Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank Predicts 5.4% gdp growth for Q1 2018

Put in place...yes.

But Bush went nuts with it...he arranged to have tens of billions put into the housing market for his low income initiative through HUD. That amount would balloon to many times it's worth through mortgages.



See from 4:14. GWB was ALL IN to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars on this and dared banks and other industry leaders to make sure that 5.5 million (!?!) new, low income homeowners would be in America by 2010. That is HUGE....and far, FAR larger then Clinton ever proposed.

That - along with the Fed lowering interest rates SO low, more then any other reason, was why the housing bubble began and eventually collapsed (as all bubbles end).

I am not going to argue facts.

The fact is that GWB (with help from the Fed) went CRAZY (with good intentions, I believe) on low income home ownership.

You don't want to believe it - fine. I am an independent and don't care which stupid party is to blame. They both are, IMO as Congress went along with all of this full bore.

Good day.

 

Actually, yes. Most of the money wouldn't have entered the market without the fraudulent lending.

Fannie and Freddie were never more than part of the subprime lending. But there's no doubt the government added to the problem.

It wouldn't have happened, either, if the government had stopped the fraud in the creation and marketing of MBSs.

Yes, Bush stepped on the gas when he should have put on the brakes to prevent the creation of a housing asset bubble. Carter and Bush the Elder hit the brakes. But then they weren't re-elected. Clinton handed Bush the Younger a hot potato. (Thanks, Slick.)

 

He raised the HUD requirement to Fannie and Freddie from 50% under Clinton to 55% of their mortgages be granted to low income applicants. That's an incremental increase over Clinton. The YouTube is from 2002. He attempted to close down Fannie and Freddie but the legislation was blocked by the D's who were in charge in the Congress by the time the legislation got out of committee. He is certainly a contributor to the housing bubble and financial crisis but not exclusively to blame.

But again this mess clearly illustrates the failure of government again but in a tragically spectacular way. If government had not been involved in an effort to allow low income people to buy houses they could not afford this would not have happened. And ironically the very people that this program was supposed to help were those harmed the most. What's the road to hell paved with ???

 

Too simplistic. Big business is merrily squashing small business. Corner stores, gas stations, diners, motels ... run out of business, then prices increased when they're gone. There are fewer new businesses these days than in the past.

 

Dufuss Bush gutted the SEC and helped create the crisis. You're perpetrating a fraud by suggesting the Republicans who controlled Congress and the White House from 2003-2007 were interested in reform.

 

Are you another supply side guy?
It took a long time for the market to come back.


Who would loan money in those days? Let alone to buy a bankrupt car company.

It was my understanding Pensky blew up the Saturn deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/business/01auto.html
I could see why they wouldn't want to sell Pontiac even though it hadn't made money in years.

9 billion? Not bad in the grand scheme of things.

I would say the market wasn't there for quite a while. Imagine it with another million or more people out of work.

 

How did Bush gut the SEC. SEC rules were responsible in part for the financial crisis. Was the SEC supposed to act to prevent the financial crisis ?? How would they have done that ??

R legislation was killed by the D’s in 2007.

 

The climb was long and slow because of Obamanomics. Compare to supply side economics recoveries.

 

Nice analysis. That describes Obamanomics concisely.

 

In a $14 trillion dollar economy with 10% fractional reserve banking...plenty of people.

There is no way auto companies are going to just let 20% market share sit there untapped. If you believe otherwise, sorry, but you do not understand macroeconomics, IMO.

Not bad...$9 billion thrown out the window with no proof whatsoever that the auto industry would have been hurt in the slightest had GM gone under.
And part of that money went to an Italian company? Jeez.
GM only has 68,000 US workers. That works out to $132,000 per worker. That is totally ridiculous.
Plus, GM still lost 22,000 workers since before the bankruptcy.
So this 'not bad' $9 BILLION taxpayer loss ended up losing Chrysler to Italy and cost GM 22,000 workers.
With ZERO proof that those jobs would not have been gobbled up by other auto manufacturers had GM been allowed to fail?
That is your idea of 'not bad'?

Noted.

I would say you are guessing.
I am not interested in guessing/debating theories about economics. I like facts and data from unbiased sources (whenever possible).


We are done here.

Good day.

 

Supply-side policies may pay for themselves in faster economic growth. Gutting environmental controls may boost output today, but cost more to cleanup later. Public spending on roads and other infrastructure may benefit a business and get a lot of political support, but it may not be worth what special interests get government to spend.

Tax cuts don't pay for thrmselves.

There are other pols who cut personal taxes in another version of a free lunch.

The dishonest big business answer of cutting regulations creates another "tragic failure of government" when business dominates and buys off the pols.

What nonsense! The message was "we'll let you f**k over your customers and others, have at it."

Some low-income types got a lot of free money.

 

FAKE NEWS ALERT!

 

Wow - there is no pretense of attempting to honestly understand the history of what actually happened anymore. Sad.

 

Why do you hate production/wealth creation and blindly defend the government whose intervention facilitated the entire housing bubble / financial crisis ?? It's amazing.

 

So I guess the bank bailouts weren't needed either?
Edit:
The Credit Well Dried Up
These massive losses caused many banks to tighten their lending requirements, but it was already too late for many of them… the damage had already been done. Several banks and financial institutions merged with other institutions or were simply bought out. Others were lucky enough to receive a government bailout and are still functioning. The worst of the lot or the unlucky ones crashed.

There was no 20% share to be tapped. The auto market fell nearly 50%.

What U.S. taxpayers avoided, according to CAR, was the loss of about $105.3 billion in transfer payments plus the loss of personal and social insurance tax collections to the tune of 768% of the net investment of $11.8 billion in GM and $1.9 billion (none recovered) in Chrysler. Including jobs related to the auto industry, the federal bailout preserved 2.6 million jobs in the U.S. economy in 2009 alone and $284.4 billion in personal income in 2009 and 2010.


As we have already noted, the CAR report suggests that many jobs would have been recovered eventually, but the gains would have been made mostly in the southeastern United States, where foreign carmakers like Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) have been building manufacturing capacity. The CAR report notes that the results of such a migration would have had severe consequences in the long term and that unemployment rates in the upper Midwestern states would likely still be in double digits.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/12/09/gm-treasury-bailout-jobs-saved/3928767/

I would say you are the one guessing.

 

The bailout of the auto industry by Obama eliminated the necessity for the auto companies to declare bankruptcy and reorganize. This continues to hurt their competiveness globally just as it did in the late 70's when Chrysler was bailed out. The Obama bailout helped labor unions, damaged bond holders some of which were people who depended on the income for retirement, and damaged the competitiveness of the US automakers. Foreign car makers always locate in right to work states, pay their employees well, provide sensible benefits, and enjoy lower employment costs. IIRC each US auto build in a union factory costs ~ $1500 dollars more due to union costs. Foreign car makers provide features for this $1500 and are more competitive because of that.

 

Uh huh. Like a stopped clock, he's right twice a day...

Yeah, we're not going back the gold standard.

His being a talking head is an indication of where you get your economic ideas.

They're out of the mainstream in economics.

Your commentary about the Fed went beyond dropping the employment mandate.

Who or what would have stopped the free fall in aggregate demand? Consumers and business weren't spending and banks weren't lending.

I asked three questions based on mainstream economic views. Can you answer them without making assumptions about my views? I have said we should be spending more on R&D, infrastructure, and job training, but I didn't say how we should go about making it happen.

You seem think tv talking heads are representative of economists. Do you understand why a tv economist is constrained to be upbeat?

https://www.federalreserve.gov/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/2002/20021108/

 

Is the mainstream responsible for the Obama stimulus which didn’t and guaranteed that unemployment would not exceed 8% ??

It’s a complement to state that the Austrians are out of the mainstream.

 

Dream on

• Back in late January the Atlanta Fed was calling for a 5.4 percent GDP gain, but on Wednesday it said growth likely will be just 1.9 percent.
• The cut comes amid similar reductions from J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs, who now respectively see growth at 2 percent and 1.8 percent.
• Wednesday's disappointing retail sales number was at the root of the latest reductions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/all...r-economic-growth-is-rapidly-fading-away.html

So who is going to pay for trump's tax cuts for the filthy rich? WE ARE!!! YAY!!!!

Remember that the staggering growth was going to pay for it. So much for that.

 

Life is hard when your company files bankruptcy.
Suddenly you are in favor of the corporations? Labor is even cheaper in Mexico you know.

 

The ratings weren't done by the federal government. You're full of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agencies_and_the_subprime_crisis

Oops.

 

Do you not save for your retirement? Do you not save at all? Every $1000 you put into a stock with good dividend yield nets you $40 per year in income, plus capital gains.

If you think Capitalism is exploitation, it's not ending anytime soon. If you can't beat them, join them. Make your money work for you.

 

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-gutting-of-the-sec-1015

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1843519,00.html

 

Do you ever admit you're wrong.