The Sheisters Passed It 74-25, Kennedy Not Present

[Slinky]

The sheisters pass the bail out. Debbie Stabenow, my Michigan Senator voted against. Michigan's Levin is not up for re-election this year, but his time will come - and he sure will NOT be getting my vote!! On some things I have a LONNNNNNNG memory!!

Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent from Vermont (gotta love those crusty, tight, old New Englanders, God love them!) has a proposal that made SENSE that he has put forward. Not that it did him or us much good.

Obama and McCain both definitely lost my vote (not that McCain was gonna get it anyway). I'm voting 3rd party, Independent, whoever else is on the ballot. I don't care if that person is a jackass. Some good ole equine horse manure will smell better than the stench outta the Senate tonight!

[Guest]

Passed what?

[Wulfman]

Passed what?

GAS!

.

.

Where you been, man?
Ted Stevens needed more money to fix up his house.


The Senate passed a bill to bail out the financial institutions that got caught up in the bad mortgage lending fiasco.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of $700 billion to $1.3 trillion. In other words, the country is going even further in debt.

viewtopic/t35078/Hurrah-The-Bail-Out-De ... o-205.html

viewtopic/t35093/Get-your-money-for-not ... -free.html

Don't stay away so long.

Den

[cpapper]

The sheisters pass the bail out.

It hasn't passed the House yet, it's not over 'till it's over.

[bigk]

IT WAS INEVITABLE it would get passed. Good Grief.

[Snoredog]

my opinion:

Both candidates are as dumb as a rock and not smart enough to be President. It is just like last time, you vote for the lesser of the two evils, but this time we are even more screwed, if we could vote for that guy Willard on Leno he would probably do a good job as long as we kept him supplied with Jack Daniels (Yukon Jack for you Alaskians).

I think I'm gonna write in Warren Buffett or Boone Pickens at least they have some common sense.

[Wulfman]

Watching the "Morning Joe" show this morning, they've been talking how much "pork" got written into this bill......anybody surprised that they got it passed???

I'm happy to report that both of my senators voted against it.
(I wrote to them multiple times to express my displeasure with this whole situation and the proposed legislation)

Den

[Slinky]

Well, I've watched Carl Levin grow to be one FAT cat thru his years in the Senate and he is NOT up for re-election this time, whilst Debbie Stabenow is. Hopefully, Levin will have an opponent when he comes up for election next time so that I can join his opponent's campaign to knock him out of his FAT cat complacent seat. Levin has obviously fed at the trough way too long.

[SleepGuy]

While I am completely independent in my politics and particularly conservative on fiscal policy issues, I support the plan but only because it's better than what I perceive to be a certain alternative. As a practicing lawyer I can say that the current credit / liquidity freeze is going to cause (within short order) an economic crisis far larger than anything we've seen, at least in our lifetimes. The free enterprise system is highly dependent on credit being available and, from what I can see in my world, it's completely locked down. And I believe that the bailout is the best solution to that problem.

[Wulfman]

I just ran across a link to the bill the Senate passed last night.

http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files ... 32_xml.pdf

I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing, but had heard about the "pork" in it, so I kind of quickly scanned it.
Yup, it's there......and MORE.

Den

[Slinky]

Of course, Den!! And not a bit of the pork really giving any relief to "the little guy" - just the fat cats.

[roster]

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
New York Times
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: September 30, 1999
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... wanted=all

[Babette]

Watching the "Morning Joe" show this morning, they've been talking how much "pork" got written into this bill......anybody surprised that they got it passed???

I'm happy to report that both of my senators voted against it.
(I wrote to them multiple times to express my displeasure with this whole situation and the proposed legislation)

Den

Official State Motto of the Wyoming Delegation:

We just do what Den tells us to do.

Good job, Den!
Babs

[zaquon]

Some very interesting pork in there. There is one very good thing though: Parity for Mental Health Care. It requires insurance companies to provide the same benefits for mental health care as it does for other medical care.

California, where I live, already has a parity law for some conditions. I imagine this will extend the benefit to all states, and it may be better than what CA already has.

I think it's a great step, but my lack of understanding of why it's part of this bill is probably why I'm not in politics.

_z

[roster]

Hey guys,

Take a nice break from this heavy stuff. I would go anywhere with this fun gal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZYuRk1pFO0

Sorry Slinky, we have to find a break for you also.