*to Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Κυνόσαργες

Saturday 5 November 2011

Quote of the Day: Tiabbi on Wall Street's 'Noble Lie'

Noble Lie?
Were there a lot of people who wouldn’t have gotten homes twenty or thirty years ago who are now in foreclosure thanks to government efforts to make mortgages more available? Sure – no question.
But did any of that have anything at all to do with the explosion of subprime home lending that caused the gigantic speculative bubble of the mid-2000s, or the crash that followed?
Not even slightly. The whole premise is preposterous. And Mike Bloomberg knows it.
In order for this vision of history to be true, one would have to imagine that all of these banks were dragged, kicking and screaming, to the altar of home lending, forced against their will to create huge volumes of home loans for unqualified borrowers.
In fact, just the opposite was true. This was an orgiastic stampede of lending, undertaken with something very like bloodlust. Far from being dragged into poor neighborhoods and forced to give out home loans to jobless black folk, companies like Countrywide and New Century charged into suburbs and exurbs from coast to coast with the enthusiasm of Rwandan machete mobs, looking to create as many loans as they could.
 

7 comments:

  1. A lot of full of shiters are being called out right now. Some are admitting it before they are called out.

    http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/28/8522718-michael-moore-confesses-i-am-the-1-percent

    Love the guy but he's aware his bread is already buttered.

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  2. You have to consider something: Moore earned his money by being an entertainer, not a speculating parasite born with a silver spoon. I still don't think anyone should have that much coin, even if I like his politics, and how effective he is at getting eyes on another version of America than the orthodox. Then again, he's the man that got the video made, on Wall Street ten years ago, of what should be the anthem of the revolution.

    http://www.veoh.com/watch/e162468rJY2JySr?h1=Rage+Against+the+Machine+-+Sleep+Now+in+the+Fire

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  3. a lot of people in the business, even down the line, knew EXACTLY what they were doing when they were lending this money to prospective homeowners.

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  4. 'Hot potato' is all about passing it along, and fast.

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  5. Watching this whole deal unfold is very interesting. We have a militarized police force (a process that has been underway in the US for quite some time), an unsustainable business model that appears be collapsing (maybe should have used the past tense), wars both abroad and at home (the drug one), and something going on with technology that allows for communication (social networking) on an unprecedented scale.

    There do not appear to be any leaders stepping in to fill the vacuum (if there is one) at this time. And somehow I find myself leaning toward the belief that the absence of leadership is a good thing.

    At the same time, I keep waiting for some unforeseen glitch, something obvious and very simple, that turns the whole situation bad in an almost irreversible and devastating way. Maybe if there is some kind of natural disaster and the timing is just right, something that allows people to be divided and controlled by their fears...

    "Don't panic. Keep moving."

    Anyway...

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  6. Amazing how a couple of airplanes with most of the hijackers from one country the CIA, and American oil, has deep ties with, committed their atrocity in the most public and cinematic way possible. I am not a 911 denier, because like you I have not been given access to a whisper of the true story. I do know how to smell a rat. What little would such a conspiracy take, after all? All of the Islamic actors could be totally sincere, but duped by just a few people with the cash.

    Is this crap about Iran the new distraction? Well-timed to distract against a citizen's movement? Iran, at best, is Iraq's problem. There are a nuisance, but not an existential threat, to countries without a shared border: Israel.

    If we are lucky, the 1% has lost the plot; if we are unlucky they'll resort to fascism to get it back. At a certain point they may decide if they don't enslave us, they'll lose it all. If they make that choice... the rest of us have all the authority we need.

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  7. How's this for a thought? Google + is a benevolent 1% (so far) and FB is not such a benevolent 1%. The thought was passed along with a link to an article by Jodi Dean, 'Why the Net is Not a Public Sphere'.

    I'm not feeling particularly lucky at this point.

    I have no idea what a distraction is anymore because I rarely look at the media. And I'm currently wondering out loud if I shouldn't be looking for some other type of blogging device, not like it should matter.

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