Whether or not parties have to go to mediation is based on the respective court's local rules. I believe there is a law mandating that for every case there must be at least an attempt to get the parties into ADR.
Motions to dismiss are very common, and parties frequently file them even if they don't have a strong argument or even think they're likely to win, so I don't know if it really means anything.
It sounds like they didn't properly control this experiment.
That's the accusation thrown at every psychological experiment on slashdot. Every study is going to have some sort of bias and experimental flaws, it's not particle physics and you can't correct for everything.
The lesser of two evils increasingly looks like a third party vote or vote one party into the white house and the other into congress in the hopes that they spend more time bickering than doing anything..
Yes, because when bad laws are already on the books and being enforced, the best option is inaction rather than electing people who will change those laws.
True, the logically challenged who tend to pipe in with "correlation is not causation" on slashdot then sit back and wait for applause are even wronger for this story than they usually are.
Spin your resume to emphasize coding skills. Did you write scripts in your QA job? Even if it was a 3 line batch file, put it in. If you coordinated with programmers in your job, put that. Did you do any debugging at all?
If you can come up with a halfway decent program on your own time, try to do it. Throw it in your cover letter, and offer them the program and the code. Don't worry about open sourcing anything, this should be your own code, and it should be clean.
Not necessarily a good thing. A foreign-owned company operating a manufacturing plant with a skeleton crew means a lot of the money is leaving the country, and isn't even partially slowed down by the wages paid to a full workforce.
The blame for this rests on the Senators and Congressmen who allowed themselves to be lobbied into passing such industry serving legislation.
Probably going to provoke some outrage here, but while I agree this legislation is problematic and don't believe it should have been passed, I can understand what a lot of congresspeople would have been thinking.
Let's be honest here: our country has lost its manufacturing base. Our financial base took a huge hit, and even a lot of those companies had already evolved from American corporations to international ones. The eternal optimists here and other places predict a glorious service-based economy, but on a global level that's self-destructive; you can't have a sustainable economy where people just sell hamburgers to each other without actually producing something worthwhile.
The only thing we're really still successful at in terms of exports is entertainment. Widespread illegal copying can kill that. In a lot of countries it's already killed that.
I don't think it specifically requires sub-prime and interest only, but they fit the bill.
It absolutely does NOT require sub-prime and interest only. In fact, it says specifically that banks should undertake the provisions of the CRA in accordance with safe lending practices.
Once financial institutions are required to make subprime and interest-only mortgages available and since they're going to have a higher default rate than conventionial mortgages, then it's a game of Hot Potato.
Uhhh...huh? Where are financial institutions required to make subprime and interest-only morgages available? They were doing these things because they thought it would make them money.
What they should do is run a continuing sting program, where undercover INS agents apply to jobs that these companies apparently can't find American applicants to fill.
And you've managed to come up with an explanation that says quantitative analysts are not to blame. That is an extremely surprising thing for you to do.
as you mentioned its not the small credit unions, or the smaller banks, its the large national banks that are having trouble, becasue they were afraid of politics from people like ACORN who would publicly deride them as racists if they didnt loan money to the poor...
Riiiiight, the large banks are such big pushovers that they would rather face bankruptcy than be publicly derided.
Sounds ridiculous when it's phrased like that, huh? The funny thing is the CRA loans you're all whining about tended to have lower interest rates and be safer investments than the other subprime mortgages. They were less likely to be packaged into the securities that actually caused the crisis.
I know you really would rather blame black people than admit the free market failed, but the free market failed.
P.S. you obviously have very little experience in "marginal" neighborhoods. REAL marginal neighborhoods don't have banks. If there are banks in a neighborhood that's a sign there are depositors. Where there are depositors, there is money.
I can tell you, from personal knowledge, that you are simply wrong. I worked at Fannie in Chicago as an IT guy for a while in the late '90's. I cannot tell you how much advertising material I saw assuring higher risk people in marginal neighborhoods they could get a loan. The CRA was invoked. The standards were lowered. In fact, one man in particular, who worked in the financial area, was concerned that Fannie was buying these lower quality mortgages. He was in no position to do anything about it, but he did not think it was smart.
Being an IT guy and seeing advertisements doesn't qualify as "personal knowledge." Find me the clause in the CRA that states that underwriting standards were lowered. In fact, the CRA specifically states:
(1) assess the institution's record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institution;
Three things you should note: (1) that "safe and sound operation" is still mandated, (2) that banks have to meet the need of low-income neighborhoods, not low-income people, and (3) that they only had to do this in neighborhoods WHERE THEY DID BUSINESS.
They were still expected to invest prudently. There can be low-risk borrowers in low-income areas, and these were the people they were expected to target. Up to this point the banks had been avoiding entire neighborhoods, mostly as a result of institutionalized racism. And finally, if they don't want to offer loans in a certain neighborhood, fine. They shouldn't set up a branch there.
Independent mortgage companies made crap loans because banks, Fannie, Freddie, etc. were willing to buy them. Why would they NOT make the loans, when there were buyers eager to pay for them?
Exactly my point; their willingness to buy them did not arise from the CRA, but rather the mortgage companies' greed and the larger banks willful ignorance.
The point is not that the CRA directly caused all the bad things. It lowered standards for poorer borrowers. That lowered underwriting standards for everyone else. And contributed substantially to our present mess.
That does not follow. In fact, if the banks were really forced by the CRA to offer loans to credit risks, then the mortgage companies (who weren't subject to the CRA) would be advantaged; they could undercut the banks on loans to high-income, low-risk borrowers because they wouldn't have the same losses from defaulting CRA borrowers to balance out, and thus could offer lower interest rates.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether or not parties have to go to mediation is based on the respective court's local rules. I believe there is a law mandating that for every case there must be at least an attempt to get the parties into ADR.
Motions to dismiss are very common, and parties frequently file them even if they don't have a strong argument or even think they're likely to win, so I don't know if it really means anything.
Are the USA and the UK in some sort of competition to see who can do the more thorough job of obliterating their citizens' rights to privacy?
The UK has been easily winning that for years. As bad as the US has gotten, the UK is consistently worse.
It sounds like they didn't properly control this experiment.
That's the accusation thrown at every psychological experiment on slashdot. Every study is going to have some sort of bias and experimental flaws, it's not particle physics and you can't correct for everything.
The lesser of two evils increasingly looks like a third party vote or vote one party into the white house and the other into congress in the hopes that they spend more time bickering than doing anything..
Yes, because when bad laws are already on the books and being enforced, the best option is inaction rather than electing people who will change those laws.
If he's a conservative you've probably just startled him. Remember that previous slashdot article, they scare easily.
These are people who put all their energy into their work. Now, what happens when you need a document on that person's desk?
You ask. Stay away from my desk without my permission.
True, the logically challenged who tend to pipe in with "correlation is not causation" on slashdot then sit back and wait for applause are even wronger for this story than they usually are.
Original Problem: Some companies need skilled employee's that are not available in the US.
It's a made-up problem. You're telling me in a nation of 250 million you can't find a java developer or an oracle DBA?
Spin your resume to emphasize coding skills. Did you write scripts in your QA job? Even if it was a 3 line batch file, put it in. If you coordinated with programmers in your job, put that. Did you do any debugging at all?
If you can come up with a halfway decent program on your own time, try to do it. Throw it in your cover letter, and offer them the program and the code. Don't worry about open sourcing anything, this should be your own code, and it should be clean.
Not necessarily a good thing. A foreign-owned company operating a manufacturing plant with a skeleton crew means a lot of the money is leaving the country, and isn't even partially slowed down by the wages paid to a full workforce.
Hmm, interesting, I was going by the drop in manufacturing jobs over the past decade.
The blame for this rests on the Senators and Congressmen who allowed themselves to be lobbied into passing such industry serving legislation.
Probably going to provoke some outrage here, but while I agree this legislation is problematic and don't believe it should have been passed, I can understand what a lot of congresspeople would have been thinking.
Let's be honest here: our country has lost its manufacturing base. Our financial base took a huge hit, and even a lot of those companies had already evolved from American corporations to international ones. The eternal optimists here and other places predict a glorious service-based economy, but on a global level that's self-destructive; you can't have a sustainable economy where people just sell hamburgers to each other without actually producing something worthwhile.
The only thing we're really still successful at in terms of exports is entertainment. Widespread illegal copying can kill that. In a lot of countries it's already killed that.
Whoa, you bought a PT Cruiser because you think it ISN'T ugly?
Thank you, you put it a lot more concisely than I've been able to do here.
I don't think it specifically requires sub-prime and interest only, but they fit the bill.
It absolutely does NOT require sub-prime and interest only. In fact, it says specifically that banks should undertake the provisions of the CRA in accordance with safe lending practices.
Now can the Court issue an injunction barring her from using that ridiculously fake and obnoxious accent?
Once financial institutions are required to make subprime and interest-only mortgages available and since they're going to have a higher default rate than conventionial mortgages, then it's a game of Hot Potato.
Uhhh...huh? Where are financial institutions required to make subprime and interest-only morgages available? They were doing these things because they thought it would make them money.
But...but...a 73 year old obstetrician from Texas told me the gold standard would help fix the economy!
What they should do is run a continuing sting program, where undercover INS agents apply to jobs that these companies apparently can't find American applicants to fill.
Hahaha wow you're ignorant...
You say the banks were forced into making bad loans by the CRA, and faced lawsuits for not doing so.
Then you cite a case where THE CRA IS NOT EVEN INVOLVED. Did you actually READ what you cut and pasted?
I'm used to having to get proper cites to disprove people, you just made it easy.
Only most of the loans that were rolled into the mortgage-backed securities were made by institutions that were not governed by the CRA.
Nice try though.
I am a quantitative analyst.
And you've managed to come up with an explanation that says quantitative analysts are not to blame. That is an extremely surprising thing for you to do.
as you mentioned its not the small credit unions, or the smaller banks, its the large national banks that are having trouble, becasue they were afraid of politics from people like ACORN who would publicly deride them as racists if they didnt loan money to the poor...
Riiiiight, the large banks are such big pushovers that they would rather face bankruptcy than be publicly derided.
Sounds ridiculous when it's phrased like that, huh? The funny thing is the CRA loans you're all whining about tended to have lower interest rates and be safer investments than the other subprime mortgages. They were less likely to be packaged into the securities that actually caused the crisis.
I know you really would rather blame black people than admit the free market failed, but the free market failed.
P.S. you obviously have very little experience in "marginal" neighborhoods. REAL marginal neighborhoods don't have banks. If there are banks in a neighborhood that's a sign there are depositors. Where there are depositors, there is money.
Being an IT guy and seeing advertisements doesn't qualify as "personal knowledge." Find me the clause in the CRA that states that underwriting standards were lowered. In fact, the CRA specifically states:
Three things you should note: (1) that "safe and sound operation" is still mandated, (2) that banks have to meet the need of low-income neighborhoods, not low-income people, and (3) that they only had to do this in neighborhoods WHERE THEY DID BUSINESS.
They were still expected to invest prudently. There can be low-risk borrowers in low-income areas, and these were the people they were expected to target. Up to this point the banks had been avoiding entire neighborhoods, mostly as a result of institutionalized racism. And finally, if they don't want to offer loans in a certain neighborhood, fine. They shouldn't set up a branch there.
Independent mortgage companies made crap loans because banks, Fannie, Freddie, etc. were willing to buy them. Why would they NOT make the loans, when there were buyers eager to pay for them?
Exactly my point; their willingness to buy them did not arise from the CRA, but rather the mortgage companies' greed and the larger banks willful ignorance.
The point is not that the CRA directly caused all the bad things. It lowered standards for poorer borrowers. That lowered underwriting standards for everyone else. And contributed substantially to our present mess.
That does not follow. In fact, if the banks were really forced by the CRA to offer loans to credit risks, then the mortgage companies (who weren't subject to the CRA) would be advantaged; they could undercut the banks on loans to high-income, low-risk borrowers because they wouldn't have the same losses from defaulting CRA borrowers to balance out, and thus could offer lower interest rates.