doublegunshop.com - home Forums A sigh of relief?

Not Ken, but can I answer. You've always praised the greatness of Canadian liberalism. By 'we', I mean you've been very generous in stressing the need for the US to spend more on the constant shortcomings that you so enthusiastically fabricate.

As to your healthcare system, europe is one big urban cesspool. Haven't we determined that some 80% of Canada is considered remote. What good would it do if some french health adviser says to slap a little deodorant on it.

The only way you're going to show any compassion for the health needs of Canadians that don't happen to live in cultural pc centers is with lots of pesos for life flights and remote health clinics. Allow me to prenotice that your brushing off of the problem screams louder than the bellyaching on misfires.

Follow the money, Craig. Think of equity for equality. Two glasses, one half-full, the other two-thirds. Fill to make them equal. Share the resource for equality.

Circumstances require more effort in some places than others--- remote clinics, medical flights, education, health, courts---but equality is less expensive in the long run.

We're all Canadians. Illness or unequal education and justice from whatever circumstances affects all of us. Equality makes healthier and happier lives.

Don't take my word for it. Compare your health and education outcomes with Canada's. It's the US that slaps around expensive deodorants.

I framed this reply on equity, capitalism, saving a buck while providing great benefits. Americans seem blind to wealth redistribution for a common good.

Comrade King, thanks for the Gift,

At least now you admit that Health Care is a mechanism for sociopathic, statist Wealth Redistribution rather than an improvement of quality or delivery.

America already has a system for the poor, it's called Medicaid. Obamacare is designed to destroy America's Health Care system, not to improve it. It's now projected to cost more than three times what it was initially sold as, so much for "Saving a Buck".

Craigd, The answer is Nope.
I cringe to ask how you can conflate simple comparisons of policy implementation with Clinton's pecadillo? Actually I don't see them as related, and I don't want to know.

By the implied logic, St Reagan had something to do with Clinton's intern showing him her thong.

It is dishonest to allow the policies of one President a week to give you what you want, before proclaiming failure and sedition, and then allow decades for another's policies to generate desirable results without complaint, nee idolatry.

The propaganda machines continuously demonize the CRA as a Federal mechanism to force banks ( well actually, expanded to cover most lending enterprises)to discard good lending practice and throw their shareholders money away.

That is not true.

I worked on dozens of loans targeted to CRA ratings, and never once felt any pressure to disregard lending practice.

If the customer was considered high risk of repayment failure, we had a number of tools available to balance our portfolio.

If one were to say that allowing trans regional mergers created a competitive environment that rewarded risky behavior, I might agree.

But that's not the CRA.

I'm not sure if there are any long-term bankers here. There probably are, but their normal demeanor would typically prevent them from participating on misfires. They best could explain the history and progression of the programs.

Propagandists spewing that the CRA in some way caused the housing market collapse always have a vested interest in the responses of their readers and listeners.

Hard to imagine being charged $5.00 to cash your Soc Sec check. People don't want to believe that that was the way it was. And that the very bank charging you for that wouldn't loan you money to fix your house because of the address.

Dave K, That's 7:30 I'll never get back in my life. A well produced, carefully parsed propaganda piece is always good before taking the dogs out.

About 90% of it is absolute fabrication.

But you wouldn't actually know.

Quote:
"Propagandists spewing that the CRA in some way caused the housing market collapse always have a vested interest in the responses of their readers and listeners"

Well:
This certainly bears out the old saying:
"If you're going to tell a lie tell a big one!"
Or use weasel words like "caused" in this case.
The CRA was the catylist leading to the housing market meltdown
and NOT the direct cause. Radical lending practices encouraged by groups like ACORN caused the housing mortgage meltdown.
Jim

Ah, yes, Jim, but it wouldn't have happened---radical and reckless lending practises---if the country had strong regulations to prevent it.

If you really wnat to know King and are willing to do some research;it's documented that John McCain and others raised a big red flag in Congress (Well before) the mortgage meltdown occurred. It was to no avail and greed on the parts of socialist impowerment groups(ACORN) and the bankers continued to the bitter end.
Jim

Not very fair considering Canada doesn't have an out of control black population like we do.

Jim

no matter how many times it been proven to King he still refuses-just like his BS belief in his shoddy Canadian HC system,
will never acknowledge it.To do so would admit defeat in his job in making others live as HE feels they should (at liberal through and through.

As to the CRA ,Obama is once again forcing banks to go back to the same subprime risky loans that CAUSED the crisis !

From IBD

Obama Boosts CRA Authority To Force Banks To Make Low-Income Loans



Despite new evidence the Community Reinvestment Act led to riskier lending and played a key role in the subprime mortgage crisis, the Obama administration is broadening the anti-redlining regulation's authority and scope, spooking bankers.

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nation's pre-eminent economic research group, states that the CRA "clearly" had a major impact on the flood of subprime loans made in the late 1990s and 2000s, which directly led to the housing crisis.


By quietly expanding the regulation, analysts say President Obama is picking up where President Clinton left off in April 1995, when he rewrote rules for what had been a largely toothless law as first drafted in 1977.

Through executive orders, Clinton set strict numerical lending targets for banks in "underserved" neighborhoods, while ordering regulators to crack down on alleged bank redlining.

The new rules for the first time mandated that banks use "innovative" or "flexible underwriting practices." Compliance required banks to pass a heavily weighted "lending test" or suffer holds on expansion plans.

The CRA overhaul "has been a disaster," said ex-BB&T CEO John Allison in his recent book on the financial crisis. He argued it's forced "banks to participate in making high-risk housing loans to low-income buyers who would not meet traditional bank lending standards."

Added Allison, who now heads the Cato Institute: "The default rates on these low-income loans are extraordinarily high."

Still, the Obama administration wants banks to step up approval of such low-income mortgages. And it's using the CRA to spur more lending, including:

� Forcing banks through threat of prosecution to expand their CRA assessment areas to include inner-city areas blighted by subprime foreclosures, where they are compelled to invest in new brick and mortar.

Many banks, in fact, are under direct federal orders to open new branches or ATMs in high-risk and unprofitable areas of Detroit, St. Louis and other cities hit hardest by the recession.

"If your assessment area looks like something you can eat � a bagel or is crescent shaped � that should be a red flag for your bank," senior Department of Justice official Tom Perez warned bankers serving areas mainly outside the inner city.

"DOJ wants banks to have a physical presence in the inner city," Washington-based Buckley Sandler LLP recently told clients, adding that "banks should carefully monitor loan data to determine whether an appropriate volume of loan originations emanate from minority areas."

� Ordering bank defendants accused of lending bias to underwrite riskier CRA loans at discounted rates.

For instance, Justice has ordered First United Security Bank of Alabama to "ensure that residential and CRA small business loan products are made available and marketed in majority African-American census tracts," while offered on terms "more advantageous to the applicant" than normal.

� Toughening CRA enforcement by bank examiners, who are giving more banks negative ratings on their CRA exams and crippling their ability to acquire or merge with other institutions. Federal data show the share of banks receiving failing grades has more than doubled to 4% from 1.5% in 2007.

� Factoring the findings of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Dodd-Frank Act-created agency empowered with investigating fair-lending violations, into CRA ratings.

� Broadening CRA examination guidelines to include loan "pricing discrimination," and instructing examiners to take a closer look at improper "steering" of minority borrowers into subprime loans with higher interest rates and fees.

� Using the threat of CRA "noncompliance" and denial of expansion plans to pressure bank defendants into settling "fair lending" cases, while scaring other banks into lending in low-income minority areas where the banks aren't located.

"Regulators have now said that banks will not be permitted to proceed with any expansion if they are the target of these pending DOJ actions," complained Independent Community Bankers of America President Camden Fine in a 2011 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

� Pressuring banks to fund HUD's new $7 billion Neighborhood Stabilization Program to earn CRA credits under a new "community development" test.