A genteel soiree? A sedate supper befitting times of austerity? Those are not for our BHO. High culture? Forget that. It’s disco time at the White House. It’s boogie time, as Beyonce shakes her pelvis along side Mr. and Mrs. BHO. Byron York (via Larry Auster) gives us the lowdown:
“At a time when the unemployment rate stands at 9.9 percent, when jobs are still being lost, when worries about the global economy are causing breathtaking volatility on Wall Street, when millions of Americans who still have jobs are worrying more than ever about the safety of their retirement savings — at a time when all that is going on, the Obama White House has turned itself into a showcase of glitzy extravagance.”
Wednesday night’s White House state dinner for Mexican President Felipe Calderon was, as far as the dinner itself was concerned, a fairly routine, if sumptuous, affair. The East Room was a grand setting, and First Lady Michelle Obama brought in a favored Chicago chef to put together a complex and expensive menu. “The main course of Oregon wagyu beef came with a Oaxacan black mole sauce with more than 20 ingredients that takes days to come together,” reported the Associated Press.
Of course state dinners are supposed to be special. But where the Obama/Calderon affair really hit the heights was in the festivities after the dinner, which took place in a huge tent
The Canadian government, not the American one, “will ‘resist’ a bank tax, Industry Minister Tony Clement said Tuesday as ministers fanned out across the world to raise opposition to the proposal for avoiding another financial crisis. ‘Canada is, and will remain, opposed to a tax that would penalize financial institutions that remained strong and prosperous while many of the world’s banks failed,’ Clement told a press conference with Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon.”
Clement said the bank tax would “encourage risky behavior” if it is used to create a bank bailout fund and “reward bad behavior” of those institutions responsible for the recent financial crisis in the first place.
As well, it would “unduly burden” Canadian banks and put them at a “competitive disadvantage” to other financial institutions.
As the AP reported a while back, “while the U.S. has seen 81 banks fail in 2009 alone, Canada has not experienced the failure of any major financial institution. There has been no crippling mortgage meltdown or banking crisis north of the border, where the financial sector is dominated by five large banks.”
I’ve often contended that if it cut back on its interventionist policies, Canada could become an economic giant. It has natural resources and a highly educated population. And as David Frum (another Canuck) reminds in this excellent piece (via alternativeright.com): Canada has an immigration system that doesn’t tolerate a tsunami of illegal alien illiterates, as does it adhere to a strict point system that benefits the country.
More HERE about the global regulatory regime debated by our oracular governors.
Defaulters or deadbeats? As I’ve explained, “You don’t have a property title in the perceived value of your property. Nobody does.” You do, however, have an obligation to honor a contract. These borrowers think otherwise and are proud of themselves for being thieves.
“Spare some change, please? Forget that. Hand over another $8.4 billion to “Fannie Mae and sister company Freddie Mac.” “The Obama administration,” reports “My Way,” had “pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012 for Freddie and Fannie, lifting an earlier cap of $400 billion.”
This via Jeff Tucker, in case you forgot who and what contributed to this affirmative-action driven downturn, here’s a New York Times’ story from 1999:
In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the 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.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates — anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans….
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.
Back in 2008, some analysts had quipped that only North Korea and Cuba were more socialist than the US in the wake of the Fannie and Freddie bailouts. This space has regularly excoriated Republican hacks for referring deceptively to our cherished “American freedoms.” (Also see BAB’s “Fascism Rising” series of posts.)
As Jim Rogers pointed out, you have a free market in housing in China. If you watch this clip, be reminded not only of Bush socialism, but of the socialism of Palin, “Bush In A Bra.” Rather than shutting F&F down, a solution to which Repbulicans are now paying lip service, Palin wanted to fine tune the mortgage miasma; make it smaller and smarter.
I would add that, as a prelude to the discussion of our economic woes, it has become fashionable for commentators to condemn socialism for the rich; this makes one look benevolent. As execrable as corporatism is, it is no reason to ignore the massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to the poor in the context of F & F, a commitment that has contributed immeasurably to the economic meltdown.
