Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

From this House of Eratosthenes post, Party Like it’s 1999 wherein there is a link to Neal Boortz who has a clipping from the Sept. 30, 1999 edition of the New York Times (Paper of Record, y’know) that says:

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: September 30, 1999

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

Yes, boys and girls, Bubba gave us a real nice going-away present!

But that’s not the quote of the day. It’s just a setup. Continuing:

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

Y’see, this is how the MARKET WORKS. If you’re a higher risk then the lender had better see a higher return on his risk, or you’re not worth the risk.

But Fannie Mae (and Freddie Mac) removed the risk (so everyone thought). As Franklin Delano Raines famously said in House testimony, “These loans are almost riskless!”

And who doesn’t like free money?

But that wasn’t the QotD either. From the House of Eratosthenes piece, here is your QotD:

If the cause-and-effect is still a mystery to you . . . well then, you just might be a liberal democrat.

Following close on its heels is this from that same NYT piece – a bit of, shall we say, foreshadowing?

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

“From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

Please do read the whole piece. It’s chock-full of crunchy goodness! Nine years to the day. Who’dathunkit?

Obviously George Bush is at fault for not Nipping. This. In. The. BUD!

Mr. Wallison published American Enterprise Institute paper on the topic of “Regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” in May of 2005 that you might also find interesting.

(*Ahem*) I hereby nominate Peter Wallison to the position of Secretary of the Treasury.

Trust Us: There’s Nothing Worng!

Trust Us: There’s Nothing Worng!

Instapundit had this YouTube video. Since I’ve posted other stuff on the topic, I thought I would post this one, too:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]
My favorite quote from the video by Don Manzullo, (R-IL):

Mr. Raines: $1.1 million bonus on a $526,000 salary. Jamie Gorelick: $779,000 bonus on a salary of $567,000. This is… What you state on page 11 is nothing less than staggering. “The 1998 earnings per share value turned out to be three dollars and twenty-three cents and nine mills ($3.239) – a result that Fannie Mae met the max, the EPS maximum payout goal right down to the penny.

“Fannie Mae understood the rules and simply chose not to follow them, if Fannie Mae had followed the, the practices, there wouldn’t have been a bonus that year.”

(6:20-7:08 in the video.)

Watch the whole thing.

(I love C-SPAN. AND YouTube!)

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

Paraphrased from this Mostly Cajun post:

Taxpayer: A title much of the Democrat Party’s core constituency fails to acheive

Because it’s never a good idea to vote against your own economic best interests, and who doesn’t like “free money”?

Here’s a couple of associated quotes:

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Both of those by Alexis de Tocqueville.

The $700 Billion Kidney Stone

The $700 Billion Kidney Stone

Bill Whittle publishes at NRO once again, with Pain. Who knew all we had to do was pay him?

Excellent as always. And, having suffered a kidney stone myself, I was unable to refrain from wincing (and laughing out loud) at his description. The only difference, the EMT was given permission to give me morphine in the ambulance but he couldn’t find a vein. Mine passed apparently much faster than Bill’s, but I think it was made on the same production line in the same Bulgarian factory.

(h/t to DJ for the pointer.)

Alger, Hayek, Hoffer and Porretto

Alger, Hayek, Hoffer and Porretto

I’ve quoted Eric Hoffer from his seminal book True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements before. Here’s one that I’ve quoted at least twice previously:

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealosies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: “No…. We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.” F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: “It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.”

Francis Porretto has written a piece that I think everyone should read, Hatings.

I honestly wish I could say that I thought Francis was wrong, but I can’t. My only quibble: the Republicans aren’t innocent, either.

I’m further reminded of a post no longer available on the web, written by Ironbear, who still comments here occasionally:

It would be a mistake to paint the conflict exclusively in terms of “cultural war,” or Democrats vs Republicans, or even Left vs Right. Neither Democrats/Leftists or Republicans shy away from statism… the arguments there are merely over degree of statism, uses to which statism will be put – and over who’ll hold the reins. It’s the thought that they may not be left in a position to hold the reins that drives the Democrat-Left stark raving.

This is a conflict of ideologies…

The heart of the conflict is between those to whom personal liberty is important, and those to whom liberty is not only inconsequential, but to whom personal liberty is a deadly threat.

At the moment, that contingent is embodied most virulently by the “American” Left. This is the movement that still sees the enslavement and “re-education” of hundreds of thousands in South Vietnam, and the bones of millions used as fertilizer in Cambodia as a victory. This is the movement that sees suicide bombers as Minute Men, and sees the removal of a brutal murder and rape machine from power as totalitarianism. This is the movement that sees legitimately losing an election as the imposition of a police state. This is the movement that believes in seizing private property as “common good”. That celebrates Che Guevara as a hero. The movement who’s highest representatives talk blithely about taking away your money and limiting your access to your own homestead for your own good. The movement of disarmament.

The movement of the boot across the throat.

Think about it. When was the last time that you were able to engage in anything that resembled a discussion with someone of the Leftist persuasion? Were able to have an argument that was based on the premise that one of you was wrong, rather than being painted as Evil just because you disagreed?

The Left has painted itself into a rhetorical and logical corner, and unfortunately, they have no logic that might act as a paint thinner. It’s not possible for them to compromise with those that they’ve managed to conflate with the most venal of malevolence, with those whom they’re convinced disagree not because of different opinions but because of stupidity and evil, with those who’s core values are diametrically opposed to what the Left has embraced. There can be no real discourse, no real discussion. There’s no common ground. There can be no reconciliation there – the Left has nothing to offer that any adherent of freedom wants. The only way they can achieve their venue is from a position of political ascendancy where it can be imposed by force or inveigled by guile.

And all adherents of freedom have far too many decades of historical precedent demonstrating exactly where that Leftward road leads – to the ovens of Dachau.

And no, that’s not hyperbole.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

(Critics) waste time on America’s debased, overwhelming, industrial pop culture. They attack it with an energy appropriate to attacking fascism, or communism, or death. But that culture (bad television, movies, ads, pop songs) is a snivelling, ingratiating, billion-dollar cur. It has to be chosen to be consumed, so it flashes its tits, laughs at your jokes, replays your prejudices and smiles smiles smiles. It isn’t worthy of satire, because it cannot use force to oppress. If it has an off-button, it is not oppression. Attacking it is unworthy, meaningless. It is like beating up prostitutes. – Julian Gough, “The rest is silence,” Prospect magazine.

This is an excerpt from an article on the death of writer David Foster Wallace found originally at University Diaries. I’ve not read his only novel Infinite Jest, nor do I plan to, but I think that single paragraph has a much broader application than its author intended.

“If it has an off-button, it is not oppression.”
That needs to go on a T-shirt, becoming part of America’s “debased, overwhelming, industrial pop culture.”

Anybody Need an Aimpoint?

Anybody Need an Aimpoint?

SWFA has a sale on their Aimpoint CompC3, the civilian version that’s waterproof to 17′ rather than the military version that’s good to 150′:


That’s a pretty good deal, there. I’d be interested, but my AR M4gery upper is already equipped with a EOTech. The deal with the free QD mount is part number 11421KIT, the third item on the page.

Just thought a couple of you might like to know.

More Poetry

More Poetry

The Obama Victory March
(To the Tune Of “Marching Through Georgia”)

Sound the tocsin loud and clear
We must repel this thrust
Our enemies have now revealed
The truth to our disgust
So we fight and smite them
With the power of the left
As we go marching to D.C.

Chorus:

Hurra Hurra We’ll bind them up in Torts
Hurra Hurra We’ll beat them in the Courts
We’ll sue them in the local
And the state and federal too
As We go marching to D.C.

When We’ve won We’ll really show
The people we despise
How we act towards those who lost
Out on our fair prize
We’ll harrass them with law suits
And drive them into the sea
As we go marching to D.C.

Chorus:

Now we’ve settled in and packed
The courts to our content
Never shall the opposition
Fight our devilment
For we’ve got the strangle hold
On The government
As we came marching to D.C.

Chorus:

“algie” from the first comment at Instapundit’s poll on Obama’s attempt to shut down the NRA’s Obama Gun Ban commercials.