relevant to this thread: http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/10/artificial-housing-respiration
QuoteNo major newspaper seriously questions the truism that foreclosures destroy neighborhoods. No news network doubts that "troubled borrowers" are overwhelmingly good Americans who have been set back by a job loss or medical emergency. And what kind of anti-American Shylock would claim that you shouldn't give bad borrowers government-backed loan modifications, cutting their mortgage payments by 20 percent?
The interesting new wrinkle on those old, false arguments is that real estate interventionists no longer pretend they have any real goal other than keeping house prices inflated. Even a year ago, the arguments for rescuing real estate prices were phrased in broad, spillover-style metaphors—"meltdown," "implosion"—that suggested a concern for the common bystander. Today, the argument is a lot plainer: We need to keep existing homeowners (or home borrowers) from experiencing any further decline in closing prices. When I ask Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) to explain his support for extending exorbitant Federal Housing Administration loan guarantees even while the real estate market continues to cool, he replies, "The economy of Los Angeles would tank if prices fell another 50 percent." Here's how Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), in an October interview with The New York Times, justified his support for the agency's shoddy lending standards: "I don't think it's a bad thing that the bad loans occurred. It was an effort to keep prices from falling too fast." Economy.com front man Mark Zandi puts it even more bluntly. The housing market, he says, "is showing improvement only because it is on government life support."
Life support is expensive. When that troubled borrower gets a 20 percent haircut, his bank has to take a loss, and the bank is compensated for the loss by you, through the $50 billion Home Affordable Modification Program. The Treasury Department has paid more than $100 billion to allow the failed government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep on guaranteeing questionable loans. Fannie and Freddie, in turn, have been expanding rather than reducing their loan portfolios—the opposite of what you're supposed to do when you've got an unmanageable debt load.
Sherman is sponsoring legislation that will let the government keep increasing its debt exposure, and on more expensive houses. As an economic emergency measure, Congress raised the limit for the Federal Housing Administration's guarantees in high-cost areas to $729,750 in 2007, up from $625,500. With 20 percent down, that's essentially a $1 million home being funded by a government subsidy for the wealthy. When I raise this point with Sherman, he replies (inaccurately), "Well, you don't live in Southern California."
Interestingly, Sherman opposed the Troubled Asset Relief Program and has taken a fairly courageous stand against the Obama Treasury Department's proposed resolution authority for banks, in both cases out of principled opposition to the too-big-to-fail trend in finance. Yet he sees no contradiction between those stances and his goal of encouraging banks to take on more and bigger taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage loads. Unfortunately, the evidence is clear: Since 2008 the big four banks—Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase—have not only grown bigger (they now control 60 percent of American bank business) but have done so by expanding their mortgage portfolios (with $800 billion in first mortgages, 8 percent of the national total).
It's easy to see why interested parties such as the National Association of Realtors would support interventions such as those above and the $8,000 Home Buyer Tax Credit. (It's notable, however, that sales data in the three years since the beginning of the real estate collapse strongly suggest that a low asking price is by far the most important factor in whether a house sells.) What's not as clear is why so many other interventionists are convinced that re-inflating the real estate bubble serves the common good. Frank, Sherman, and others maintain that their efforts are a matter of constituent service. "If you're talking about international economic theory, that's a separate matter," says Sherman. "But there is no practical argument that [underwriting $1 million homes] is not in the interest of the district I represent."
I guess that depends on what the meaning of interest is. If foreclosures really destroyed neighborhoods, we'd expect to see some evidence in, for example, crime rates, which continue to decline around the country. The Washington Post, in a 2008 story on foreclosure-heavy Fairfax County, Virginia, pronounced, "As Foreclosed Homes Empty, Crime Arrives." Yet a year later, year-to-year quarterly statistics from the county's police department show crime down 1.8 percent, with double-digit drops in murder, rape, and robbery.
Meanwhile, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, "unemployment" and "illness" account for just 9 percent and 6 percent, respectively, of overall defaults. "Excessive obligations"—which in English means you bought more house than you could afford—causes twice as many defaults as unemployment. And the shockingly high rate of re- defaults on modified loans—more than 60 percent in some classes— argues strongly against loan modification as a public interest.
More to the point, keeping real estate inflated is not an abstract public choice experiment, in which the benefits are concentrated and the costs distributed. The policy has a very discernable victim class: would-be home buyers, whose interests are served not by tax credits or massive debt commitments but by lower asking prices. Perversely, foreclosures are the highest they've ever been in American history, yet it's harder than ever to buy a house. According to the National Association of Realtors, the median down payment by first-time buyers, even after a three-year, debt-driven economic shock, is just 4 percent. One-third of homes are still being purchased with no money down. As we learned (or thought we learned) in 2006, numbers like these are a recipe for cascading misfortunes. Renters should be angrier than ever.
Imagine a yard sale outside the biggest, fanciest house in town. You get there early, eager to buy cool stuff cheap. But every time you see something you like, a police officer comes along with a Sharpie, crosses out the price, and writes in another number that's two or three times higher. Scale that up a bit, and you have the Obama housing plan.
The prevailing idea that any market led deflation of value or any deflation of value at all really, will always be worse than artificial inflation and should be prevented at all costs is, IMO, the biggest part of the problem.
It will continue to create bubbles and lead to more recessions and their spacing will get closer and closer together.
Reason.com.
:lulz:
You ever SEE an empty neighborhood? They listed the crimes that don't have any correllation.
They haven't listed trespassing, meth labs, vandalism and arson. I wonder why that is?
And I wonder what will happen to the crime rates when the "entitlements" that the libertarians bitch about so much go unfunded?
I guess screwing the existing home owners isn't of much of a concern to you, Pickle.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 06:54:36 PM
I think Cain may be a tad optimistic.
To be fair, I meant 19th century
Ireland. Around 1845 or so.
Quote from: Cain on May 26, 2011, 07:09:19 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 06:54:36 PM
I think Cain may be a tad optimistic.
To be fair, I meant 19th century Ireland. Around 1845 or so.
Okay, I can see that.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on May 26, 2011, 07:09:14 PM
I guess screwing the existing home owners isn't of much of a concern to you, Pickle.
Only corporations matter, LMNO.
Because they're not stupid and inefficient, like the government. :lulz:
And because the purpose of society is to keep the shareholders happy. That is THE only thing that matters in 21st century America. It is the sole reason for civilization.
And it never, ever causes problems. If it did, that's your fault.
Oh yeah. I forgot.
The Private Bank serves the interests of the People, who are entitled to redress. Of course.
I just hopped over to reason.com.
The ad banner at the top is for government grants. :lulz:
Quote from: LMNO, PhD on May 26, 2011, 07:09:14 PM
I guess screwing the existing home owners isn't of much of a concern to you, Pickle.
The values in 2008 were completely inflated. Existing homeowners got screwed when it burst. Trying to artificially inflate the value back to what it was before it burst prevents new people from coming in and buying a house they can afford.
Oh, wow! A straw poll!
Palin
Gingrich
Romney
Paul
Pawlenty
Huckabee
Bolton
Johnson
In that order. :lulz:
Good thing its not a wingnut site.
Also, a pile of polls that agree in all ways with the libertards, with no methodology shown. Loads of interviews with teabaggers, and a bunch of shit about why the elderly & poor should be left out to die (TBH, it's worded that they should have "choice" in health care, and we all know that code word by now).
Hey! It's also, it seems, un-American to point out that living on fast food makes you fat.
:lulz:
Not "legislation", mind you, but merely pointing out the fact.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 07:23:09 PM
Oh, wow! A straw poll!
Palin
Gingrich
Romney
Paul
Pawlenty
Huckabee
Bolton
Johnson
In that order. :lulz:
Good thing its not a wingnut site.
Also, a pile of polls that agree in all ways with the libertards, with no methodology shown. Loads of interviews with teabaggers, and a bunch of shit about why the elderly & poor should be left out to die (TBH, it's worded that they should have "choice" in health care, and we all know that code word by now).
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 07:24:15 PM
Hey! It's also, it seems, un-American to point out that living on fast food makes you fat.
:lulz:
Not "legislation", mind you, but merely pointing out the fact.
:retard:
Apparently Rand Paul is something of a hero, there.
Must be an Appalachia thing, I think. Curbstomping an uppity woman = Instant Cred.
WOOOOOOOOOO
http://reason.com/blog#article_149664 <--- The video clip at the top.
Also, Fox News is now a credible news agency.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/26/ventriloquists-for-the-powerle
Poor people = animals.
:spittake:
What. The. Fuck.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 07:29:48 PM
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/26/ventriloquists-for-the-powerle
Aside from the obvious problem, it is interesting how this article mistakes or conflates Marxism with "postmodernist wankery". Slavoj Zizek would have a field day with this.
In all fairness to Cain's thread and topic might I suggest splitting this into a "Let's make fun of Reason.com" thread?
[EDIT] It's Cain's topic, I suppose I should leave him to ask if he wants to.
Quote from: Cain on May 26, 2011, 07:34:23 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 07:29:48 PM
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/26/ventriloquists-for-the-powerle
Aside from the obvious problem, it is interesting how this article mistakes or conflates Marxism with "postmodernist wankery". Slavoj Zizek would have a field day with this.
The whole site is like this. It's like a gold mine full of right wing fuckbattery.
Quote from: Disco Pickle on May 26, 2011, 07:34:42 PM
In all fairness to Cain's thread and topic might I suggest splitting this into a "Let's make fun of Reason.com" thread?
[EDIT] It's Cain's topic, I suppose I should leave him to ask if he wants to.
I was just trying to refute your source and couldn't stop.
Like drinking out of a spitoon on a dare. You have to keep going, because it's all one string.
Quote from: Disco Pickle on May 26, 2011, 07:34:42 PM
In all fairness to Cain's thread and topic might I suggest splitting this into a "Let's make fun of Reason.com" thread?
[EDIT] It's Cain's topic, I suppose I should leave him to ask if he wants to.
Yes please. Reason does deserve its own thread.
It's sad to think only five years ago, Reason was a mostly good, if sometimes misguided, publication. They really went around the bend post-election...
Done.
Holy crap! It never ends!
There's more crazy there than in Charley Sheen's dressing room. :lulz:
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 07:35:56 PM
Quote from: Disco Pickle on May 26, 2011, 07:34:42 PM
In all fairness to Cain's thread and topic might I suggest splitting this into a "Let's make fun of Reason.com" thread?
[EDIT] It's Cain's topic, I suppose I should leave him to ask if he wants to.
I was just trying to refute your source and couldn't stop.
Like drinking out of a spitoon on a dare. You have to keep going, because it's all one string.
I very nearly puked on my laptop at that. :vom:
Quote from: Cain on May 26, 2011, 07:36:52 PM
Yes please. Reason does deserve its own thread.
It's sad to think only five years ago, Reason was a mostly good, if sometimes misguided, publication. They really went around the bend post-election...
Okay, so that's not just me?
I started reading Reason.com during the libertarian phase I had in my early twenties. They were always kind of out of there on a lot of stuff, but they had some decent articles from time to time, and I had fun trolling the comments once in a while (though the poster called "joe" was definitely the king of that back then). I went back maybe six months ago after not reading it for years and the whole place was just awful. The comments threads are a sliver away from Free Republic. I wasn't sure how much of that was my own greater political maturity/not having Randroid tendencies anymore and how much was them really having just gone fucking insane after Obama was elected.
For an example of the opposite happening: is it just me, or has Cracked gone from being a crappy poor man's MAD clone to being fairly entertaining most of the time since it became an website?
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on May 26, 2011, 07:29:48 PM
HOLY FUCKING SHIT!
http://reason.com/archives/2011/05/26/ventriloquists-for-the-powerle
Poor people = animals.
:spittake:
You should have kept reading.
QuoteTry this for an exercise: Open any book written in the last 40 years on African-American history, women's history, or labor history and count the number of times Hribal's terms describing the consciousness of animals are used to describe the consciousness of people. Then look for evidence that the people themselves used those terms. Most often, you will find the self-appointed leaders of the "oppressed" and "exploited"—abolitionists, feminists, union leaders, civil rights leaders, and political radicals—standing in for their constituents and speaking the language that left-wing historians want to hear.
Yes the slaves were perfectly happy with their working conditions until those no good radical left wing abolitionists started putting words in their mouths!
:argh!:
QuoteIt is not a defense of slavery, segregation, the denial of rights to women, or poverty to acknowledge the fact that, according to the available evidence, only a tiny portion of their alleged victims clearly thought of themselves that way. Few historians mention that a majority of the ex-slaves who were interviewed held positive views of their days on the plantation
I cant believe Im actually reading this. :lulz:
Quote from: Laughin Jude on May 28, 2011, 03:09:44 AM
Quote from: Cain on May 26, 2011, 07:36:52 PM
Yes please. Reason does deserve its own thread.
It's sad to think only five years ago, Reason was a mostly good, if sometimes misguided, publication. They really went around the bend post-election...
Okay, so that's not just me?
I started reading Reason.com during the libertarian phase I had in my early twenties. They were always kind of out of there on a lot of stuff, but they had some decent articles from time to time, and I had fun trolling the comments once in a while (though the poster called "joe" was definitely the king of that back then). I went back maybe six months ago after not reading it for years and the whole place was just awful. The comments threads are a sliver away from Free Republic. I wasn't sure how much of that was my own greater political maturity/not having Randroid tendencies anymore and how much was them really having just gone fucking insane after Obama was elected.
For an example of the opposite happening: is it just me, or has Cracked gone from being a crappy poor man's MAD clone to being fairly entertaining most of the time since it became an website?
WARNING: long winded and buzzed diatribe follows. Summary is at the end.
It's not just you. As Cain said, the quality has deteriorated some since "OMFG THERE'S A DEMOCRAT IN THE WH AGAIN"
But to put it in perspective a bit: in 2002 when the Hit & Run blog was started they were joining a rising voice of opposition to the Iraq debacle and the contributers there were also pretty damn harsh on the previous WH administration for the same things that are being said about this one, namely that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Any democrat that was all "BUSH BAD" during the 8 years his people were in and is now, still, cheering Obama after 2010 is suffering from a partisan delusion that there is any inherent difference in the policy positions of the people at the helm. In my more lucid and honest moments, I'll lament that it doesn't matter who gets elected and their party affiliation because it's the people that hang out in D.C. for four to eight years while they wait for "The Other Guys" to get voted out that everyone should be more worried about. We don't elect those people. The just go away (or their friends get them jobs in other areas) for part of a decade and then return to do the same things they were doing before.
But as is often the case in politics, when the other guy is doing it it is bad. When my guy is doing it there's (x) number of reasons he has to be doing it/continuing to do what the last guy did in order to fix it/it was the other guys fault first we're just cleaning it up and how dare you etc. etc.
Now that the schism in the Republican party between the social conservatives and the libertarians is more prominent in the rhetoric if not necessarily in the ability to elect people who want the Repubs return to their stated values, you're bound to see a larger amount of passioned talk that you wont agree with (assuming you fall left on economic issues) as the real goal of the schism that started in mid 2007 was, if nothing else, to at least create a debate on subjects that had for the previous 20-30 years been off the table within the GOP, namely the shift from the Democrats being the war party of history to the Republicans, and the Republicans spending money like a drunken Democrat on shore leave.
The internet result of this is that you'll have social and pro-war conservatives duking it out with social and anti-war libertarians on the same forum even when they're likely all still registered with the same party (assuming they're in a closed primary state).
Reasons' origin, if it can be said to have one, is The Cato Institute. When they have an idiealogical difference, it can be found in The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reality is that they're just arguing over which defective life raft is the best one to jump ship with. Libertarians suffer the same disease Democrats have suffered for decades: They squabble enough and refuse to stand together enough to the point that the opposition (both of the major parties) just panders to them when it's convienient to have their vote.
Summary: Blast Reason for the right reasons.
They're wrong in opposition to raising taxes on the people who benefited most from the last few decade's largess as necessary to help normalize and correct the damage and debt caused by several decades of electing people who borrow beyond the ability to pay those debts. The "We'll just pay for it later" crowd is a cancer fueled by banks that encourage them to do just that, and it's hardly a problem limited to government.
The reality of the retirement of the Boomers' and the ability of the rest of us to support that retirement is a stark contrast to anyone paying attention. Blame the Boomers for it, and their blatant disregard to being bent over a table and whispered sweet promises. I know I do. But admit that letting the house of cards fall down around the rest of us for the sake of maintaining the few who were smart enough to pay attention, save, invest and profit on it is the worst sort of medicine.
BUt give Reason credit where they've been right.
Staunch opposition to the longest wars in our recent history.
Supporting and even advocating for equality under the law for marriage for guys who want to marry guys and girls who want to marry girls.
Opposition to the failed war on drugs and its creation of black markets for products that people can still, to this day, go find with a phone call or and hour in a bar making nice, but have to worry about having their entire professional lives ruined doing it.
Man, it seems like it took forever to write that.
I await the ridicule and dissection that is expected and even encouraged.
ah fucking hell. I haven't checked the source contributor yet, but given the last two posts I had to finish my beer to even press post after the "warning more posts have been posted" thing.
fuck.
if that's really the shit that's getting published there now, you can completely disregard that last post where I actually defend the fucking site and I'll humbly commit to never go there again.
never ever.
Everyone makes mistakes. Apparently you just haven't been over in a while or something.
Freeky,
Generous because she skipped the wall o' text.
DP, I'm sort of with you. I stumbled on Reason a while back, and it certainly appeared at the time to be coming at the issues with a different perspective, and they were just reasonable (heh) enough not to dismiss out-of-hand.
These days though... Whoooooo. Nutbags.
I barely skimmed the tl;dr and I was going to say something snarky about also giving White Nationalists credit where they're right, but then I saw your followup post so I won't. :lulz:
Hopefully the lesson you're taking away from this is "know your source".
As well as I can remember, back in the day I agreed with their stances on the War in Iraq (against), the PATRIOT Act (against), the drug war (against) and gay marriage (for). They were critics of the Bush administration without being Democrat shills, and they had articles blasting the military-industrial and prison-industrial complexes that tried to use logical arguments instead of being whiny hippies about it. They had a long-running series of blog posts re: "another isolated incident" about police departments around the country who would fuck people's fourth amendment rights and often kill people in no-knock raids (often at the wrong houses). The magazine/site definitely had its issues; they had a hard-on for Rand/Objectivism and seemed to believe the free market was the solution to everything, among other things. But at least it was something different and seemed to have a mostly consistent philosophy, even if it wasn't one I always agreed with.
Nowadays it looks like a Tea Party playground. I have to wonder how much of that comes from Nick Gillespie (editor in chief until 2008) having left. Apparently Matt Welch has been in charge since then. What that's done to change the site/zine I couldn't say as I haven't really been keeping up on it in the past few years, but that might start to explain the massive shift in content and philosophy.
That and the spooky black man with a funny name in office, of course.
Welch, amusingly, used to be a big Clinton supporter, back in the day. Great libertarian credentials, that.
HEY KORESH! IT'S NOT LIKE THE CONSTITUTION SPECIFICALLY PROHIBTS THE FBI BURNING YOU ALIVE, RIGHT?
\
(http://www.coverups.com/scans/waco2.jpg)
Quote from: Cain on May 29, 2011, 03:05:44 AM
Welch, amusingly, used to be a big Clinton supporter, back in the day. Great libertarian credentials, that.
Lot of Libertarians thought they could lead Clinton around by the nose. It wasn't that they felt he was "their man", it was more like they thought he was "their bitch" via Greenspan.
Yeah, I could see that.
On the other hand, radical expansion of Federal power, stepping up the drug war, no lessening of state involvement in the economy....I know a certain kind of "libertarian" (ie Matt Welch, the numpties at the Adam Smith Institute who I've had the misfortune of dealing with before etc) doesn't really care about that so long as certain people's interests are looked after carefully, but it tends to cast libertarianism as a whole in a pretty hypocritical light. And I would think at least other libertarians, beyond the usual suspects (Kevin Carson, ED Kain) would try and distance themselves from such people due to the kind of poisonous support and brand recognition they help create.
See, that's the problem with Libertarianism... No matter how moony-eyed you wanna get over personal liberty, YOU HAVE COMPETING CLASS INTERESTS. It relies on the philanthropy of the poor, basically. Even if you're the most true-blue Libertardian in the world, you will assign different weights to say, drug prohibition, depending on your class. A guy who can afford a good lawyer, and a guy who's stuck with a public defender, well, the drug laws matter a hell of a lot more to the second guy, even if they both love yay.
Poor guy sees Libertarianism as either, nievely, a route to the big boy's table, or else a means of not going to jail over stupid shit.
A rich guy just wants minimum wage laws to fuck off, etc.
Borgoise's power is his capital, Worker's power is his politics. It's kind of noble being a poor libertarian, sticking to your principles in the face of, well, being poor and powerless, but it's also really fucking dumb, because you're embracing the shitty end of the stick.
So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?
Quote from: Jerry_Frankster on May 29, 2011, 09:10:01 PM
So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?
Or possibly they are Libertarian Socialists and would like the government to stop protecting the interests of the rich.
Quote from: BabylonHoruv on May 29, 2011, 09:22:55 PM
Quote from: Jerry_Frankster on May 29, 2011, 09:10:01 PM
So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?
Or possibly they are Libertarian Socialists and would like the government to stop protecting the interests of the rich.
BLASPHEMY \
:mullet:
Quote from: BabylonHoruv on May 29, 2011, 09:22:55 PM
Quote from: Jerry_Frankster on May 29, 2011, 09:10:01 PM
So poor libertarians are either stupid or altruistic, and poor objectivists are both?
Or possibly they are Libertarian Socialists and would like the government to stop protecting the interests of the rich.
Um, yeah. :lulz:
Keep Government out of Government
Quote from: Slyph on May 30, 2011, 02:17:12 PM
Keep Government out of Government
Fuck all of you libertariantards. I say MORE government. Give the people what they demand, until they scream with happiness, and never stop.
You anarchist slobs just aren't
serious about having a good time.