Times are tough all over

[tw]

Originally Posted by Elspode

I see. So Icelandic banks invested heavily in our mortgage banking, but that isn't America's economy driving theirs in any way?

I never said that. Iceland is apparently in trouble due to entanglements with the American economy. And so the question. Does Australia have the same entanglements?

I have no idea why you concluded otherwise.

[classicman]

I think a company leveraged at 30:1 might have had something to do with it too - just maybe.

[Aliantha]

All economies are intertwined or entagled to use your words tw. It's only the degree that differs. As I mentioned before, so far, our major banks have weathered the storm very well, and they've gobbled up the couple of smaller ones who've become slightly unstable.

We may be more isolated here and as I also mentioned before, our banks invest very heavily in resources and exploration. This is a market which is performing well here in Australia so things are not so bleak. Also our ability to export natural resources gives us a leg up which many other countries don't have. Our dollar being weaker is good for our export market also, and with the cost of imported products then becoming more expensive, people are encouraged to buy Australian, which in turn boost our economy and keeps it stable, at least in house.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

tw, an arm is not free money.

Australia was listed in The Economist article - a falling brick labeled housing prices. ARMs - described as easy money - were blamed for higher housing prices. Either the buyer could afford a home with a fixed mortgage, or he could use a money game - ARMS, sub-prime loans, variable rate, etc - to get an even larger home. So what happened? Housing prices rose 20% and 40% too high for no reason? Excessively higher house prices: also a symptom of money games. Since prices are even higher, more people wanted a bigger house and also resorted to ARMs. And so the money game is also self inflating as it sucks more homeowners in.

ARMs are a classic example of a money game. If the homeowner cannot afford a fixed mortgage, then the homeowner is not productive enough to earn that house.

Now, are you saying the massive economic implosion where ARMs, et al were more common - is that a coincidence? Hardly.

ARMs are a classic money game. Your mortgage should be structured to never becomes a burden when times get tough. That means no ARMs.

Let's see. Where ARMs were more common, then housing prices skyrocketed. Where ARMs are most common, then homeowners got homes they otherwise could not afford. Where ARMs were more common is where the worst mortgage crisises are now found (ie Stockton). But you say ARMs are not a money game? Then how do you explain the contradiction in those examples? How do explain economics taking the most revenge where ARMs were routine?

Meanwhile, still not answered are the questions about Australia's commodity export market.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

Our dollar being weaker is good for our export market also, and with the cost of imported products then becoming more expensive, people are encouraged to buy Australian, which in turn boost our economy and keeps it stable, at least in house.

That reasoning works to a certain extent. Buy Australian does not make a stronger economy. The strongest economies buy the best - believe in the free market - regardless of where it is made.

Furthermore, an economy heavily dependent on commodity exports is then very dependent on other imports to maintain that economy. That part gets forgotten. The productivity of higher tech industries then gets stifled as the necessary import costs are higher.

Example - a lower dollar means gasoline prices go higher.

Lower dollar is a double edge sword - with good and bad points. But the bottom line: a lower dollar means a lower standard of living. If an economy does not fix its problems, one way that economics takes revenge is to lower the dollar's value and therefore lower the country's standard of living. As a result, the people either work more productively or work more hours.

Another example of 'no free money'.

But again, how have the commodity markets affected the Australian economy?

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

I think a company leveraged at 30:1 might have had something to do with it too - just maybe.

What were they leveraged with? Mortgage backed securities that looked so good on paper because these securities were regarded similar to fix rate mortgages. Its not the fix rate mortgages that went into massive default. It is the irresponsible ARMS, et al mortgages that created problems.

Where did this house of cards stumble fastest? Where finance companies were holding so much ARMs in the form of mortgage backed securities.

VP of Merrill Lynch warned about this almost two years ago. So they fired him. Goldman Sachs is one of the few who (are said to) predicted the problem and hedged six months earlier.

So why did all that debt come crashing down at once creating the largest economic calamity since 1929 - the Great Depression? Most of it was created in money games such as ARMs.

Which institutions suffered most? Not all banks with a 30 to 1 ratio collapsed. But those mostly invested in ARMs and other classic money game equities required corporate welfare or no longer exist.

[classicman]

The banks were forced to make more loans thru the Community Reinvestment Act.

The Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law [1]designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.The Act was intended to reduce discriminatory credit practices against such neighborhoods, a practice known as 'redlining'. [2]The Act requires the appropriate federal financial supervisory agencies to encourage regulated financial institutions to meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation. To enforce the statute, [3]federal regulatory agencies examine banking institutions for CRA compliance, and take this information into consideration when approving applications for new bank branches or for mergers or acquisitions.

This was the beginning of the end.
[1] Excellent idea in theory - Very noble.
[2] Who are these and why aren't the being held accountable?
[3] Hmm, The lenders who play the game and offer the most are allowed to expand and acquire,merge and gain power. NOT A GOOD IDEA! Therein lies the opportunity for corruption and bribery.

There were other major problems primarily the mark to market ( The rules of how their assets were valued changed.) which others here disagree with me on. My admittedly limited research has led me to believe, and I am not alone in this opinion, that these are two of the major causes.

ARM's when used properly are not the problem - they have a greater opportunity for abuse, yes, but when used/issued properly should be no issue whatsoever.

[Nirvana]

ARM = Adjustable Rate Mortgage
LEG = Leveraging Equitable Gain ?

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

The banks were forced to make more loans thru the Community Reinvestment Act.

So why did this cause the collapse of so many investment banks that had nothing to do with CRA? Just the first in a long list of embarrassing questions.

Rather amazing how two silly little regulation changes - the Community Redevelopment Act (CRA) and an accounting rule change - explains the disappearance of $2trillion. That reasoning is extremely naive. And yet there it is in classicman's research.

For example, his post completely ignores the 20% to 40% excessively overvalued housing prices for everyone - especially the wealthiest homeowners. It ignores that the CRA was passed in 1977, last modified in 1995, but somehow started creating ARMs in mass numbers and a housing bubble sometime after 2002. It ignores that the CRA is only for low and medium income earners - not for the $200,000+ homeowners. It ignores the slashing and burning of financial regulations that occurred after 2000 either by regulatory rules changes or by simply discontinuing all enforcement. It ignores that Enron style accounting (which has nothing to do with 'mark to market') meant that spread sheets would become unreadable. It ignores that losing ventures and other debts could simply be hidden in off-balance entities. It ignores that after 2000, large numbers of equities were carefully created so to not be insurance (regulated by the states) and instead would be equities (regulated by the SEC which was ignoring regulations so as to 'free the markets').

ARMs were not created by the CRA as classicman would have us believe. ARMs were created by post 2000 deregulation that meant mortgages could now be approved without any due dilligence of whether the applicant was even eligible. And then those mortgages, carefully structured to avoid state regulations, could be sold as mortgage backed securities. Sold as if these were fixed mortgages without any consideration for their actual value and risk.

All this somehow gets ignored by classicman who says he did all the research.

CRA only targets low and medium income housing. So how did it create massive numbers of ARMs for $million+ homes? It did not. CRA did not create the ARM. A market suddenly liberated from regulations replaced fixed income mortgages with ARMs. CRA had nothing to do with that. Whereas but a few (single digit percent) of loans were ARMs, then suddenly after 2000, over 25% of all loans were ARMs. This sudden and massive increase in ARMs then resulted in a post 2000 housing bubble so large that The Economist warned of the resulting meltdown in June 2005. How did the 1995 CRA cause this? It did not. How did one accounting change create this? It did not.

Why were so many high income applicants, who could have easily qualified for fix mortgage loans, suddenly moved into ARMs? Did the CRA cause this? Of course not. Did one accounting change create this? Of course not.

When a research source is an extremist propaganda machine trying to divert blame, then suddenly an accounting change and 1995 CRA change (to blame Clinton) caused $2trillion to vaporize? Market changes that created a housing bubble, the sudden use of ARMs, numerous deregulations of financial markets, etc all occurred mostly after 2000. Clearly Clinton and the Democrats who did not control Congress or the White were to blame. Blame 1995 Clinton and one accounting change? A commentary on how that research is identical to right wing propaganda spin.

Congress literally tried to double the Security and Exchange Commission budget in 2002. Harvey Pitts refused to accept a budget increase. After 2000, George Jr objectives were to free finance markets of regulations. What resulted? NINJA. Did the CRA create NINJA? Of course not. Did 'mark to market' accounting changes create NINJA? Of course not. Why does classicman only blame what right wing extremists blame? Why did CRA and accounting changes cause $trillion defaults? Political spin without numbers can blame anyone that must be blamed rather than where failure really exists.

Why were those mortgage backed securities so carefully written to not be insurance? Because elimination of regulation only existed in the Federal Government - the George Jr administration. If a mortgage backed securities was not carefully written, then it became insurance; regulated by the states. State regulation would have never permitted those equities to exist without due dilligence. The entire mess was made possible because the George Jr administration was slashing and burning market regulations. To be free of any regulation, the various SIVs, CDOs, etc all had to be carefully written so that the ponzi scheme could continue without oversight.

I asked one of my bankers some years ago about Glass-Stegall. Yes, it still existed. Then he noted how existing laws were no longer enforced - all but did not exist. Glass-Stegall created finance market firewalls. Due to a political agenda of deregulating markets, even Glass-Stegall was gutted. So how was this created by Clinton, the CRA, and an accounting change?

Why did classicman ignore all this when he did his research? Why did a 1995 law change and an accounting change suddenly cause the greatest financial market meltdown since 1929? Because a political agenda demands someone else be blamed.

Why did the commercial credit market (that maybe does $55trillion of business) completely seize up? Classicman tells us that this was due to a 'mark to market' accounting change. Meanwhile, the entire commercial credit market completely seized since Enron style accounting (that included SIVs, CDOs, etc) made it impossible to determine who was safe to do business with. Transparency that is so necessary in unstable markets no longer exists.

Enron was a wakeup call. The accounting industry was completely devoid of accountability. Completely obvious in 2002 was a finance industry desperately in need of across the board review and regulatory standards. Enron accounting standards had all but destroyed transparency so necessary in today's uncertain times. So what did George Jr's administration do? All but refused to even prosecute Enron. Did nothing to address accounting reasons that made corruption acceptable. A company could simply spin excessive debt into an off-balance entity where nobody knew it existed. What was AIG doing? If was creating a spin off company to unload debt; but failed to do that fast enough.

Classicman tells us this too is due to the CRA and 'mark to market' accounting? Hardly. But again, he curiously blames the same things that wacko George Jr extremists also blame. Coincidence? After all, a moderate would not parrot the George Jr administration - would he?

Clearly, the greatest financial disaster since 1929 was directly traceable to a Clinton 1995 CRA law modification for low and medium income home loans (actually created by a Republican Congress) and a ‘mark to market’ accounting change. Amazing how two little changes completely seized the entire American financial system. It must be true. classicman did the research.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by tw

Enron accounting standards had all but destroyed transparency so necessary in today's uncertain times. So what did George Jr's administration do? All but refused to even prosecute Enron. Did nothing to address accounting reasons that made corruption acceptable.

Signed Sarbanes-Oxley, the biggest set of new accounting regulations in our lifetimes.

A company could simply spin excessive debt into an off-balance entity where nobody knew it existed. What was AIG doing? If was creating a spin off company to unload debt; but failed to do that fast enough.

Can you point to the specific deregulation that made that possible.

[ZenGum]

Sorry I went quiet there, after stirring things up like that. I was moving house. Graphs do catch the imagination, don't they?

So, Australia's economy. There are two main reasons why the AU$ has fallen so steeply, especially against the yen.


Reason number one is an indirect link with the USA's problems.

We are NOT very badly exposed to the bad mortgage market in the US. Most of our banks have written off a billion or so, but nothing they can't handle. The "Big Four" banks are cashed up and looking to buy other banks.

However, we are indirectly feeling the pinch of the current problems.

The main export earner for Australia is commodities, especially minerals. However, we sell most of those resources to China (etc), where the Chinese manufacture them into consumer goods and sell them to the USA. Now that demand in the USA has gone frigid, China is slowing, and that means both lower volumes of sales for us, and lower prices, thus significantly lower total earnings. This of course means less demand for AU$, and so the price falls.
So, one factor in the steep decline of the AU$ definitely IS the US problems, only indirectly.

The second factor driving the fall of the AU$ is interest rates. Note that the AU$ has fallen much more against the Yen than any other currency. This is because of the unwinding of the "carry trade".

The carry trade is made possible by different interest rates in different countries. The Japanese central bank, in an attempt to stimulate their economy, has kept interest rates at either 0 (yes, ZERO) or 0.5% for more than a decade. Many people realised they could borrow money in Japan, and invest it in a bank overseas where it would earn a nice interest rate, and rake in the interest. Until a year ago, you could get 7.5% or more capital guaranteed in Australia. New Zealand was offering a few points more.

(Digression: this shows the folly of extreme interest rates - in this case, they caused money to flood out of Japan, thus sedating, not stimulating, the economy. The same works the other way: high interest rates can suck in capital from overseas, thus stimulating, not slowing, an economy. It only works if the difference with other markets is small enough that the risk of currency fluctuations (see below) is enough to deter carry trading. End digression.)

The risk with the carry trade is if the currency exchange rate changes - if the Yen goes up, the Japanese carry-traders might not have enough foreign denominated holdings to pay back their initial loan in Yen. They can get burned pretty badly.

As a result, carry-traders are skittish and prone to panic. If the Yen starts to rise, it sometimes spikes dramatically, as carry-traders try to rush their money back and minimise their losses. This of course is an extra spike in demand which just drives the Yen even higher.

That is what has happened recently. The end of the resources boom caused the Australian dollar to fall moderately. More of a slide than a fall. But as it slid, it crossed some thresholds that caused *some* carry-traders to panic and get out, which started a feedback loop and led to something more like a stampede, and the result was a big, swift rise in the Yen.

I am less sure but I think there is a third factor: with the Japanese stock market sliding, some heavily leveraged Japanese investors got margin calls from their brokers and had to shift capital back to Japan to cover themselves. This has been little discussed in the sources I read.

I will say that I have been expecting this for well over a year, maybe two. It has been widely discussed by economics writers in both Australian and Japanese media. But even so, I have been stunned by the size and speed of the recent shifts.

And yes, as Ali said, we did have a real estate bubble, driven by three factors: the mining boom, the gradual running out of land close to our urban centres, and the too-low interest rates of a few years back.

We have had variable mortages (ARMs) for ages, and as always, some people lock into a 30 year loan they can only afford while rates remain low. Then rates go up, as they do. And the people suffer. So it goes.




Now if you will excuse me, I want to go and cuddle that big pile of Yen I brought back from Japan.

[Burns] Eeexxxcellent!!!!!! [/Burns]

[classicman]

Originally Posted by classicman

The banks were forced to make more loans thru the Community Reinvestment Act.

This was the beginning of the end.
[1] Excellent idea in theory - Very noble.
[2] Who are these and why aren't the being held accountable?
[3] Hmm, The lenders who play the game and offer the most are allowed to expand and acquire,merge and gain power. NOT A GOOD IDEA! Therein lies the opportunity for corruption and bribery.

There were other major problems primarily the mark to market ( The rules of how their assets were valued changed.) which others here disagree with me on. My admittedly limited research has led me to believe,
and I am not alone in this opinion, that these are two of the major causes.
ARM's when used properly are not the problem - they have a greater opportunity for abuse, yes, but when used/issued properly should be no issue whatsoever.

Originally Posted by tw

So why did this cause the collapse of so many investment banks that had nothing to do with CRA? Just the first in a long list of embarrassing questions.

They wanted to get in the game too - MAKE MONEY!
You should be embarrassed to ask some of your questions.

Originally Posted by tw

For example, his post completely ignores the 20% to 40% excessively overvalued housing prices for everyone - especially the wealthiest homeowners. It ignores that the CRA was passed in 1977, last modified in 1995, but somehow started creating ARMs in mass numbers and a housing bubble sometime after 2002. It ignores that the CRA is only for low and medium income earners - not for the $200,000+ homeowners. It ignores the slashing and burning of financial regulations that occurred after 2000 either by regulatory rules changes or by simply discontinuing all enforcement. It ignores that Enron style accounting (which has nothing to do with 'mark to market') meant that spread sheets would become unreadable. It ignores that losing ventures and other debts could simply be hidden in off-balance entities. It ignores that after 2000, large numbers of equities were carefully created so to not be insurance (regulated by the states) and instead would be equities (regulated by the SEC which was ignoring regulations so as to 'free the markets').

I didn't ignore the housing prices I CLEARLY STATED what I believe are two of the initial causal factors of the current issue. There were others. ARMs don't make people buy houses they cannot afford - corrupt and/or greedy people do. I'll again ask the question which tw, as usual, conveniently ignored because it doesn't fit into his cute little theory - Who was in charge of regulation?

Originally Posted by tw

ARMs were not created by the CRA as classicman would have us believe.

100% FALSE - I never said nor implied anything of the sort.

Originally Posted by tw

ARMs were created by post 2000 deregulation that meant mortgages could now be approved without any due dilligence of whether the applicant was even eligible. And then those mortgages, carefully structured to avoid state regulations, could be sold as mortgage backed securities. Sold as if these were fixed mortgages without any consideration for their actual value and risk.

TITLE VIII, ALTERNATIVE MORTGAGE TRANSACTIONS, Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 allowed Adjustable rate mortgages.

Originally Posted by tw

All this somehow gets ignored by classicman who says he did all the research.

READ MY POST - I even highlighted it for you. I'll paste it here again

Originally Posted by classicman

My admittedly limited research has led me to believe...

Originally Posted by tw

CRA only targets low and medium income housing. So how did it create massive numbers of ARMs for $million+ homes? It did not. CRA did not create the ARM. A market suddenly liberated from regulations replaced fixed income mortgages with ARMs. CRA had nothing to do with that. Whereas but a few (single digit percent) of loans were ARMs, then suddenly after 2000, over 25% of all loans were ARMs. This sudden and massive increase in ARMs then resulted in a post 2000 housing bubble so large that The Economist warned of the resulting meltdown in June 2005. How did the 1995 CRA cause this? It did not. How did one accounting change create this? It did not.

It was INTENDED for the lower income households. I even mentioned that in a prior post and commended it for being a noble gesture with good intentions. What I said was, and perhaps you could actually read it this time, was that it created a situation whereby the greedy and corrupt could ABUSE it, and they did.

Originally Posted by tw

Why were so many high income applicants, who could have easily qualified for fix mortgage loans, suddenly moved into ARMs? Did the CRA cause this? Of course not. Did one accounting change create this? Of course not.

GREED & Corruption. A situation was, in some cases, inadvertently created and determined to be exploitable and therefore it was. Which part of that are you not grasping?

Originally Posted by tw

Political spin without numbers can blame anyone that must be blamed rather than where failure really exists.

And you are doing a wonderful job of it. I fully recognize that I am not in the majority of people on the cellar with my views, but the biggest failure here is your post.

Originally Posted by tw

I asked one of my bankers some years ago about Glass-Stegall. Yes, it still existed. Then he noted how existing laws were no longer enforced - all but did not exist.

tw seems to continually ignore basic facts and avoids answering the simple question of ... Who was in charge of regulating these companies? For the third time.

Originally Posted by tw

Classicman tells us this too is due to the CRA and 'mark to market' accounting? Hardly. But again, he curiously blames the same things that wacko George Jr extremists also blame. Coincidence? After all, a moderate would not parrot the George Jr administration - would he?

Again and again I have to repeat my prior post because you do not read - you simply get on your soapbox and attack posters with any opinion that differs from yours and selectively choose information that fits your theory while ignoring or dismissing anything that does not.

If they were correct, yes. If not, no. More classic diversionary tactics to attack the poster and not the post - all this from one who routinely complains and whines about it when done to him. I'll ask this - Would a wacko left wing liberal nutjob only chant mental midget, 85% of all... mission accomplished... and a host of other crap even when it is completely inappropriate and immaterial to the subject matter at hand? Would this person be saying virtually the same thing in every single one of their posts of theirs no matter what the topic? Would this person have an agenda a political axe to grind? perhaps? I guess so.

Originally Posted by tw

Clearly, the greatest financial disaster since 1929 was directly traceable to a Clinton 1995 CRA law modification for low and medium income home loans (actually created by a Republican Congress) and a ‘mark to market’ accounting change. Amazing how two little changes completely seized the entire American financial system. It must be true. classicman did the research.

Well at least you came to your senses in the end after all your spin. :P (I'm sorta kidding)

[lookout123]

ARMs are simply a tool. A quite effective one for specific purposes that was used by far too many for very incorrect reasons. The loan isn't to blame - the people who approved it and the people who took it are. The housing bubble didn't happen because a bunch of republicans figured out they could scam the system, it was a result of human nature colliding with market forces.

1) Home ownership changed from being the American Dream to the American Expectation.

2) Tech Bubble burst, money flooded out of equities. Money has to go somewhere real estate was attractive at the time.

3) Greenspan dropped rates to lowest in well over 40 years. Real estate became very attractive due to low cost money.

4) This made mortgages more affordable for everyone. New lenders and loan officers flooded the market and competition increased.

5) "highest percentage of home ownership in history" started creeping into the news and political speeches. People who never considered buying a home were now told they should, so they did.

6) Low Rates + Large amounts of cash + human nature (ego/greed) resulted in bigger houses, bigger prices, and competition between consumers/builders/lenders.

7) People started using ARMs to buy more house than they could afford rather than the intended purpose for the product.

8) Housing supply begins to outstrip demand with more development continuing.

9) Rates increase causing people to rethink the next new house compared to their current cost.

10) Supply starts to surge.

11) Builders offer incentives, causing resales to become less attractive, thus causing prospective buyers problems in selling current home or to keep it as "an investment property".

12) Smart money left real estate. ARMs start to reset. Everyone starts talking about the elephant in the room.

13) The snowball now has enough momentum to take out pretty much anything in it's path.

[tw]

Originally Posted by lookout123

ARMs are simply a tool. A quite effective one for specific purposes that was used by far too many for very incorrect reasons. The loan isn't to blame - the people who approved it and the people who took it are.

lookout123's analysis far more accurately describes how the avalanch started.

ARMs always existed and were useful for the few (single digit percent) applicants that needed it. ARMs would never have been approved for so many when rules and standards existed. Few qualified for an ARM until recently with deregulation. Suddenly almost anyone qualified for an ARMs when we were fixing the economy by throwing money at it - tax cuts, Greenspans low interest rates, etc. Loan officers could offer such dangerous mortgages to most anyone. Those mortgages would then be sold to markets that no longer bothered to review what they were investing in - mortgage backed securities carefully written so as to not be insurance and therefore devoid of any serious regulatory oversight. NINJA became the new standard for mortgages.

Perot was quite blunt about this. An economy is never fixed by throwing money at it like a grenade. And yet that is exactly what we did rather than let a recession fix the economy. Unfortunately and as a result, we are now doing it with literally the entire value of both the Federal Reserve and US Treasury. Yes, even those institutions have run into monetary shortages by issuing so much corporate welfare.

Money games were so widespread especially since 2000 that even the Treasury and Federal Reserve are scrambling to find and free more funds. Appreciate how massive this meltdown. Accounting changes and the CRA had near zero effect - obviously irrelevant to the problem.

[tw]

Classic man - your admittedly limited research has led you to post the right wing extremist mantra. Blame it on Clinton. Blame an accounting change. A finance market meltdown due to those trivial reasons?

Ignore that the mental midget intentionally deregulated and kept throwing money at the economy as if tax cuts to the rich, tax rebates, and massive government spending solve everything. Even equities were carefully written to be regulated only by the SEC (not regulated by the states) where regulations were subverted, ignored, or liberated. Where even NINJA was the new model for business.

George Jr got the deregulated economy he wanted. None of which is mentioned in classicman's research. Research curiously echoes what right wing extremists say. Blame Clinton. Never blame the administration that all but refused to prosecute Enron, did nothing to address a lack of transparency, and even refused to increase the Security and Exchange Commission budget.

Why such great care so that securities would not be insurance? Then the equity had near zero regulatory oversight by federal regulators – George Jr’s deregulation.

Rule changes after 2000 made it easy and profitable to market equities without due diligence. As a result, $trillions were tied into unstable equities - especially mortgaged backed securities that started an avalanche. As a result, credit and equities markets froze because no one knew who was stable and who was about to go belly up. As a result, companies ran to government for corporate welfare while the reason for those failures walked away with $hundreds of millions. All these somehow are missing in classicman's posts that would attack the messenger rather than address a fundamental problem. His research parrots right wing extremist mantra.

Blame 'mark to market'? Why not also blame Putin? Classicman – do you realize that is equivalent to blaming an ant for causing you to stumble? Can you deal with the absurdity of your ‘research’ rather than take it as a personal attack?