quote:Originally posted by bdgee: I had no idea that Jackson had ever tried to segregate this country. And I don't think anyone that claims so honestly is remotely rational. Maybe you should see someone about that problem?
I think you are dreaming up trash. This country is decidedly less segregated than it was years ago, with much thanks going to Jackson and absolutely none due to the republicans, who depend on and have essentially placed all of their weight behind fostering racial bigotry to hold and gain power.
Shows your complete lack of understanding of how the 2 reverends have done more to segregate their own than any other two people in the history of the U.S.
Who was the second reverend you refer to?
-------------------- It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
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quote:Originally posted by bdgee: I had no idea that Jackson had ever tried to segregate this country. And I don't think anyone that claims so honestly is remotely rational. Maybe you should see someone about that problem?
I think you are dreaming up trash. This country is decidedly less segregated than it was years ago, with much thanks going to Jackson and absolutely none due to the republicans, who depend on and have essentially placed all of their weight behind fostering racial bigotry to hold and gain power.
Shows your complete lack of understanding of how the 2 reverends have done more to segregate their own than any other two people in the history of the U.S.
really?
how bout this guy?
George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998), was a Democratic Governor of Alabama for four terms (1963-1967, 1971-1979 and 1983-1987) and ran for U.S. President seven times, running as a Democrat in four times and in the Independent Party three times. He is best known for his pro-segregation attitudes and as a symbol of states' rights during the American desegregation period, which he modified later in life.
quote:Originally posted by bdgee: I had no idea that Jackson had ever tried to segregate this country. And I don't think anyone that claims so honestly is remotely rational. Maybe you should see someone about that problem?
I think you are dreaming up trash. This country is decidedly less segregated than it was years ago, with much thanks going to Jackson and absolutely none due to the republicans, who depend on and have essentially placed all of their weight behind fostering racial bigotry to hold and gain power.
Shows your complete lack of understanding of how the 2 reverends have done more to segregate their own than any other two people in the history of the U.S.
quote:Originally posted by bdgee: I had no idea that Jackson had ever tried to segregate this country. And I don't think anyone that claims so honestly is remotely rational. Maybe you should see someone about that problem?
I think you are dreaming up trash. This country is decidedly less segregated than it was years ago, with much thanks going to Jackson and absolutely none due to the republicans, who depend on and have essentially placed all of their weight behind fostering racial bigotry to hold and gain power.
Shows your complete lack of understanding of how the 2 reverends have done more to segregate their own than any other two people in the history of the U.S.
really?
how bout this guy?
George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998), was a Democratic Governor of Alabama for four terms (1963-1967, 1971-1979 and 1983-1987) and ran for U.S. President seven times, running as a Democrat in four times and in the Independent Party three times. He is best known for his pro-segregation attitudes and as a symbol of states' rights during the American desegregation period, which he modified later in life.
OK....stand corrected.....should of said the last 2 decades....
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quote:Originally posted by bdgee: I had no idea that Jackson had ever tried to segregate this country. And I don't think anyone that claims so honestly is remotely rational. Maybe you should see someone about that problem?
I think you are dreaming up trash. This country is decidedly less segregated than it was years ago, with much thanks going to Jackson and absolutely none due to the republicans, who depend on and have essentially placed all of their weight behind fostering racial bigotry to hold and gain power.
Shows your complete lack of understanding of how the 2 reverends have done more to segregate their own than any other two people in the history of the U.S.
Whoooo-wee...
That evaluation of superior segregationists must have considered Orval Faubus and George Wallace and how many super-dupey-head-supreme-grand- dragons of the KKK (all republicans by the way in this day) and ranks skum of their ilk below black Christian preachers. Thus, I guess you REALLY blame Marti Luther King above and beyond any other segregationist and claim he was un-American and ought to have been deported back to Africa?
Sheeeeeee-iitt, man, I don't think it is my understanding that is screwy and bigoted.
Man, you need to go get some lessons in reality.
(Oh by the way, reverend is an adjective and not a noun. It isn't properly used as a title. It is "the reverend Jackson"....he is revered, not he is a Reverend, much like "the very crude Pat Robertson" doesn't become "Pat Robertson is a Very Crude".)
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quote:Originally posted by a surfer: Don't forget....they need segregation.
Without it they are nothing.
NOTHING??
maybe...they are EQUAL
Out of context.
Nothing politically.
Jordan 1 of my best friends is African American.
Our families hang out with one another.
I lived with a Haitian family while living in the Abacos.
It is you, surfer, that is out of context. No one here in this thread was spreading racial hatred 'til you laid it on us.
Are you blind to the fact that it is exactly in those states socially tied to racial segregation that is the base of the republican electoral power?
Without that segregationist hatred, the republican party is dissolved into a hand full of backward free market losers on the economic front using high priced lobbyist to twist and turn our economy to their benefit with bribery and blackmail.
We don't need republican sponsored racial trash politics in this Country
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quote:Originally posted by CashCowMoo: Anyone whos long-time spiritual mentor and pastor turns out to be a rabid, racist, America-hater who claims the U.S. invented AIDS to wipe out black people is questionable in my mind.
"Not God bless, but 'God d--- America!'" -Jeremiah Wright
One would think that any true "minister" would believe that HIV/AIDS more than likely may have come from God, as possibly another plague.
I know that these articles are from Rolling Stone but it will be interesting to see who actually takes the time to read them and the ensuing remarks.
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"If you look at how this started with the subprime crisis, it doesn't seem to be a good bet to put your money behind the idea that people with the lowest income and the poorest credit ratings are gonna be able to pay off their mortgages," Kroft points out.
"The idea that you could lend money to someone who couldn't pay it back is not an inherently attractive idea to the layman, right. However, it seemed to fly with people who were making $10 million a year," Grant says.
With its clients clamoring for safe investments with above average return, the big Wall Street investment houses bought up millions of the least dependable mortgages, chopped them up into tiny bits and pieces, and repackaged them as exotic investment securities that hardly anyone could understand.
60 Minutes looked at one of the selling documents of such a security with Frank Partnoy, a former derivatives broker and corporate securities attorney, who now teaches law at the University of San Diego.
"It's hundreds and hundreds of pages of very small print, a lot of detail here," Partnoy explains.
Asked if he thinks anyone ever reads all this fine-print, Partnoy says, "I doubt many people read it."
These complex financial instruments were actually designed by mathematicians and physicists, who used algorithms and computer models to reconstitute the unreliable loans in a way that was supposed to eliminate most of the risk.
"Obviously they turned out to be wrong," Partnoy says.
Asked why, he says, "Because you can't model human behavior with math."
"How much of this catastrophe had to do with the instruments that Wall Street created and chose to buy…and sell?" Kroft asks Jim Grant.
"The instruments themselves are at the heart of this mess," Grant says. "They are complex, in effect, mortgage science projects devised by these Nobel-tracked physicists who came to work on Wall Street for the very purpose of creating complex instruments with all manner of detailed protocols, and who gets paid when and how much. And the complexity of the structures is at the very center of the crisis of credit today."
"People don't know what they're made up of, how they're gonna behave," Kroft remarks.
"Right," Grant replies.
But it didn't stop ratings agencies, like Standard & Poor's and Moody's, from certifying the dodgy securities investment grade, and it didn't stop Wall Street from making billions of dollars selling them to banks, pension funds, and other institutional investors all over the world. But that was just the beginning of the crisis.
What most people outside of Wall Street and Washington don't know is that a lot of people who bought these risky mortgage securities also went out and bought even more arcane investments that Wall Street was peddling called "credit default swaps." And they have turned out to be a much bigger problem. ///////////////// "A credit default swap is a contract between two people, one of whom is giving insurance to the other that he will be paid in the event that a financial institution, or a financial instrument, fails," he explains.
"It is an insurance contract, but they've been very careful not to call it that because if it were insurance, it would be regulated. So they use a magic substitute word called a 'swap,' which by virtue of federal law is deregulated," Greenberger adds.
"So anybody who was nervous about buying these mortgage-backed securities, these CDOs, they would be sold a credit default swap as sort of an insurance policy?" Kroft asks.
"A credit default swap was available to them, marketed to them as a risk-saving device for buying a risky financial instrument," Greenberger says. ///////// "Now, who was selling these credit default swaps?" Kroft asks.
"Bear Sterns was selling them, Lehman Brothers was selling them, AIG was selling them. You know, the names we hear that are in trouble, Citigroup was selling them," Greenberger says.
"These investment banks were not only selling the securities that turned out to be terrible investments, they were selling insurance on them?" Kroft asks /////////// Asked what role the credit default swaps play in this financial disaster, Frank Partnoy tells Kroft, "They were the centerpiece, really. That's why the banks lost all the money. They lost all the money based on those side bets, based on the mortgages." ///////////////// That chapter is not over, and there is much suspense and fear on Wall Street that there are other big losses out there that have yet to be disclosed
They already dwarf what has been lost on those original risky mortgages. As bad as the mortgage crisis has been, 94 percent of all Americans are still paying off their loans. The problem is Wall Street placed its huge bets and side bets with all of those fancy securities on the 6 percent who are not.
"We wouldn't be in any of this trouble right now if we had just had underlying investments in mortgages. We wouldn't be in any trouble right now," says Partnoy.
He says it’s the side bets.
"You got Wall Street firms, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers. You got insurance companies like AIG. Merrill lost a ton of money on this," Kroft says. "Everybody's lost a ton of money. They're supposed to be the smartest investors in the world. And they did it themselves."
"They did it all on their own," Partnoy agrees. "That's the most incredible thing about this crisis is that they pushed the button themselves. They blew themselves up."
Look no further than your friendly federal government. Only the government could call insurance a "swap". The government and their social experimentation has been responsible for this mess from day 1!!!
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The republican party with its no oversight no regulation mantra made this mess.
ALL the big wheels that ran the system and poked a hole in the bottom of the financial boat so it would sink are big time republican Party supporters and operatives, that were acting on republican Party free market mantra and absolute screaming fans of the developing a "permanent republican majority", with Party before Country politics.
No more of your Party line "blame the government" B.S, because since 1994 there has never been a Congress that could pass a non-republican Party sanctioned bill to get it to any president for his signature (a simple majority in the Senate is insufficient to send legislation to the President for his signature [at least 60 % is required and no congress since then has had fewer than 40 republican Party line voters] and anything that doesn't contribute to the development of that "permanent republican majority" is block voted out of existence there by the Party).
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Look no further than your friendly federal government. Only the government could call insurance a "swap". The government and their social experimentation has been responsible for this mess from day 1!!!
the truth is exaclty the opposite.
when JP Morgan invented the CDS in the mid 90's it was in fact a regulatory DODGE.
by "insuring" the bond covered with a credit default swap ( only one of several different instruments in the derivatives market) they were able by way of a simple accounting trick to keep LESS capital reserves on hand and leverage themselves more heavily...
the failure of the regualtory system was to not legislate new rules requiring that the issuer of the CDS (the insurer) maintain enough capital to PAY out the "insurance claim" when the insured instrument failed...
all of these attempts to demonise Fannie and Freddie are overblown...
they are not completely wrong, but the subprime mortgage market was just ONE trigger of several that brought down the house of cards...
fannie and freddie are only responsible for about 30% of the subprime mortgage market anyway... all of the Fox "News" calims about how Obamas "freinds" and not McCains lobbyist are to blame is some of the lamest political spinning ever done.
the Treasury is now in the unique position of choosing which banks will fail and which will succeed by selecting who they bail out quickly and who they stall...
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise.
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quote: Originally used as a form of insurance against bad debts, these instruments became a tool for financial speculation when the US Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 specifically barred regulation of these trades.
quote: The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (H.R. 5660 and S.3283) is United States federal legislation which repealed the Shad-Johnson jurisdictional accord, which had banned single stock futures in 1982. The legislation also provided certainty that products offered by banking institutions would not be regulated as futures contracts.
This act was incorporated by reference into H.R. 4577, an omnibus spending bill. It was passed by the 106th United States Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton on December 21, 2000...
The act has been cited as a public policy decision significantly contributing to Enron's bankruptcy in 2001 and the much broader liquidity crisis of September 2008...
The "Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000" [H.R. 5660 was introduced in the House on Dec. 14, 2000 by Rep. Thomas W. Ewing [R-IL] and cosponsored by Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-VA) Rep. Larry Combest (R-TX) Rep. John J. LaFalce (D-NY) Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA) and never debated in the House.[2]
The companion bill (S.3283) was introduced in the Senate on Dec. 15th, 2000 by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and cosponsored by Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) Sen. Thomas Harkin (D-IA) Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) and never debated in the Senate.[2]
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 has received criticism for the so-called "Enron loophole," 7 U.S.C. §2(h)(3) and (g), which exempts most over-the-counter energy trades and trading on electronic energy commodity markets. The "loophole" was drafted by lobbyists for Enron working with senator Phil Gramm[3] seeking a deregulated atmosphere for their new experiment, "Enron On-line".
Several Democratic legislators introduced legislation to close the loophole from 2000-2006[4][5], but were unsuccessful.
In September 2007, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) introduced Senate Bill S.2058 to specifically close the "Enron Loophole" [6] This bill was later attached to H.R. 6124, the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, aka "The 2008 Farm Bill". President Bush vetoed the bill, but was overridden by both the House and Senate, and on June 18th, 2008 the bill was enacted into law.[7]. One specific reason behind its introduction was to address the record high oil prices of the 2000s energy crisis. Since it was enacted, average gas prices of regular unleaded gasoline in the U.S. have dropped $0.357, from their record high of $4.114 on 7/17/2008 to an average of $3.757 as of 9/21/2008[8]
H.R. 4577 was an appropriations/budget bill encompassing the funding for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education for fiscal year 2001 which had already begun in Sept., 2000.
LOL I guess I quoted nearly the whole article. Worth it though, this is one problem we can't afford to figure out halfway and then get frustrated, throw up our hands, and expect our elected to get us out without our input.
-------------------- No longer eligible for government service due to lack of tax issues.
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