion

Michael Barone

Housing, the Subprime Mortgage Crisis and the Enduring Resilience of the U.S. Economy

July 07, 2008 01:06 PM ET | Michael Barone | Permanent Link | Print

Reader Comments

Martin Eakes

Economy is everyone's concern.Government must impose strictly the rules regarding matters affecting the flow of financial aspect which is considered as the backbone of every unit in the society.Martin Eakes may be misguided, and at worst perhaps a hypocrite. He has been publicly decrying predatory lending and the subprime mortgage crisis, along with the media wing of the organization he heads, the Center for Responsible Lending. The comedy is that while the center makes unproven claims about the payday loan industry, Martin Eakes and the CRL were also lobbying for more banks, such as World Savings, the bank headed by Herbert Sandler that started making subprime loans in the early 90s, to make loans that were – you guessed it – subprime.

What a Reassuring Read!

So, now I've learned that the Captains of our Financial Enterprises really know what they're doing, and should be left alone to get on with it!

And that our greatest concern as a nation ought to be Obama's casual relationship (one that is also shared by scores of solid Chicago Republicans) with a man who did some bad thing 35 years ago.

Wow, thanks! There's some solid information the MSM is not getting out there!

One more point that the doubters should ponder: a few months ago it was a chore for me to track my 401K investments - such big, complicated numbers! And now, it's getting easier all the time! Because I'm sure the biased media will never report it, let me say: Thank you, Captains of Financial Enterprise!

Watching Chris Wallace interview made me sick

Thursday morning I turned on the news and heard that ACORN is under investigation for voter fraud in a number of states. Since I learned not to trust what the media tells us, I decided to have a look what the bloggers had to say. On a sight called A Look Into Barack Obama’s Past - Obamamania - Zimbio website I found the following comment that made me think.

A concerned citizen

Oct-6-08 7:48pm [Edit]

Those two videos paint a very clear picture. As the terrorists have promised, they will destroy this country from with in. …..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puN9X1mVgRA ……..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjvBEKrGkDI …….

Back to my point. By allowing the voter fraud to go on, makes this great country look like a third world dictatorship. We are supposed to send an example to the rest of the world how honest elections are held and not allow the media to distort the facts. Please people, wake up and tell the media no more. Boycott all the products advertised on publications like the Newsweek, Time magazine and other propaganda machines like the New York Times. Also do the same with CNN and other communist propaganda news sources. Even the Fox News network is starting to sway the viewer decision. After Thursday’s presidential debate, watching Chris Wallace interview a communist from Saint Louis made me sick. Even bad journalists should realize that when you ask a communist or a skin head to give you their views, you can pretty much expect what they are going to say.

I certainly had enough of all of the $%#@Comunism.org

Cybercorrespondent

A look into Barack Obama’s past might shed some light on the crisis

Barack Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ more than 20 years ago and considered the church pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his mentor. Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope." In his sermons, Rev. Wright repeated denunciations of the U.S and blurted out statements like “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

Looking at Obama’s ties to Rev. Wright, and his connections to a terrorist bomber, William Ayers, both men who would like nothing more than to destroy this country causes many people to second guess Obama’s intentions for change. If you have not heard about William Ayers, you can read about him in the U.S. News, Michael Barone’s column-Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers. “In my U.S. News column, I make a brief reference to the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers and his connections to Barack Obama. They were closer than Obama implied when George Stephanopoulos asked him about Ayers in the April 16 debate—the last debate Obama allowed during the primary season. To get an idea of how close they were, check out Tom Maguire's Just One Minute blog and Steve Diamond's Global Labor and Politics. The Obama-Ayers relationship is also mentioned in David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate.”

Lets examine Obama’s connection with an accused political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko. The following is on explanation by Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz from ABC News. “In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, for "advice" as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate. Rezko had been widely reported to be under investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI at the time Obama contacted him and has since been indicted on corruption charges by a federal grand jury in a case that prosecutors say involves bribes, kickbacks and "efforts to illegally obtain millions of dollars."

Because Barack Obama was a dependable ally of subsidized developers in the Legislature, his friend and fund-raiser Rezko depended on him to get things done such as cosponsoring a bill in 2001 allowing developers to pocket half of the proceeds from selling state tax credits to others. Obama admitted that his decision to involve Rezko was “a bone-headed mistake.” What he failed to mention is that he has a closet full of bone-headed mistakes such as Peter Wallsten pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on

January 24, 2008.

“Barack Obama angered fellow Democrats in the Illinois Senate when he voted to strip millions of dollars from a child welfare office on Chicago's West Side. But Obama had a ready explanation: He goofed.

"I was not aware that I had voted no," he said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he “intended to vote yes.”

That was not the only misfire for the former civil rights attorney first elected to the state Senate in 1996. During his eight years in state office, Obama cast more than 4,000 votes. Of those, according to transcripts of the proceedings in Springfield, he hit the wrong button at least six times.”

Now comes the big question, what exactly does a community organizer do?

One thing Barack Obama did as a community organizer was pressure banks to make bad loans. In Barack Obama’s youthful community organizing days he joined a group called ACORN. Using the Community Reinvestment Act which was designed to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, ACORN started abusing the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in 'subprime' loans to minorities with bad or no credit. Using charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansions have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.

Other things that ACORN did as community organizers were agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits and organize voter registration drives. In 2006 for example, their voter registration drive in Washington produced 1,800 new voters of which 1,794 names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the “worst case of election fraud in our state’s history.”

If you like to know more, watch these two videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRmB93McZeI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

Cybercorrespondent

http://cybercorrespondent.blogspot.com

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Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications—including the Economist and the New York Times.

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