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The problem here was it was an industry wide accepted practice to injure a group that was vulnerable. Where were the watchdogs? Instead of wiping out social security, they wiped out the mortgate industry. This is the danger of having a base that consists of just rich people. There is no supervision.

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And who was behind this industry? When the housing industry was the ONLY thing keeping us from a recession, whose interest was served by coaxing banks/brokers to do this? Trace it back to the White House! Also, these buyers were not vulnerable. They KNEW what they signed, but they wanted those houses so badly. They led with their hearts & not their heads. or they were flippers. I have dealt with a number of brokers who tried to flimflam me. I caught them at it, reported them if necessary, & called my lawyer who armtwisted. Incidentally, paying a lawyer a few hundred bucks during the process is well worth the investment. And if you can't afford the lawyer, you can't afford the house! So yeah, brokers were not straight, never have been. But mindless folks signed on the dotted lines. Take some responsibility for your half of the equation!

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Well, seems to me the biggest beneficiaries of the housing bubble were the people who sold their houses at ridiculously inflated prices. But don't expect our dirtball politicos to go after those people.

I agree with Kathy that people were not forced to use subprime mortgages to buy more housing than they could afford, any more than people are forced to use high-interest loans to buy expensive new cars they cannot afford. If you have a modest income you should buy a modest house and buy a used car. Anything else and you are asking for trouble. Don't blame the government for your own folly.

I don't see why some guy who lives in a trailer in Alabama should be taxed to bail out some idiot who bought a house in Santa Monica he couldn't afford and that was ridiculously overpriced in the first place. We need to end this bubble cycle sooner or later.

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Sometimes people lose things because they are not good with respecting the little people. Being able to own a house is a statists statement. The house crisis is just a sign that God is angry with people that value things over people.

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Subprime mortgages -- the "Payday Advance" of home loans.

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Mr. Greenspan knew about this citzen highjacking and nary a word was said until after he retired and wrote a book. HMMMM

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U know during the so called boom they sold this dream to people who otherwise couldnt dream of owning a home. I agree those people should take some responsibility. But there is something criminal about a business allowing a mortgage to go threw when the numbers dont add up.

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One way to jumpstart the mortgage industry is to make your house cheaper to sell by selling it yourself. These days there are tons of free fsbo sites just for this puprpose. A good example of this is http://www.primefsbolistings.com where you can list your house for free through the end of 2008.

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As if any of this lets the home owner off the hook. You know how much money you have, you know how much you can pay. Being a dumb ass isnt mention here. Being a show boat and a dumb ass isn't listed here.

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A look into Barack Obama’s past might shed some light on the crisis
Barack Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ more than 20 years ago and considered the church pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his mentor. Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope." In his sermons, Rev. Wright repeated denunciations of the U.S and blurted out statements like “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."
Looking at Obama’s ties to Rev. Wright, and his connections to a terrorist bomber, William Ayers, both men who would like nothing more than to destroy this country causes many people to second guess Obama’s intentions for change. If you have not heard about William Ayers, you can read about him in the U.S. News, Michael Barone’s column-Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers. “In my U.S. News column, I make a brief reference to the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers and his connections to Barack Obama. They were closer than Obama implied when George Stephanopoulos asked him about Ayers in the April 16 debate—the last debate Obama allowed during the primary season. To get an idea of how close they were, check out Tom Maguire's Just One Minute blog and Steve Diamond's Global Labor and Politics. The Obama-Ayers relationship is also mentioned in David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate.”

Lets examine Obama’s connection with an accused political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko. The following is on explanation by Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz from ABC News. “In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, for "advice" as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate. Rezko had been widely reported to be under investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI at the time Obama contacted him and has since been indicted on corruption charges by a federal grand jury in a case that prosecutors say involves bribes, kickbacks and "efforts to illegally obtain millions of dollars."
Because Barack Obama was a dependable ally of subsidized developers in the Legislature, his friend and fund-raiser Rezko depended on him to get things done such as cosponsoring a bill in 2001 allowing developers to pocket half of the proceeds from selling state tax credits to others. Obama admitted that his decision to involve Rezko was “a bone-headed mistake.” What he failed to mention is that he has a closet full of bone-headed mistakes such as Peter Wallsten pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on
January 24, 2008.
“Barack Obama angered fellow Democrats in the Illinois Senate when he voted to strip millions of dollars from a child welfare office on Chicago's West Side. But Obama had a ready explanation: He goofed.

"I was not aware that I had voted no," he said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he “intended to vote yes.”
That was not the only misfire for the former civil rights attorney first elected to the state Senate in 1996. During his eight years in state office, Obama cast more than 4,000 votes. Of those, according to transcripts of the proceedings in Springfield, he hit the wrong button at least six times.”

Now comes the big question, what exactly does a community organizer do?
One thing Barack Obama did as a community organizer was pressure banks to make bad loans. In Barack Obama’s youthful community organizing days he joined a group called ACORN. Using the Community Reinvestment Act which was designed to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, ACORN started abusing the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in 'subprime' loans to minorities with bad or no credit. Using charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansions have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.
Other things that ACORN did as community organizers were agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits and organize voter registration drives. In 2006 for example, their voter registration drive in Washington produced 1,800 new voters of which 1,794 names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the “worst case of election fraud in our state’s history.”
If you like to know more, watch these two videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRmB93McZeI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

Cybercorrespondent
http://cybercorrespondent.blogspot.com

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