Saturday, October 04, 2008

The Culpability Diversion: The Fannie Mae; Freddie Mac Crises

and drawing parallels to the Springfield Police/Fire Pension Crisis

Snopes.com has the low down on the credit crisis, at least from the sub-prime mortgage perspective. Understanding that people who find themselves in messes like to fully understand how they got in the mess they are in, snopes verified that two articles recreated and circulated by email are true.

One of the articles, written by Steven A. Holmes and published in the "New York Times" in 1999, was titled: "Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending," the other, also a "New York Times" article, written by Stephen Labaton was published in September, 2003, and titled: "New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ."

Both are eye opening, if you really want to know how we got here today, with $700 billion dollars, by any name, still being a bail-out. I'd recommend the snopes link, it is a very easily understood summary.

Representative Roy Blunt insists it is not a bailout. He said American taxpayers are "investing in their future."

In other news, the City of Springfield is still working, through its new City Manager, to find a feasible solution to our local police and fire fighter pension plan crisis. The sentiment among some of the local press seems to be that citizens should not finger point or try to place blame regarding how the pension plan ended up underfunded by $140 million dollars, or only funded by 50 percent. With blindfolded determination, some believe understanding the past will only start a "potentially paralyzing round of finger pointing," leaving one to believe if residents understand how our pension plan got into such a mess it will only serve to keep us from looking forward to a solution. Perhaps they are waiting for the Associated Press to issue a report for them (or another local paper).

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future." - George Bernard Shaw

"History is a race between education and catastrophe." - H. G. Wells

"History is more or less bunk." - Henry Ford

"History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again." - Kurt Vonnegut

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again." - Maya Angelou

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation." - Robert F. Kennedy


Have a pleasant weekend.

9 comments:

admin said...

"When people don't want you to know what happened it is because they are the ones who screwed up."
FAT JACK

"Don't be such a dumb ass."
FAT JACK

Jackie Melton said...

"Don't be such a dumb ass."

Begging your forgiveness.

I'll try not to be such a dumb ass in the future...I am trying to learn from my past mistakes, here.

;)

Busplunge said...

Well, maybe they are taking a page from Governor Palin and her comments on global warming: "I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?"

And do you remember what Joe Biden said in response to the Governor's statement? I do: "If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution."

Jackie Melton said...

Jim,

I don't want to get into a debate about the cause of global warming (or cooling), but, that said, I understand your point. I will say I think it is a bit simplistic to believe that man and man, alone, is the sole and only cause of global warming and I think Governor Palin recognizes there may be some other considerations involved, recognizing that we may not know EVERYTHING about any given subject, in my opinion, IS the intelligent approach.

Now, I don't know if it was really Jack's intention to call me, personally, a "dumb ass," but considering I've been a "dumb ass" before and will, likely, be a "dumb ass" at some point in the future....I try not to take myself too seriously and would advise others against it too.

I think, even when we are stating the obvious (to some) that it's appropriate, at times, to get it on record that we SEE and UNDERSTAND what is really happening and can read beyond the political rhetoric.

That's why, this morning, I posted a possibly "dumb ass" entry at JackeHammer, and THAT is why there will continue to be loads of "dumb ass" entries in the future.

I also question the motives of a self-proclaimed Obama supporter calling a person who posts about facts that indicate Democrats had a clear hand in the mortgage crises, as it stands today, identifying that historically, efforts were made to correct it which indicate Republicans made an effort to do so.

We all are motivated for the things we say, do and write about.
I know my motivations and don't mind sharing them.

From one "dumb ass," to one "Jack" "ass." ;)

Busplunge said...

One of the things I like about blogging and one of my favorite blogs is that, while we may disagree on how the train gets to the station, we both agree that it needs to go to the same station, especially when we are riding the city train.

In re-reading my comment, I can see where it looks like an attempt to hijack the thread and turn it into a discussion on global warming.

Not so.

I was using the Palin / Biden exchange to re-inforce your comments that we need to know how we got into a mess to know how to fix the mess. I probably could have just used the Biden statement without the Palin prologue.

Global warming was just staging arena for the main gist I was going after: IF you don't know what the cause is, it is virtually impossible to come up with a solution.

And that applies aptly to the pension fund crisis.

tom said...

Another one you might want to look at the info comes at the following link :
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

Enough of the he said she said argument of those in both political parties. The ones who seem to be getting off scott free on the blame game is those people who bought a house that they just couldn't afford NO matter what the lender said. In my situation we could easily have qualified for a 100K plus home on the south end of town however I would much prefer to have some spending cash at the end of my bill payment instead of trying to figure out which bill to short change so I can make a house payment.

There were MANY political favors done in this industry an a pox on someone's house who complains about the situation then cast a ballot for anyone who had anything to do with this problem.

For those of you that be thinking about casting a ballot for McCain, Obama, Blunt and a host of hundreds which screwed us don't complain unless you will cast a ballot in a month to STOP the status quo.

You can't continue to support the actions of those and complain about it at the same time.

Jackie Melton said...

"You can't continue to support the actions of those and complain about it at the same time."

Ah, contraire, Tom, people do it every day. We may not like it and think it is wrong, but people do it every day.

tom said...

I'm well aware of this and I point it out often, much too the dismay of some who think they can complain about corruption and continue to support it at the same time.

Whether it be on the local, state, or the national scene hypocrisy bounds those who support the political parties which reign supreme. They have every right to complain to themselves for being idiotic when they cast their ballot, why others should castigate them for supporting what it is they rail against.

Anonymous said...

c said:

I saw a great bumper sticker the other day...

it said:

"Quit bitchin & start a Revolution