Will you vote against any legislation to pretend that the Dis¬trict of Columbia is a state and entitled to a state’s rep¬resentation in Congress?
Will you vote No on any carbon tax or cap-and-trade bill?
Will you vote to eliminate the ban on our favorite light bulbs?
Will you vote No on Card Check that eliminates the secret ballot in workers’ elections?

Will you vote Yes for legislation providing that actions claiming a violation of the Establishment Clause shall not be eli¬gible for an award of attorney’s fees?
Will you vote to defeat Planned Parenthood?
Will you vote Yes and introduce legislation to control unions?
Will you vote Yes to the FairTax and support its passage?
Will you vote against any judicial nominee who espouses the unconstitutional theories of a “living” or “evolving” Constitution, or an “activist” judiciary?

Especially for U.S. Senate candidates:
Will you vote No on the New START Treaty, which would restrict our right to build anti-missile defenses?
Will you vote No on the UN Law of the Sea Treaty?
Will you vote No on the UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child?
Will you vote No on the UN Treaty on Women (known as CEDAW)?
Will you vote No on the UN ban of all firearms?
Will you vote Yes on withdrawing from the UN and providing support for them leaving America?
Will you pledge to bring to the floor a change in procedure to do several things:
1. Limit future bills to 50 pages or less (preferably less)?
2. Have bills written by people who speak English, not legalize?
3. Limit bills to one single subject with no additional ‘add ons’ of different bills?
4. Must have a floor vote on all bills within 90 days?
5. Enforce open hearings and providing bills to the public for one week before sending them to the President for signature?
Will you vote to hold all confirmation hearings for all judicial appointments within 15 days of nomination?
This list is a short list but it provides a hint at how far this Country has gone toward Socialism and how much work it’s going to be to get it headed back toward the Federalist Union, directed by the people, it once was.
The voters have GOT to begin to be more aware of what’s going on in politics and vote for the correct people. Undoing the wrongs that have been done is a great deal harder than selecting the correct candidates in the first place. It is obvious from the 2010 election results in Nevada, California, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, etc. that there are still many people going to the election booths who have not yet gotten the message!
Chuck Slate

My wife and I have been talking for years that the price of houses could not continue to escalate indefinitely. As a matter of fact we believed that so fervently that we sold our home and moved into an apartment. We spent our equity on travel and saw a great part of the world.

The word from the economists is that the burst of the housing bubble was the keystone of the total financial collapse. That being true we must look at the cause of the housing bubble collapse. The bill which originally generated the beginning of the financial meltdown was called “The Community Reinvestment Act.” That act (which we the people were never told) was to provide junk mortgage paper to people who could not afford a mortgage (primarily minorities). The drive behind that was to provide a mortgage to ANYONE who wanted one! I think that idea began with Lyndon B. Johnson and his ‘great society.’

First of all, those of us who understand our own family’s finances know that we cannot owe more than we can pay back and the ideal situation is to not owe anything at all. However, whenever it is necessary to borrow we must look very carefully at our ability to pay our debt. We should consider several things:

1. What is the debt incurred in proportion to our gross income?

2. What is the probability of the debt increasing over time? That is — if I incur debt at a certain interest rate what is the probability of the debt increasing because of the interest rate increasing?

3. What is the probability of any asset I used to secure the debt going down in value?

4. What is the time limit of the debt and can I continue payments until the debt is paid?

5. Do I really need the item I am going into debt to purchase?

6. If the asset I am buying is real estate, what is the probability that I can continue to see the asset increase in worth throughout the total time of the debt?

7. Can I afford the down payment without putting myself in more debt?

8. What is the probability of my income going up (or down) during the period of incurred debt?

During the Carter years a law was passed providing the legal authority for banks to provide mortgages to everyone whether they could afford them or not. The law was called The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) (12 U.S.C. 2901) (See Appendix B). Nothing much seemed to happen during Carter’s watch.

But during the Clinton years, the liberals (especially Bill & Hillary) with the help of Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd and other questionable characters in congress continually brayed that EVERYONE (there’s that every and all cornerstone of liberal thinking) in the U.S. should own a home if they wanted to. Not everyone who could AFFORD one but EVERYONE (apparently whether they could afford it or not).

Since Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were (are) a quasi government entity they chose them for support in this endeavor.

They reduced the oversight control and the restrictions upon the requirements to obtain a mortgage (of course enhancing the EVERYONE should have a house mentality). The banks chose to join Freddie and Fannie and produced ‘sub-prime’ mortgages (as they have become know). Fannie and Freddie then began ‘bundling’ these mortgages (or paper as some people call them) into packages for sale to other banks both in America and other countries.

It should be noted that since the probability that the mortgagee could repay the loans were slim to none the selling banks made a fortune. The smaller private banks and savings and loans could not afford to buy this paper so they became immune to the catastrophe to follow.

In 2005 George Bush and the Republicans put forth a bill (S 190) to provide much more Government oversight on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (See Appendix C). Obviously the trend was noticeable at that time since Conservatives are somewhat reluctant to suggest more Federal control (See a, b and c below).

a. Alabama Democrat Rep. Arthur Davis said on September 30, 2008, “Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues, I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. …in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit that when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.”

b. During an interview in the last week of September 2008 on Good Morning America, Bill Clinton said, “I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rests more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress … to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

c, Even Mr. Greenspan has said that he was not aware of the disaster to follow these silly and inane policies.

The liberals (including Barney Frank who gave a speech which in essence said, “There is nothing wrong with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. No further oversight is necessary”) decided to kill the bill.

This has GOT to be a first! Liberals admitting they made a mistake. Unfortunately that mistake not only nearly destroyed America’s financial institutions but the financial institutions of the world! And future events may prove that the world economy really will be completely destroyed.

In September 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.

Some might say the current mess couldn’t be foreseen, yet in 2005 Alan Greenspan told Congress how urgent it was for it to act in the clearest possible terms: If Fannie and Freddie “continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road,” he said. “We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk.” (Greenspan couldn’t possibly have seen the effect on the whole world).

What happened next was extraordinary. For the first time in history, a serious Fannie and Freddie reform bill was passed by the Senate Banking Committee headed by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (See Appendix A). The bill gave a regulator power to crack down, and would have required the companies to eliminate their investments in risky assets. Oh, and there is one little footnote to the story that’s worth keeping in mind while Democrats point fingers Senator John McCain was one of the three cosponsors of S 190. ( If you want to read the whole bill search on 2 190).

If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. In 2005, 2006 and 2007, a blizzard of terrible mortgage paper fluttered out of the Fannie and Freddie clouds, burying many of our oldest and most venerable institutions. Without their checkbooks keeping the market liquid and buying up excess supply, the market would likely have not existed.

But the bill didn’t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn’t even get the Senate to vote on the matter.

If you listened closely to Obama during the recent political campaign you heard him say that the Republicans wanted less oversight and government controls. How does THAT square with #3 above? Of course it doesn’t! There is no law against politicians telling big lies either. He was in the Congress that allowed people mortgages without having the ability to pay and was also part of the Congress that allowed the housing market to decay with no controls. As a matter of fact he was a part of the entity that refused to pass a bill which tightened the controls. Of course the liberals (including Obama) blamed the Republican administration! The liberals are masters at accusing others of the very things of which they are guilty.

I worked with Fannie Mae during the middle 90s attempting to obtain help for families in VA whose homes had been decimated by land slides. It was summarily turned down at every turn. The requests were not even considered if the requesters were for white folks. Most of the workers in the two organizations were liberal and most were black. I tried diligently, even to the point of going to Fannie Mae to give presentations asking for re-consideration. No luck! The decision was that the people I was representing were too well off financially even though they had lost everything in these disastrous mountain slides.

It now appears that the liberal government set up the real estate market to eventually fail when they pushed the financial arm of the economy to provide housing loans which not only did not require a down payment but were based upon variable rates and used the philosophy that the real estate assets would continue to grow in value forever. They even tried to convince the borrowers to accept more money than they really needed. Of course there is a great deal of blame to be levied against the financial companies that followed the government’s lead. If they didn’t see the crash coming by doing such a silly thing they didn’t belong in the financial world in the first place.

Just Trust Us

“Trust us,” we are told. “We have the best interests of the nation at heart.” Citizens are now left with no rational choice to protect savings, college plans, and investments but to accept the new aristocracies’ trillion dollar picking of our pockets to prop up institutions that must function. It is not the first time in recent years that we have accepted the grasping hand of the federal government in our wallets to avert a disaster not of our making. Well, we did – again!

There are several results of the government interference in our private financial institutions remaining to be seen. There were also (some of which I have already pointed out) of instances where the Government should have acted and did nothing. It may take many years before the results of the interference and lack of understanding by our leaders of what makes a free economy, by the government (and the use of the people’s money), is finally known.

1. The government (as can be seen above) was initially responsible for opening the door to the real estate fiasco. They also allowed monopolies to be “too big to fail.” If the ‘giant monster mega banks’ (as Clark Howard calls them) had not been allowed to exist they could not have caused such a mess as AIG. If there was a melt down it would not affect all the banks in America and the world and there would never be a bank ‘too big to fail’.

2. The lending agencies were stupid in several ways:

a. Following the government’s lead
b. Lending to people they knew very well could not pay back the debt.
c. Convincing people to accept more money than they needed.
d. Selling bad paper all over the world.

3. The people borrowing money from the lenders who knew very well they could never pay it back.

4. The government getting involved with a bail out. THAT will always generate a great deal of ‘Me-Too-Ism. If organizations and the American people are stupid enough to do an absolutely silly thing that the government suggests they deserve what they get.

5. The absolutely stupid move of the government using the people’s money to purchase lending institutions’ stock.

6. The additionally stupid move of buying stock without the OK from the citizens or getting the lending organizations how to use the money.

Well, here we are. You determine who is responsible! Joe Biden even blamed the current mortgage crisis on the Bush tax cuts. He said, “We should try to correct the problems that caused this . . . [which are] the profligate tax cuts to the very, very wealthy that John [McCain] wants to continue.”

Then the government bailed out the financial institutions (the list is long and too long to mention here) which ranged from banks to lending companies. Now ‘me-too-ism’ has taken over and the car companies are looking for a bail out, and cities and states are asking for bail outs. You can bet there will also be others who will try to jump on the bailout bandwagon!

Companies have failed in this Country many times and no cataclysmic results occurred. It was a big mistake bailing out the financial institutions and it will be a bigger mistake to bail out any other entities.

I have been listening to the hearings concerning bailing out the car companies. There are many horrific results being predicted if the car companies go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Let’s take a calm realistic look at the car companies:

1. Jobs – There would be x number of people put out of work. Let’s look at this – If Chrysler and GM co out of business where will people go to buy their cars? Toyota, Nissan, Kia, etc. What happens then? – Those companies need more production to keep up with demand. Where do the additional workers come from? – Chrysler and GM? Will there be some period of car production workers out of work – sure. What else would one expect during a depression?

2. Why are GM and Chrysler losing money? They began losing market share 30 years ago and did nothing about it – why? Because they were poorly managed during the good days and because they allowed the UAW to con them into exorbitant concessions (that was OK because times were good)?

If the people associated with the hearings would just be honest and make a statement that the automobile companies of other countries are doing well because they are NOT unionized and NOT that the UAW has taken a horrible advantage of GM (especially) and the other companies as well. The other countries also do not tax their car companies to as high a level as the USA.

So – It appears that the problem lies directly in the lap of the federal government. As usual the federal government uses our money as though it was theirs with no agreement whatever from the taxpayers.

1. They (Carter & Clinton) created the start of the housing disaster (Clinton and other responsible members including Greenspan have admitted a mistake on their part) which caused the whole economic ‘house of cards’ to collapse.

2. They exacerbated the problem by not doing anything to rein in the unions.

3. They went deeply into debt using the huge bailouts for the financial institutions.

4. They are considering additional bailouts to the ‘me-too-ism’ crowd.

The bottom line is that the American people have (through the President and congress) taken on a horrible debt that we may never be able to repay. It is possible that because of that there may be an event in the future which places the whole Country into bankruptcy. This Country always made out fine until the government began getting more and more involved.

The Country was making out fine until the various levels of government (especially the federal government) began to get involved with our lives. The interference by government has been going on for the past 70 years and (using the boiling frog theory) becomes more invasive as time goes by. The financial melt down gave government a great advantage to become even more intrusive. Leading to who knows what. Certainly NOT the America that most of us ‘oldies’ knew!

The government should never, ever meddle in private business for any reason. Now that they have, I believe that the actions they take will in no way bail the Country out of the financial crisis the government made. Stay tuned for more government interference and ineffective actions!

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Appendix A

Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.

So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.

Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank’s relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie.

Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain skeptical.

“It’s absolutely a conflict,” said Dan Gainor, vice president of the Business & Media Institute. “He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?

“If this had been his ex-wife and he was Republican, I would bet every penny I have – or at least what’s not in the stock market – that this would be considered germane,” added Gainor, a T. Boone Pickens Fellow. “But everybody wants to avoid it because he’s gay. It’s the quintessential double standard.”

A top GOP House aide agreed.

“C’mon, he writes housing and banking laws and his boyfriend is a top exec at a firm that stands to gain from those laws?,” the aide told FOX News. “No media ever takes note? Imagine what would happen if Frank’s political affiliation was R instead of D? Imagine what the media would say if [GOP former] Chairman [Mike] Oxley’s wife or [GOP presidential nominee John] McCain’s wife was a top exec at Fannie for a decade while they wrote the nation’s housing and banking laws.”

All that having been said – Where are we after about 8 months of a great deal of activity but very little, if any, action causing anything resembling a return to economic stability and job increases (as a matter of fact unemployment is approaching 10%).

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Appendix B

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), enacted by Congress in 1977 (12 U.S.C. 2901) and implemented by Regulations 12 CFR parts 25, 228, 345, and 563e, is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate. In this section of the web site, you can find out more about the regulation and its interpretation and information on CRA examinations.

Background & Purpose
 The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound banking operations. It was enacted by the Congress in 1977 (12 U.S.C. 2901) and is implemented by Regulations 12 CFR parts 25, 228, 345, and 563e. (See CRA Regulation — http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/regulation.htm).
CRA Regulations
The links to the CRA regulations are either documents to be downloaded or to sites that contain the regulation or links to the regulatory agencies.
 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System FRB (http://www.federalreserve.gov/bankinforeg/reglisting.htm)
 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation FDIC (http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/community/community/index.html)
 Officer of the Comptroller of Currency OCC (http://www.occ.treas.gov/fr/cfrparts/12CFR25.htm)
 Office of Thrift Supervision OTS (http://www.ots.treas.gov/?p=CRA)
The CRA requires that each insured depository institution’s record in helping meet the credit needs of its entire community be evaluated periodically. That record is taken into account in considering an institution’s application for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions. (See CRA Ratings – http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/ratings.htm) CRA examinations (see Exam Schedules) are conducted by the federal agencies that are responsible for supervising depository institutions: the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).

Additional information in the form of Interagency Questions and Answers (http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E8-31116.pdf), Interagency Interpretive Letters (http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/letters.htm), CRA data reporting (http://www.ffiec.gov/cra/letters.htm) is available.

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Appendix C

Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory
Reform Act of 2005 – S 190
109th Congress
2005-2006

A bill to address the regulation of secondary mortgage market enterprises, and for other purposes.

Proposed by the President and supported by Sen. McCain

This is a bill in the U.S. Congress originating in the Senate (“S.”). A bill must be passed by both the Senate and House and then be signed by the President before it becomes law.
This bill never became law. This bill was proposed in a previous session of Congress. Sessions of Congress last two years, and at the end of each session all proposed bills and resolutions that haven’t passed are cleared from the books. Members often reintroduce bills that did not come up for debate under a new number in the next session.

Jul 28, 2005: Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably.

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