Subprime Suspects

To West Coast Messenger. At least your name is appropriate. Claerly a "Leftist" thinker. When is the left going to acknowdlege that the last and only 2 democrats for the past 40 years in the White House are right in the middle of this? Republicans have come and gone many times, but you dont see thier names tied to actual laws related to CRA and Fannie and Freddie. Both significant actions were done be Democrats. Those are facts. THat is why Fannie pumps millions into electing democrats.

Let's not forget the Clinton admin. threatening to sic Janet "Waco" Reno and the justice dept onto lenders for racial discrimination if they didn't make these risky loans to minorities who couldn't afford it.

Clearly poor minorities are to blame for the financial crisis. They were given mortgages they could not afford by banks and financial institutions under pressure by the government. Now the rooster has come home to roost! And that same government now expects the taxpayers to pay for the bailout!

The average "Joe Sixpack" (as Ms. Palin would have herself be characterized) is NOT to blame for this mess we're in. I am an average Joe (Josephine) Sixpack-when I bought my house I could afford it. What I can't afford is the fact that my heating oil obscenely doubled in price this year ($158 to $311/mo), my food prices have skyrocketed along with the gas that I need to drive to a job for which I haven't had a raise in 2 years.....I am not a deadbeat, I make my mortgage payments, I pay my property taxes and my income taxes, but it's harder and harder to get by when my income stays the same and the prices keep going up-I've cut as much as I can (internet, TV, food, clothes) cancelled life insurance (no one to leave anything to so why bother), switched car insurance, dropped coverages-I have analyzed everything down to the last dime and I'm still looking for a 2nd job just so I can bring in more than goes out the door. WE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM.....

The only reason why you can label this as racism is because the view of the poor in America centers around the minority.

I wish people would grow up and get over the race card. I watch Fox news and not one time did they blame minority groups. They did, however, blame people that can't afford their mortgage.

Now, if in your mind that immediately translates into minority groups instead of people up and down the social hierarchy, then the racism is in your own heart.

Thank Heaven for this column! I cannot tell you how many otherwise normal people are willing to put all the blame for almost anything that has gone wrong on the poor and minorities. Simple common sense should tel you they simply don't have the leverage to create a world-wide meltdown, or even a national meltdown. As for scolding people for "living beyond theIr means", it's a national disease with plenty of fraudulently presented deals presented to people who should have read the fine print, but maybe couldn't afford the glasses necessary ro do so. Additionally half of all bankruptcies are due to medical costs. I am on disability, and therefore on Medicare. Thank God for that! If it weren't for that we might well be on the street or living with relatives. The insurance premiums alone (we are both 61 YOA) or the medical bills without insurance would not allowed us to pay our mortgage payments. My husband has run his own business profitably since 1979, until the last few years, which have been a desperate struggle to keep going, jus waiting for things to get better, meanwhile trying to think up creative new services the busines can offer (and that people can afford) and marketing them without bankrupting the company on ads, etc. We don' worry about the stock market much, since all we have left ther is the IRAs. The rest has been "loaned" to the business. No, I don't feel the slightes bit responsible for the present economic crisis as we slip from middle-middle income to lower middle income.

ryoushi - "they just signed that EIGHT INCH THICK stackof docs and hoped for the best)". It's known as asking the lender what the monthly payment will be on any given amount of money, then sitting down and figuring out if you can afford that monthly mortgage payment along with all of your other bills. It's not rocket science.

It is up to the American Citizens to demand from the media to find out if Obama Ever sent a letter about the Bailout he claimed he sent during the second debate. There is evidence according to C-Span that he DID NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And for all of you sympathizers of the poor. Why dont you go live in Section 8 housing for one week and see if they deserved to buy a home with NO MONEY DOWN, NO CREDIT HISTORY AND NOT ENOUGH INCOME TO QUALIFY. Now they are going to get yet another check off of the back of middle class who are already paying the taxes that they are not?????? 40% of Americans dont even PAY TAXES AT ALLL! WE NEED THE FAIR TAX!!!



Finally Good news! YOU CANT STOP THE TRUTH!!!!!

After much protesting - Hulu.com brought back the Saturday Night Live Congress Bailout skit back. CHECK IT OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.hulu.com/watch/38041/saturday-night-live-washington-approves-the-bailout#s-p1-st-i1

NOW WITNESS THE REST OF THE STORY B-4 THE MEDIA TAKES IT OFF THE SITE AGAIN!

I am going to ask all of you to join me and reject credit completely. If you cannot buy it outright, don't buy it. They keep trying to punish us, telling us how hard it will be to get credit. How hard will it be if we don't want it? After all, they only reason they offer credit is so they can make additional money (interest) on top of the full price you are paying. We have to get back to our roots, expecially us minorities, where we took care of ourselves and rejected their notions of how we are supposed to live. They want to sell their goods and services, they want to sell them for whatever the market can bear. I say, it is time for us to deprive them of money. Who cares about buying a house -- I live in the city and if I did buy a house, nine times out of ten I still wouldn't own the land the house stands on. Screw those rich muckety-mucks. I say we collectively drive them into the poor house by not purchasing anything but the bare necessities. I am hoping us minorities will stop trying to buy favor with people who hate us and make them beg us to be a part. Be honest, their system(s) has(ve) never worked for us. A few individual accomplishments does not make us a part of things anyway. Deprive those wealthy dirtbags, deny them your money. If they continue to try to put people out of work (manufacturers, retailers, etc.) to make money, we need to deprive them even more and make them close their doors. Please people, review your history -- particularly our history of philanthropy by us for us. When they denied us, we went on without them. They looked up, saw we didn't need or want them and suddenly, it was important to reach out to us and make us confirm to their standards. While most of us are by no means wealthy, many of us are willing to help and we can help each other now. We can use our dollars to keep us going outside this stupid system. But even if you don't join me, I'm going on anyway and I will just have to be satisfied with not participating in this corrupt system. It is corrupt, it has always been corrupt, and there are no rules or regulations that will put their system on the side of right. It is their nature, their inherent belief that some people are better than others. Read some of the response to the article, especially the ones decrying racism. Until we minorities take charge of our future, our destiny outside the powers that be and stop participating in this wide-spread criminality perpetuated by our so-called betters, these so-called experts, we will continue to suffer and allow them to lead us straight to hell.

celticdreaming you have hit at a very big part of the problem. The tilt was on home ownership for the lower income families of America and yes the Democrats are to blame for forcing the issue and blocking oversite. See this web site http://www.state.nj.us/dca/hmfa/consu/buyers/ownprg/smart.html not only can you still get a loan without a real ability to afford you can also get a $10,000.00 grant to help you buy it. Tell me realistically if they need a grant to buy a house what are the chances they waill be able to afford it down the road but these loans are still out there.

Additionally, the poor and blacks and other minorities most certainly are to blame for this mess. You had people barely making enough money to keep the electricity on in their efficiency apartment who were told by lenders that they could buy lavish, sprawling homes in the suburbs and elsewhere for a payment of a few hundred dollars a month and they (the poor and blacks and minorities) fell for it. How could anybody be that stupid? They weren't stupid. If you make an offer like that to somebody who has never had anything then they are going to take you up on it. And they did. They knew they would never be able to keep these houses and the plan was that they would stay in them as long as they could and when the payment got to be too high they would walk away. And that is what they did. Just like when they buy cars. They'll buy a Cadillac or a Lincoln or some other expensive car that they obviously cannot afford. They drive them for a few months, make a few payments, then they can't afford the payments anymore so they tear the car up, trash it, and abandon it or the company comes and picks it up in the night. They don't care. They just go get another car the following day under they Aunt name or they Uncle name or they baby name or they brother name or they sister name. Come on people. Don't hand me this line. We all know what is going on and everybody is too afraid to say it except me. So there. I said it and you all know it's the truth.

one more point: the 1993 legislation required that fannie and freddie, when considering mortgage applications from minority and low income applicants, that welfare payments and food stamps were to be considered income.

that makes a whole lot of sense doesn't it?

If you have someone making minimum wage buying 3 or 4 bedroom house, how can they afford it when I can't even do it on $22/hour. Something is very wrong here.

Let's see. When I bought my house in 2001 I was "pre-approved" for $300,000. But did I buy a house for $300,000? No. I bought a house for $119,000. And why did I do that? Because I knew that a $300,000 mortgage was too much for me to handle comfortably. I did not want to spend nearly everything I made each month on the mortgage payment and not have money left over to buy groceries and pay other bills. So I searched and searched until I found the house that I have now in a nice area and I'm still making my payments. What ... was I the only one out there who wasn't blinded with greed and gimme, gimme, gimme. Was I the only one who was willing to settle for a less grandiose house - something that I could afford and that I could keep for years to come.

Racism is running thick and true here. It's all the fault of those poor, i mean non-white folks, taking all that money being thrown at them instead of being 'moral enough not to take it. Well, i see a lot of WHITE people in the same boat for doing the same thing, and lets not even talk about the studies showing minorities even with good credit histories and good jobs were routinely steered to subprime loans because mortgagers made MORE money that way. The subprime mortgage fiasco is squarely the fault of the lenders who had all the power and all the knowledge (I'd like one of the covert racists here to explain THEIR mortgage and home purchase, because I bet they can't - they just signed that EIGHT INCH THICK stackof docs and hoped for the best) And, the bigger problem was the massive Ponzi pyramid schemes played by the investment banks in unregulated insurance and finance schemes which, as all Ponzi schemes do, deflated like a leaky balloon once the money flow from the bottom dried up.

Angry American Mama once again who ever said those paying their bills were to blame? If everyone was paying their bills we'd be in great shape right now. The problem is those who were living above their means (yes this goes for those making 200k a year as well) got in over their heads and stopped paying their bills.

I find this article somewhat offensive. Nobody is blaming the poor, at least I'm not. I do however blame stupid people for getting themselves into mortgages they couldn't afford. I blame banks for pushing mortgages on people they knew couldn't afford it. I blame Freddie and Fannie for pushing bad loans, from people they knew couldn't afford, onto banks who normally wouldn't have taken or given those loans to those people. I blame Congress, specifically the Democrats, for blocking any attempts to regulate Fannie and Freddie to keep this form happening. I blame Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Maxine Waters for telling everyone "everything is fine people, nothing to see here. Move along." However, I do HOLD PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE for their actions. If you make 1500 a month, sorry, you can't afford that 500000 dollar house. Especially if you don't put anything down. Nope, this economy exploded and imploded all in the name of political correctness. This article is partisan at it's best and worst.