subprime at Brave New Films

Mortgages Are Troubled Assets - Rescuing the Economy

2008-11-23T00:52:44Z

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/11/barr_mortgage_crisis_testimony.html

Andrew Jakabovics of the Center for American Progress explains that the about face by Treasury Secretary Henry (Hank) Paulson misses the mark -- the troubled US mortgage markets are the root of the international financial crisis.

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Rescuing the Economy: The U Turn

2008-11-23T00:52:45Z

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/11/restoring_confidence.html

Michael Ettlinger of the Center for American Progress offers his thoughts on the Treasury's about face on the economic rescue plan as President-elect Barack Obama and a new Congress will take office in less than 70 days amid the greatest financial market and economic challenges our nation has faced since the Great Depression. The economy is likely in a recession—one that could be a long and deep. We are engaged in two wars overseas. Skyrocketing health care costs are consuming too great a share of our economy and threatening to create an unsustainable national debt. Our continued heavy reliance on fossil fuels exposes our economy to volatile oil prices and supply disruptions as well as the potentially catastrophic costs of climate change in the coming decades.

Aggressive action is needed to restore economic confidence and growth. We need action now to stimulate the economy, starting at once and lasting as long as necessary. Immediate government investments can put us on a path to recovery while also speeding the arrival of accessible, affordable health care, an economy powered with clean, sustainable, and secure sources of energy, and an education system that prepares our children for good jobs and keeps good jobs in America. These steps will help the economy through a period of economic weakness and lay the foundation for shared economic growth in the decades to come.

These investments in economic stimulus and recovery will contribute to a higher budget deficit in the short term. But we cannot be penny wise and pound foolish. Strong economic growth will do far more to put us on the path of fiscal health than shortchanging needed investments today.

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Sarah Palin: Rally 10/21/08

2008-11-13T08:50:08Z

Sarah Palin
Rally
Pensacola, FL 10/07/08

TRANSCRIPT:
SARAH PALIN: And talk about patterns. I see a patter now too in how our opponent has talked about one of his most troubling associations. [harrumphing] And heres some more straight talk: one of Barack Obamas earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers. [boos] Now, according to The New York Times, hes an unrepentant domestic terrorist [boos] and was part of a group that quote, launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our United States Capitol. [boos] Now, our opponents campaign is claiming for the first time, recently they just said that Barack Obama wasnt aware of Ayerss radical background [shouting and boos]. Barack recently remembered him though as just a guy in the neighborhood [shouting]. Now, yesterday though, our opponents campaign claimed for the first time that, well, yeah, I guess he was aware of that background but he wasnt aware of when that had taken place or something, its getting tougher and tougher to find out what he had said. [shouts and laughter] The question comes down to, Hm!?, he didnt know that he had launched his career in the living room of a domestic terrorist? [laughter and boos] He didnt know that until he did know? And then he continued to be in any way associated with that person. The story keeps changing and the claims keep getting more and more curious. So what next? Claiming that he didnt know that two of his biggest supporters were running Fannie Mae? The subprime mortgage giant? [boos and cheers] I dont know, thats, thats of course the subprime mortgage giant that has done so much harm to this economy. Maybe he just thought they were guys in his Washington neighborhood? [laughter] And, since he got called out on his plans to meet unconditionally with terror state leaders like Irans Ahmadinejad, will he claim that he wasnt aware of his radical background? [laughter and hooting] Will he now claim his ticket doesnt define higher taxes as patriotic? member, thats what Joe Biden said? Will he claim now that hes just learned that tax increases on small businesses kill jobs? [gasps] Ladies and gentlement, theres a pattern here. And, this election is about truthfulness and judgment needed in the next president. [cheers] [shout of We love you Sarah!] Good judgment in the next president and John McCain has it and Barack Obama does not have it. [cheers]

LABEL: SP FL 10-7 (EW#21) GHARS - clipF

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Rudy Giuliani: Town Hall 12/30/07

2008-11-12T13:09:26Z

Rudy Giuliani
Town Hall
Bretton Woods, NH 12/30/07

TRANSCRIPT:
RUDY GIULIANI: What is the proper role of the federal government in the subprime mortgage crisis? The proper role of the federal government is to have fiscal policies that support our economy and make it strong, so that the effect of the subprime mortgage situation doesn't bleed over into the rest of the economy and just the opposite happens: the rest of the economy bleeds back into the subprime situation and gives people more liquidity, more assets or more liquidity actually and gives lenders confidence that our economy is going to grow. So, I would, I would do things that bolster the general economy. Things that are fiscally sound. The, the, the Fed deals with monetary policy, the United States government should deal with fiscal policy. Lowering some taxes right now would be a good thing to do because it would stimulate our economy. Doing a government reduction of spending programs on the civilian side would be a very good thing right now, because it would create more confidence in the economy. And then I think the program that Sec. Paulson announced, uh, about two or three weeks ago of asking lenders voluntarily to extend the, uh, the rate for five years. I think that that's a good answer, it's a better answer than the government coming in and doing some kind of direct bailout. Better answer that it's voluntary. But I think you'd find that there'd be more compliance with that if the lenders had a little more confidence that the economy was going to grow. That's why, if you do fiscally sound policies at the same time; when you're going to these lenders and you're asking them where you can see your way clear to stretch out the rate for five years, I think if they thought there was a chance that they were moving into a growing economy, many more of them would do it. And I think that's how the federal government affects it, not with, not with direct bailouts, which I think would be, would ultimately be a mistake.

LABEL: RG NH 12-30 (JC#50) ACDIR - ClipA

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"Financial Crisis: The Musical" Lyrics: B. Hopman Vocals: R. Hopman

2008-11-23T00:41:24Z

The Shock Market is out of control!! Gall Street is crumbling!! Your savings have been 401KOD!! Just when you thought the economy has hit a low note, here comes a real chorus of gloom and doom. It won't take a degree in economics to enjoy this musical parody. Just a degree of humor. (Special appearance by John McCain.)

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Sarah Palin: Rally 10/07/08

2008-10-30T11:03:22Z

Sarah Palin
Rally
Pensacola, FL 10/07/08

LABEL: SP FL 10-7 (EW#21) GHARS - clipF

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Who Owns John McCain?

2008-11-23T00:33:30Z

McCain doesn't seem to care as much about the foreclosures as he does about it's impact on Wall Street. Notice how he kept on stating and restating how "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" while millions of Americans were being thrown out of their homes, but only rushed back to work when the crisis overwhelmed corporate America?

Who exactly does John McCain work for? The "nation of whiners" or the corporate contributors to his campaign?

Take a look at the video I edited together about this question and let me know what you think. Am I being too hard on McCain? Or do you think he sincerely believes that corporate tax breaks and more deregulation of the financial industry will help average Americans?

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McCain’s Involvement in the Keating 5 FINALLY Explained

2008-11-02T22:58:30Z

Many on the left have been wondering for months when the media or the Obama campaign would bring up the Savings & Loan scandal, John McCain’s “membership” in the Keating 5, and the clear connections to the economic crisis the world is currently enduring. A few news programs have broached the topic, though usually in biographical pieces about McCain instead of relating it to the subprime debacle, with which there are clear, eerie parallels.

So the Obama campaign has done what the corporate media has failed to do: explain the S&L crisis, McCain’s involvement in it, and how little McCain learned from it as he continues (until a few weeks ago) to call for even more of the deregulation that caused both the S&L and subprime disasters. You can view KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis above, or go to KeatingEconomics.com to find out more about it (and even download your own hi-res copy).

Like many voters, I had heard of the Keating 5, but I was a bit young when the S&L scandal happened and had never understood McCain’s role in it (other than him being one of the five). I eventually did my own research and was shocked by the parallels, and even more shocked that the corporate media was not mentioning it every time McCain talked about the economy and/or his abrupt reversal on deregulation and his decades of championing deregulation at all costs. If the corporate media has any shame, they should be ashamed that it took the Obama campaign to bring this story to the fore. It is the media’s duty in a functioning democracy to inform citizens about a candidate’s record and experiences that are relevant to issues being faced by voters today.

The Economic Crisis - No Bailout - Now What?

2008-11-23T00:52:46Z

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/conservatives_pain.html

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/real_solutions.html

Michael Ettlinger of the Center for American Progress offers his take on the latest news out of Washington and the financial markets after U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and President George W. Bush yesterday failed to convince a majority of their own party in Congress that the consequences of failing to pass their $700 billion financial rescue package could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy. The American people over the next few days will catch a glimpse of the consequences in financial markets, at their hometown banks, and at their jobs, but should congressional inaction persist we may not experience the full brunt for a month or more.

Thats why these next few days will be so telling. If those who opposed the rescue package in Congress do not feel responsible for the leading edge of the problems they have allowed to grow—as prices fall, borrowing costs rise, and more and more small- to medium-sized companies and financial institutions are unable to access credit—then they are unlikely to change their minds about the bailout plan. If their constituents do not get antsy as the problems of Wall Street start to spread to the companies they work for and to their own access to credit, and they do not demand action—no action may be forthcoming.

Will the financial markets spook enough of the dissenters to change their vote on the bill, which fell only 12 votes shy of passage? That probably depends most immediately on how dramatic the reaction is in the commercial paper market, which was largely done with trading yesterday before the bailout bill went down to defeat. This vital credit marketplace—where companies tap short-term credit to smooth out their cash flow needs to make payroll and pay suppliers in a timely fashion—could react sharply today. This mornings record high for the benchmark London Interbank Offer Rate—the rate at which ...

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Michael Bloomberg on the Origins of the Economic Crisis

2008-10-20T04:33:08Z

Complete video at: fora.tv

Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City and founder of Bloomberg, L.P., discusses the origins of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.

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Mayor Michael Bloomberg addresses a Georgetown audience on the state of the American economic crisis, the steps that should be taken and the steps that have not yet been taken. He characterizes federal responses to date as being akin to "buying an alcoholic a drink."

Michael Bloomberg is an American businessman, philanthropist, and the Mayor of New York City. He was elected mayor in 2001, then reelected to a second term in 2005.

Bloomberg graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1966. His 1997 autobiography was titled Bloomberg by Bloomberg.

Bloomberg is the founder and former CEO of financial news and data company Bloomberg, L.P.

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Rescuing Wall Street to Save the US Economy - Neither Fair Nor Effective

2008-11-23T00:52:46Z

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/fair_nor_effective.html

Ed Paisley of the Center for American Progress shares his thoughts on the unprecedented economic bailout being planned by the federal government.

Unless U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsons first stab at a $700 billion rescue of the global financial system is revised to incorporate restructuring troubled mortgages, it will be neither fair nor effective. Paulsons draft legislation attempts to rescue the balance sheets of Wall Street but does almost nothing for homeowners on Main Street. Thats a fundamental flaw. The U.S. housing market won't recover without restructuring of underlying mortgages that are troubled. Global credit markets will not respond to this exceedingly expensive plan unless we get our fundamentals right. Moreover, taxpayers will be saddled with increasingly worthless paper as many of the underlying mortgages fail.

The Paulson plan demonstrates a disturbing disconnect between the mortgage-related assets that taxpayers $700 billion is being used to purchase and the necessary restructuring of the troubled mortgages themselves. Many hard-working Americans are having trouble paying on their mortgages, which in turn is driving down the value of their neighbors homes across the country. Tens of millions of families have seen their home values plunge through no fault of their own. Nearly 1 in 10 American households—roughly 5 million—have a mortgage that is either in default or facing foreclosure. These are the families still struggling to pay their mortgage even after the earliest subprime borrowers have already lost their homes.

Without provisions expressly aimed at helping these borrowers restructure their mortgages with the assistance of the federal government or through judicial modification, this grand plan to buy "toxic" assets from the financial institutions that engineered this market meltdown will not help the U.S. housing market recover. The Bush administration, however, is ...

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Second Biggest Bank Failure in History

2008-11-15T11:45:26Z

Afshin Rattansi talks to Prof. Peter Morici from the University of Maryland about how Americans have government intervention to worry about and other Hayekian themes, even as America's biggest lenders hit the buffers and IndyMac Bancorp becomes the biggest bank failure in history.

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Mayor Rhine McLin of Dayton, OH

2008-11-23T00:51:52Z

Mayor McLin enumerates the dangers of the subprime crisis, wonders how her citizens who make minimum wage get to work, and assures us that suburbs and core cities are facing similar challenges.

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Inside the US subprime crisis 01 April 2008

2008-10-21T09:30:08Z

The subprime mortgage crisis in the US is being felt deeply by those in the business of selling homes.
With property sales dipping across the country, property agents are feeling the pinch.
Adam B. Salem is a property agent in the state of Virginia who has a lot of clients, many of them immigrants, who took out subprime loans they can't re-pay.

He tells his story in his own words.

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Wall street demands massive bailout or else

2008-10-14T11:27:48Z

Doug Henwood: Real solution includes shifting spending to green and public infrastructure

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Subprime -The 'new' homeless in the U.S.

2008-10-20T21:29:37Z

Tent cities have sprung up outside Los Angeles as people lose their homes due to the subprime mortgage crisis. The BBC reports.

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Mad As Hell

2008-11-23T00:41:28Z

A reminder of what the last seven years have been like and what we need to do.

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Market Meltdown - Getting the US Economy Back on Track

2008-10-27T03:30:02Z

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/01/market_meltdown.html

Since the beginning of the current business cycle in early 2001, family incomes in the United States have not risen, yet the costs for important consumer items such as housing, health care, transportation, energy, and food all climbed at often breathtaking speeds. To afford these necessities, families piled on record amounts of debt relative to their income—at a rate more than four times faster than that in the 1990s.

Families, though, were not the only ones going deeper into debt. The federal government ran up large budget deficits due to massive tax cuts for the rich and a spending spree for an ill-designed Medicare prescription drug benefit and two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Since March 2001, foreign investors financed close to 80 percent of the federal budget deficit.

More importantly, these large capital inflows financed a massive U.S. trade deficit that still remains at an unsustainable 5 percent of gross domestic product. To finance this deficit, the U.S. economy borrowed heavily overseas, selling everything to foreign investors, including home mortgages.

The result: a vicious cycle of debt, with foreign investors fueling a housing market boom that required households to borrow money that foreigners were willing to borrow.

This process is now going into reverse. Stock market investors are selling off shares tied however tenuously to the U.S. housing market, thus fueling the financial markets downturn. This sell off is also increasing worries about a broader credit crunch that could lead to further deterioration in the U.S. housing market.

The largest drawback of the debt boom was that it let U.S. policymakers get away with not addressing the country's underlying economic problems. The fundamental weaknesses of the U.S. economy—a weak labor market, large budget deficits, and massive trade deficits, and an unsustainable housing boom—were masked by record amounts of debt, allowing the federal government to continuously ignore these problems. Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Christian Weller explains the underlying issues and the way forward in ASK THE EXPERT, the new video feature from CAP.

www.AMERICANPROGRESS.org

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The SubPrime Blues #2, Will Inflate Stated Income for Food

2008-10-21T15:30:06Z

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Temecula, CA Housing Crash

2008-10-21T15:30:24Z

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CENTRAL CALIFORNIA HOUSING CRASH

2008-10-21T15:30:23Z

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MIAMI, FLORIDA: HOUSING CRASH 50% OFF!!!!

2008-10-21T15:30:21Z

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