Life In Sherman Oaks

Image via Wikipedia One common assumption about the subprime mortgage crisis is that it was caused by poor folks with bad credit. Amongst some groups, especially those putting all the blame on Barney Frank — is that this subprime mess and the resultant recession is all about minorities that just had to have a house they couldn’t afford — so some kindly banker did their best to give them the [...]

Republican Rep. Jab Hensarling says President Obama is responsible for budget deficit. After the interviewer pointed out to Jab that: (a) 90% of the budget $13.5 trillion deficit was handed over to Obama by a Republican administration and (b) that most spending is non-discretionary — Jab just kept living up to his name and telling stories. Maybe he wants to go along with his colleague Blackburn from Tennessee who wants [...]

After the Supreme Court ruling, revising the constitution to read, “We the Corporations on the United States of America” — a ruling Republicans believe to be excellent for the advancement of free speech — a corporation has decided to run for Congress! Finally….(see video)

Since President’s budget came out today, I thought it might be interesting to look at health care and health care costs. Last year, as a country — we spent on average $8,160 per person on health care — $2.5 trillion altogether. But averages are deceiving. There are 308 million Americans. According to this data, 31 million of us require $1.45 trillion worth of health care or an average of $46,774.00. [...]

The London Times is reporting that the CEO of Goldman Sachs, the company who may be most reponsible for the current recession and received tax payer loans in order to prevent it from going into bankruptcy — is going to give himself a $100 million compensation package this year. Goldman is saying the announcement is premature. By the way — this is a picture of Blankfein’s $41 million home in [...]

Too many of our Nation’s railways, highways, bridges, airports, and neighborhood streets are not keeping up with the needs of our Nation due to lack of investment and strategic longterm planning. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our country’s infrastructure the grade of a “D.” The unsatisfactory condition and operational performance of our roads and bridges carries real costs from billions of dollars in car repairs to wasted fuel [...]

John McCain is wrong. Ben Bernanke is not the one who is responsble for the recession we find ourselves in. But John McCain would like to have you believe that he is responsible, because then your attention is deflected from the real cause: Legislation that Congress passed from the end of the Clinton era thru the Bush era — that overturned regulations on Wall Street that were put place after [...]

In response to the Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to spend as much as they want of their profits in the political arena, Congressman Frank, Democrat, who is known on the hill as one of the smartest Congressman we have — has said that while we may not be able to contain corporate spending on campaigns as a matter of campaign finance reform.. …but that Congress does have the right [...]

The Robber Barons: the Goldman Sachs, the JP MorganChase, etc. now own America as a result of the Supreme Court Ruling Today. John Boehner and Mitch McConnell (Republican leaders) applauded the Supreme Court decision today. Wake up tea partiers! Wake up populists! This is your doing! See the video.

The President has announced a minimal fee on Wall Street banks with over $50 billion in assets that will be levied to recapture the loan default of about $117 billion on the TARP funds. Uncle Warren, or Warren Buffet as this 78 year old is more often called, is yelling “No fair.” Why is this kindly old man talking like this? Isn’t he the same man who expressed outrage that [...]

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Alan Greenspan (born March 6, 1926) is an American economist who was appoined by Ronald Reagan to serve as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States in 1987 Until to 2006 he continued to serve in this capacity. Alan Greenspan is a free market champion. Not just a regular free market champion, but an Ayn Rand type market champion (if you don’t know what that means, read “Atlas [...]

Effective July 6, 2007, the SEC voted to remove the “short sale tick test”, Rule 17 CFR 240.10a-1 for all equity securities. As a result traders were able to short all securities on an up, down, or zero tick. Well, first of all, what is short selling? Short selling is betting that the stock of a company will go down. As a result of the Great Depression, there had been [...]

With the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 (a Republican sponsored bill), Wall Street regulations that had been in place since the great Depression, were wiped out. The Banking Act of 1933 (in response to the Great Depression) was a law that established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and introduced banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation. It is most commonly [...]

While the banks would have you get bogged down in the sophisticated statistical risk models that they used to figure out the derivatives market, the truth is — the concept is quite simple. It’s betting. Legalized betting. (By the way, in their sophisticated statistical risk models, the bankers before the Congressional inquiry committee this week, that they forgot to include in their equations the fact that home prices could go [...]

It has been reported on CNBC, when the junior lien holder (the 2nd mortgage holder) is Citibank, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, these banks are asking home owners and/or real estate agents, for kick backs off the books — when a home is sold as a short sale. Now remember, is it Citibank, Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase who made these loans to home owners and [...]

Larry Kudlow, host of CNBC’s larry Kudlow show, was laughing this morning about the record bonuses being dolled out by Wall Street. His arrogance was only a public display of the private arrogance of Wall Street. He thought it was funny to sarcastically announce that he had heard President was sending the National Guard down to Wall Street (ha ha) as a result of the bonus payouts (a reference to [...]

[REMEMBERING LAST JANUARY] This morning, President Obama announced a fee structure that will be put in place on banks with more than $50 billion in assets. The idea is to make sure Wall Street banks who borrowed American taxpayer money under TARP, PAY IT BACK! After listening to the heads of the four biggest causes of the economic debacle yesterday (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, B of America, JP Morgan) explain [...]

In 1998, a woman named Brooksley Born who sits on the Congressional Investigative Committee into the 2008 Economic debacle, was head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission– a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading. Brooksley had been a derivatives lawyer for years. As the newly appointed head of the CFTC, she warned of a coming economic disaster as a result of the unregulated derivatives market. But former Federal [...]

Let’s face it, the banks and investment firms like Goldman Sachs KNEW the subprime mortgages were going to fail. How did they know this you ask? Well, contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t always the borrower who was unqualified, risky. No — it was the loan itself that was. The average subprime loan from ’98 to ’06, was for $205,700. And here is how they worked. the first type — [...]