oooooooohhhhhhhhhh......so HOW F*ING ABOUT THAT????? Sicarius is a fucking ANARCHIST????

So, to all you SOCIALISTS out there....how do you feel now? Because your poster boy apparently does NOT believe in the government solution, because he believes in NO government!!!

So what fucking solution was he protesting for? Certainly not a government one...because he doesn't believe in government.

Wow....how totally fucking hilarious this has turned out to be! The hypocrisy is simply outstanding!

Krellin - a question. Who makes you angrier: Michael Moore or the Banksters who *)$#! up, got bailed out, and received obscene bonuses at taxpayer expense, while people are being kicked out on to the street by the hundreds of thousands?

I agree with you about personal responsibility. I'm not 100% behind what Sicarius and company are doing/did. But I think people trying to hold on to the American Dream in the face of forty years of economic decline that has been papered over with a massive credit bubble deserve some degree of sympathy. Yes, many people were foolish and bought houses they couldn't really afford, but can you really blame them for their decision when the eternally optimistic talking heads on TV and the bank loan officers kept telling them that real estate never loses value, and if you don't buy in now with an ARM or NegAm loan you'll never ever be able to have your slice of the American Dream? I'm a pretty responsible and frugal person, and I stuck out the housing bubble in a crappy 400 square foot apartment next to the railroad tracks in the ghetto, but I have to admit I was tempted to buy in four or five years ago when every time I walked into the bank (now-defunct Washington Mutual) the teller told me I was pre-approved for a $250,000 home loan . If I hadn't known there was going to be a bust at some point, I almost certainly would have bought a house at an over-inflated price and (since my business is essentially dead and unemployment is 25-30% around here) been foreclosed on by now.

There are now hundreds of thousands of vacant homes in this country. No one can buy them, because the same banks that were encouraging deadbeats to buy expensive homes with NINJA/NegAm loans are now refusing to lend to anybody - even though the banksters told everyone they needed all those bailouts to get the credit juices flowing again. There are so many vacant foreclosed homes that no one can buy here in my corner of Southern California that prices have dropped 60-80% from where they were three years ago (about 90+% of transactions around here in the last year appear to be all-cash sales). The villainy of the Banksters - who made the riskiest decisions at every turn for a decade, duped people into making bad financial decisions, and then demanded the Krellins, Tolstoys, and even the Michael Moores of the country pay for their mistakes - far exceeds that of the people like Keith Sadler who just couldn't keep up.

I'm an ardent Libertarian. I believe in laissez-faire capitalism and the importance of contracts. But I'm completely on the same page as Sicarius in thinking there's something seriously wrong with a society that has more vacant homes than homeless people. There's something really rotten in the State of Denmark, and placing all the blame on people who are losing their homes - even if they did make a bad decision in purchasing - is just plain wrong when the other party to that bad decision (who had to approve the loan) is laughing it up in the Bahamas counting their bonus money.

too tired to do anything else tonight.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/6739863

Seven of the TFDL were arrested then released.

http://historymike.blogspot.com/2010/05/police-arrest-keith-sadler-and-toledo.html

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?section=news/local&id=7419810


I will tell you all about what really happened later. sleep for now.
if housing rights are important to you, find a way to help others in yoiur community!

www.takebacktheland.org

@TOLSTOY - how do you differentiate between an evil banker an Michael Moore....who preys upon the poor to get good video to make his movies to make his millions.

Blatant liberal hypocrisy....

SERIOUSLY...You ACTUALLY believe there are MORE vacant homes than homeless people???? VERIFY that stat.....or i will forever think y9ou are just a stupid moron making bad, emotional arguments. o.m.g...

@tolsty : I am angrier at Michael Moore, who CLAIMS to be for the little guy, takes advantage of the little guy when he "tells their story".....but gives NOTHING BACK TO THE LITTLE GUY. As with ALL liberals....Moore's beliefs end when we ask him to open his pocket book to support his cause. f*ing liberal.

SICARIUS ---- HOW MUCH of your PERSONAL WEALTH have you offered up for the aggrieved? F*ING HYPOCRITE....I'll bet it is ZERO!

krellin +1

Krellin
"So, to all you SOCIALISTS out there....how do you feel now? Because your poster boy apparently does NOT believe in the government solution, because he believes in NO government!!! "

Its well known on this site that Sicarius is an anarchist. He makes no secret about that.

@Tolstoy
"Here's the actual footage of the heroic masked Stormtroopers breaking into the house and arresting Sicarius"

I believe what you meant to say was "here are the men in blue having to waste time, taking away from preventing actual crime, having to gently remove hoodlums who are trespassing and vandalizing and showing no intent of stopping, intentionally flouting the law, knowing full well (and enjoying!!!) what the outcome will be."

"But I'm completely on the same page as Sicarius in thinking there's something seriously wrong with a society that has more vacant homes than homeless people. "

Please provide documentation on this.

"placing all the blame on people who are losing their homes - even if they did make a bad decision in purchasing - is just plain wrong "

I do place all the blame on them. I do blame the bankers for setting up the system to place risky loans. I wasn't for or against he bailout, though I understood both sides of the issue. For those who complain about 'why did we save the bank and not the homeowner?' If we didn't save the bank, the people who made the loans still wouldn't face any liability, so I'm not sure why that argument is always trotted out. Why save the fatcat banker? We didn't. We saved the bank. The fatcat banker had already made his money. We don't get fined or held legally responsible if we make bad decisions at our jobs. Tolstoy, if you serve a burnt hamburger at your job and someone gets sick, you aren't held legally liable. Nor should the bankers be. McDonalds yes, but not you personally.

Allowing the banks to fails may have been a good option. Just remember it would not have been the 'fatcats' who suffered. They had their salaries paid already. They would have lost money when their stock options were worthless, but many more 'regular americans' would have been hurt than bankers. THAT is why the banks were bailed out.

Bailing out one has nothing to do with whether or not to bailout homeowners.

My only comment is this is Toledo, Ohio, not California, nor Arizona, nor Florida, nor Georgia, nor Nevada, nor Oregon. The probability that banks were extending exotic mortgages to bundle into CDOs or that the borrower was stretching into real estate to gamble with other people's money both seem low. More than likely the local bank and the former home owner both are suffering from being in one of the newly god forsaken corners of this country. This whole morality play where a great many of you seem to be trying to squeeze one or the other into their assigned stock roles seems ill advised. The only villain I see is Sic using the tragedy of both sides to play out his own self-important and highly onanistic fantasy life. I have difficulty imagining him telling us all about it, if he were motivated by anything else. This hardly counts as publicity in support of any cause, but just "Hey, over here. Look at me. Play attention to me. Me me me me me." And did I read that right? Sic is one of those creepy nerds in a fedora types from the mid-90s?

Also, I have difficulty understanding how the government could bailout homeowners in a more efficient way than they are. When the government buys 1.2 Trillion dollars worth of mortgage bonds and then refuses to pay the banks any interest on cash, it serves to support the mortgages bond market driving down interest rates for people who can refinance and subsidizing further home buying by individuals, indirectly supporting prices for both sellers and refinancers. And since the government in their infinite wisdom explicitly backstopped all of Fannie and Freddie's debt in the Summer of '08 (Thank you, Barney Frank), we as taxpayers were already insuring every mortgage bond they bought, so there is not net exposure increase.

I'll be interested to see what the TARP repayment funds end up being used for as they become a possible all purpose slush fund.

We know, you dipshit krellin

"oooooooohhhhhhhhhh......so HOW F*ING ABOUT THAT????? Sicarius is a fucking ANARCHIST???? "

I hope you just had a heart attack asshole

@alamothe + krellin - you guys are kind of ruining a possibly decent discussion.

Also just a general comment:

CDO's were actually pretty safe investments when they were bundled, the problem was that they were dependent on continued growth in the housing market, once the housing market bubble burst CDO investors began to suffer. This is just the nature of investing, CDO's were actually a fair deal, the problem was just that the housing market was overly inflated, everybody suffered and it isn't the Banks fault.

@kaptinkool
That is true for some of them, but at some point most cdos were complete crap. After they were able to sell the first set so easily, there started to be big demand for this safe investment. At that point some banks and mortgage brokers staryed giving loans to anyone and for anything, then packaging them together. If the market always grew as quickly as with the insane speculating, those may be ok, but they weren't afe.

@krellin
You have some real anger issues. You also can't seem to actually have fact based discussions. Still a troll. Calm down and start to think things through a bit.

"CDO's were actually a fair deal, the problem was just that the housing market was overly inflated" - just to point out KaptainKool, the CDOs allowed banks to mask this over inflated market and the 'financial products' they were selling meant it wasn't clear whether these items were overly inflated or just normally priced...

Thus CDOs may have contributed to the extent to which the housing market was 'overly inflated' - at least that is what my rudimentrary understanding of the situation leads me to conclude.

@Krellin, i'm not even reading yours posts, but since you don't reply to minew i can assume you don't bother reading them. Fair enough?

@orthaic - you said that CDO's "allowed banks to mask this over inflated market"

This couldn't be further from the truth. How did CDO's mask an over inflated market? People could easily look up house listings and see that prices had been increasing exponentially. I really don't understand what you mean when you say this, you will have to clarify, because CDO's had nothing to do with the housing market speculation AND since any real estate investment is generally packaged with the assumption of positive market growth even late CDO's were decent investments given current (at the time) market speculation.

Also just to clarify, there was almost no "normally priced" real estate available circa 2008, everything was over inflated, this isn't the banks fault.

@Tantris - fair enough, the Banks weren't completely blameless, but I find it hard to blame them solely for these sour investments, when anyone who invested in real estate got burned equally, not just CDO investors, the only distinction is the volume of CDO's. But in the end it wouldn't matter how the real estate was invested in (CDO's, Bank holdings, etc.), it would have ended up just being a game of hot potato no matter how the assets were alloted.

@kaptainkool: by creating a financial product which is rated as 'secure' or whatever, when the money isn't actually there to pay it back you can generate money to invest in actual property - thus increasing the price of housing while not creating any value - So long as the supply of money into the housing market continued it would inflate the price of houses, and so long as you can package CDOs to appear like a good investment the money to buy this 'financial product' will continue to flow.

And of course as the money flows the property prices keep going up and anyone who sells their house can pay off their mortgage and make profit - thus making some debts very successful...

Anyway, i'm not sure about the detail, but as far as my understanding goes this is essentially a masking of the value, by 1) increasing the money supply to certain items, 2) bundling the risk to allow for increased demand to be supplied by these banks.

In ireland people blame the banks because they were lending money to individual buyers, and if two people tried to buy the same house at auction (but the same bank offered to lend each of them twice as much as they could afford) then this would directly increase the price of that one house... It is like arms dealers selling weapons to both sides in a war, only the bank really profits (until the war is over...)

"I believe what you meant to say was..."

You say po-tay-toe, I say po-tah-toe... :-)

"We don't get fined or held legally responsible if we make bad decisions at our jobs. Tolstoy, if you serve a burnt hamburger at your job and someone gets sick, you aren't held legally liable. Nor should the bankers be. McDonalds yes, but not you personally. "

I have a business, and I am a sole proprietor. I am absolutely 100% personally liable for everything I and (when I had them) my employees do. If someone gets hurt because I didn't do my job right, I get personally sued and can lose everything. When my office manager apparently didn't file the correct payroll tax forms (or the IRS/EDD lost them, which is also possible), I was personally on the hook for thousands of dollars in penalties. I'm only free of liability at my burger-flipping job because I am an employee of a corporation (and we'll just for the sake of discussion put aside the fact that most McDonalds' are operated by franchisees, many of whom I bet are sole props like me, accepting all the legal liability). The point which you are inadvertently bringing up - immunity from liability for corporate executives, employees, and shareholders - is an important one, and the cause of a great many problems in business today. You can be sure none of the banks would've been bundling and selling toxic mortgages and the ratings agencies would've given the bonds substantially less than AAA ratings if the executives who approved the whole scam knew that they'd be personally on the hook somehow for what they were doing.

Lots of people who got filthy rich in real estate during the boom had their corporations file for bankruptcy when things got tough, walked away from a great big pile of business debts at no penalty, and started up a new corporation doing 'loan mods' and the like. That's a lot more shameful in my eyes than Keith Sadler making mortgage payments for 20 years until he gets to a point where he just can't keep up on the payments with his pitiful SSI disability check.

Corporations are supposed to be a way for shareholders to aggregate their wealth for a common business purpose. It shouldn't be a giant shield to protect everyone no matter how bad they screw up, which seems to be their primary purpose today. All of the banksters who created this massive scam were a helluva lot more irresponsible than the Keith Sadlers of the world, but the former get to walk away scot free while Sadler is homeless. There's something very wrong with that, and there ought to be some very serious changes to the way corporations and their members are treated under the law.

"but many more 'regular americans' would have been hurt than bankers. THAT is why the banks were bailed out."

The whole reason for the banker bailout was so that the banks would start loaning money again. They haven't. Have you applied for a loan lately? It's like trying to give a cat a bath. I was turned down for home loans left and right when I started trying to buy a house last year - even though I was putting 20% down and my payments were going to be substantially less than what I'd been paying for rent for the last 12 years. The vast majority of home sales in my area have been all cash - no bank loans have been involved, because the banks refuse to loan money. I really don't see a bailout-free world being much different from the situation 'regular joes' are facing today.

"Please provide documentation on this [ratio of vacant homes to homeless people]."

The city I live in is host to one of the first and largest tent cities in America. Its official population is just under 200 people (it was over 500 at one point, but the city kicked everyone out who didn't have paperwork proving they'd lived in the city before becoming homeless). I can absolutely guarantee you there are more than 200 vacant properties in the city - in my condo complex alone, there are 10-20 vacant units at any given time out of a hundred. And there are four other condo complexes adjacent to mine that are all of similar size with roughly comparable vacancy rates. That covers half the claim right there, and I've only counted the vacant properties in about 1% of the city's total area! Beyond that, I of course don't have precise numbers - but neither do you, since homeless people are notoriously difficult to count and the number of vacant homes banks are holding onto at any given moment is even harder to determine. Any way you slice it, there are a lot of vacant homes in many parts of the country.

I'm not sure that the CDO structure did anything of the sort. The US residential real estate bubble was smaller than in the UK, or Ireland, or Spain, or even Finland. At least according to The Economist in 2005. As the bubble was starting to pop even Canada was seeing real estate prices shoot up. They were just lucky to be a little late to the party.

CDO like structures have existed for 25 years in the US and we've had three real estate declines without anything like this happening before. It all seems like a pretty standard bubble to me. But to defend the banks for a little bit. Virtually none of this in the US was coming from the banks. Countrywide was 17% of all US mortgages in 2007 and they most certainly were not a bank. People in Florida and California were explicitly gambling with other people's money. And they are losing their homes and credit ratings. The mortgage originators were borrowing in the 30-90 days commercial paper market to create long term loans pocketing the liquidity premium and them off loading them to anyone else. And they are all bankrupt now. Bear Sterns, Lehman and Merrill packaged the long term loans into MBSs and CDOs pocketing a diversification premium and sold them on. and they are all gone now. European banks and insurance companies bought them to hold without doing any real due diligence. And they are being bailed out.

@Tolstoy....if you are talking about the Sacramento Tent City it was there long before this crisis. And corporations exist precisely to serve as a shield for liability....that is why they were invented. Pooling one's wealth with others would be a partnership, and even then most of those of any size go the l.l.p. route.

@orthaic - the "financial product" (CDO's) was explicitly tied to the mortgage market, people realized they were buying bundled mortgages. The only way for a CDO to have been a bad investment would have been for the entire housing market to tank seeing as CDO's were fairly diverse mortgage portfolios. Real estate investors who purchased CDO's would have still lost money if they had invested in other real estate, and the mortgages bundled in the CDO's would have still been lent because Banks hands were forced regarding 0 down mortgages etc.

As far as your two points on how CDO's somehow "hid" the looming real estate collapse:
1) Money supplied to the housing market will always increase over time CDO's had nothing to do with this.
2) Bundling the risk didn't perpetrate the crisis, it softened the blow.

But more importantly, the real estate market collapse had nothing to do with CDO's, it had to do with inflated real estate prices, it was a bubble that had to burst no matter what happened, CDO's or no CDO's, the only connection is that CDO investors lost money because of the collapse, not because of the Banks.

As for your Arm's dealers analogy, this is only partly accurate. The reality is that in a normalized situation, where the Bank would cause this market inflation (which it wouldn't even occur if a Bank forced to insure its own lending rather than the Government backing risky loans) it would also be holding the toxic assets when said buyers defaulted and the impending asset vacuum happened. Now I do agree that the nature of CDO's should have been disclosed, but the reason that they became toxic is because of the collapse which was perpetrated by Government asset insurance rather than making Banks liable.

**IN ANY CASE**
Important Read: I do not entirely disagree with you, the Banks did act as a major catalyst for market inflation and in the future Banks should be required to fully disclose the nature of bundled assets up front. I believe that these two things would be the largest steps in providing future stability.

But yeah we are at around 1.3 Trillion dollars sitting on deposit at the Fed earning 0% interest.....up from 17 billion in September of 2008.

But the banks aren't loaning money because they are afraid of credit risk. Interestingly, there is a reasonably strong argument that banks will start loaning and inflation will skyrocket when the Fed raises interest rates out of the 0% range.

I highly recommend MR MARKET MISCALCULATES by James Grant. The chapter on CDOs is entertaining and scary as Grant's Interest Rate Observer was pricing and recommending CDSs on specific CDOs in 2004 and 2005.

"As for your Arm's dealers analogy, this is only partly accurate." - i do acknowledge that i'm not particularily well informed, and i will also admit that if you were to ignore that analogy and think of the situation where the banks weren't offering loans to any parties - back to my auction of a house example - nobody could buy the hosue at all, and nobody would be building houses because of a lack of capital which would also be less than optimal...

I don't know how best to organise a system in the middle ground, but i guess i'm in good company there because no-one else seems to have done a particularily good job of it either...

"The point which you are inadvertently bringing up - immunity from liability for corporate executives, employees, and shareholders - is an important one,"

Inadvertently? I think not.
My point stands. The evil bankers in question, but from the now defunct Washington Mutual, etc, weren't sole proprietors, so no, they weren't liable.... just like you flipping burgers at McDonalds. You seem to have told me I inadvertently brought up a point, which you then agreed with.

I'm also not sure you'd like the situation if bankers were personally liable - then there'd be no money being lent either. As pointed out, that is why people start LLCs in the first place.

I should say 'You agreed with my inadvertant fact. You just didn't think it was a good thing.'