Politics is the art of compromise: you give so that you might receive. That is how it works. Or at least how it is supposed to work. In my youth, I saw the world in more absolute terms and was generally never willing to compromise, especially when it came to principles: I was right, others were wrong…or at least confused. As I gained more experience, I began to understand that I could disagree with people while still recognizing that they had legitimate needs and wants. I also developed a better understanding of compromise. This is not to say that I always compromise. There are, I contend, points upon one must not compromise. After all, for some things, the price is far too high. However, the deficit ceiling is not one of these things.
The Republicans have largely become obsessed with not raising taxes. Ever. The Democrats have also embraced an unwillingness to compromise. Obama was more willing to compromise, but has decided that he will not accept any temporary solution. As such, politics is at a standstill because the players cannot give up something in order to gain.
I do understand the Republican desire to not raise taxes. No one ever wants to pay more taxes and their pledge appeals to anyone who is taxed. Of course, their apparently absolutist approach is fundamentally flawed: there are times in which raising taxes is a necessity because the alternative is far worse. Unless, of course, one regards the raising of taxes as the greatest of all evils. This, however, seems wildly implausible. I do understand Obama’s desire to avoid yet another temporary solution. After all, this problem should be fixed in a more lasting way, otherwise they will just have to go back and duct tape the mess all over again. That said, there are times when a temporary solution is an acceptable option-especially when it comes to political matters. Perhaps, given time, the Republicans will be willing to allow some tax cuts to expire or they will be willing to get rid of certain tax breaks or subsidies, thus allowing a tax increase under the magical blur of semantics.
Alternatively, everyone could just stick to their commitments and let America reap the consequences. That would certainly teach us for electing these folks.
“Perhaps, given time, the Republicans will be willing to allow some tax cuts. . .”
I doubt it.
And any short term compromise will leave the proverbial kicked can resting smack dab in the middle of an election year. If we think the parties are intractable now, wait until the political prize of 2012 is dangling in front of their grubby little noses.
If what I’ve said in the last paragraph is true, Obama’s bid for a long term solution is indeed the only offer that should not be open to compromise at this time. If I’m right, the world’s confidence in the good faith of the American government will just continue to wither as the two parties spat over their beliefs from one short term “solution” to the next.
The Democrats in the House aren’t exactly potted plants. Why is everybody forgetting about them? Will they not support a deal with Obama?
Could be ^those^ Democrats are more interested in saving their “seats” than solving problems. Seems to have been working for Republicans for a while. An example you’re probably aware of:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/feb/01/mitch-mcconnell/mcconnell-reverses-position-conrad-gregg-budget-co/
Sometimes words speak louder than actions:
Mr. McConnell (Jr)–see link above– , not in the House, but minority leader of the Senate, said last year that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one- term president..” He’s done all kinds of chicken-flapping*# with that statement, just as he did about with his flip on the Conrad -Gregg task force, but no matter how he wiggles and slithers, his statement above is either a telling slip of this tongue between his tightly pursed lips and/or a true statement that clearly places all other important national concerns in the back seat— or it’s simply dangerous blithering political idiocy.
*# No apologies for this. The image seems to work.
Just what the American people need now; a tax increase… just as TJ points out–the democrats don’t support Obama’s plan. AND Obama and the prior Dem Congress DID raise taxes…
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12508
How’s that worked out for us? What is it with the Dem obsession for taxes? I just don’t get it.
Is any liberal on here going to admit how many tax dollars are being lost becassue of the unemployment rate?
Does any liberal on here honestly think that raising taxes is the answer, or are they just reflexively standing against Republicans? Are more people going to get hired with even higher taxes?
We’re taxed out of our minds already and Washington keeps increasing both taxes AND spending. Increasing taxes does not lower deficits–it gives more money to the government to spend on pet projects. They will keep spending more than we give them. They always do.
At some point someone needs to stop compromising and stick to the guns of spending less than the government takes in in taxes. It’s that simple.
How would it look if I routinely overdrew my bank account and wanted to “compromise” everytime with the bank about paying the penalty?
At some point compromise becomes an evil on its own; the art is in not letting “perfect” become the enemy of “good.”
Magus, you’re aguing with people who believe govt. is the greater good and private enterpirse is the greater evil. Some of them won’t admit this because they’re sophists, others because they’re socialists who won’t admit being socialists, others because they’re communists who are only socialists today so they can have communism tomorrow. Not that there’s that much difference. It wasn’t called the Union of Soviet Communist Republics, after all.
Perhaps they don’t want to admit even to themselves that deep down they know communism is evil. It’s about controlling others. It starts by telling people what to do with their own money, which is really nothing more than confiscating that money. If/when they get a little more power for the govt. and things continue to fail, they know that they can’t be wrong, they just need more power to prove how right they are. And before long you’re doing what they want, but it’s all for the “common good”, you understand.
“How’s that worked out for us?”
How has conducting two wars and cutting taxes work for us?
This is one independent who thinks that raising taxes is a more sensible “part” of the answer in time of war. We are still spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, right?
“At some point someone needs to stop compromising and stick to the guns of spending less than the government takes in in taxes. It’s that simple. ” Nothing’s ever “that simple”. It sounds good, and in an imaginary world I would say “AMEN!”
Sesame Street used to teach the importance of “consequences”. If I’m a little boy and I see a fishbowl on a stand and I get the urge to touch the fish, I may knock over the stand and the fishbowl. The fish, out of water, without mommy around to quickly put it back in water will surely die. If mommy asks me what happened, and I tell her the truth, I’ll be punished. If I lie, and she knows it, my punishment will be greater.
A child very early on about consequences. As he gets older, he realizes that the sequence of events leading from an action can be complex, irreversible, and sometimes damaging.
We (yes, ^we^–an electorate that, for decades has put politics before the kind of household common sense you describe–have for decades taken the simple route to “prosperity” and got ten ourselves into this mess by blindering ourselves to any consideration of the complex aftermath of our actions as voters and citizens. We are where we are– right now. At least now we should grow up and begin considering consequences.
And please don’t be silly enough to reach the “simple” conclusion that it’s all the fault of liberal or conservative pols They and we precipitated and ignored a long sequence of events and consequences bringing us to this point.
Compromise is only an evil if everything is “that simple”. But everything isn’t that simple. It’s time to get the ball rolling toward a solution of the our debt problem, but it’s not time to be ignorant of the possible consequences of the “solutions” we pursue.
#I also don’t believe it is practical, in any sense, to send 11-12 million illegal immigrants back to Mexico (the “simple” solution to the immigration problem). When you figure out the logistics of that, perhaps you can tell us all about it.
Like sending all slaves back to Africa where they came from would have been a “simple” solution to our racial divide. There would be significant consequences. You don’t raise the debt ceiling, there will be consequences. Do your crystal balls tell you that the consequences will be good?
Yeah..nothing’s ever that simple. Good excuse to keep going where we’re going. Didn’t Obama’s quote that TJ posted make it sound simple?
In my blog post on compromise, I posted a link that says the Fins cut gov spending by 100% in order to meet budgets.
Simple.
And by the way: How is raising taxes and the debt ceiling compromise? Couldn’t your “it’s all too complicated, see?” argument be used by either side? What a croc. What the hell do we pay these guys for? No figure it out, that’s what.
As a matter of fact, I was thinking just that today; that economics gurus (who contradict each other) intentionally obfuscate. They don’t want people to understand how simple it is.
It’s simple–no president or congress should pass a budget that costs more than the government makes. If paying half of what someone makes in a year to the government is not enough, what is?
And as far as the wars go–can’t we stop them? Why did the debt grow under Obama in 2 years, more than it did with Bush in 8? The wars? No. But I thought Obama would solve our problems, especially those nasty wars that he campaigned on. You do realize that the bailouts cost more than the entire Iraq War, right?
“You do realize that the bailouts cost more than the entire Iraq War, right?”
I don’t realize that.. Do you have a link for that statistic?
It takes a long time to pay for a war. We still have mounds of veteran’s benefits from World War 2. The care of wounded soldiers from these wars will be with us for another seventy years, at which point we might be able to access the cost of these conflicts.
We should have had a tax increase before the invasion of Iraq, not a tax cut. The idea of cutting taxes,
knowing you plan to invade a country eight times zones away, is incredibly bad.
chamblee54
It’s all simple, really—right magus71? No one apparently spent one second considering the unintended ^consequences^ of these two wars. It’s as if the American people were the enemy, and the collateral damage inflicted upon them in the near present on into the future.is of no consequence.
The soldiers who fight and lose arms or limbs or who come home whole are citizens; they will suffer twice . Having survived rotation after rotation they will continue to deal with mental and physical injuries, and they will be part of the struggle in this country that will, in large part, determine how they are treated.
Simple as pie, really.
http://www.traders-talk.com/mb2/index.php?showtopic=98230
Barry Ritholtz, a financial blogger, has run the numbers on the bailout, and he cites a guy named Jim Bianco of Bianco Research who crunched inflation-adjusted numbers and compared some previous federal government expenditures to the current total of the bailout. Now, depending on where you look, the total bailout money to date is either $6 trillion or $7.4 trillion. These guys, they just ran it up to $4.6 trillion, and it’s more than that now. It’s at least two trillion more than that. Now, the current national debt is like $7 trillion. Maybe it’s higher than that. But regardless, that’s irrelevant here.
This current bailout, calculated only up to $4.6 trillion, has cost more than all of the following government expenditures combined. Are you ready? The Marshall Plan. The Louisiana Purchase. The race to the moon. The S&L crisis. The Korean War. The New Deal. The invasion of Iraq. The Vietnam War. And NASA.
All of those combined, in inflation-adjusted dollars, equal $3.92 trillion in today’s dollars. This bailout is more than all of those combined. Now, would you like to hear the inflation-adjusted dollar amounts for each of these line items? The Marshall Plan, back when we did it, cost $12.7 billion — and it rebuilt Europe after World War II. If we did the Marshall Plan today, it would cost $115.3 billion. We rebuilt European for $115.3 billion in today’s dollars; and we have just spent, according to these guys, $4.6 trillion on bailouts of the US financial industry. The Louisiana Purchase, in today’s dollars, would cost $217 billion.
The race to the moon, in today’s dollars, would have cost $237 billion. That’s more than the Marshall Plan and Louisiana Purchase in today’s dollars. The S&L crisis. We bailed out the S&Ls and fixed that. In today’s dollars, it would cost $256 billion. Back then it was $153 billion. The Korean War, $54 billion back in the fifties. Today’s cost would be $454 billion. The New Deal. Today’s dollars, estimated to be $500 billion, if we did the New Deal today. That’s half a trillion. We have spent $4.6 trillion. The New Deal was half a trillion in today’s dollars. We have spent $4.6 trillion, and probably more than that, at least six or seven. The invasion of Iraq, $597 billion in today’s dollars. The Vietnam War. Back in the era of the Vietnam War, it cost $111 billion. To do it today would cost $698 billion. And NASA. This is not the race to moon. This is the whole NASA budget. Over the years, $416.7 billion. In today’s dollars, it’s $851.2 billion. This is an annual cost for NASA.
So, all of these add up to $3.92 trillion.
The only thing that comes close is World War II, and even that cost less than what we have spent. Again, I have to emphasize, this is using a figure of $4.6 trillion as the bailout today. It is far, far more than that.
IF it were all dollars. But it isn’t. Does the phrase “inflation adjusted dollars” take into account that to wage a war these days the equipment you must purchase is much more complex ? Hence, you’re buying vehicles to protect against IEDs and you’re buying drones and more heavily armored tanks and advanced artillery . I could buy the firepower equivalent of a musket today for a pittance (even adjusted for inflation) But we need much more than musket power, so we spend much more money on weaponry. Is that all part of the “inflation adjustment” or is he just talking dollars?
Does anyone here have a link that shows the cost of the entire bailout right ^now^, Wall Street, Fannie Mae, etc? Here’s a link from Oct 2008 (pre-Obama) breaking things down a bit and providing a speculative fig of $4.599 trillion:
http://infowars.net/articles/october2008/151008Bailout_figures.htm
http://www.reflectivepundit.com/reflectivepundit/2008/09/wall-street-bai.html
Give a few more years on the current rate and Iraq will surpass the bailout. And we didn’t even fight Iraq or Afghanistan like most other wars. We built millions and millions in useless stuff, too.
Lesson learned, kill terrorists and leave.
These wars aren’t costing as much as the libs like us to think. Even when the wars stop, we still have all of those servicemen. They still all eat, train, get paid and have a place to live. We still buy military equipment and must maintain it. All of that just happens to be going on over there, instead of in garrison.
Oh–and lets not forget about the cost of Obama Care.
Palin 2012.
It does make more sense to simply kill terrorists than to try to hold entire countries. Terrorists do not operate like nations with actual armed forces. Rather, they act more like criminal groups. As such, it makes more sense to combat them in a similar manner. To use an analogy, if criminals live in a city, we do not occupy the entire city. Rather, we just go get the criminals.
“if criminals live in a city, we do not occupy the entire city. Rather, we just go get the criminals.”
Mike, we can do that because we already occupy the city. You think we can just overtly fly in to any country and kill people inside of it? They tend to get pissed. Even when those people aren’t exactly appreciated.
“If paying half of what someone makes in a year to the government is not enough, what is? ”
Is that federal only, or federal, state, local ,sales and property taxes some or all of them? I’m anxious to hear the states and municipalities yowling when there’s no federal money coming back to them. Especially in those states that require balanced budgets. Why, even if the federal taxes are lowered, the governors and mayors may have to ^raise taxes^! Then the chicks will come home to roost. Money for infrastructure has to come from somewhere. There would likely be no federal money for schools. Towns would lose their libraries. Utilities would be less reliable than they already are. Sidewalks would crumble. The ill, and disabled and survivors would be out in the streets. And lord, lord help us if there’s a disaster or three.
On the same point, when one is making a million a year, one has 500k to survive on if your 50% fig. isn’t an exaggeration applying to a relatively few people or none. Not too shabby. A similar tax rate applied to a person making 30k/ year would leave him with 15k. Consequences. You’ve seen photos from the Great Depression?
http://history1900s.about.com/od/photographs/tp/greatdepressionpictures.htm
Read the Grapes of Wrath? Of course you have. And the world is much more complicated now. What would the consequences of another Great Depression be?
“Why did the debt grow under Obama in 2 years, more than it did with Bush in 8? ”
Hmmmmm. Because Bush left a steaming big turd of a problem behind, perhaps? . You’re in the military. How easy is it to simply stop a war. Simple, is it ,to safely and quickly pull out 130000 troops? Simple to maintain some kind of positive opinion about the US in the process? Vietnam reinforced our positive feeling about the bravery of our troops, What effect did our quick pullout there have on world opinion (not that it matters since we are absolutely exceptional—BTW did you have your fingers crossed behind your back when you compare the US to Finland ? You do know they have universal health care, don’t you)?Something of interest for both of us here:
http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/03/finland_can_teach_michigan_the.html
“Yeah..nothing’s ever that simple. Good excuse to keep going where we’re going.”
Interesting, that last sentence. Can I compare that to the approach we took in Vietnam, until the fall of Saigon when a treaty was signed and we withdrew after accumulating 50.000 dead soldiers? A quick scan of the first few pages of Google shows considerable debate over the subject of whether we won or lost that ” war”#.
“And by the way: How is raising taxes and the debt ceiling compromise?”
Intriguing. Did I say that? Or are you just implying that I did? I would say compromise by raising taxes,raising the debt ceiling, ^and^ making serious adjustments to Social Security ( eliminate the ceiling for payroll taxes, for ex.)* and Medicare (Part D, in particular– a Republican, conservative administration monstrosity) by allowing government to negotiate drug prices with drug companies.
#Whether it was a war or not seems to be central to that debate. 50,000 Americans died. One thing’s certain: They weren’t playing tiddlywinks.
*Privatization was an idiot’s idea under Bush, and it’s clearly even more idiotic now that we’ve seen what the market has done over the last 3 years.
magus–Just for you:
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/07/quote-day-never-trust-simple-and-plausible
Taxes are actually lower than they were during the Clinton years, so we are hardly being taxed out of our minds. True, I’d like to pay less taxes. However, I also like having roads, schools, defense, police, fire departments and so on. The tax cuts for the top earners should be restored to the Clinton era levels while spending is trimmed. Once we have a surplus again (as we did under Clinton), then we can start lowering taxes until the income of the state matches the spending.
As a matter of simple math, there are only two ways to lower the deficit: raise income or lower spending. These are, of course, not mutually exclusive. I’m in favor of a rational approach to both: entitlements need to be trimmed, but corporations and top income folks need to contribute more to the system that keeps them rich.
“As a matter of simple math, there are only two ways to lower the deficit: raise income or lower spending.”
Or. . .we could lower income and raise spending. Oh, that was already done. :Lower taxes, wage two wars and create an unfunded social program. Zowie!
This article is about compromise. Raising taxes and the debt ceiling is not compromise. Where is the assurane that Obama will spend less? He wants to keep spending. He can’t stop.
“Taxes are actually lower than they were during the Clinton years”
Depends on what you mean by “taxes”. Tax rates? Revenue in absolute dollars? Just at the federal level? What’s at issue here is how we’re making up the difference between revenue and excess spending, which is debt. That translates to more taxes down the road.
Spending as a percent of GDP is much higher. The government’s footprint on the economy has been consistently growing. Especially when you consider the burden of legal costs due to excessive regulation on businesses and unfunded mandates from the federal government. ” I also like having roads, schools, defense, police, fire departments and so on.” Do you also like having your city pay to train your police/fire dept to instruct citizens on how to install child safety seats? It’s a one week class. Very few rational people object to taxes to support roads, schools, defense, police, and fire departments. It’s the “and so on” that’s the problem. Surely use of such logic is covered in your 42 fallacies. If not, you need to add one. No, just adding your picture will not suffice.
And I know we may have to raise taxes; but I want some sort of proof that taxes will just be spent, and that it will go to paying our debt.
As far as Clinton goes, Clinton proposed a 16 billion dollar stimulus bill, which Congress stopped because it was too expensive. Unemployment at that point was 7.3%; a year after the stimulus was shot down, unemployment was 6.5%.
Match those numbers against Obama’s. A stimulus package that he pushed through with a Dem congress–the only way he could get it done. We were warned that if he didn’t, unemployment would rise above 8%. Well, now it’ above 9%.
Obama said the other day that he’d rather be talking about “new programs” than the debt ceiling. He just wants to keep spending and there ARE real socialists in his government spurring him on. They can’t get all they want done, they can’t call it socialism, their government can’t suddenly take control of everything, but they believe that that’s the way things *should* be.
Just like you, they’re for wealth redistribution, for punishing success, and rewarding unproductivity.
Paragraphs 2 and 3. Are these two great examples of post hoc or what? Are you willing to take the time to explain and defend your conclusion that stopping the Clinton stimulus was the direct cause of the drop in unemployment? Are you absolutely certain that passing the Obama stimulus is the direct cause of rising unemployment. Can you honestly say no other causes contributed to the two effects you cite? Seems a facile observation.–a search for a ^simple^ answer where none is to be had.
Without wealth redistribution and “labor redistribution” (as in having the richest redistribute the workload to the poor, for example, not in the sense of labor being redistributed from one locale to another) do you think we’d have the money to maintain a fighting force, soldiers and weaponry, that could defend our homeland or go after the purported roots of any enemy’s strength overseas? By all reports, the top 1% of the taxpaying public pay as much as the lower 99%. My take on that factoid is that 50% of the money used to maintain infrastructure, defense, etc. at the federal level is paid by the bottom 99%, The richest have nothing to bitch about. They they get the advantages of a (semi-functioning?) government and get the advantages of the good life.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt1fYSAChxs&version=3&hl=en_US%5D
My wife came home from the grocery store. Three dump trucks dumped 4 tons of groceries on my lawn as she reached our front door. I asked her what the hell was going on.
“I walked into the store and it was jammed with so much…stuff. It was so complicated. So I bought it all,” she said.
I scratched my head, walked down the lawn, sifted through piles of dog food, heaps of tofu, tossed aside 8 containers of Blue Bonnet. Finally I found a beer. I cracked it and drank it all in one swig.
“How’r we going to pay for this, Hon?”, I asked.
“I already paid. Credit cards are great aren’t they?”
She began to stack cans of beans in the cupboard.
My great grandmother on my mother’s side lived in a world without credit cards. She never borrowed a penny in her life. She and my great grandfather were tenant farmers. Sharecroppers. She died quite young .There was no Social Security then. No Medicare.
She was twenty three when JP Morgan died, She died 14 years later . Ironically , she never lived to see the Great Depression. She lived it all her life.
“Useless stuff.” I smile and a tear runs down my cheek as I think of the soldier who were blown to bits because they didn’t have heavily armored vehicles. Who weren’t supplied with adequate body armor until public outcry changed things about a year into the war.. Cost to the American public, adjusted for inflation, infinite.
Your link is another pre-bailout article but it has its points:
“The fact is that the responses to the 9/11 attacks—the prudent measures and, more so, the controversial and outright wrong ones—cost us far more than the projected bail-out of Wall Street. ”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“But as the bailout puts a giant hole into the federal purse, perhaps Washington decision-makers will be reminded of the huge expenditures for the Iraq adventure (and for the tax cuts for the rich). “
“He wants to keep spending. He can’t stop.”
Ah. You’ve mastered character assessment— another skill to go with crystal ball gazing. Purchased any tea leaves lately?
The compromise comes in with the Social Security and Medicare offers. In a compromise, both sides make concessions. It doesn’t work if one side rejects, out of hand, any concession by the other side.
McConnell is making an offer. Doesn’t seem so much a concession as a purely politically motivated move. We’ll see.
Oh, and where is the assurance that Republicans will be true to their word? Remember the seven members who co-sponsored the Gregg-Conrad ^bipartisan budget commission^?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/feb/01/mitch-mcconnell/mcconnell-reverses-position-conrad-gregg-budget-co/ In addition, there was the biggest flip-flopper of all Mitch McConnell.
Some fun with the debt ceiling. Have a laugh even if you disagree. It’ll only take 9+ minutes of your time
http://www.hulu.com/watch/257878/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-tue-jul-12-2011
According to several sources, one of them the Wall Street Journal
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/06/28/eric-cantor-is-short-treasurys-sort-of/
representative Eric Cantor, a key negotiator in the debt ceiling has invested his own money in shorting the treausry. Basically, he will benefit significantly with a US default.
Why are we not screaming against this? This is significantly worst than Wiener sex scandal. This crook is betting against its own country and on top of that he is a key member of the negotiation.
I believed this is completely unethical and unacceptable, and a scandal greater than any sexual misconduct because it affects the US as a country. You can honestly belive in not raising the debt ceiling, but it is certainly unacceptable and the behaviour of a crook to bet your own money and be a key member in the negotiations.
Thanks for the link. Interesting. From same article:
“But to be fair to Mr. Cantor, he also owns a lot of Treasury debt (updated to add: as part of his pension), and the TBT merely hedges some of that exposure, his spokesperson tells Salon.
And so far the Treasury market has seemed decidedly not roiled by the debt debate, which most observers regard as so much Kabuki theater anyway.”
Yes, its true that what the articles says. But that does not change the ethical argument and the fact he can not be a negotiator. He has clear conflict of interests. We will all lose our pensions and all of us are not betting against our country.
You stated “Basically, he will benefit significantly with a US default.” But if he holds more debt than he is likely to gain from his short position, is this statement on which much of your point is based, true? And couldn’t one argue that holding any Treasury debt is also a disqualifier? Perhaps risking default is a better long-term position for the country, as leverage for getting the country’s finances in order, than is the relatively short-term interest of holding debt an incentive for making a deal? Not saying that such is actually knowable or in any way certain, but it’s a more valid point that stating he will “benefit significantly”. According to what is stated in the article, this is simply not true.
“^Perhaps^ risking default is a better long-term position for the country, as leverage for getting the country’s finances in order, ”
^Perhaps^ we’ll get a chance to find out.. I’m ready for just about any result, so I can’t wait to find out. The drama’s just killing me. . .
Michael Lewis’ The Big Short paints a clearly disturbing picture of men of Cantor’s ilk.
Lewis’ characters may have wagered on dog fights, or cock fights, or baseball games in their youth, We don’t know whether they did or not. But later in life they wagered against the happiness and livelihoods of millions of their fellow Americans Made big money betting that people, who purchased housing that they could not afford, could be fooled into believing they could pay their adjustable rate mortgages for twenty or thirty years:
“A subprime auto loan is in some ways honest because it’s at a fixed rate. They may be charging you high fees and ripping your hear out, but at least you know it. The subprime mortgage loan was a cheat. You’re basically drawing someone in by telling them ‘ You’re going to pay off all your other loans, –your credit card debt, your auto loans–by taking this one loan. And look at the low rate!.But that low rate isn’t the real rate. It’s a teaser rate.”
And the sleazeballs, slithered out of their mud holes prepared to feast on human failure . They wagered against the success of the subprime mortgage market, knowing there was big money to be made in betting against the borrowers’ ability to handle the interest reset .
I’d prefer not to remove Cantor from the negotiations at this point. He’s one of the crowd that’s digging his party into a bigger hole with every breath he takes, every move he makes. . .
I’d prefer he’d be given a vasectomy before he sires any more children. Just my preference you understand.
OO! OO! Hot off the internets!!
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58937.html
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58937.html