Political Roundtable Part XXVII

[dckingsfan]

Might want to revisit that again... I think it was in 2007 that Fannie and Freddie first began to experience very large losses on their portfolios, especially on their subprime investments.

And remember, Fannie and Freddie created a liquid secondary market for mortgages.

What does that mean? Financial institutions no longer had to hold onto the mortgages they originated. They could sell mortgages on the secondary market shortly after origination. Selling mortgages freed up funds for creating additional mortgages.

[Zonkerbl]

So they served as government subsidized mortgage aggregators.

I mean, there'd be no need to regulate this market if there weren't huge subsidies underlying the whole situation. The market wouldn't even exist.

Just because it's an extremely popular subsidy doesn't make it a smart one. Arguably it's surprising something similar didn't happen sooner. Did I tell you the story about the housing reg expert we brought by DOC to explain the whole mess to us. I asked why the entire industry dropped all the "rules of thumb" they used to regulate mortgages before, and his answer was "we all thought the market had changed." What, all of a sudden people who can't afford even a 5% down payment magically transformed into good candidates for a 30 year loan? Mind boggling.

[Kanyewest]

Might want to revisit that again... I think it was in 2007 that Fannie and Freddie first began to experience very large losses on their portfolios, especially on their subprime investments.

And remember, Fannie and Freddie created a liquid secondary market for mortgages.

What does that mean? Financial institutions no longer had to hold onto the mortgages they originated. They could sell mortgages on the secondary market shortly after origination. Selling mortgages freed up funds for creating additional mortgages.

A good read on this is the big short by Michael Lewis. The financial markets really put an atomic affect on this because they made all the bad loans from Freddie and Fannie into triple a rated assets.

I think I also have to review some of this (although enough problematic things from Bloomberg have come out other than the red lining that makes him seem unrealistic that he would win a democratic primary)

[dckingsfan]

Might want to revisit that again... I think it was in 2007 that Fannie and Freddie first began to experience very large losses on their portfolios, especially on their subprime investments.

And remember, Fannie and Freddie created a liquid secondary market for mortgages.

What does that mean? Financial institutions no longer had to hold onto the mortgages they originated. They could sell mortgages on the secondary market shortly after origination. Selling mortgages freed up funds for creating additional mortgages.

A good read on this is the big short by Michael Lewis. The financial markets really put an atomic affect on this because they made all the bad loans from Freddie and Fannie into triple a rated assets.

I think I also have to review some of this (although enough problematic things from Bloomberg have come out other than the red lining that makes him seem unrealistic that he would win a democratic primary)

Yup.

I think Bloomberg should be judged on his record overall. But to call him a racist and say he should be labeled a racist on this issue, well, I don't agree. He isn't the candidate I would vote for in the primary - but he can be very useful long-term.

[pancakes3]

saying that redlining [a policy to not loan to black people] is justified because undoing redlining policies forced banks to make bad loans [to people that can't afford it] is absolutely racist because it's equating black people to poor people. i don't know what's so controversial about that.

either doesn't know what redlining is or he's racist.

[dckingsfan]

saying that redlining [a policy to not loan to black people] is justified because undoing redlining policies forced banks to make bad loans [to people that can't afford it] is absolutely racist because it's equating black people to poor people. i don't know what's so controversial about that.

either doesn't know what redlining is or he's racist.

Don't mean to go around in circles but... "I think" that he was trying to take issue with the government policies on subprime mortgages.

If you feel he was saying - "we shouldn't have stopped redlining", then I fully understand your position.

I think it should be:
1) he doesn't know what is redlining
2) he didn't support stopping redlining
3) he feels that selling mortgages to those that can't afford them is wrong

[dckingsfan]

BTW, the reasons I wouldn't vote for Bloomberg are:
1) Thinks we should continue the war on drugs
2) Thinks we should continue tough on crime
3) Doesn't have a solid plan to move us forward with respect to healthcare (although he is talking about the cost drivers)
4) Doesn't have a solid plan to end the forever wars
5) Doesn't have a solid climate change plan

[I_Like_Dirt]

BTW, the reasons I wouldn't vote for Bloomberg are:
1) Thinks we should continue the war on drugs
2) Thinks we should continue tough on crime
3) Doesn't have a solid plan to move us forward with respect to healthcare (although he is talking about the cost drivers)
4) Doesn't have a solid plan to end the forever wars
5) Doesn't have a solid climate change plan

He's a status quo candidate. Don't change a thing and doesn't have any reasonable ideas on how. And really, why should he? Things are pretty damn good for him right about now. Avoiding having things change is in his interests. The catch is that things are absolutely going to change no matter what he does.

I'm not actually sure I've ever seen a bigger disconnect between wealthier people and climate change. There is this idea that they understand it's a problem but it's not a problem they have yet so seems to get isolated as a potential future risk that can be dealt with later in the face of certain costs now to try and avoid it. And then you wind up with the argument that we can spend our way out of it, well... some, maybe, but even then, they're still going to lose. This isn't a zero sum game and everybody loses but spending to avoid it and trying to play the gamesmanship stuff of who will actually cover the costs winds up costing absolutely everybody orders of magnitude more in the long run. It's basically a problem tailor made to cause havoc for modern capitalism run amok. And the amount of times I see it rationalized away as though it's a win because others will lose more, as though this is some sort of power game and being the chief in mad max is better than being a wealthier non-king in a modern society is a win is disturbing.

[dckingsfan]

BTW, the reasons I wouldn't vote for Bloomberg are:
1) Thinks we should continue the war on drugs
2) Thinks we should continue tough on crime
3) Doesn't have a solid plan to move us forward with respect to healthcare (although he is talking about the cost drivers)
4) Doesn't have a solid plan to end the forever wars
5) Doesn't have a solid climate change plan

He's a status quo candidate. Don't change a thing and doesn't have any reasonable ideas on how. And really, why should he? Things are pretty damn good for him right about now. Avoiding having things change is in his interests. The catch is that things are absolutely going to change no matter what he does.

I'm not actually sure I've ever seen a bigger disconnect between wealthier people and climate change. There is this idea that they understand it's a problem but it's not a problem they have yet so seems to get isolated as a potential future risk that can be dealt with later in the face of certain costs now to try and avoid it. And then you wind up with the argument that we can spend our way out of it, well... some, maybe, but even then, they're still going to lose. This isn't a zero sum game and everybody loses but spending to avoid it and trying to play the gamesmanship stuff of who will actually cover the costs winds up costing absolutely everybody orders of magnitude more in the long run. It's basically a problem tailor made to cause havoc for modern capitalism run amok. And the amount of times I see it rationalized away as though it's a win because others will lose more, as though this is some sort of power game and being the chief in mad max is better than being a wealthier non-king in a modern society is a win is disturbing.

Agreed.

Can I ask if you are associating consumerism with capitalism? I am assuming you are equating reduce, reuse and recycle as incompatible with capitalism?

[I_Like_Dirt]

Can I ask if you are associating consumerism with capitalism? I am assuming you are equating reduce, reuse and recycle as incompatible with capitalism?

I used the term "modern capitalism" for a reason. I can envision ways of making capitalism work better but we don't have those versions of capitalism. I've mentioned it before but I equate capitalism as essentially powering the economy by greed. It's both incredibly effective and incredibly dangerous, not totally dissimilar to a nuclear power plant. Contain things properly with immense safety measures, protocols and other barriers and it works just fine. Let those protections go and you'll get an immense amount of power for far cheaper but you're not going to necessarily be in a position to benefit from all that power.

As for consumerism and capitalism, I don't think there's a whole lot of value on the macro level in splitting those hairs. Consumerism is an offshoot of capitalism. They sort of go hand in hand at this point. Reduce/reuse/recycle isn't incompatible with capitalism from my view, but recycle is an issue in the sense that it takes energy and costs to recycle things that don't necessarily make them better. Sometimes recycling is great and other times far less so. Reducing and reusing, yes, they can work with capitalism, but not with the capitalism we've got. The balance of power is far too out of line. We're in an era where there are barely any repercussions for companies admitting that they intentionally render their products both obsolete and completely unusable within a couple years of making them, while using a high degree of rather rare materials that have significant costs to obtain.

I'm all for capitalism, to be honest. I feel it's better than any of the other alternatives we've seen to date. It's completely unworkable the way we have it set up now, though, and I don't actually think it's something that we should continue with unless we're going to have an honest discussion about it and include all of the associated costs in the equation while also regulating and functionally enforcing to protect ourselves from the offloaded costs, though. Deregulating is only cheaper for businesses. It's not cheaper if everyone else has to pay the environmental consequences, to say nothing of higher prices or worse service or whatever.

This is where I actually really liked Andrew Yang as a candidate. He wasn't my preferred choice as he leans a tad too libertarian for my likings (it should be pretty clear based on the earlier part why libertarianism and I don't get along) and I would hope he would be a touch more aggressive on a few of these fronts but he's also extremely forward thinking and willing to take policy risks even if I don't agree with everything he says. We need to start looking for change because it's coming whether or we like it or not and if we don't look for it we're going to be even less prepared for it and we will all lose because of it.

[Kanyewest]

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[Zonkerbl]

Redlining is literally drawing a line around zip codes that are poor (and therefore refusing to make loans in that zip code). It was only implicitly racist, because being black is highly correlated with being poor.

Among the population of people who are creditworthy and should have been allowed to take out mortgages but were refused because of redlining (they happened to live in a poor zip code), a disproportionate number of them were black.

A very good example of unconscious bias that has real, debilitating effects that over decades results in catastrophic results for the biased-against community. Can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if redlining cuts right through them. Very unamerican. This is the land of opportunity after all. It's precisely the people who grow up poor but manage to make good that we *want* to be successful. We *want* such people to get loans and get rich and become complacent Republicans and not angry, vengeful reparations-supporting Democrats. It's just common sense and patriotic and apple pie and all that good stuff.

I worked on some redlining-related regulations when that was my gig at the DOC. Interesting stuff.

[Zonkerbl]

My wife, who hates Bernie's guts, may kill me if she ever finds out I said this, but Bernie just might be the left's Reagan. He has that same vibe to me, especially how he sort of offhandedly shrugged off HRC's "everybody hates him" jibe - "meh, my wife likes me. Sometimes."

Also because people are familiar with him it'll actually be easier for him to shrug off the inevitable "OMG SOCIALIST" bs from the right. He can just say "Yeah so?" I think it'll be less effective against him than candidates who will stop and be like "but I'm NOT socialist, waaaah"

[Zonkerbl]

What the hell happened on December 17th?

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html

[dckingsfan]

My wife, who hates Bernie's guts, may kill me if she ever finds out I said this, but Bernie just might be the left's Reagan. He has that same vibe to me, especially how he sort of offhandedly shrugged off HRC's "everybody hates him" jibe - "meh, my wife likes me. Sometimes."

Also because people are familiar with him it'll actually be easier for him to shrug off the inevitable "OMG SOCIALIST" bs from the right. He can just say "Yeah so?" I think it'll be less effective against him than candidates who will stop and be like "but I'm NOT socialist, waaaah"

Funny how Bernie started the campaign season with a "don't attack one another" and then rolled out attacks on Warren and then the rest of the candidates. Now he is going to be treated with millions of response attack ads... just stupid.

[Zonkerbl]

My wife, who hates Bernie's guts, may kill me if she ever finds out I said this, but Bernie just might be the left's Reagan. He has that same vibe to me, especially how he sort of offhandedly shrugged off HRC's "everybody hates him" jibe - "meh, my wife likes me. Sometimes."

Also because people are familiar with him it'll actually be easier for him to shrug off the inevitable "OMG SOCIALIST" bs from the right. He can just say "Yeah so?" I think it'll be less effective against him than candidates who will stop and be like "but I'm NOT socialist, waaaah"

Funny how Bernie started the campaign season with a "don't attack one another" and then rolled out attacks on Warren and then the rest of the candidates. Now he is going to be treated with millions of response attack ads... just stupid.

If you can't take attacks from people on the same side, how are you going to survive what Trump is going to do to you?

[dckingsfan]

My wife, who hates Bernie's guts, may kill me if she ever finds out I said this, but Bernie just might be the left's Reagan. He has that same vibe to me, especially how he sort of offhandedly shrugged off HRC's "everybody hates him" jibe - "meh, my wife likes me. Sometimes."

Also because people are familiar with him it'll actually be easier for him to shrug off the inevitable "OMG SOCIALIST" bs from the right. He can just say "Yeah so?" I think it'll be less effective against him than candidates who will stop and be like "but I'm NOT socialist, waaaah"

Funny how Bernie started the campaign season with a "don't attack one another" and then rolled out attacks on Warren and then the rest of the candidates. Now he is going to be treated with millions of response attack ads... just stupid.

If you can't take attacks from people on the same side, how are you going to survive what Trump is going to do to you?

That would definitely be one point of view... I just think that when both sides of this equation start narrowing the tent, the chances of beating Trump go down.

I am talking to more and more folks on both sides of the tent that say they will now no longer vote for the other side

[Zonkerbl]

Don't worry, like 80% of the electorate is not paying any attention right now. This election will probably be decided by some random thing in October that no one has control over.

yay

[dckingsfan]

Don't worry, like 80% of the electorate is not paying any attention right now. This election will probably be decided by some random thing in October that no one has control over.

yay

You could be right... but it isn't what I am seeing. Folks already know the difference and are entrenching. For me, it is easy - I am just trying to sign up D voters. And I am in Texas... so there is that. Both sides ask me who I am supporting - and I say, whoever emerges out of the primaries. You wouldn't believe the blowback I get. I had one Bernie fan chase me down the street telling me I was evil for signing up moderates - sheesh.

Something on October or before has to break - otherwise the current economy that Trump didn't start will carrying him through. This economy is so damn resilient no matter how much we try to break it...

[gtn130]

We are prisoners of the moment. Nobody will remember any of this primary season in-fighting come November. Bernie is going to win the nom most likely, and Dems will fall in line.