Obama Sponsor of greed.

Pete McCluskey.

Lifetime Supporter
The following was written by a friend of mine to the Editor of the Financial Review, it was published yesterday. I think he has a point.

SPONSOR OF GREED.

I think it is a touch hypocritical of U.S. President Barack Obama to attack Wall St greed in his Kansas speech.
All the big banks in the U.S. went broke in 2008-09 and should have been put into bankruptcy. Instead the Government bailed them out to allow them to continue being greedy and to add insult to injury they used taxpayers money.
How can Obama claim that this greed is hurting the American middle class-
he sponsors it.
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
Pete, the TARP bailout was supervised by Paulson, who was the Secretary of the Treasury at the time, and it occurred at the end of the second Bush administration. Obama inherited it as a fait accompli. There isn't any reason to assume he would have done otherwise, but to be fair, it was not his program. It's a mystery to me why he gets blamed for it. Although it isn't uncommon for things that happen at the end of one administration that continue into the next to get blurry as far as who gets the credit or blame...

On a related note, it used to be acceptable to tell your friends and people you met that you were in banking. It was considered a profession, and an honored one, more or less. Bankers were felt to be financial conservatives, Tories or GOP types, who would only lend you money if you didn't need it, etc. In former decades, bankers were asked to advise the government, etc.

That's not the case now. Bankers rank somewhere around the social level of used car salesmen, as near as I can figure. Actually, since this is a site for car enthusiasts, I'd go so far as to say there are a lot of "used car" salesmen in the classic car business that would rank far above the average banker. And with regard to Wall Street or investment bankers, their credibility is in the cellar- unless there's a rank below that. Maybe the rank below that is occupied by mortgage bankers or mortgage salespeople.
 

Pete McCluskey.

Lifetime Supporter
Correct but both of you are missing the point which is Obama is being a hypocrite calling the banks greedy when he is in effect sponsoring them with your dollars.
IMHO no business should be bailed out by the taxpayer.
 
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You fail to point out that a democrat congress and senate majority (2007-2009) voted for TARP. It would not have gone anywhere without their drafting up, approval and presentation to the president for his signature.
 
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Correct but both of you are missing the point which is Obama is being a hypocrite calling the banks greedy when he is in effect sponsoring them with your dollars.
IMHO no business should be bailed out by the taxpayer.



Pete, you're right, no business should be too big to fail. Had we not bailed out GM, they would have filed bankruptcy, restructured, and probably ended up being profitable. The average auto workers wage is $29.00 per hr, but with benifits and pension ends up being $70.00+ per hour. Retirement cost is huge There are about 350k active UAW members and 600k retired workers recieving pensions. Sounds like our Social Security problem that polititcians pilfered from for the last 40 odd years.
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
I agree. I will point out that Congress bailed out Chrysler years ago and they paid every cent back with interest.

One of my friends is involved in suing Bank of America, which repossessed a client's house even though she had paid the mortgage off. He found the BofA bureaucracy so Byzantine and difficult to navigate that he described it to me as "too big to succeed", which I thought was pretty funny. And accurate.

I think the jury is still out on the TARP program, but the part about it that makes me sickest is that banks were allowed to get themselves into that kind of mess to begin with. I thought banks had a rule book to play by. Evidently I was totally wrong.
 

Jim Craik

Lifetime Supporter
Pete,

You start this thread with completely wrong information, now I know you are not an American, so we will cut you some slack.

Change the title to "Bush, sponsor of greed" and then we will talk!
 
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I agree. I will point out that Congress bailed out Chrysler years ago and they paid every cent back with interest.

One of my friends is involved in suing Bank of America, which repossessed a client's house even though she had paid the mortgage off. He found the BofA bureaucracy so Byzantine and difficult to navigate that he described it to me as "too big to succeed", which I thought was pretty funny. And accurate.

I think the jury is still out on the TARP program, but the part about it that makes me sickest is that banks were allowed to get themselves into that kind of mess to begin with. I thought banks had a rule book to play by. Evidently I was totally wrong.

The banks did have a rule book to play by, the goverment in their infinite wisdom gave them a new rule book called "everyone should own a house, even if they can't afford it". The government set the guidelines that caused the meltdown.
 

Terry Oxandale

Skinny Man
And ingnorant Americans couldn't tell the difference between income and expense. If the speed limit was 200 mph, does that mean the government is to blame if I cannot safely navigate my car at 200 mph? No, and my responsibility to myself is to drive at a speed in which I can. I was told I could afford a house that was $150K more than the one I settled for...does, so does this mean I could blame the banking industry for my foreclosure if I had? Stupid-ass Americans want to blame everybody but the person they should blame (themselves), and that goes not only for their own personal lifestyle spending practices, but also the politicians they vote into office, and the economic and social woes they seem to think is somebody else's problem.

Everybody wants to blame Obama for not getting the economy on it's feet. News flash folks, we don't do shit in this country anymore except push money around, and no economy is going to thrive on that...period. Nobody in the last 4, and the next 4 is going to fix our problems. This is long term. All the housing bubble did was push (what our leaders knew was coming) it back a few years, to make it look like we were prospering, when in fact the people who couldn't afford large homes (and fancy cars, and large shopping malls every 1/2 mile down the road), still can't, but now it's all out in the open.

What I don't get is, many corporations are sitting flush with cash, buying back their own stock with it, and yet there are some folks that say, "give them a bigger tax break to create more jobs". If the jobs were there (or the consumer to profit from), wouldn't they be spending that money, and any other a tax break money, to create them (and profit from them)?
 
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Pete McCluskey.

Lifetime Supporter
Terry I agree with your sentiment but the banks were encouraged to lend to just about anybody by I think the Clinton administration, I'm sure Jim will correct me if I am wrong. But my point is when they could no longer sell off their toxic loans
they should not have been bailed out by Bush or Obama.
And Obama is a hypocrite calling them greedy when his administration continues its sponsorship.
 
And ingnorant Americans couldn't tell the difference between income and expense. If the speed limit was 200 mph, does that mean the government is to blame if I cannot safely navigate my car at 200 mph? No, and my responsibility to myself is to drive at a speed in which I can. I was told I could afford a house that was $150K more than the one I settled for...does, so does this mean I could blame the banking industry for my foreclosure if I had? Stupid-ass Americans want to blame everybody but the person they should blame (themselves), and that goes not only for their own personal lifestyle spending practices, but also the politicians they vote into office, and the economic and social woes they seem to think is somebody else's problem.

Everybody wants to blame Obama for not getting the economy on it's feet. News flash folks, we don't do shit in this country anymore except push money around, and no economy is going to thrive on that...period. Nobody in the last 4, and the next 4 is going to fix our problems. This is long term. All the housing bubble did was push (what our leaders knew was coming) it back a few years, to make it look like we were prospering, when in fact the people who couldn't afford large homes (and fancy cars, and large shopping malls every 1/2 mile down the road), still can't, but now it's all out in the open.

What I don't get is, many corporations are sitting flush with cash, buying back their own stock with it, and yet there are some folks that say, "give them a bigger tax break to create more jobs". If the jobs were there (or the consumer to profit from), wouldn't they be spending that money, and any other a tax break money, to create them (and profit from them)?

Terry, stupid or not, if the qualifications to recieve the loan were not relaxed by the government to get "everyone" a home, the bad loans would not have been made. The blame is on the government.
Tax breaks to corporations attract more business into the country. Big taxes send them looking elsewhere.
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
The idea that everyone should own the place in which they live is unrealistic and essentially bullshit. And I don't think this was pushed out of anything but 1) misguided idealism or 2) greed. The US government goes to great lengths to push home ownership (and you might well spell "ownership" in quotes because you don't really own your home if you have a mortgage, you only prospectively own it if nothing goes wrong, right?) I suppose to please the building, banking and real estate lobbies and because they feel that somehow owning the place you live in stabilizes the society. But people rent their housing long-term all through Europe and the UK and are their societies less stable than ours? I don't think so. Where I grew up (NYC) it was quite common NOT to own your home- people rented for life. And in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the US, they were deprived of the tax benefits of home ownership just because they lived in NYC and couldn't afford to buy there.

You may have guessed that I have a bee in my bonnet about this. I do. I think that government policies that profess to "stabilize" societies while actually pandering to for-profit economic interests are morally and economically bankrupt. Do not get me wrong- I bought a house here in Annapolis and paid it off in thirteen years (I have a good income, I am not married, I did not have to put kids through college) My situation is not typical of most Americans. When our government began pushing two things- home "ownership" for everyone AND bleeding the equity out of your primary residence using HELOC loans, they sowed the seeds of disaster- which is now all around us in the form of dispossessed families, a collapsed real estate market, homeless and broke families, etc. There is enough blame to cover all the jackasses who were the architects of these policies. Do I feel strongly about it? You bet I do- even though, ironically, I have benefited from it. (I recently bought a vacation house in NC, for far less than it sold for in 2005, and with a low interest rate mortgage) But, again, my situation is not that of most Americans. I wish most Americans had more money and could own their houses. I wish I lived in the kind of society where people begin saving for a house for their child when the child is born (Scandinavia, from what I hear) I wish I lived in a society where people did not live on credit and carry enormous card balances as a matter of course. And most of all, I wish I lived in a society where the government actually served the people instead of (as in this case) helping the banking, building and real estate industries prey on them.

I apologize for the rant. Even though I have not been personally injured by this crisis (at least not directly- I have had to support family members who were, to be sure) I can recognize the actions of foolish and greedy people when I see them. And if I have ever seen foolish and greedy actions in my sixty years, it has been the actions of those who contributed to the real estate bubble. Absolute idiots, and indecently dishonest, and THAT is being charitable.

I have now ruined my own appetite for breakfast :)
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
Just to make this clear, as far as the real estate and subprime mortgage crises go, I am not giving anyone a Mulligan on this: the government agencies, the mortgage industry, the building industry, the real estate industry AND the borrowers themselves ALL should have known much better than they did. There is no such thing as a free lunch and borrowed money has to be paid back (unless, I suppose, you are the government itself and you just create more of it) The one group I am inclined not to blame is the group of investors who bought securities which were backed by subprime mortgages- it is pretty clear that the investment banks who created these securities went to great lengths to disguise what they were and their lack of value and even bet against their own products behind the backs of the investors. And then lied about it. I don't think the average investor is sharp enough to figure it out if the investment bank is actually lying to his face and betting against their own product.
 

Jim Craik

Lifetime Supporter
Pete,

Let me see if I understand your original post.

Your post accused Obama of hypocracy. How could he call the banks greedy, after bailing them out?

When it was pointed out that Tarp was a BushII program and at the time the bail-out was passed Obama was the junior Senator from Illinois, you just went on calling Obama a hypocrite.

Pete if Obama did not bail out the banks, then how can he be a hypoctite?

Pete, much of these problems were caused by "GREEDY" banks.

Pete do you think the banks were greedy?
 

Jim Rosenthal

Supporter
I'm not Pete, but I DO think the banks were greedy. And I think they were greedier yet to actively solicit the government for a bailout. Now, having been bailed out, they are sitting on a fortune in capital and won't lend it to anyone. All of a sudden, they've got religion about careful lending practices. Imagine that. Meanwhile, they are STILL foreclosing on people's houses without due process, and in some cases people who DO own their houses and DON'T owe money. Yes, I think these banks are greedy.

I want to point out there that I have gone to some pains not to do business with certain banks because of this- my own bank is PNC, which so far has managed to keep their hands clean, more or less. I avoid any further dealings with Morgan/Chase, B of A; I'm stuck with SunTrust for the moment, but I am not expanding any business with them. And as for Wells Fargo.. they have turned from the old stagecoach company into the stagecoach robbers. They are a pack of thieves IMHO, and God help me if I ever have to do business with them. Not all banks are greedy, and not all are bad actors, but there are some really rotten apples in the barrel.
 
Pete beware,
Critise the US government and suddenly your credit card is de activated.
Your phone will be tapped, your identity will be erazed.
The men in black will suddenly be parked outside your house in a blacked out 24 style vehicle.
Life will change for you forever.

This may be the last we ever hear of Pete Mc.... something...........WHO
 

Jim Craik

Lifetime Supporter
I'm not Pete, but I DO think the banks were greedy. And I think they were greedier yet to actively solicit the government for a bailout. Now, having been bailed out, they are sitting on a fortune in capital and won't lend it to anyone. All of a sudden, they've got religion about careful lending practices. Imagine that. Meanwhile, they are STILL foreclosing on people's houses without due process, and in some cases people who DO own their houses and DON'T owe money. Yes, I think these banks are greedy.

I want to point out there that I have gone to some pains not to do business with certain banks because of this- my own bank is PNC, which so far has managed to keep their hands clean, more or less. I avoid any further dealings with Morgan/Chase, B of A; I'm stuck with SunTrust for the moment, but I am not expanding any business with them. And as for Wells Fargo.. they have turned from the old stagecoach company into the stagecoach robbers. They are a pack of thieves IMHO, and God help me if I ever have to do business with them. Not all banks are greedy, and not all are bad actors, but there are some really rotten apples in the barrel.

So Jim,

It sounds like you agree with President Obama, that the banks are greedy.
 

Pete McCluskey.

Lifetime Supporter
Pete,

Let me see if I understand your original post.

Your post accused Obama of hypocracy. How could he call the banks greedy, after bailing them out?

When it was pointed out that Tarp was a BushII program and at the time the bail-out was passed Obama was the junior Senator from Illinois, you just went on calling Obama a hypocrite.

Pete if Obama did not bail out the banks, then how can he be a hypoctite?

Pete, much of these problems were caused by "GREEDY" banks.

Pete do you think the banks were greedy?

Jim, Obama was president when the banks were bailed out,in his state of the union address he said bailing them out was a necessary evil.

He could have vetoed the bail out so at the end of the day it was his choice.

So I guess that makes him a hypocrite.
Do I think the banks are greedy? I think most are, but not all.
 
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