President Barack Obama: You can't continue to pay yourselves billions, after nearly destroying the economy... Banker: No bonus for him. And therefore he must not be any good.
It is true that the democracts helped ruin the economy. But they went on the advice given to them by economists. They said, “sure, give people cheap loans to buy houses” Well that sounds altruistic in nature and surely they as polititians where not going to see the effects of such actions, especially when everyone was happy in the short term. But the thing is that the democrats are realizing that mistakes were made and so have to implement legislation to help resolve that. The republicans are just telilng people to do the same as they did before, and that IS crazy. I mean certainly the dems had their hand in ruining the economy, everyone did, anyone who took a cheap loan was part of the problem. But now that they DO KNOW, they are triyng to fix it, instead of trying to tell people that everything is great and we should keep driving off the cliff.
Poor Scott, You haven’t read the Sermon on the Mount. Obviously you have a pathological tendency to turn your self loathing into blind and uninformed hatred of anyone to your right.
Who started a war against a nation that was not a national security threat? Hint: they said that it would “pay for itself.” $700 Billion dollars paid just for Iraq, while cutting tax rates, is not sound economic strategy.
That said, yes, Republicans got us into this mess, but we won’t get out of it by doing what’s best for the rich.
Dems and Republicans got us into this mess, and just like Republicans are blaming Obama for unemployment going up [because it happened on his watch] this crisis happened on Bush’s watch.
acd…Whether a bank CEO gets a bonus or not, has nothing to do with fixing the huge amounts of bad loans that bankers were encouraged to write by Dems and community organizers. It is just a bandaid on a broken arm and a boogey man for the president to put up to incite emotions of the people. Republicans and some Democrats were warning of the Fannie/Freddie debacle and what may happen, but Frank and Dodd were on a mission. You say that the Republicans are telling people to do the same as before, but that is just a talking point that must have been picked up on some left leaning blog and has nothing to do with the problem of all those bad loans.
I agree that all politicians have had a hand in the current recession, and some of those banks weren’t that worried about bad publicity of denying loans, but were just raking in the cash while they could.
They deliberately create problems, then blame the GOP while offering to “solve” them.”
Some Dems did. Yet scott, you often enough give the GOP congress credit for Clinton’s balanced budgets. Yet now you only mention the Democrats? Riiiight.
wminfield, bonuses aren’t such a big thing either way, on their own. My beef with bonuses is that they are simply an indicator of a flawed culture. When your company has been doing poorly, you’ve been laying people off, losing, etc and you get a bonus at the end, what is this bonus given for? Definitely not good performance, and in most cases not because your salary is too little. It means that you don’t care what happens to the company, its employees, or anything else. You are effectively draining the company to fill your own pockets.
On its own, it’s a fairly nasty practice. However, if the company in question is employing state aid, it becomes a bigger matter. Now it’s not only the company’s coffers being drained, and not only its public image dragged through the mud.
Remember the uproar when AIG, just after receiving billions from the state, announced its latest bonuses? The administration got a lot of flak for its bailout because of stuff like that.
4uk4ata…That was my point. Bonuses are a drop in the bucket to the bad loans that helped start the recession. I agree they are an indication of corruption as you lay it out. CEOs fill the boards with cronies so they can take care of each other. I would rather the consumer punish companies that are run like this, but I realize it is tough to tell until it is too late in many cases. I still don’t like the idea of the gov’t capping salaries, because it is a slippery slope.
Fed employees and Congress are receiving wage/salary increases, all while they cry for all of us poor, jobless citizens that they want to tax to death. That is taxpayer money funding those increases. Where is the uproar over that as they talk about the how they can limit corporate pay. The administration keeps looking for another boogeyman they can hold up as a divertion to what they are doing behind closed doors.
wminfield: “…the huge amounts of bad loans that bankers were encouraged to write by Dems and community organizers.”
The mortgage market is up in the $3,000 billion range ($3 trillion). Government ‘encouraged’ loans to low income people made up a tiny fraction of the total market, and a small fraction of the subprime mortgage mess.
“The subprime market began to bloom in the late 1990s, and then picked up steam after the 2001 recession At the start of the current decade, subprime originations still only accounted for about 6 percent of total residential mortgage originations. By 2006, the subprime share of total mortgage originations had risen to about 25 percent. By one estimate, in late 2007, the number of outstanding subprime mortgage loans totaled about 73⁄4 million, or 14 percent of the overall mortgage market.5
research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/08/01/McDonald.pdf
ACORNs ( http://www.acorn.org ) annual budget is about $.0035 billion, What is so scary about this little organization?
The subprime mortgage mess was generated by greed, willing fraud and a failure of oversight in the banking sector that had only a little to do with any government sponsored programs.
Only one of 25 subprime lenders was subject to the government rules that encouraged loans to low income people. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/opinion/14krugman.html I’ve read elsewhere that the subprime loans resulting from government programs made up less than 5% of the totals. This was a private banking sector free-for-all, that had little to do with the loans to the poor programs and a lot to do with the deregulation of the banking/investment sector.
The idea that the big meltdown was a result of government forcing banks to lower their standards is utter nonsense, designed to take attention away from the culprits (the private banking sector) and blame it on government (the only power capable of reigning in the excesses of the financial sector).
It’s very effective: Convince the easy to manipulate that they must fear government regulation, so that the worst offenders in the financial sector are free to pillage the economy.
“ACORNs ( http://www.acorn.org ) annual budget is about $.0035 billion, What is so scary about this little organization?”
It encourages lower income people to vote. Lower income people might vote Democrat. The Right likes to attack the Left saying we fear Palin, but ACORN is a buzzword perpetrated by the Right to the same degree.
How come it’s never a slippery slope in the other direction? Never a comment about how if we get rid of any of the regulations governing the private sector, we will slip into a situation where there will be so little regulation that a boom and bust market will be destructive.
Nope.
It’s always, “if we pass that oversight law, we’ll all have to wear the same brown coats and eat government-supplied oatmeal every meal!”
wminfield, I don’t think that under normal conditions, governments need to regulate maximum salary or the like. They already do some of that via taxation anyway.
The thing is, for the banks that got the bailout the term “normal conditions” does not apply. They got a credit better than anyone else could have given them, and a credit with public money at that - yours, in the end (I’m not from the US, sorry). When you take a loan, you also take on some obligations; in this case as payback for the good conditions. A private institution would probably hold the banks no less responsible for the waste (in its eyes) that they generate.
In the end, I don’t think the bonuses aren’t a big thing in themselves, but the big shots’ behavior is reflecting badly on their savior - the US government. Already there are comments on these boards blaming everything that went wrong with the bailout on Obama, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
wminfeld. but no one forced banks to parse up those loans into incomprehensible derivatives, craeting $30 bucks of debt for every $1 of mortgage. That’s what did them in. And they were helped by the rating agencies who gave these sliced and diced derivatives the highest rating possible, even the ones based on questionable loans. No one forced the mortgage loan industry to falsify documents, forego income verification and write up big loans that paid them higher commissions, then sell the loans, having no blowback from their falsified data. Bear Stearns got caught with e-mails between hedge fund managers warning that 50 percent of bonds they were selling for one year (2006 as I recall) were based on loans with no income verification. The partners protected their own personal funds by withdrawing but kept selling the bonds as high yield. Lots of blame to go around for meltdown. Greed trumped common sense and then some.
NoFearPup over 14 years ago
I thought it was Barney and the Hand-out Gang that destroyed the Economy.
HUMPHRIES over 14 years ago
Looks like there’s a little animosity in high places. And my how the local “conservatives” squeal.
d_legendary1 over 14 years ago
He’s looking more and more like a Republican everyday that passes by.
a.c.d over 14 years ago
It is true that the democracts helped ruin the economy. But they went on the advice given to them by economists. They said, “sure, give people cheap loans to buy houses” Well that sounds altruistic in nature and surely they as polititians where not going to see the effects of such actions, especially when everyone was happy in the short term. But the thing is that the democrats are realizing that mistakes were made and so have to implement legislation to help resolve that. The republicans are just telilng people to do the same as they did before, and that IS crazy. I mean certainly the dems had their hand in ruining the economy, everyone did, anyone who took a cheap loan was part of the problem. But now that they DO KNOW, they are triyng to fix it, instead of trying to tell people that everything is great and we should keep driving off the cliff.
hastynote Premium Member over 14 years ago
Poor Scott, You haven’t read the Sermon on the Mount. Obviously you have a pathological tendency to turn your self loathing into blind and uninformed hatred of anyone to your right.
eft over 14 years ago
Who started a war against a nation that was not a national security threat? Hint: they said that it would “pay for itself.” $700 Billion dollars paid just for Iraq, while cutting tax rates, is not sound economic strategy.
That said, yes, Republicans got us into this mess, but we won’t get out of it by doing what’s best for the rich.
Jaedabee Premium Member over 14 years ago
Dems and Republicans got us into this mess, and just like Republicans are blaming Obama for unemployment going up [because it happened on his watch] this crisis happened on Bush’s watch.
wminfield over 14 years ago
acd…Whether a bank CEO gets a bonus or not, has nothing to do with fixing the huge amounts of bad loans that bankers were encouraged to write by Dems and community organizers. It is just a bandaid on a broken arm and a boogey man for the president to put up to incite emotions of the people. Republicans and some Democrats were warning of the Fannie/Freddie debacle and what may happen, but Frank and Dodd were on a mission. You say that the Republicans are telling people to do the same as before, but that is just a talking point that must have been picked up on some left leaning blog and has nothing to do with the problem of all those bad loans.
I agree that all politicians have had a hand in the current recession, and some of those banks weren’t that worried about bad publicity of denying loans, but were just raking in the cash while they could.
lonecat over 14 years ago
Another great Toles image, but it might be better without the sign. He could have identified them as bankers in Obama’s balloon.
iamthelorax over 14 years ago
I suppose then the answer should be “So why d’you give us the money?”
4uk4ata over 14 years ago
“DEMONCRATS. The Barney Franks, Chris Dodds, etc.
They deliberately create problems, then blame the GOP while offering to “solve” them.”
Some Dems did. Yet scott, you often enough give the GOP congress credit for Clinton’s balanced budgets. Yet now you only mention the Democrats? Riiiight.
wminfield, bonuses aren’t such a big thing either way, on their own. My beef with bonuses is that they are simply an indicator of a flawed culture. When your company has been doing poorly, you’ve been laying people off, losing, etc and you get a bonus at the end, what is this bonus given for? Definitely not good performance, and in most cases not because your salary is too little. It means that you don’t care what happens to the company, its employees, or anything else. You are effectively draining the company to fill your own pockets.
On its own, it’s a fairly nasty practice. However, if the company in question is employing state aid, it becomes a bigger matter. Now it’s not only the company’s coffers being drained, and not only its public image dragged through the mud.
Remember the uproar when AIG, just after receiving billions from the state, announced its latest bonuses? The administration got a lot of flak for its bailout because of stuff like that.
wminfield over 14 years ago
4uk4ata…That was my point. Bonuses are a drop in the bucket to the bad loans that helped start the recession. I agree they are an indication of corruption as you lay it out. CEOs fill the boards with cronies so they can take care of each other. I would rather the consumer punish companies that are run like this, but I realize it is tough to tell until it is too late in many cases. I still don’t like the idea of the gov’t capping salaries, because it is a slippery slope.
Fed employees and Congress are receiving wage/salary increases, all while they cry for all of us poor, jobless citizens that they want to tax to death. That is taxpayer money funding those increases. Where is the uproar over that as they talk about the how they can limit corporate pay. The administration keeps looking for another boogeyman they can hold up as a divertion to what they are doing behind closed doors.
vhammon over 14 years ago
wminfield: “…the huge amounts of bad loans that bankers were encouraged to write by Dems and community organizers.”
The mortgage market is up in the $3,000 billion range ($3 trillion). Government ‘encouraged’ loans to low income people made up a tiny fraction of the total market, and a small fraction of the subprime mortgage mess.
“The subprime market began to bloom in the late 1990s, and then picked up steam after the 2001 recession At the start of the current decade, subprime originations still only accounted for about 6 percent of total residential mortgage originations. By 2006, the subprime share of total mortgage originations had risen to about 25 percent. By one estimate, in late 2007, the number of outstanding subprime mortgage loans totaled about 73⁄4 million, or 14 percent of the overall mortgage market.5 research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/08/01/McDonald.pdf
ACORNs ( http://www.acorn.org ) annual budget is about $.0035 billion, What is so scary about this little organization?
The subprime mortgage mess was generated by greed, willing fraud and a failure of oversight in the banking sector that had only a little to do with any government sponsored programs.
Only one of 25 subprime lenders was subject to the government rules that encouraged loans to low income people. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/opinion/14krugman.html I’ve read elsewhere that the subprime loans resulting from government programs made up less than 5% of the totals. This was a private banking sector free-for-all, that had little to do with the loans to the poor programs and a lot to do with the deregulation of the banking/investment sector.
The idea that the big meltdown was a result of government forcing banks to lower their standards is utter nonsense, designed to take attention away from the culprits (the private banking sector) and blame it on government (the only power capable of reigning in the excesses of the financial sector).
It’s very effective: Convince the easy to manipulate that they must fear government regulation, so that the worst offenders in the financial sector are free to pillage the economy.
Jaedabee Premium Member over 14 years ago
“ACORNs ( http://www.acorn.org ) annual budget is about $.0035 billion, What is so scary about this little organization?”
It encourages lower income people to vote. Lower income people might vote Democrat. The Right likes to attack the Left saying we fear Palin, but ACORN is a buzzword perpetrated by the Right to the same degree.eft over 14 years ago
Slippery slope!
How come it’s never a slippery slope in the other direction? Never a comment about how if we get rid of any of the regulations governing the private sector, we will slip into a situation where there will be so little regulation that a boom and bust market will be destructive.
Nope.
It’s always, “if we pass that oversight law, we’ll all have to wear the same brown coats and eat government-supplied oatmeal every meal!”
4uk4ata over 14 years ago
wminfield, I don’t think that under normal conditions, governments need to regulate maximum salary or the like. They already do some of that via taxation anyway.
The thing is, for the banks that got the bailout the term “normal conditions” does not apply. They got a credit better than anyone else could have given them, and a credit with public money at that - yours, in the end (I’m not from the US, sorry). When you take a loan, you also take on some obligations; in this case as payback for the good conditions. A private institution would probably hold the banks no less responsible for the waste (in its eyes) that they generate.
In the end, I don’t think the bonuses aren’t a big thing in themselves, but the big shots’ behavior is reflecting badly on their savior - the US government. Already there are comments on these boards blaming everything that went wrong with the bailout on Obama, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.
believecommonsense over 14 years ago
wminfeld. but no one forced banks to parse up those loans into incomprehensible derivatives, craeting $30 bucks of debt for every $1 of mortgage. That’s what did them in. And they were helped by the rating agencies who gave these sliced and diced derivatives the highest rating possible, even the ones based on questionable loans. No one forced the mortgage loan industry to falsify documents, forego income verification and write up big loans that paid them higher commissions, then sell the loans, having no blowback from their falsified data. Bear Stearns got caught with e-mails between hedge fund managers warning that 50 percent of bonds they were selling for one year (2006 as I recall) were based on loans with no income verification. The partners protected their own personal funds by withdrawing but kept selling the bonds as high yield. Lots of blame to go around for meltdown. Greed trumped common sense and then some.