I don't think she did anything illegal. Probably she did something stupid. On the other hand, the hacker did something illegal and did it stupidly. So this is 2:1 in the Palin vs. Hacker match.
Exactly how familiar are you with Alaskan public records laws?
...this bozo gave Palin a perfect excuse to close the account and (presumably) destroy all the evidence. (And any evidence that can be recovered will be tainted.)
Yahoo already closed it. I think they had closed it before the first article hit Slashdot.
Once again, the account that got hacked is not the same account that was being used for state business. They were two different Yahoo accounts that she had and used for two different purposes, one for personal and the other for official communications.
Well they have a rather large.zip, in there. I'm still trying to figure out why people think there was incriminating stuff in there, though, since he claimed to have read all the emails and not found anything.
Nobody (who has half a brain) thinks there was incriminating things in her personal account. What people in Alaska found out before the hacking even took place, was that she had a Yahoo account that she was using for state business, and which therefore was circumventing the security and archival laws regarding official communications. That's not the account that got hacked, and both accounts were later deleted, so we aren't likely to find out what was in them. That could possibly come back to haunt her if there is an investigation.
I did read the whole article. I said that I understood the law already protected fetuses.
So if fetuses are already protected, and would remain protected, then how exactly is your earlier statement even remotely true?
Most importantly Obama voted to allow newborn babies who survived abortion attempts to be denied medical care, food or milk and allowed to die in a closet. Yes, look it up. He did it. Know your candidate.
Well, what some are claiming was that she was illegally using a personal account to do city business and avoid freedom of information act or some such. This guy probably was looking more for just plain dirt or gossip rather than trying to perform some public service as it's being painted. Turns out there wasn't anything in there and now he's in big trouble.
Read the linked article. She was using a Yahoo account for official business. Just not the account that was hacked.
Read the whole thing you moron. Click the link at the bottom that leads to the earlier article too. It explains what he voted against, and the fact that whether that law passed or not, your claim is still false because Illinois law already protects aborted fetuses, which you'd understand if you actually READ THE ARTICLE.
I do think that Bidens and all other congressional emails (through GOV accounts) should be available/read by 3rd party. And when corruption is found like in palins case...
Uh, nothing was found. You can keep saying that, but there was nothing there. Sorry.
No kidding. Because she had two Yahoo accounts. The one used for official business was already made public. He found another one that she used for personal communications. Of course he wasn't likely to find much official-looking stuff in that one.
Government officials are still citizens. They deserve privacy just like you or I do. If they are not above the law, then they have the same rights as you or I. Otherwise, we would be allowed to see into the private lives of the old lady at the DPS office. She is just as much a government employee as the governor.
But, hey! Don't let the facts cloud your judgment.
There happen to be laws that apply to government employees regarding the security and archiving of communications. It allows for accountability if there is an investigation that needs to subpoena those communications. She's not above those laws either.
Even if Palin had improperly conducted state business on yahoo (which would be stupid and illegal), hacking her email account is still immoral and illegal. I'm surprised that many people who normally are pro-freedom turn out to have very situational ethics when it comes to people they regard as political enemies. As others have said in this thread, a guy called Richard Nixon seemed to think that way.
This, I agree with. There are two crimes here. The kid hacking into her account, and her using a commercial account for state business. Both deserve their own punishment.
I'm sure that you can find many valid reasons to bag on Sarah Palin without insulting her for not knowing more about computers.
That is true. We should be focused on the fact that she's bypassing the law by using commercial email accounts rather than official state accounts that have the type of security and archiving that is required. That's plenty of reason to bag on her, or any other politician using such methods to avoid accountability.
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation, all the pictures, and there was nothing
There was no government business conducted from the account, moron.
That's because she had two different Yahoo accounts. He hacked the personal one. There was another one used for official business.
Actually that's NOT a fact. There's no evidence that anything there was anything illegal in her emails. There's a thread in here that reveals a link to a public post from the alleged hacker who said he was looking for dirt, but didn't find anything. And even if there were, the ends do NOT justify the means. In fact, even if there were anything illegal about the emails, it's now tainted and could not be used for prosecution.
Once again... for those who haven't been paying attention. He didn't hack the account she uses for official business. So we wouldn't really expect to find much in there anyway, and the account was only compromised for a brief time before someone changed the password and reported it.
If he had hacked in and found nothing (which is what he found, nothing) then just left it at that then Sarah would have had to reset the password again but probably would not think anything of it. Instead the moron posted to Wikileaks information that really was not very interesting I have to admit. In fact it would be subject to deletion for not being important had it not come from a hacked email account.
It's well-established that she and her staff have been using private accounts for state business. Anchorage Daily News has a decent story on it. It wasn't the one that got "hacked", which is why it's stupid that people keep saying that there's no story here because we haven't seen any official email.
The kid is an idiot for hacking the account. He's an unbelievably HUGE idiot for posting the emails the way he did. But really, he got into her personal account, and I don't see how that warrants any more of a punishment than if he'd gotten into anyone else's personal account.
Most importantly Obama voted to allow newborn babies who survived abortion attempts to be denied medical care, food or milk and allowed to die in a closet. Yes, look it up. He did it. Know your candidate.
Which is less than he deserves, really. If you're serious about privacy rights, you shouldn't have the attitude that privacy rights only attach to people you like.
I am serious about privacy rights, which is why I don't want the law to be applied in a partisan way or for political reasons. I don't think he should receive more punishment for hacking Palin's personal account than he'd receive for hacking my own. That doesn't seem likely in this case though. They'll probably be trying to make an example of him. That's just wrong, IMO.
By Rove's logic, there probably couldn't be a worse VP pick than Palin. Richmond is only the 105th largest city in the U.S.? I don't think Wasilla would have shown up even in the top 2000.
It is all spin and personal views anyway. If it hadn't been Palin, but had been Jindal, the Obama spin machine would still be attacking. If Hillary had won the nomination instead of Obama, the McCain group would be challenging her lack of experience.
I agree that it's all spin. But you'd think that they'd at least try to give the appearance of being internally consistent. I don't relish voting for either ticket, but my main issue is the economy and taxes. The republicans haven't been doing well in that area, and haven't been a fiscally conservative party in decades, taking only a quick step back in that direction during Reagan's second term, before returning to their irresponsible ways.
I am really disappointed in both candidates in their responses to the economic crysis so far. McCain still seems to hold Gramm as a close advisor, even though the AIG failure and many of the problems stem from the deregulation of credit default swaps in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 via a rider tacked on by Gramm. McCain seems to want to rearrange the regulation agencies, but doesn't seem to favor any regulation.Obama at least has proposed to re-regulate some of these areas, but its still short on details. I want to see more discussion of this in the debates and from the campaigns.
I think either one of them will be in for a seriously tough presidency due to the condition things will be in when they take office.
Unless they were standing there watching them fill out the ballots or click the buttons, then they weren't controlling their votes, and even if they were, they couldn't stop the person from voting for whoever they liked. Maybe they brought in groups that they believed were more likely to vote for their candidate, but both sides do all they can to get their supporters to the polls. It's nothing even remotely unusual, and certainly not illegal. But there's always a benefit to being able to call your opponent's efforts fraud, so of course that happens too.
People feel that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote, but until more people vote third party it will continue to look that way. How do you fix that?
Because our election system makes it this way. If we had a system that wasn't biased towards a 2-party system, like a ranked voting system, it wouldn't be an issue. The reason people don't vote for third party candidates is because it can lead to the worst possible outcome for them. Their two most favored candidates split the vote, and then the least-favored candidate wins. Can't blame people for not wanting to cause such a situation. If we were able to rank our choices, then there would be no ambiguity about who the people want to elect.
Of course, during that time she was doing the job she was elected to do, and gaining real world executive experience, unlike some others in this campaign.
Right. Republicans were belittling Tim Kaine as a possible VP pick for Obama because he was only mayor of Richmond and then governor of Virginia, and those just aren't as big as some other places in the U.S. Being mayor of Richmond makes Palin look like she ran a gas station in Wasilla. It's not even remotely comparable. Virginia dwarfs Alaska in both population and budget. Yet Republicans felt it wasn't enough to qualify him for the position. Then they turn around and put Palin up? Unbelievably hypocritical. A political stunt and nothing more. Anyone that takes Palin seriously as a VP candidate has issues.
And now my local Telco has already run fiber to my house to compete with the local cable company,
Where do you live that you have fiber to your house? I sure as hell don't have that option. It's slow or slower here. Even though AT&T is now starting to sell its U-Verse service here, it's definitely not fiber-to-the-house. Seems like glorified DSL and cable packages that only let you receive 1 HD stream at a time.
The problem isn't the products. The problem is that people abused them. High LTV products, Option ARMs, and stated income loans all have perfectly legitimate uses, and I have used them all. "Qualifying" unqualified borrowers is not a legitimate use, but I guess I don't need to explain that now.;)
Seems like the abuse was on a pretty massive scale though. Otherwise there wouldn't be nearly so many defaults.
Prices are set by markets. It was the market that didn't know how to value these securities.
Well, I wonder what the market actually knew about these securities. Aside from the complexity that they keep talking about, I wonder if they had any idea of the abuse of the various loans, and if not, who didn't come clean about the level of risk that was actually involved rather than the risk that would be expected if the abuse hadn't occurred?
Both McCain and Obama have been preoccupied with their presidential campaigns. I suppose it's less critical that Obama be back in Washington since he wouldn't add anything to the debate, and there's a 96.0% chance he'll just vote whatever his party tells him to vote, anyway [washingtonpost.com].
They're both talking about wanting most of the same principles to be applied to the eventual deal. Aside from that, neither of them will have much input on it, but both parties want their buy-in because the stakes are so high, and one of them will be the next president. Of course it has to be bipartisan, both for the sake of a united front to hopefully help calm the market, and because neither side has any desire to be held solely responsible for this deal.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall enjoyed huge bipartisan support. To call a bill that was passed nearly unanimously and signed into law by President Bill Clinton a "Republican initiative" is misleading. It pretty much just brought us into line with how the rest of the world operates.
Actually, the repeal part was only supported by Republicans, and it was a party-line thing until concessions were made in committee, which happened to be related to the CRA.
Those mortgage pools were divided into 3 tranches in increasing level of risk. The senior tranches with the safest loans it them were insured against loss. How would you, wise fellow, rate the safest loans in the pool that were insured against loss? Once it became clear that the senior tranches were seeing high levels of default, to the point that the insurers were too undercapitalized to actually compensate the investors in these "low-risk" securities, their ratings were slashed.
Seems like you're saying "safest" in a relative sense, compared to the other loans. That still doesn't seem like a safe investment, considering the types of loans that were made.
After all, if a protected class member fills out a loan app, and that protected class member qualifies for a loan product, any loan product, it would be illegal for a broker to deny the applicant.
Who creates these loan products that someone with no job and no collateral can qualify for?
These investments were mispriced, it turned out, and no one really knew how to price them
Seems like the banks that were packaging these things should have known how to price them. How do they manage to create what are, by all accounts I've heard, extremely complex securities, without knowing what they're worth?
By the way, would you like to see real leadership? Check out the front page of CNN right now [cnn.com]. That's who needs to be running the country come January 2009.
I think they both have a point. I do think that Obama needs to be back for a vote, but it will probably be the related committees doing most of the negotiations and work anyway. I think Congress would be amazed to see McCain show up for a vote at all, given his record.
Ok then, convince me. Explain what's going on here. From what I know of it so far, it was more due to Congress and a lack of oversight, although some things like repealing Glass-Steagall were Republican initiatives, while the CRA was a Democratic initiative. Obviously it's a combination of laws that resulted in the current situation. Saying that the CRA is responsible for it is a major oversimplification though, as is pointing the finger at any one specific law. Most of the subprime loans weren't CRA-related.
The banks and mortgage companies were doing some very shady stuff in pushing subprime loans on people who could qualify for regular loans (as many as 61% according to the WSJ). The rating agencies were giving AAA ratings to these securities composed of high risk loans. I haven't found any explanation for that yet, but it seems like one of the most egregious problems, as investors who thought they were getting a safe investment were actually getting a very risky one. I assume this makes the banks more money, but the high-risk nature seems like it could lead directly to the situation we're in now.
For some reason, we still seem to let these companies grow so big that they become "too big too fail", and then we have to bail them out, as Secretary Paulson keeps saying. I can't find any explanation for why that happens either.
And you still have no answer to my assertion that raising taxes during an economic downturn will make the downturn worse. I don't blame you, because that is one of Obama's biggest Achilles' heels, and McCain will be wise to really hammer him on that one in the debates. No credible economist believes raising taxes will help get us out of this downturn.
Have you been paying attention? We're in the situation we're in now thanks to Republican policies. They haven't made anything even remotely better. The economy is screwed and we're practically bankrupt. Why? Because Republicans don't think markets need rules, so they back deregulation at every opportunity. They think there's no such thing as a "too big" corporation, so they back mergers at every opportunity.
Taxes are a red herring. Republicans will rant about how your taxes will go up under the Democrats. They forget to tell you that the economy in general will do better under the Democrats, and that the income levels of the lower tiers will rise faster than the upper tier under Democrats, so most of us will be doing better overall, and the ones at the top are already doing ridiculously well and tend to stay that way.
History supports this. It's very unlikely that most people will do better under a Republican president. You talk about taxes being higher, but that will happen regardless of who wins because the government will be broke by the time Bush leaves. So, what evidence do you have that supports the idea that most people will do better under a Republican?
That's an easy one. Obama wants to raise your taxes during an economic downturn. Most economists agree that raising taxes during an economic downturn will make the downturn worse.;)
My wife and I don't make anywhere near a combined $250K, so Obama's plan won't raise my taxes, despite McCain's ads to the contrary.
Sure sounds like an offer for McCain to pick the venue to me. But I'm not a great communicator like Sen. Obama.
Time and place are one thing. Setting the format and rules are something else altogether. McCain obviously thought so or he would have taken them up on the offered debates. On the FISA issue, he has issued a rather thorough explanation for why he voted for the final bill after voting against the immunity amendments repeatedly. I still wish he had voted against the whole thing, but that's just my view. I'm sure that it would be used as a club against him either way, and he probably knew that too. Btw, he said he would support a filibuster on it, but he can't do that alone. There weren't enough votes against it to make a filibuster happen anyway.
Look, I could go down the list of McCain's reversals, but you'll find some way to excuse them all I'm sure. I'm not going to waste my time. Like I said, I'm voting for the one I think will do the least damage, and it's not a pleasant thing for me to do. I won't be heartbroken if McCain wins. In some ways it will be fitting to see him suffer the aftermath of the deregulation that he supported. I just don't trust him not to give away the farm to the jackasses in the banks that have managed to bankrupt the country.
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Which is what she did.
Not hardly.
I don't think she did anything illegal. Probably she did something stupid.
On the other hand, the hacker did something illegal and did it stupidly.
So this is 2:1 in the Palin vs. Hacker match.
Exactly how familiar are you with Alaskan public records laws?
...this bozo gave Palin a perfect excuse to close the account and (presumably) destroy all the evidence. (And any evidence that can be recovered will be tainted.)
Yahoo already closed it. I think they had closed it before the first article hit Slashdot.
Once again, the account that got hacked is not the same account that was being used for state business. They were two different Yahoo accounts that she had and used for two different purposes, one for personal and the other for official communications.
Well they have a rather large .zip, in there. I'm still trying to figure out why people think there was incriminating stuff in there, though, since he claimed to have read all the emails and not found anything.
Nobody (who has half a brain) thinks there was incriminating things in her personal account. What people in Alaska found out before the hacking even took place, was that she had a Yahoo account that she was using for state business, and which therefore was circumventing the security and archival laws regarding official communications. That's not the account that got hacked, and both accounts were later deleted, so we aren't likely to find out what was in them. That could possibly come back to haunt her if there is an investigation.
I did read the whole article. I said that I understood the law already protected fetuses.
So if fetuses are already protected, and would remain protected, then how exactly is your earlier statement even remotely true?
Most importantly Obama voted to allow newborn babies who survived abortion attempts to be denied medical care, food or milk and allowed to die in a closet. Yes, look it up. He did it. Know your candidate.
This was complete bullshit and you know it.
Well, what some are claiming was that she was illegally using a personal account to do city business and avoid freedom of information act or some such. This guy probably was looking more for just plain dirt or gossip rather than trying to perform some public service as it's being painted. Turns out there wasn't anything in there and now he's in big trouble.
Read the linked article. She was using a Yahoo account for official business. Just not the account that was hacked.
Read the whole thing you moron. Click the link at the bottom that leads to the earlier article too. It explains what he voted against, and the fact that whether that law passed or not, your claim is still false because Illinois law already protects aborted fetuses, which you'd understand if you actually READ THE ARTICLE.
I do think that Bidens and all other congressional emails (through GOV accounts) should be available/read by 3rd party. And when corruption is found like in palins case...
Uh, nothing was found. You can keep saying that, but there was nothing there. Sorry.
No kidding. Because she had two Yahoo accounts. The one used for official business was already made public. He found another one that she used for personal communications. Of course he wasn't likely to find much official-looking stuff in that one.
Government officials are still citizens. They deserve privacy just like you or I do. If they are not above the law, then they have the same rights as you or I. Otherwise, we would be allowed to see into the private lives of the old lady at the DPS office. She is just as much a government employee as the governor.
But, hey! Don't let the facts cloud your judgment.
There happen to be laws that apply to government employees regarding the security and archiving of communications. It allows for accountability if there is an investigation that needs to subpoena those communications. She's not above those laws either.
Even if Palin had improperly conducted state business on yahoo (which would be stupid and illegal), hacking her email account is still immoral and illegal. I'm surprised that many people who normally are pro-freedom turn out to have very situational ethics when it comes to people they regard as political enemies. As others have said in this thread, a guy called Richard Nixon seemed to think that way.
This, I agree with. There are two crimes here. The kid hacking into her account, and her using a commercial account for state business. Both deserve their own punishment.
I'm sure that you can find many valid reasons to bag on Sarah Palin without insulting her for not knowing more about computers.
That is true. We should be focused on the fact that she's bypassing the law by using commercial email accounts rather than official state accounts that have the type of security and archiving that is required. That's plenty of reason to bag on her, or any other politician using such methods to avoid accountability.
Earlier it was just some prank to me, I really wanted to get something incriminating which I was sure there would be, just like all of you anon out there that you think there was some missed opportunity of glory, well there WAS NOTHING, I read everything, every little blackberry confirmation, all the pictures, and there was nothing
There was no government business conducted from the account, moron.
That's because she had two different Yahoo accounts. He hacked the personal one. There was another one used for official business.
Two separate crimes. Neither excuses the other.
Actually that's NOT a fact. There's no evidence that anything there was anything illegal in her emails. There's a thread in here that reveals a link to a public post from the alleged hacker who said he was looking for dirt, but didn't find anything. And even if there were, the ends do NOT justify the means. In fact, even if there were anything illegal about the emails, it's now tainted and could not be used for prosecution.
Once again... for those who haven't been paying attention. He didn't hack the account she uses for official business. So we wouldn't really expect to find much in there anyway, and the account was only compromised for a brief time before someone changed the password and reported it.
If he had hacked in and found nothing (which is what he found, nothing) then just left it at that then Sarah would have had to reset the password again but probably would not think anything of it. Instead the moron posted to Wikileaks information that really was not very interesting I have to admit. In fact it would be subject to deletion for not being important had it not come from a hacked email account.
It's well-established that she and her staff have been using private accounts for state business. Anchorage Daily News has a decent story on it. It wasn't the one that got "hacked", which is why it's stupid that people keep saying that there's no story here because we haven't seen any official email.
The kid is an idiot for hacking the account. He's an unbelievably HUGE idiot for posting the emails the way he did. But really, he got into her personal account, and I don't see how that warrants any more of a punishment than if he'd gotten into anyone else's personal account.
Most importantly Obama voted to allow newborn babies who survived abortion attempts to be denied medical care, food or milk and allowed to die in a closet. Yes, look it up. He did it. Know your candidate.
Get your facts straight, idiot.
Your other arguments are too dumb to bother responding to. It's rather hilarious that you call others mindless.
Which is less than he deserves, really. If you're serious about privacy rights, you shouldn't have the attitude that privacy rights only attach to people you like.
I am serious about privacy rights, which is why I don't want the law to be applied in a partisan way or for political reasons. I don't think he should receive more punishment for hacking Palin's personal account than he'd receive for hacking my own. That doesn't seem likely in this case though. They'll probably be trying to make an example of him. That's just wrong, IMO.
I don't recall any belittling of Tim Kaine, I'd be happy to review any citations you have.
How about Karl Rove himself?
By Rove's logic, there probably couldn't be a worse VP pick than Palin. Richmond is only the 105th largest city in the U.S.? I don't think Wasilla would have shown up even in the top 2000.
It is all spin and personal views anyway. If it hadn't been Palin, but had been Jindal, the Obama spin machine would still be attacking. If Hillary had won the nomination instead of Obama, the McCain group would be challenging her lack of experience.
I agree that it's all spin. But you'd think that they'd at least try to give the appearance of being internally consistent. I don't relish voting for either ticket, but my main issue is the economy and taxes. The republicans haven't been doing well in that area, and haven't been a fiscally conservative party in decades, taking only a quick step back in that direction during Reagan's second term, before returning to their irresponsible ways.
I am really disappointed in both candidates in their responses to the economic crysis so far. McCain still seems to hold Gramm as a close advisor, even though the AIG failure and many of the problems stem from the deregulation of credit default swaps in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 via a rider tacked on by Gramm. McCain seems to want to rearrange the regulation agencies, but doesn't seem to favor any regulation.Obama at least has proposed to re-regulate some of these areas, but its still short on details. I want to see more discussion of this in the debates and from the campaigns.
I think either one of them will be in for a seriously tough presidency due to the condition things will be in when they take office.
Unless they were standing there watching them fill out the ballots or click the buttons, then they weren't controlling their votes, and even if they were, they couldn't stop the person from voting for whoever they liked. Maybe they brought in groups that they believed were more likely to vote for their candidate, but both sides do all they can to get their supporters to the polls. It's nothing even remotely unusual, and certainly not illegal. But there's always a benefit to being able to call your opponent's efforts fraud, so of course that happens too.
People feel that a vote for a third party is a wasted vote, but until more people vote third party it will continue to look that way. How do you fix that?
Because our election system makes it this way. If we had a system that wasn't biased towards a 2-party system, like a ranked voting system, it wouldn't be an issue. The reason people don't vote for third party candidates is because it can lead to the worst possible outcome for them. Their two most favored candidates split the vote, and then the least-favored candidate wins. Can't blame people for not wanting to cause such a situation. If we were able to rank our choices, then there would be no ambiguity about who the people want to elect.
Of course, during that time she was doing the job she was elected to do, and gaining real world executive experience, unlike some others in this campaign.
Right. Republicans were belittling Tim Kaine as a possible VP pick for Obama because he was only mayor of Richmond and then governor of Virginia, and those just aren't as big as some other places in the U.S. Being mayor of Richmond makes Palin look like she ran a gas station in Wasilla. It's not even remotely comparable. Virginia dwarfs Alaska in both population and budget. Yet Republicans felt it wasn't enough to qualify him for the position. Then they turn around and put Palin up? Unbelievably hypocritical. A political stunt and nothing more. Anyone that takes Palin seriously as a VP candidate has issues.
And now my local Telco has already run fiber to my house to compete with the local cable company,
Where do you live that you have fiber to your house? I sure as hell don't have that option. It's slow or slower here. Even though AT&T is now starting to sell its U-Verse service here, it's definitely not fiber-to-the-house. Seems like glorified DSL and cable packages that only let you receive 1 HD stream at a time.
The problem isn't the products. The problem is that people abused them. High LTV products, Option ARMs, and stated income loans all have perfectly legitimate uses, and I have used them all. "Qualifying" unqualified borrowers is not a legitimate use, but I guess I don't need to explain that now. ;)
Seems like the abuse was on a pretty massive scale though. Otherwise there wouldn't be nearly so many defaults.
Prices are set by markets. It was the market that didn't know how to value these securities.
Well, I wonder what the market actually knew about these securities. Aside from the complexity that they keep talking about, I wonder if they had any idea of the abuse of the various loans, and if not, who didn't come clean about the level of risk that was actually involved rather than the risk that would be expected if the abuse hadn't occurred?
Both McCain and Obama have been preoccupied with their presidential campaigns. I suppose it's less critical that Obama be back in Washington since he wouldn't add anything to the debate, and there's a 96.0% chance he'll just vote whatever his party tells him to vote, anyway [washingtonpost.com].
They're both talking about wanting most of the same principles to be applied to the eventual deal. Aside from that, neither of them will have much input on it, but both parties want their buy-in because the stakes are so high, and one of them will be the next president. Of course it has to be bipartisan, both for the sake of a united front to hopefully help calm the market, and because neither side has any desire to be held solely responsible for this deal.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall enjoyed huge bipartisan support. To call a bill that was passed nearly unanimously and signed into law by President Bill Clinton a "Republican initiative" is misleading. It pretty much just brought us into line with how the rest of the world operates.
Actually, the repeal part was only supported by Republicans, and it was a party-line thing until concessions were made in committee, which happened to be related to the CRA.
Those mortgage pools were divided into 3 tranches in increasing level of risk. The senior tranches with the safest loans it them were insured against loss. How would you, wise fellow, rate the safest loans in the pool that were insured against loss? Once it became clear that the senior tranches were seeing high levels of default, to the point that the insurers were too undercapitalized to actually compensate the investors in these "low-risk" securities, their ratings were slashed.
Seems like you're saying "safest" in a relative sense, compared to the other loans. That still doesn't seem like a safe investment, considering the types of loans that were made.
After all, if a protected class member fills out a loan app, and that protected class member qualifies for a loan product, any loan product, it would be illegal for a broker to deny the applicant.
Who creates these loan products that someone with no job and no collateral can qualify for?
These investments were mispriced, it turned out, and no one really knew how to price them
Seems like the banks that were packaging these things should have known how to price them. How do they manage to create what are, by all accounts I've heard, extremely complex securities, without knowing what they're worth?
By the way, would you like to see real leadership? Check out the front page of CNN right now [cnn.com]. That's who needs to be running the country come January 2009.
I think they both have a point. I do think that Obama needs to be back for a vote, but it will probably be the related committees doing most of the negotiations and work anyway. I think Congress would be amazed to see McCain show up for a vote at all, given his record.
Ok then, convince me. Explain what's going on here. From what I know of it so far, it was more due to Congress and a lack of oversight, although some things like repealing Glass-Steagall were Republican initiatives, while the CRA was a Democratic initiative. Obviously it's a combination of laws that resulted in the current situation. Saying that the CRA is responsible for it is a major oversimplification though, as is pointing the finger at any one specific law. Most of the subprime loans weren't CRA-related.
The banks and mortgage companies were doing some very shady stuff in pushing subprime loans on people who could qualify for regular loans (as many as 61% according to the WSJ). The rating agencies were giving AAA ratings to these securities composed of high risk loans. I haven't found any explanation for that yet, but it seems like one of the most egregious problems, as investors who thought they were getting a safe investment were actually getting a very risky one. I assume this makes the banks more money, but the high-risk nature seems like it could lead directly to the situation we're in now.
For some reason, we still seem to let these companies grow so big that they become "too big too fail", and then we have to bail them out, as Secretary Paulson keeps saying. I can't find any explanation for why that happens either.
And you still have no answer to my assertion that raising taxes during an economic downturn will make the downturn worse. I don't blame you, because that is one of Obama's biggest Achilles' heels, and McCain will be wise to really hammer him on that one in the debates. No credible economist believes raising taxes will help get us out of this downturn.
Have you been paying attention? We're in the situation we're in now thanks to Republican policies. They haven't made anything even remotely better. The economy is screwed and we're practically bankrupt. Why? Because Republicans don't think markets need rules, so they back deregulation at every opportunity. They think there's no such thing as a "too big" corporation, so they back mergers at every opportunity.
Taxes are a red herring. Republicans will rant about how your taxes will go up under the Democrats. They forget to tell you that the economy in general will do better under the Democrats, and that the income levels of the lower tiers will rise faster than the upper tier under Democrats, so most of us will be doing better overall, and the ones at the top are already doing ridiculously well and tend to stay that way.
History supports this. It's very unlikely that most people will do better under a Republican president. You talk about taxes being higher, but that will happen regardless of who wins because the government will be broke by the time Bush leaves. So, what evidence do you have that supports the idea that most people will do better under a Republican?
Republicans, Democrats, National Debt, and Fiscal Responsibility
Jobs created during U.S. presidential terms
National debt by U.S. presidential terms
Would Obama's Plan Be Faster, Fairer, Stronger?
That's an easy one. Obama wants to raise your taxes during an economic downturn. Most economists agree that raising taxes during an economic downturn will make the downturn worse. ;)
My wife and I don't make anywhere near a combined $250K, so Obama's plan won't raise my taxes, despite McCain's ads to the contrary.
Sure sounds like an offer for McCain to pick the venue to me. But I'm not a great communicator like Sen. Obama.
Time and place are one thing. Setting the format and rules are something else altogether. McCain obviously thought so or he would have taken them up on the offered debates. On the FISA issue, he has issued a rather thorough explanation for why he voted for the final bill after voting against the immunity amendments repeatedly. I still wish he had voted against the whole thing, but that's just my view. I'm sure that it would be used as a club against him either way, and he probably knew that too. Btw, he said he would support a filibuster on it, but he can't do that alone. There weren't enough votes against it to make a filibuster happen anyway.
Look, I could go down the list of McCain's reversals, but you'll find some way to excuse them all I'm sure. I'm not going to waste my time. Like I said, I'm voting for the one I think will do the least damage, and it's not a pleasant thing for me to do. I won't be heartbroken if McCain wins. In some ways it will be fitting to see him suffer the aftermath of the deregulation that he supported. I just don't trust him not to give away the farm to the jackasses in the banks that have managed to bankrupt the country.