Can you show this?  Or are ya just saying it with out proof?

Evil Elves are a myth (have you never read Tolkein?).

They were Orcs.

http://www.usvetdsp.com/aug08/mccain_unfit.htm

I have a hard time getting past McCains history. I alos dont care for the trickle down effect McCain wants to do, that is what Bush is doing and the only thing trickling is the money out of my pocket. We need a strong foundation to build on not a top heavy economy.

Its archived on the web simply google it. A lot of the old stuff links to library archives which you'll have to register with an remember that in prior years you have to look at PAC's since that was the main money trail. There is some really good info on Tom Delay's links since he was actually indicted for many of his various activities.

Here's a decent article that shows some lobbyists that have moved in and out of the GSE's and Govt. The Revolving Door.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92540620

Heres Freddie MAC lobby info. Fannie Mae isn't on the heavy hitters list  but Freddie has spent about 3 times the amount in lobby money in any case. You can get the same type of report on Fannie but they charge for it since its not on their heavy hitter list.

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000163

If you further search the site you will find breakdowns on the specific individuals and PAC's which got the moola.

Lula posts:

Smoothseas,

Yes, I imagine there are some Republicans involved in this too, but the point is at this particular hearing it was the Democrats covering for Fannie Mae's fraudulent dealings. To date, I've only seen that it is the Dems who are knee deep in keeping the fraud going forward...the warnings and attempts to regulate came from the Republicans....that's fact and this is backed by news items and actual congressional bills that were defeated by the Dems.

Here's a New York Times article written in 1999.......    

Lilliesgrace,

This is you mouthing Obama empty-speak.  Obama's the one with the nasty history ....his economic advisor was/is Raines who walked away with 100 million from the Fannie Mae fraud.

Be more concerned with the greed, the principal vice of the present age as well of the present crisis...Obama's smooth talk will lead us straight into socialism. 

Of course the housing market is key to the ecomony....owning a home is the American dream and a wonderful one when the government helped honestly and properly....

But that's the whole point...it changed drastically when the Carter and Clinton Democrats got into social engineering wanting every one of their constitutents,  even those with poor or no credit (today it's the illegals) to own their own homes....they wrongly interfered by forcing banks to provide "affordable mortgages"credit .

You saw the video....the government required banks to make loans or face penalties...banks became rated on performance results...IN 1994, one year before Clinton changed the "Community Reinvestment Act", Obama sued Citibank on behalf of a client who claimed the bank was systematically discriminating against African Americans. Whether or not they could afford the loan didn't seem to be important.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

Haven't had a chance to watch said video as I am at work but will do so later, but it likely has a lot of the things in the article i just linked. Its a interesting read, they pretty much lay out all the people who bare the blame and there ultimate conlusion was that BOTH sides had a lot go wrong.  Theres a whole lot of screw ups in washington in general repsonsible for this. Its times like these the parlimentary system looks real nice. We could simply kick everybody out and elect an entirely new washington. That would be good times.

After i watch the video  I'll ask fact check about it and maybe they will track down some info on it, unless someone else wants to go ahead and do it. Thought they may already have covered it in that article.

False

False

False

Case Summary
Plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit on July 6, 1994, alleging that Citibank had engaged in redlining practices in the Chicago metropolitan area in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), 15 U.S.C. 1691; the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3601-3619; the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and 42 U.S.C. 1981, 1982. Plaintiffs alleged that the Defendant-bank rejected loan applications of minority applicants while approving loan applications filed by white applicants with similar financial characteristics and credit histories. Plaintiffs sought injunctive relief, actual damages, and punitive damages.

The case was based on racial discrimination. The summary states:

Good post Vishmaw, but Fact Check is not totally on point.  The video deals with a lot of the stuff that Fact Check does, but it is not a "McCain/Obama" finger pointing like the ads they are running.  It is close to the history of what did happen, with a bent towards the mis-deeds of the democrats primarily.

But on the Fact check, they seem to want to go out of their way to assign blame to anyone and evryone, even to the point of mis-representation.  Specifically:

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

That is a stretch.  Home buyers are not a monolithic group or in anyway organized to do anything in sync.  This is more a result of the bad policies of the Government than a cause of the problem.  In other words, they were swept up in the problem, not causing it.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

This is true to a degree.  Most people do not realize that Real Estate agents are representing the seller, not the buyer (you can hire your own Buyer agent, but most people do not.  And the deal there is the seller still pays them!).  But then their job, since their inception, is to Upsell, so that is again not a cause of the problem, just a part of the market.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

I will not deny this delusion exists.  It was there when the S&Ls failed in the 80s (after the Housing price inflation of the late 70s and early 80s), and of course in a different form during the Dot com bubble of the 90s.  But making this a cause is akin to saying "breathing" was part of the cause (due to the 6 degrees of separation, everything can be blamed).

But I think the rest of their "foxes in the henhouse" are close to the truth.  I am sure everyone is going to have their own pet peeves and culprits.  But in a general sense, the rest of their instigators is correct.

However the discusssion was about someone claiming that the lawsuit did not account for:

"Whether or not they could afford the loan didn't seem to be important."

So once again THE SUMMARY OF THE CASE PROVES THAT CLAIM TO BE FALSE.

Unfortunately we will never know if the banks were redlining since it was settled out of court. You are simply assuming that it is when more than likely you do not enough about the case to make such an assumption. How can you be so sure that they were in fact redlining? Do you know whether or not there were loans approved in the same neighborhoods to other ethic groups with the same or lower credit standings? That is one of the problems with partisan politics. You make assumptions and apply them to all cases without knowing the facts.

Thats not flipping that is speculation.  Flipping is when you buy a property that is below market value because it need renovation. Perferably quick cheap fixes that add large amounts to the value to that peice of property. Flipping can also be done with cars, and isn't dependent on the rise of the price of whole group of properties as speculation is.