The Stout Republican

UPDATE of a more serious vein
WHOSE economic policies led to the credit crisis?

In the NYT 5 years ago, “The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago…Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.”

Please do read the original post above. Below the fold is a comment left by a reader of that post that is lengthy but should be read as well. Crickets chirping indeed…

Comment from hotair.com post,

Body language experts, poker players, etc. use a technique called “baselining” to detect deception. Basically, they observe and catalog a person’s behavior under favorable (non-stressful) circumstances in order to get a “baseline” of their normal behavioral patterns. By doing so, they are able to detect lies or deception by observing deviations from that normal behavior when the subject is subjected to stress of one sort or another.

The good news is that the same behaviors that can be attibuted to a person can also be attributed to groups of people who share similar goals. And a few months back, something struck me as odd about Democrat behavior in the face of the mounting turmoil of the mortgage markets. Namely: why are Dems being so hush-hush about this? Instead of the usual teeth-gnashing and soap-boxing, Dems seemed to be more than willing to work with Republicans and the Bush Administration to quietly orchestrate bailouts of the firms that were hardest hit.

Why?

So I thought about it for a while and then I hit upon the answer. What was bugging me was that I was picking up on the fact that the Dems were deviating from their baseline behavior in the face of such a big economic issue. Want an example of their baseline behavior? Look no further than their treatment of the oil industry. IOW, demonize and demogogue.

These people aren’t stupid. They know – just as well as we do – that US oil companies aren’t responsible for the price increases of the past few years. But that doesn’t matter to them: all that matters is that they know that American consumers are angry about oil prices and therefore they see an opportuity to score political points.

They have hearing after hearing, calling oil execs before the Congress to testify, making a huge media hoopla out of it. Are they worried that the truth is going to actually breakthrough to the public – that the price increase we’ve seen since 2000 are the logical result of what happens when you have 40% increase in worldwide demand but only a 10% increase in worlwide production? Not at all. Why? Because they know that their fellow-travelers in the MSM are not going to actually focus on the truth. They know that every 15 paragraph article is going to have 12 paragraphs of tough-sounding Dems standing up to the evil oil execs for Joe Six-Pack, with 2 paragraphs at the end that cover the thoughts of a Republican with “ties to the industry”, and a final paragraph that contains a sentence stating that “oil industry officials and some so-called experts contend that price increases are due demand increases and production decreases…”

Now ask yourself: considering the huge nature of this economic crisis, where are the big mortgage collapse hearings? Where’s the NBC, ABC, and CBS footage of banking and mortgage execs sweating under the hot lights? Where are the $25 million Congressional reports on what happened?

(crickets chirping)

You know why you’re hearing crickets? Because the Dems know that they started this mess in the mid ’90s by pushing banks and mortgage firm to start making extremely risky loans to borrowers who weren’t qualified. And they know that if too much of a spotlight is shone on it, they’ll be lucky to keep 20 seats in the Senate.

This is a post I submitted a few months back at Townhall regarding this very subject:

“BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!!”

You Leftists are adorable! It must be great to be able to simply blame George W. Bush for LITERALLY EVERYTHING…no matter how ridiculous or divorced from reality the argument is!

For example, a sane person may understand the FACT that the subprime/adjustable rate mortgage crisis can be traced to the MID 90’s, at which time LEFTISTS, using their favorite tactics of screaming “Racists!” and threatening lawsuits, began pressuring mortgage lenders into extending loans to low income/bad credit borrowers (aka SUBPRIME BORROWERS) by threatening said lenders with being sued for not complying with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977.

What is the CRA?

The CRA basically states that banks have an obligation to provide access to credit to the lower income people in the communities in which they operate – e.g. providing credit for buying homes. To ensure that a bank is complying, regulators examine the bank’s records whenever there’s a proposal for opening new branches or for merging with other banks. If the bank is found wanting in it’s “outreach” efforts, it’s request for a new branch/merger can be denied.

So what did lenders do in response? They created the SUBPRIME MORTGAGE, then, it’s b@stard son, the ARM loan.

Oh, and just for sh!ts-n-giggles, anyone care to take a guess at which party led a failed effort to repeal the CRA in 1996…precisely because the CRA was being used to force lenders to make inherently risky loans that opened the institutions up to the risk of significant losses and even complete failure?

Here’s a clue: starts with an “R”.

But will any of these FACTS matter to Lefties?

Of course not!

“BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!! BUSH!!!”

It’s good to see that people are beginning to see through the fog on this matter. And I hope that this is a ticking time-bomb that explodes in their faces.

rvastar on September 16, 2008 at 11:35 AM

Conspiracy, Democrats, Limousine Liberal