Buzz's 5 questions for Derek Newton

As part of our Five Questions series, Buzz caught up with Miami-based Democratic consultant Derek Newton to chat about the invincibility of Charlie Crist and Pam Iorio, the U.S. Senate race, and how Harvey Milk's style of politics would play in Florida.

Comments

Who the heck is this guy?

Baby Huey.

HE HAS LOST EVERYTHING HE HAS EVER WORKED ON. WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP PAYING HIM????

Don't forget the Independent candidate!

DO they keep paying him? Look at that suit? I lloks like the one my Dad wore on the boat.

NEWTON BLEW THE AMENDMENT

[democrats/liberals caused the mess. when you start a govt program--beware--no one can stop it.]

Who caused the mortgage crisis?
Thomas Lifson
A reader reminds us of this remarkable article from the New York Times in 1999 (before Bush 43 took office), headlined, "Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending." Some excerpts (emphases mine):
...Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits. ...

... at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market. ...

Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

3:29 - don't even try... you will be called a repiggie, grunt, scum sucking whohaaa... when you try to interject fact with the folks on this board.

3:29 - I offer this as EMPHASIS in that article...

"In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's."

[when you finance your campaigns with corporate money, pretty soon they own the government.]

For 30 years, conservatives have practiced deregulation, corporate welfare, and tax cuts for the rich, like they were a religion. You made the Great Bush Depression of 2008 and no little nitpicking factoids can undo your complicity.

[yes, the government tried to help low income families get home loans - so what?]

I see Rush has sent his little piggies out with the laterst clever talking points.

[Miami-Dade Dem]

This is embarrassing.

4:09 - so what... are you really that thick headed?

Thanks I needed an afternoon siesta.

3:29...As a Democrat, I say that the deregulation by the Republican Congress and the Democratic administration of the banking industry in 1999 was truly the biggest failure of the time period. But it goes to show that regardless of which party is in power in DC, they are all controlled by the moneyed big interest. Trust me, Fannie Mae (even at Clinton's insistence) was not wanting to make loans to low-income people out of the goodness of their hearts--look how much money Wall Street made by locking people into payments they never should have taken on. The realtors took their 6% commission; the mortgage brokers took their 5% commission; the lenders took their money off the top and sold it into the securities market so they could do it again; and on and on.

What's scary is that the proposed "soluton" to all this mess is to free up the credit markets so "the banks can lend again." Good grief! The last thing we need is to issue all the T-Bills humanly possible to remove toxic assets from banks just so they can turn around and loan it to the same group of people that have no hope of paying it back. Now, I wonder who might be pushing this--oh yeah, the realtors who make their 6%; the brokers who make their 5%, and on and on.

But really, the real hoot of it all is that regardless of how bad Fannie and Freddie's lending was, anybody that put down less than 20% was supposed to have "mortgage insurance" (PMI). That was allegedly the security net in the whole system of lending to those with poor credit.

Of course, those "mortgage insurance" companies tacked on $200 a month to millions of mortgages in the U.S. AND STILL DO, even though they weren't able to pay a darn penny of it when the crap hit the fan. Why? Because they had been so deregulated as well that they were investing in the very same CRAP that they were supposed to be providing insurance for!!!

What an amazing cluster f*&* to let any of them do that. And here the feds are proposing to spend every last amount of ink printing money so that banks can turn around and do it again. But then we won't even have the option of massive deficit spending to claw our way out.

We will probably get through this mess, but the desire to put us right back into it will be like the Titanic--it survived the first scrapes with the iceberg, but it was that last puncture that did it in; and when it did; it went down fast.

4:09 is the typical sour repiggie, furious at the overwhelming evidence of both his party's total failure and his party's recent lack of principles. Apart from carrying water for the holy roller nutjobs, what are the repiggies for these days?

Kendrick Meek (DEM) vs Connie Mack (REP)

[Adam Smith]

Please watch the personal attacks folks. We'd prefer not to block IP addresses

[Susan S]

3:29 PM,
Sorry that won't work. If helping low-income Americans buy homes were such a problem, the GOP had six years of total control to fix it. And they didn't. Instead, they deregulated and privatized everything in sight, gave tax cuts to the super-rich, and supported an extremely expensive, unprovoked war in Iraq.

For a party that's so big on "personal responsibility" when it comes to poor people, you sure do everything in your power to avoid taking responsibility for your own failures.

Susan S, the 6 years the GOP had control of Congress 2001-2007, our economy was the best America has ever seen.

Since the democrats under Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid took over in 2007, they have crashed it into a deep recession.

VOTE OUT EVERY DEMOCRAT IN 2010 ESPECIALLY IN CONGRESS! TIME FOR CHANGE!