Here are few things I get tired of having to constantly post to remind people of facts:
1) Don't blame Clinton or liberals for the repeal of Glass Steagall. There is certainly a lot to legitimately blame liberals for, but the repeal of the important parts of Glass Steagall, which separated regular banking from investment banking (aka, gambling), was the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, sponsored by Republicans and passed by a Republican-majority congress with a veto-proof vote in 1999. Note than many Democrats shamefully voted for it as well, but it certainly wasn't their idea.
2) Don't blame CRA for the housing crisis. While it ...More ultimately may not have been a very good idea, the CRA was a laughably *minor* contributor to the crisis. The evidence of this is overwhelming. Even the WSJ admits it. Even Fox News doesn't tout this anymore because it'd be like claiming that gravity falls up. CRA certainly makes for an "easy" scapegoat (those darn poor people, it's all their fault!!), and but the facts don't support that argument.
The overwhelming majority of subprime loans (2/3 or more) were made by private banks not subject to CRA. Worse yet, among subprime loans, the actual CRA loans were MUCH less likely to default to private banks' subprime loans.
Full-time systems engineer, with a part-time hobby of investing.
My positions on the state of the markets are summed up nicely in a recent article:
* Regulate CDS as insurance, with a requirement of insurable interest for the buyer, and adequate capital for the seller.
* Reinstate Glass-Steagall
* Apply a Transaction Tax, sufficient to deter HFT
* Impose Position Limits, both individual and collective, sufficient to maintain to volume of commodities futures trades in some meaningful relationship with the amount of the actual commodity in circulation or production.
* Outlaw synthetic securities
* Restrict MBS and other securitizations to simple structures, with wide tranches.
* Extend the statute of limitations for securities fraud and misrepresentation in the Securities and Securities Exchange Acts to seven years.
* Impose obligations on market makers and liquidity providers sufficient to compensate for the privileges and exemptions they receive.
* Develop international standards for regulation, strong enough to end regulatory arbitrage.
1) Don't blame Clinton or liberals for the repeal of Glass Steagall. There is certainly a lot to legitimately blame liberals for, but the repeal of the important parts of Glass Steagall, which separated regular banking from investment banking (aka, gambling), was the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, sponsored by Republicans and passed by a Republican-majority congress with a veto-proof vote in 1999. Note than many Democrats shamefully voted for it as well, but it certainly wasn't their idea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
2) Don't blame CRA for the housing crisis. While it ... More