New Gallup data show confidence in Congress at all time low

[BMT (RIP)]

http://blogs.usatoday.com/gallup/2007/06/what_do_hmos_an.html

Miss Nancy's Romper Room has really got their act together!!

:munchin

BMT

[rubberneck]

It just re-enforces the fact that the Democrats are out of touch with mainstream America on most issues and that the voters are suffering for a major case of buyers remorse.

[Sten]

I think it shows that the system is broken.

[The Reaper]

Other than the recent, "all is lost", "cut and run" movement, I see little change from the earmarking, corrupt, expansionist, entitlement creating, self-centered, "get reelected at any cost" Republican majority that was turned out.

As long as the American people continue revalidating Kennedy, Schumer, Feinstein, Boxer, Byrd, Reid, Pelosi, Jefferson, et al, and giving them card blanche, I predict no change in the status quo.

Short of some catastrophe or terrorist act taking the whole lot out (or an equally unlikely Constitutional Amendment mandating term limits) and forcing us to start over, they have stacked the tables in their favor, and I see little real change, regardless of who is in power.

Any self-respecting American would quit after the first term or two rather than have his name affiliated with the continuing madness that passes for legislation.

Just my .02.

TR

[nmap]

As has been said, confidence in congress is low and there seems no reason to expect a change in the trend.

That being the case, I wonder what the implications are as approval ratings of our legislative body decline below 14%. At what point, if any, is the disconnect so complete that governance becomes problematic. What is the fate of a constitutional republic wherein the governed simply do not trust their representatives?

I do not claim to know. But I don't think it's a good sign.

[Sionnach]

Other than the recent, "all is lost", "cut and run" movement, I see little change from the earmarking, corrupt, expansionist, entitlement creating, self-centered, "get reelected at any cost" Republican majority that was turned out.

As long as the American people continue revalidating Kennedy, Schumer, Feinstein, Boxer, Byrd, Reid, Pelosi, Jefferson, et al, and giving them card blanche, I predict no change in the status quo.

Short of some catastrophe or terrorist act taking the whole lot out (or an equally unlikely Constitutional Amendment mandating term limits) and forcing us to start over, they have stacked the tables in their favor, and I see little real change, regardless of who is in power.

Any self-respecting American would quit after the first term or two rather than have his name affiliated with the continuing madness that passes for legislation.

Just my .02.

TR

TR has nailed it. Both parties are guilty, and it's easier for us to point fingers at the other group.

[afchic]

I have been working legislative affairs for over a year, and still a newby, and no matter how long I do it, don't think I will ever understand it; but from what I have seen, if you ask the average American what they think of Congress, in general you are going to have a response that parallels the poll posted. But, if you ask them what they think of THEIR congressman/senator, you will get a more favorable comment. It goes to prove the point that all politics are local. Americans, for the most part, may not like congress as a whole, but like their guy and that is why you see Byrd's/Kennedy's/etc... continue to be re-elected.

I am in favor of voting them all out. Doesn't matter what the party affiliation. If they are in there now, they need to be booted next election. Maybe that will get them all to understand that they are there as our voice, not their own. They are there to do our bidding, not their own.

Funny thing about this poll, it isn't getting much network time, but the POTUS' falling numbers are all anyone can talk about.

[Monsoon65]

Funny thing about this poll, it isn't getting much network time, but the POTUS' falling numbers are all anyone can talk about.

Well, of course! Everything is Bush's fault!

Seriously, the media was in heaven when the Dems took over, but now that they see they are just as screwed up as the Republicans, and have their own fair share of scandals, they shut their mouths and look away.

[afchic]

Well, of course! Everything is Bush's fault!.


Well said. I read an article on MSNBC the other day saying that the large number of foreclosures on private homes is all Bush's fault as well. As usual, instead of taking responsibility for making a poor decision (taking an interest only loan, sub-prime loan, etc...) without taking the time to educate oneself on the risks, it is all Bush's fault.

Does anyone in America understand economics anymore?

[nmap]

Does anyone in America understand economics anymore?

I suspect few do. The real problem may be that the use of largely unregulated derivative securities in the existing global market is difficult to analyze.

So, in the housing arena, we saw sub-prime mortgages. The people who wrote the mortgages didn't concern themselves with credit risk - they simply packaged up large numbers of mortgages and sold them. The borrowers tended to be unsophisticated. The companies that put the securities together had various models for performance of the underlying mortgages, but those had underlying assumptions that weren't tested. Then, various institutions (such as public pension funds) purchased them.

I noticed a few days ago that Moody's had just downgraded the credit rating of many securities based on sub-prime mortgages - so that means that anyone holding the securities just saw the value of their portfolio take a hit.

Now - what happens if housing continues to decline? What happens when securities that are based on trash decline...and, by the way, when those securities are highly levereged? How many financial institutions will be in distress or worse? What happens as more adjustable rate mortgages increase their charges? And, as foreclosures mount, what happens when the banks start to liquidate the properties?

Perhaps a slow-motion train wreck? I suspect so.

In the meantime, people buy groceries and gasoline with credit cards under the assumption that things will be better tomorrow. Enjoy the show. :munchin

[The Reaper]

The explosion in the mortgage market is exactly what happens when you let people without the proper means apply auto financing techniques to residential property.

Knuckleheads do not look beyond what the monthly payment is today, as long as they can close that deal and get that shiny new home.

Lenders see themselves as providing a service to those with poor credit records and inadequate income without regards to the conseqences a few years later.

I agree, people are incredibly ignorant when it comes to the economy. Look at the consumer sentiment about the state of the economy, when (minus the dot.com boom) it rivals anything during the Clinton era, with better basis.

I fear for the future of my country, with some of these characters also having the right to vote.

TR

[82ndtrooper]

I suspect few do. The real problem may be that the use of largely unregulated derivative securities in the existing global market is difficult to analyze.

So, in the housing arena, we saw sub-prime mortgages. The people who wrote the mortgages didn't concern themselves with credit risk - they simply packaged up large numbers of mortgages and sold them. The borrowers tended to be unsophisticated. The companies that put the securities together had various models for performance of the underlying mortgages, but those had underlying assumptions that weren't tested. Then, various institutions (such as public pension funds) purchased them.

I noticed a few days ago that Moody's had just downgraded the credit rating of many securities based on sub-prime mortgages - so that means that anyone holding the securities just saw the value of their portfolio take a hit.

Now - what happens if housing continues to decline? What happens when securities that are based on trash decline...and, by the way, when those securities are highly levereged? How many financial institutions will be in distress or worse? What happens as more adjustable rate mortgages increase their charges? And, as foreclosures mount, what happens when the banks start to liquidate the properties?

Perhaps a slow-motion train wreck? I suspect so.

In the meantime, people buy groceries and gasoline with credit cards under the assumption that things will be better tomorrow. Enjoy the show. :munchin


I once sat in on an invitation only dinner with Elaine Garzarelli, then one of the most successful strategists and economists on the street, was asked by one of the attendee's "What economic indicator do you consider the most accurate?" Her answer: "Tuesday's, the Fed Chairman and bank credit card application rates" The crowd, including myself lauphed, but she was one of the first people to recognize the borrowing trends and loan sales practices during the "Great Boom" of the Clinton years. :rolleyes:

She also predicted that whoever took the seat in the Oval Office would suffer the great decline in the securities market and take the blame for the people over spending and extension of securities credit. Bush took office shortly there after. The market declined, and the MSM of course placed all the blame on the "psychology of the people" having closed their long positions and reverting to treasury's.

Nope, not many in the MSM understand the economy, let alone Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi et al.

[The Reaper]

Good discussion.

It takes a willing buyer to sign the mortgage paperwork.

TR

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2007/06/24/here_comes_the_repo_man/

Here Comes the Repo Man

It's easy to scold sub-prime lenders for the glut of home foreclosures. It's also wrong. Blame the buyers.

By Kris Frieswick | June 24, 2007

My Dad was a repo man for GMAC, the lending arm of General Motors. At 3, I couldn’t tie my shoes but knew that if you didn’t pay your auto loan on time, Dad would come to your house at 2 a.m. and steal your car. I vividly remember his tales of being chased by large German shepherds and gun-wielding car owners. But what really stuck with me was his disdain for the people from whom he had “liberated” the vehicles, people who had taken out massive loans to pay for cars they knew they could not afford, but who were surprised when he showed up.

“How, exactly, did they think this was going to end?” he asked.

Thanks to my early fiscal training, when my husband and I bought our South End condo in January 2004, we ignored the loan officer who wanted to sell us an interest-only loan for twice the amount we needed and instead got a smaller adjustable-rate mortgage. Lenders spent the boom years coming up with dozens of complex loan options – negative amortization, balloon payments, no-interest, no-documentation, no-income, no-pulse – most capable of putting your family so far underwater that some deals even came with free snorkel gear. Borrowers gobbled these loans up, convinced the hot market would make it easy to sell out or refinance if things got too tight. Then interest rates climbed, and the housing market tanked. Mortgage foreclosure filings hit historic highs in Massachusetts – 23,116 for the 12 months ended April 30.

With so much constituent suffering and gnashing of teeth, politicians launched a hunt for a big, evil, deep-pocketed culprit for the skyrocketing foreclosure rate – and pounced on sub-prime loans and their brokers. They were the perfect villains, especially the subset that used predatory lending practices, an element of the mortgage business that legislators have long targeted unsuccessfully. That’s because it is hard to define a predatory loan. To paraphrase a recent General Accounting Office report on the matter, one person’s predatory loan is another person’s financial opportunity. An August 2006 study of Chicago-area foreclosures, done by a policy analyst at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, found that many so-called predatory lending practices were not directly linked to increased foreclosures – some augmented foreclosure risk, some decreased it, some had no effect – and it advised against legislation based on the assumption of a direct link.

The Massachusetts Legislature can’t help itself, though, and there are a variety of proposed laws that would, among other things, require mortgage brokers to be licensed by the state, mandate in-person counseling for anyone who gets a sub-prime loan, and create a $10 million fund to provide temporary financial relief to victims of predatory loans and for public education campaigns. I applaud the licensing and counseling concepts, but legislators must accept that home buyers deserve the bulk of the blame for the foreclosure crisis. Homeowners, not more laws, are the only ones who can prevent it. Brokers and lenders sold a boatload of usurious loans, but they couldn’t have moved a single one without the full cooperation of buyers who didn’t read or understand the fine print, didn’t do the math, or gambled wrongly that tomorrow would be a better day. They weren’t just undereducated, low-income buyers, either: Boxborough, Topsfield, and West Newbury, three of the wealthier communities in the state, showed the top three largest percent increases in foreclosures in Massachusetts in the past 12 months ending April 30.

So how do we fix the foreclosure problem? We don’t. Time does. We help the people we can and punish anyone who preyed on those incapable of making sound financial decisions. And the rest, sadly, will lose homes they probably couldn’t afford in the first place.

“Homeownership is not for everyone. There’s a reason it’s unattainable for some people, and as a society we’re too afraid to talk about it,” says Erin O’Connor Jones, executive director of the Family-to-Family Project. When the Boston nonprofit works with people facing foreclosure, it looks for alternative financing and offers bridge funds in the interim. But even the project won’t assist families that couldn’t afford their homes to begin with. It’s called common sense, and if you abdicate it, guys like my Dad show up at your house at 2 a.m. Who, exactly, is surprised when this is how it ends?

Kris Frieswick is a freelance writer in Boston. E-mail her at krisfrieswick@verizon.net.

[504PIR]

One of the reasons that we have a decline in understanding of how basic economics, govt. work, failure to understand responsibilty and general stupidity is our school system. If you have crappy instructors you get substandard students.

Hell most of today's sheeple can't tell you the 3 branchs of govt or how to compute interest. But they can darn sure tell what some idiot movie star or drunken heiress is doing. As the Left has taken over acadamia, the education standards have fallen IMHO.

So maybe thats how we end up with the Harry Reids, Barbara Boxers, the Clintons and the rest of their ilk.

Rant over, back to lurking

[afchic]

One of the reasons that we have a decline in understanding of how basic economics, govt. work, failure to understand responsibilty and general stupidity is our school system. If you have crappy instructors you get substandard students.


I agree that the school system isn't all that it should be, but I don't agree that it is all the teacher's fault. My sister is a teacher who on several occassions has tried to hold students back (at the time she was teaching 2nd grade) because they just weren't ready. But the priciples and parents would hear none of it, "because it might hurt their self esteem". So being the dummy in the next grade and being made fun of is okay, that won't hurt kids' self esteem at all.

Many times teachers are so busy just trying to keep control in the classroom that they don't have time to teach. And why is this? Because we have a generation of children that have never been disciplined, and know how far they can go, because no one is going to touch them for fear of being sued by someone.

Yes our schools need help, and lord knows there are teachers out there that have no business forming our childrens' minds. But, in my opinion, a good strong education begins at home, and that includes discipline!!!!

[Ret10Echo]

Congress historically has low approval ratings. It just tends not to be a very important topic of conversation.

I agree with the idea that people believe "Congress" is bad but their elected Representative is "OK". But then again most people know about as much about the voting record of their elected officials as they do about all that micro-print in their credit card agreement and loan paperwork.

I have flashbacks of one of my troops walking into the barracks with an armload of stero equipment for his truck and saying..." I just got back from Stero World and boy did I get a great deal!"