Orson Scott Card goes off on the media

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Orson Scott Card said:
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

Note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat.

The rest of the article can be found here.

Digg here.
 
It just goes to show how little of the cause of this Orson Scott Card knows, and how it has little to do with the risky mortgages, and more to do with what banking, finance, and wall street businesses did with absolutely insane investment bonds placed out on those risky mortgages.

In short, the people who supposedly know what a good investment is, placed investments in risky mortgages, basically putting up to 5 times the original amount of those mortgages at risk. The losses then compounded to what we now see before us.

If anyone believe this was done accidently, and that somehow, it was a magic coincidence that it all came to a head 'right about the same time', just as dubya is getting out of office, then I have some interesting bond proposals for you based on the recycled human waste industry and how we can process it into foodstuffs.
 
In other news, the President DIRECTLY CONTROLS HOW MILLIONS OF PEOPLE INVEST.

Meaning to say, dur.
 
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In other news, the President DIRECTLY CONTROLS HOW MILLIONS OF PEOPLE INVEST.

It wasn't millions that brought this down, and had nothing to do with the common mans investments.

Theses were business to business transactions, conducted by a few hundred people.

The implications of how few people it took to demolish an economy are scary, but not surprising. You have a small % of america controlling a large % of the wealth, this should not be a surprise to you. Stop thinking at a ground level.
 
It wasn't millions that brought this down, and had nothing to do with the common mans investments.

Theses were business to business transactions, conducted by a few hundred people.

The implications of how few people it took to demolish an economy are scary, but not surprising. You have a small % of america controlling a large % of the wealth, this should not be a surprise to you. Stop thinking at a ground level.
IT'S A VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY TO MAKE THEIR POSITION SUCK AS MUCH AS EVERYONE ELSES!

*sigh*

Im sure it's a followup to the wildly successful and PROFITABLE stock market downturn of 2002.

It's obvious because no financial crisis has ever been stopped from going completely out of control, by a few rich people >.O
 
I loved Ender's Game but don't give a shit about anything non-fiction he has to say. Although I prefer hearing rants from authors than reality stars.
 
Poor People: Fuckin' Up Our Lives For Thousands of Years

That's the line they keep pushing, anyway.

Odd though, that the poor, not really having control over anything, can be such a burden on everything.

Weird, isn't it. It's almost as if blame is being associated to those with no voice to reply.

But that couldn't be. Not in a democracy like ours...
 
That's the line they keep pushing, anyway.

Odd though, that the poor, not really having control over anything, can be such a burden on everything.

Weird, isn't it. It's almost as if blame is being associated to those with no voice to reply.

But that couldn't be. Not in a democracy like ours...

I'm sorry, I don't care how much money you have you should be smart enough to know that if something sounds too good to be true (ie "Hey, you CAN afford this 200k house on a 35k a year salary!") it usually is. Sure, the banks should have never given those loans, but the people that couldn't really afford them never should have signed the paperwork either. It's call personal responsibility, and seems to be lacking immensely in our nation.
 
I'm sorry, I don't care how much money you have you should be smart enough to know that if something sounds too good to be true (ie "Hey, you CAN afford this 200k house on a 35k a year salary!") it usually is. Sure, the banks should have never given those loans, but the people that couldn't really afford them never should have signed the paperwork either. It's call personal responsibility, and seems to be lacking immensely in our nation.

the banks were much more the stumbling point than the individuals...who can blame someone for wanting a better life? the banks had a responsibility to their shareholders to do the right thing and they failed miserably and now we are all screwed for it
 
I'm sorry, I don't care how much money you have you should be smart enough to know that if something sounds too good to be true (ie "Hey, you CAN afford this 200k house on a 35k a year salary!") it usually is. Sure, the banks should have never given those loans, but the people that couldn't really afford them never should have signed the paperwork either. It's call personal responsibility, and seems to be lacking immensely in our nation.

I think your missing the point here.

Poor people being unable to handle their home loan payments balooning up when their interest rate adjusted to something ungodly did not cost this country $700 billion dollars.

But that is where all the blame is being focused, because that is what the news is mainly harping on.

60 minutes, last week, played out where all that money really went, and while the high risk mortgages played a part, it wasn't the real cause of the loss.

Also: Any any point, a re-finance of these high risk loans to something that made sense could have saved a crapton of problems, but why didn't they do this?

Because, the reverse hit on the bond products being supported by the huge 'potential' returns on these high interest payments generating more cash than normal would cause the banks to lose money, in a way that they wouldn't get a big fat bailout payment afterwards.
 
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Face it, Duke. Poor people suck. Let's round them up and force them to be rich or face severe consequences.
 
Have prostitutes traditionally been wealthy people? I'm pretty sure you'd just end up with lots of abused, addicted, disease-ridden poor people with loose buttholes. Like fly and April. (I'm extrapolating a little, I know)