[GCFL-discuss] OK, Now open your other eye...

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

Well, greenBubble, I thought I knew what the gist of this article would
be before I read it. But I read it, because I don't know what it says
until I have finished reading it. Like most of the stuff being bandied
about these days, it is part of the truth, spoken defiantly by a partisan
who is in denial about the rest of the truth.

It has been gospel to the dominant factions in the Republican Party since
about 1980 that government should take its hands off the stock markets,
the financial markets, and business generally, expecting that "market
forces" would generate not only prosperity but impeccable Norman Rockwell
morality and a sound economy we could all rely on.

That has proved to be hogwash. It was already proved to be hogwash, only
a few years after Reagan deregulated the Savings and Loan industry. What
had been small, community-based savings institutions, offering relatively
easy access to mortgage money for local working families, became a prime
target for large-scale speculators and spectacular mergers, resulting in
a crash for which taxpayers picked up a tab running into billions of
dollars. A well regulated Savings and Loan industry would not have been
attractive to those speculators, nor would such large regional chains
have been consolidated under the previous rules. (My money is in a credit
union, which still serves its original purpose. When credit unions get
"deregulated" and some highly leveraged investment bank offers to "buy
the shares" of current "members" I will take all my money out and never
look back.) 

A good deal of the same thing has happened with the mortgage industry.
The Boston Globe columnist doesn't want to admit it, any more than Barney
Frank wants to admit that congressional pressure to make mortgages more
widely available might have contributed also.

Red-lining has been, for much of American history, a very real thing.
Whole neighborhoods of most cities, even fairly small ones, literally had
red lines drawn around them on maps at every bank, almost every bank, and
no loans of any nature, including mortgages and small business loans,
would be issued to anyone residing or doing business within those lines.
Mostly, the lines were based on race, but there was a time when an
Italian or Irish neighborhood would disqualify -- when Italians and Irish
were considered "non-white." Jewish neighborhoods too, although not in
our lifetime. That is one reason there were ethnically identified banks,
which were the only ones that WOULD lend to people in those
neighborhoods, but those banks never had enough capital to make up for
all the red-lining. After all, their depositors were little corner stores
and wage-earning families, and they didn't have much other investment.

No good deed is done without someone running a number on it. Welfare
began as a way to insure that single mothers could devote their time to
raising young children properly before returning to the workforce -- at a
time when daddy was generally expected to be the provider for most
families, and there was no daddy to provide. Some women took advantage of
it to support drug habits or ignore the kids while watching soap operas
or whatever. Now that we have "reforms" to put all the lazy moms to work,
none of the kids, including those with good conscientious moms, are
getting supervised much, so we have a rising wave of kids with no sense
of courtesy or respect, because it simply doesn't compute. It is not part
of their life experience that they owe respect to anyone.

In the same way, legitimate efforts to open credit to those who needed it
and could make good use of it was run off with in many ways. Just because
someone who got themselves into their own mess cried "racism" doesn't
mean racism never existed or doesn't still have an impact. Just because
racism is real does not mean everyone who cries "racism" deserves one
iota of sympathy. We need some broad guidelines, and then settle down to
the hard work of judging each individual as a unique individual.

I personally know a man who for many years ran a used car lot, worked
very hard at it, supported his three children (wife also worked -- very
high-priced real estate market, even to rent), and could have grown his
business in a much more succesful way if he could only have gotten some
credit to improve the quality of his stock of cars, and equipment to add
more services. He had the skill, drive, commitment, honesty, experience,
all he lacked was the credit. Eventually he closed the business, and went
to work for Pep Boys, then for Office Depot. Some people meant to be
helped by the measures your Boston Globe columnist critiqued still
haven't gotten it. So we have some adjustments to make in both
directions.

I drive a bus all over a county with some very expensive suburban areas
and some very depressed inner-city areas. I can tell you, the clusters of
"For Sale" signs and unsold properties are mostly in the new condos and
reasonably well maintained, relatively recent single family homes. There
are old boarded up buildings in the most impoverished neighborhoods, but
those have not been boarded up because of a mortgage default. They are
just old and badly maintained. Most of the bad mortgage money is in
working or business families who simply reached beyond their means. That
only stands to reason: they are buying the more expensive houses, so a
larger portion of the mortgage money is in their mortgages. They aren't
homeless, they are simply unable to make their payments. If they'd
settled for a house a room or two smaller, or one twenty years older,
they would be all right.

Its hard to put ideological defenses down in an election year, because
everyone is looking for reasons the present crisis (or anything else
going on) gives their neighbors a good reason to vote for whichever
candidate the speaker, or writer, is committed to. The fact is, there is
a great deal to be fixed. Except for 1998-2000, our national debt has
been rising exponentially since 1981. We're going to have to pay that
back sooner or later. Its going to be painful. Nobody running for
president is going to tell us "We have to lower our standard of living."
But its going to happen to us, whether we like it or not, whether
politicans level with us about it or not.

You all know I'm voting for Obama. I know Obama has ties to Sallie Mae. I
have read that McCain has equally established ties to Freddie Mac.
Neither one of them is absolutely beholden to either one, but both have
shown some bad judgment. I fear McCain more, because he has consistently
supported the kind of deregulation that has done a whole lot to get us
into this mess. And if the excessively lax mortgage standards began with
Carter, take note that Reagan, Bush and Bush allowed that to continue.
Why? Probably because the upper crust financial markets were finding ways
to print money off of it, and give campaign funds a nice cut. Also,
McCain and Palin can talk taxes until they are blue in the face, Obama's
tax cuts will benefit 95% of the population, McCain's will mostly benefit
the other 5%. As far as I am concerned, that 5% can start paying a much
bigger share of the burden, since they are socking away most of the
profit. Finally, Republicans have a record of running up the deficit,
Democrats of balancing the budget and actually reducing the national
debt.

Its all very well to implicitly blame it on black welfare recipients
thinking they could own a home (that is, in some markets, a net savings
for the taxpayer compared to the cost of renting). But I for one would
like to be able to buy a primary residence someday with 5% or 10% down,
because I don't know if I can come up with 20% before the price rises
entirely out of my reach again. A lot of individuals and families are
also in that in between. I never took seriously the idea of buying
property with no money down, and that option should never be brought
back, but some flexibility is a good thing.

Yes, Barney Frank has some mess to clean up in his own house, but that
doesn't mean that if government would just keep its hands off the banks,
we would have a fine prosperous community and good ethical, stable
financial markets that never never never threatened to tumble us into a
recession. The reason we havent had five more depressions since 1929 is a
tremendous amount of regulation. Remember, corporations are not natural
persons, they are creatures of government, and their powers need to be
restrained just as much as the powers of government need to be
restrained.

Siarlys
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