Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[puterbac]

>>>The only "metric" that mattered was those who had real skin, they ALL kept paying. Those mortgages that defaulted, they ALL had very little to NO skin in the game. That was the only "metric" that was "consistent". I'm just trying to be consistent. Are you going to sit there and tell me that people who may have had riskier credit histories than you but were able to put real money down on their mortgages, added ANY fuel to the fire? We both know they didn't. They kept paying.<<<

No I don't know that. Are you saying NOBODY who put 20% down walked away?

I have no idea where to find the data, but my guess is its some kind of Gaussian curve where if the curve was fit to data that factored in 4-5 variables we've been talking about you would see about equal numbers of defaults for those like myself who had little other debt, very high score, 10% or less payment to income ratio (total Pay+Ins+Tax) and for those that all you looked at was 20% down.

One size doesn't need to fit all.

And yes there is blame all around. People wanting to keep up with Joneses, trying to flip, buying WAY more than was prudent for their particular situation, banks actually lending such people money when they had no income to back it up. Why? Because they were going to sell it 2 months later to some sucker who didn't do their due diligence who then sold it someone else etc.

[puterbac]

The housing bubble was a collective frenzy, but it was made much worse by the fact that millions of borrowers were making poorly informed decisions about the debt they were taking on. If people had known more, they might well have borrowed less.

The quote above amazes me. WTF is responsible for knowing what is being signed and agreed? The fucking person signing it and agreeing to it.

Barring invisible ink or some such underhandedness its not that hard to understand it all.

Hell I brought my laptop in with me with a spreadsheet I made to verify the payment terms of the loan at closing.

[puterbac]

Damn right I'm entitled to SS.

And Medicare too.

Actually you are not. The govt could just change the law and end it all and your only recourse is at the ballot box. Unlike a private biz, but of course a private biz would never have been able to start a ponzi scheme like SS or a $ loser like Medicare.

[puterbac]

The assertion that it was less than 20% down payment to blame for the defaults...

You misunderstood.

Individual PEOPLE are to be blamed, not what they put down on the mortgage. PEOPLE default because if all you have to lose is your credit rating by walking away from such a dramatically unfavorable financial situation, then you have too little to lose!

That is why I want 20% down.

And again if you take 5% down with very low payment/income ratio, and little to no personal debt, very high credit rating you are at the same or better default rate than just looking at 20%.

One size doesn't need to fit all. If you just looked at 5% vs 20% with nothing else taken into account then YES I agree with you.

[puterbac]

OK, so by 2006 Bush's massive tax cut was fully in place. So why did tax revenue start to decline?

Another point of interest. Everyone look at the two lines on this graph, The bottom line is Federal Income Tax by itself, the top line includes the payroll tax. Which line is moving up faster? One of the dirty little secrets conservatives never mention is that while the rich pay a large percentage of Income tax, poor and middle class tax payers pay a disproportionate share of the Payroll tax and that tax is going up much faster as is reflected on the chart.

Your dirty little secret isn't secret or dirty. Social security is NOT a welfare program as of yet. Everyone pays in and everyone gets back. The benefit is CAPPED so the tax is CAPPED. If you want to pay gates and buffet 1000 times others are retirement then uncap both. If you uncap one and not the other it becomes a welfare program.

Next...

You are failing to read or comprehend or both. In 2001 the 10% bracket was created and the 15% bracket was modified. That was IT as far as brackets being changed. The other brackets were not changing until 2006 from the 2001 law.

In 2003 (summer) another law was passed that made the changes to the other brackets take effect IMMEDIATELY and retroactive to the beginning of 2003 and lowered the cap gains rate even more for everyone.

The Bush tax cuts were not fully put in place until 2003 and it was for all of 2003. Income tax revenue and cap gains tax revenue increased every year despite the cuts. Why? Because more people were able to find jobs and paying more in income taxes and lower cap gains taxes encouraged people to invest more money leading to more jobs etc.

[puterbac]

Lies! Damn Lies! And Statistics!

The charts posted by puterbac, which claim the CBO as a source, are actually products of The Heritage Foundation, a conservative political propaganda organization. It may seem like nit picking on my part to point this out, since the chart's creators likely did gather data from the CBO, but the distinction is important because while the CBO is a nonpartisan organization, the Heritage Foundation is not. The Heritage foundation has a point of view and a purpose; their reason to be is to promote a particular political agenda. In short, the Heritage Foundation exists for the purpose of convincing people to support conservative economic political positions.

I'm not saying the Heritage Foundation's charts are frauds, I'm just saying that when you look at material from a partisan organization, be it conservative or liberal, always keep in mind their POV and what they are trying to do.



This chart purports to prove that Bush’s tax cuts shifted the tax burden from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, but what the original poster doesn’t say is exactly which taxes this chart is showing. If the chart includes Capital gains tax revenue, which I’d bet it does, then the result is skewed by Bush’s 2003 capital gains tax cut that caused many wealthy investors to sell off capital assets taking advantage lower rates and resulting in a temporary spike in the tax receipts from the wealthy.

This might explain why the Heritage Foundation chose this data. Otherwise, the choice of years, 2000 and 2004 strikes me as odd. I mean, why did they pick those specific years? Why not 2000 & 2005 or 2006? Or better yet, why didn't they use a range of years like comparing Clinton 1994-2000 & Bush 2001-2007?

I'd bet money that they didn't use other years because if they used different years the result would show that the Bush tax cuts actually favored Wealthy tax payers.

But that's just a guess.



Always check to see where your information is coming from. You can do a lot of things with statistics. A careful fraud might well prove that the earth is flat if he picked his data carefully.

You are a piece of work I tell ya. The same numbers can be found at the IRS website. W's cuts shifted more of the income tax burden to top 1, 5, 10 , 20, and 50%. The bottom 50% paid LESS and millions more were removed from the rolls entirely.

[Dora]

Actually you are not. The govt could just change the law and end it all and your only recourse is at the ballot box. Unlike a private biz, but of course a private biz would never have been able to start a ponzi scheme like SS or a $ loser like Medicare.

The government will not change the law as long as we boomers are here to vote them out of office. As for a private biz, if they go out of business, forget about anyone collecting anything.

[Hacksaw]

Congrats, gule. My little girl graduated over the weekend, too. She is our oldest and she wore the National Honor Society cord. Pretty hard to wrap my brain around the idea that she is an adult now.

[Hacksaw]

And keep up the good fight, puter! Maybe something will penetrate.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Only 23% think Palin qualified to be President. 63% view her as unqualified

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... candidates

[Hacksaw]

You're surprised? If the coverage of her was 9:1 in the other direction, she'd be doing a bit better than that.

[Hacksaw]

I still say the dumbest thing Palin ever said was when she claimed that her confidence in her own knowledge and abilities should be a comfort to voters. Then, she went on to use the example of how FDR went on television right after the stock market crash in 1929 to assuage the fears of the nation. LMAO! Imagine how retarded she must be not to know that FDR wasn't POTUS then and that television didn't even exist! I mean, everybody knows that.

Man, it's no wonder she is viewed as such a dumbass. There's no way you'd ever catch a dem saying something that stupid. And if they did, there's no way the media would ever let the public forget about it. And there's no way that person would ever be considered for a serious political office like, say...Vice President.

Right?

9:1

[Hacksaw]

[youtube]QnKcRo8DNYY[/youtube]

[puterbac]

Question: The CBO projected in 2001 that the federal income tax would generate about $9 trillion in revenue from 2002 to 2007. This was before President Bush enacted his first round of tax cuts that year, saying it would spur growth. How much tax revenue was actually generated from 2002 to 2007?

Answer: $7 trillion. Income tax revenue from 2002 to 2007 was $2 trillion less than CBO projected in 2001 before the first round of Bush tax cuts passed.

Source: Center For American Progress

So much for the idea that Bush's tax cuts increased Tax receipts.

Note: the Center For American Progress uses data from the CBO, the same government office that the Heritage foundation used to gather data. It's not what you got, it's how you use it.

You are giving what PROJECTIONS were. I gave you what the actual numbers were that are facts.

And CBO is ALWAYS wrong.

In Clintons first years CBO was projecting 200+ billion deficits every year for a decade, yet we started having smaller deficits and then surpluses. Then when the surpluses occurred CBO was predicting surpluses for years to come and they were once again WRONG.

CBO cannot see the future (internet boom, Y2K spending, stock bust, 9/11, war, etc) and the constraints placed on them by congress automatically biases reports towards increases in taxes vs tax cuts. They are only allowed to predict based on how much revenue is predicted to not come in because of a cut and not allowed to take into account increased economic activity that occurs because of the cut (aka more jobs more people paying taxes etc).

[puterbac]

Actually you are not. The govt could just change the law and end it all and your only recourse is at the ballot box. Unlike a private biz, but of course a private biz would never have been able to start a ponzi scheme like SS or a $ loser like Medicare.

The government will not change the law as long as we boomers are here to vote them out of office. As for a private biz, if they go out of business, forget about anyone collecting anything.

Better be careful. Your kids may get tired of paying huge taxes for a ponzi scheme. Better off paying for you themselves.

The point about biz is they would never be allowed to start a program like SS because it is ILLEGAL. Its a ponzi scheme just like Madoff with the only difference being Madoff couldn't force the US population to pay in like govt can.

[Dora]

[quote]Better be careful. Your kids may get tired of paying huge taxes for a ponzi scheme. Better off paying for you themselves./quote]

Nope, there is no way they could support me with the amount of FICA taxes they pay.

[puterbac]

June 6, 2011, 6:54 p.m. EDT

Firms to cut health plans as reform starts: survey

30% of companies say they’ll stop offering coverage

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/firms- ... 2011-06-06

[puterbac]

President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout

By Glenn Kessler

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fac ... _blog.html

We take no view on whether the administration’s efforts on behalf of the automobile industry were a good or bad thing; that’s a matter for the editorial pages and eventually the historians. But we are interested in the facts the president cited to make his case.

What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.

[hedge]

Call me Sassus...

[innocentbystander]

Better be careful. Your kids may get tired of paying huge taxes for a ponzi scheme. Better off paying for you themselves.

Nope, there is no way they could support me with the amount of FICA taxes they pay.

Of course they could.

Sell YOUR house, move into one room in THEIR house.

You are supported.