politics, banking, email, and whatnot

Politics usually revert to rather tough tactics but we’re getting close to new levels of nasty . . .

Political hacking fun

A punk son of a Democrat politician has been questioned (and will be charged) for hacking Gov. and VP candidate Sarah Palin’s personal email account and posting the info online.  Hackers should be beaten in public.  To show my nonpartisanship, I volunteer to flog the first person who hacks Sen. Obama’s personal email.

Anti-Iran-nukes rally fun

Hillary pulls out of an anti-Iran-nukes rally when she discovered that Gov. Palin was also invited to speak.  Then certain New York Democrats threatened the rally organizers with IRS investigation into tax exempt status if they allowed Palin to speak.  After these strongarm (dare I say fascist-like?) threats, Palin was “disinvited”.

Real estate & banking fun

Banks and brokerage firms heavy into real-estate have taken a huge beating in the last few weeks – some are bankrupt.  Everyone wants to blame everyone else but the bottom line is that the banks made horrible decisions on WHO they extended mortgages to: those who didn’t have the resources to pay them back.  Absolutely idiotic leaning policies.  The core of the current crisis consists of loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards – no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment.

Here’s the big issue: banks are limited by federal regulations on the risk levels and other factors that they are allowed to assume and still receive federal insurance.  Somehow these limitations were relaxed in the past 30 years.  The core of the current crisis consists of loans that were made with virtually nonexistent underwriting standards – no verification of income or assets; little consideration of the applicant’s ability to make payments; no down payment.

Ever heard of the CRA?  Activitist groups like ACORN in the ’70’s and ’80’s making claims of racial discrimination in mortgage lending lead to the relaxing of lending criteria.  The Community Reinvestment Act put pressure on lenders to offer loans to those who couldn’t afford them by ignoring size of the mortgage payment relative to income, credit history, savings history and income verification.  Talk about sacrificing business practice on the altar of political whims – wow.

The Carter-era CRA was expanded by Clinton.  No surprise there since the mortgage recipients targeted by the CRA are overwhelmingly Democrat voters.  Gotta keep the masses happy I guess.  President Bush doesn’t get off without any blame here either . . . he just followed along with current policy assuming “all is well”.  Too bad this one blew up in everyone’s faces.  We’re ALL now paying for these liberal ideals infecting business practice. 

In case you’re in the market:  CRA loans are still advertized online and are still available via ACORN with “100 percent financing . . . no credit scores . . . undocumented income . . . even if you don’t report it on your tax returns.”  Yay for bad business!

If we continue to sacrifice logic on the altar of racial, class-warfare politics, we deserve what we get!