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Tag Archives: financial meltdown
My Letter to Secretary Geithner: Fannie Mae Must Stop Bankrolling Lawsuits Against Underwater Homeowners with Our Money
One of the most underreported stories of the recent global financial meltdown was the role played in the crisis by housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and their subsequent and continued government bailout. To date, the federal government has pur… Continue reading
GOP Golden Boy Boehner’s Dark Economic Prognosis Is About as Fake as His Freakishly Dark Skin Tone
House Minority Leader John Boehner (OH) is a hopeful man. He hopes that voters are both stupid and forgetful. He hopes they have no recollection whatsoever of the eight years of largely Republican rule during the Bush years; years that saw a loss of ei… Continue reading
Posted in News, Original Content
Tagged Bush, Dark, dark skin tone, financial meltdown, Freakishly, Golden, GOP, great depression, house minority leader john boehner, john boehner, Leader John Boehner, loss, minority leader john boehner, nancy pelosi, nemesis, party, recollection, republican rule, retake, Speaker Nancy Pelosi
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Standing up to the Unholy Alliance between Washington and Wall Street
Wall Street and its allies have been calling the shots in Congress for decades, so they must be glad to see how things are shaping up on financial regulatory reform. Congress is about to vote on a final bill that fails to fix the key flaws in the bill… Continue reading
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Tagged Alliance, amendment, bill, calling the shots, economic disaster, financial meltdown, glass steagall, issue, mccain amendment, need, pain, reform congress, repeal, Senate, senate consideration, Senator Dorgan, strict limits, support legislation, test, way
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Don’t Blame the Dream of Home Ownership
Here is a fable that is making the rounds. It is a collection of half-truths and outright lies:The financial meltdown was the result of too many people pursuing the American Dream of home ownership. People who couldn’t really afford to be homeowners be… Continue reading
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Tagged act, American, american dream, cheap mortgages, Collection, community, community reinvestment act, damage, fable, Fannie, fannie mae, fannie mae and freddie mac, financial meltdown, freddie mac, home, home ownership, Mae, overgrown, result, speculators
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Why the Latest Financial Reform Bills Won’t Prevent Another Crisis
In case you were starting to feel good about the outcome of the financial reform debates, here’s a bold prediction: The reform bills making their way through Congress will not prevent another crisis. Who knows whether it will be next year, the year after, or five years from now? But it will happen eventually, for two very powerful reasons: Complacency and Complexity. Let me explain.
I’ll start with a reminder that the financial meltdown that we experienced almost two years ago was just one more in a long series of banking-related crises over the past few decades (or more). Over this period we’ve had bubbles and bursts related to “least developed country” (LDC) loans, commercial real estate lending, the savings and loan collapse, Asian currency speculation, dot-com exuberance, and now subprime extravagance. As Gilda Radner’s character from the original Saturday Night Live used to say, “It’s always something!”
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Tagged asian currency, bold prediction, case, complacency, complexity, Congress, crisis, currency speculation, extravagance, financial meltdown, Gilda Radner, ldc, least developed country, outcome, prediction, reform, reform bills, saturday night live, way, Year
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The Oil Spill is Not Like Katrina
After weeks of being pushed by right-wing bloggers, the “Obama’s Katrina” meme, comparing Deepwater Horizon to the 2005 hurricane, has finally made it all the way to the mainstream, with no less a liberal stalwart than Frank Rich using the phrase in his column title this past Sunday. It’s unfortunate, not only because it seems to have stemmed from a cynical attempt to politick the disaster into a blow to Obama’s approval ratings similar to that suffered by Bush after Katrina.
Those who have asked whether Deepwater Horizon is Obama’s Katrina have generally focused on whether Obama has done enough to address a major disaster, and whether the government’s slow response is comparable to that of FEMA in the aftermath of Katrina. These questions are legitimate. Yet the nature of the Deepwater Horizon crisis bears less resemblance to Katrina than it does to the financial meltdown. The underlying problem isn’t underfunded public infrastructure or inadequate government preparation, but rather, lax corporate risk assessment and insufficient regulation.
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Tagged column title, corporate risk, cynical attempt, Deepwater, disaster, financial meltdown, Frank Rich, government, government preparation, Horizon, Hurricane, Katrina, mainstream, major disaster, meme, Obama, public infrastructure, slow response, stalwart, way
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The Prince of Persia was a White Dude?!!
I know there are a lot of important issues to discuss this week – like BP’s oil spill, Europe’s financial meltdown and of course the opening of “Sex and the City 2″- but stop the presses because apparently we have all missed one big thing: The Prince of Persia was a white guy!
At least that is what the new movie “Prince of Persia” opening this weekend would have us believe. And who is playing the title role – an actor whose very name conjures up the Middle East: Jake Gyllenhaal- who would’ve thought that the guy from “Bubble Boy” – who is of Swedish heritage – could be the Prince of Persia. Was Owen Wilson busy? Why not just get Will Ferrell – who in all honestly would’ve been great and I would’ve been at the midnight screening of the film if he was the star of it!
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Tagged bubble boy, City, course, Europe, financial meltdown, guy, Jake Gyllenhaal, lot, Meltdown, Middle East, midnight screening, oil, oil spill, opening, Owen Wilson, persia, prince, prince of persia, sex and the city, spill, swedish heritage, week, will ferrell
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Stability in the South Caucasus versus short term gains
Stability is one of the most significant ingredients to the success of nations, regions and the global community in the modern age. No longer can nations prosper as individual entities, shielded from the politics, economics and social events of other nations. The recent financial meltdown of Greece is a good example of how one nation’s fiscal mismanagement can direly affect other nations throughout the world. The impact of Greece’s difficulties on the US stock market a few weeks ago perfectly illustrates this. Unfortunately, many nations and their leaders have yet to come to this realization, even when faced with blatant and obvious evidence.
A prime example of and a case study in the need for stability to ensure regional peace, success and prosperity is the South Caucasus, a region sandwiched between a resurgent Russia and a militant Iran. It is a complicated region, comprised of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and, by extension and political realities, Turkey. If one claims to understand completely the South Caucasus, chances are he/she doesn’t. If one claims to have spent years studying the region and still has many questions, he/she probably knows more than most.
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Tagged age, community, example, financial meltdown, fiscal mismanagement, Georgia, global community, Greece, Iran, Meltdown, mismanagement, nation, political realities, prime example, region, regional peace, resurgent russia, Russia, South Caucasus, stability, success, success and prosperity, turkey, US, us stock market, world
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The Economy: Don’t Hit the Reset Button
With apologies to rapper-actor L.L. Cool J and his song “Mama Said Knock You Out,” don’t call it a comeback.
In fact, let’s not call our wobbly progress from the brink of a global financial meltdown a “recovery.” Why? Because we are doomed by our collective mindset to plunge into more financial crises as soon as we recover. Some of the world’s top business leaders, including General Electric Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, have rightly recognized that we need to create a fundamentally different way of pursuing business and human endeavor.
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Tagged brink, business, business leaders, CEO Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt, collective mindset, comeback, fact, financial crises, financial meltdown, human endeavor, jeffrey immelt, knock, l l cool j, L.L. Cool, Mama Said, Meltdown, microsoft ceo, mindset, progress, recovery, song, steve ballmer
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Our Energy Production System: Too Big to Fail
The eerie timing of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, just a month after the Obama administration announced plans to expand offshore drilling, has been widely noted. But a second coincidence is equally striking. The Congress is currently debating legislation developed in response to another man-made disaster: the financial meltdown of 2008. As attention turns to the regulatory reforms necessary to avoid the next environmental catastrophe, what can we learn from the debate over financial reform?
As in other disasters, the initial response to the financial meltdown was to find the guilty parties. And there were many candidates: the collapse of an inflated housing market, irresponsible lending practices, the negligence of governmental regulators, nefarious investment schemes. The search for such culprits helps only in demanding redress, but also in narrating the significance of the event. However, such a narrow purview distracts attention from a bigger issue: the characteristics of the overall system that made it vulnerable to these specific failures.
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Tagged administration, Attention, culprits, Deepwater, disaster, financial meltdown, governmental regulators, guilty parties, Horizon, initial response, investment schemes, man made disaster, Meltdown, month, Obama, offshore drilling, purview, regulatory reforms, response, timing
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