jjamie12
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Posts posted by jjamie12
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The reason for that is because the market for unsecured mortgages (e.g. sub-primes) basically evaporated late in 2008, which is roughly what triggered this mess. No one wants to take the risk of trading unsecured mortgage products. Go back three years, and I'll bet that percentage is much lower.
That number probably seems scarier than it really is, as it's probably a reflection of fewer lousy mortgages being written. Which does not make the fact that the government is basically subsidizing a large part of the housing industry any less scary in itself, of course...
Actually, as it turns out, 86% of new mortgages are government guaranteed. I'm assuming that this includes not only Fan and Fred, but the FHA and VA, as well (probably some of the state and local programs, I'd imagine). That is up from about 30% 4 years ago, according to this article: Wash Post article from Fall '09 Their source is an industry mag called 'Inside Mortgage Finance', which I don't know too much about, and haven't corroborated the numbers with any other source. It doesn't seem 'wrong', to me, though. That's crazy... from 30% 4 years ago to 86% today... market share growth by, essentially, the WORST managed entities in the business. There's some weirdness there, yes?
While that is true, I think that there are interesting reasons why that is the case. It's not that new mortgages are less collateralized, it's that Fan, Fred, and our government friends are doing the same old BS they've always done, save for the really outrageous NINA and NINJA loans. You can still get loans with nothing down. The agencies actually promote 3% down payments at historically (or close to it) low rates. The question to ask is: How is it that the government can guarantee these loans, when traditional banks won't write these loans anymore (hell, NOBODY thinks its worth it... there aren't any investors on earth willing to do what the agencies are doing!)No one wants to take the risk of trading unsecured mortgage products.You can see what is happening: Fed is buying trillions of dollars worth of Agency bonds, keeping Agency rates artificially low; agency 'conforming' limits keep growing, allowing ever larger slices of the population to become customers. The government is taking over the mortgage market (and, by extension the housing market). I don't know... I guess you can make the argument that this is needed to avoid economic disaster... I guess I just wish we could get some sort of real 'bottom' on the housing market, not this cluster of subsidized nonsense we have right now.
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i find it humorous that people think i'm following talking points or following this debate like some political junkie.
these are my impressions and my opinions and my observations. i am not politically connected or member of some party or group/movement.
i think the polarity of this debate and the rigid black-and-white nature of it in this country and others creates a mood of utter intolerance that i find vexing.
jw
ADD: i will not apologize for my opinions or get dragged into the marginalizing name-calling that takes place on this particular board.
Put another way: I will NOT try to learn anything. My opinion (uninformed as it is) will continue to be that which it has always been, no matter what new information might come to me. Na-na-nuh-boo-boo.
Change a few of the words around up-thread, and you will sound exactly like the ultra-right religious crew.
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so let me get this straight: employees pay into a fund that provides them unemployment insurance, and there's someone who says those fund shouldn't be released -- in an economic crisis no less. and this person taking this "moral" stand is a former athlete who got paid lots of money to throw a baseball, before his arm gave out, at which point he could live quite easily on the millions of dollars he was paid and had no need to cash in on unemployment insurance because he, after all, was paid millions.
and he's taking this stand against people who paid into a fund and seeking recompense?
well, sheesh, i can see the point he's making, given the fact that he used to throw a baseball and cashed in on his name recognition, and now is being paid by the people he's accusing of being lazy.
it all adds up.
jw
ADD: hey bishop!!
This whole post shows just a startling lack of knowledge about, well... everything you're making a point about (Except maybe the whole 'cashing in on his name' thing. I don't know).
You, apparently, don't understand 1- How unemployment insurance works; 2- What the contents of THIS particular bill are, and by extension, its implications; and 3- What PAY-GO is (actually, I, apparently, don't know what it is, either because it obviously doesn't mean jack)
How is it that you've formed such a 'locked-in' opinion on something when you clearly don't understand many of the issues central to forming that opinion?
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I hate being white and making 20% more money for no good reason.
Honestly, with all of the persecution and demonization, I had forgotten about THIS particular burden... Thanks for making me hate myself more.
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Actually I'm just a person who is tired of being demonized for being a white christian male.
You're darn right, Wisconsin! I'm tired of it, too. What we need to do is get some White Christian Males elected to positions of political power and we've got to put pressure on some of these companies to hire MORE persons of WCM. Eventually, we'll get some WCM's in C-level positions at lower-level Fortune 500 companies. Once that happens, then we could have a conversation about us WCM's not being persecuted and demonized, but NOT UNTIL we have AT LEAST 10 Senators and 20% of Fortune 500 Company CEO's. Then we'll talk. Until then, I will continue to believe that us WCM's are being demonized, simply because of our skin color and religious affiliation.
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I read this earlier. It doesn't get nearly the headlines that the TARP does, but at the end of the day, the governments Financial losses from the GSE's will easily trump the total losses from the TARP. It's a bottomless pit, and the losses are going to accelerate over the next few years. I know that they are looking to unwind Fannie and Freddie, but I don't see how they will be able to do that without signficantly changing the dynamics of the entire system. As of right now the government owns over $3.5 Trillion worth of mortgages and growing, I just don't see how this won't continue to be a huge burden on our deficit any time soon.
I think I read 78% of all mortgages originated in the US last year were guaranteed by the government in some way (Fan, Fred, FHA, whatever the hell else).
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It would appear that we can close this one up and confidently say "No, we shouldn't" on the $5K tax credit. I haven't been able to find anything that says that this particular tax credit hurdles the "Is this good fiscal policy?" question. (Outside of the general 'Tax cut for small business' thing, which isn't necissarily good fiscal policy.)
Although I can't help but believe that there would be some companies, somewhere, who would benefit from this, I've seen no data to suggest that to be the case. Furthermore, if you've got small businesses out there demanding to NOT take $5K from the gov't, so be it!
Good discussion on this.
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Because he's a repetitive little cheerleader who would willingly vote to have a functional retard leading our nation as long as it was a functional retard from his favorite team?
Just a wild guess.........
I don't presume to speak for Magox... (but I'll do it anyway) I think he just mis-spoke upthread. He doesn't strike me as a 'Republican'.
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She is not what the GOP needs, don't get me wrong, if she wins the primary, which I hope to god she doesn't, then I'll vote for her.
Please, God, NO!!!!
I had you pegged for a third party voter in the scenario outlined above...
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I found this today.
Detailed numbers and explanations that I thought you would find interesting.
This next part is what we were talking about.
This is perfect. Thanks for the link and the discussion. I'm going to do a little more digging on this to see if there are any other studies done. I'm a little bit surprised at this comment: "It failed to create jobs, however,[1] because much like today, policymakers ignored the jobs the credit would destroy since it had to be funded by government borrowing." Personally, I'm having a hard time with the idea that $30 billion in government borrowing would destroy any jobs in this environment, but this is just a gut reaction. I'll need to think about it some more.
Based on the above, they get a cost per job of between $111,000 and $200,000 per job created, vs. my estimated $50,000. This type of cost per job created will never turn into a positive NPV on the revenue side of the equation because the jobs created (most likely) won't be that high paying. I'll do a little more research and try to see if there are other estimates for that cost number. If their estimates are correct, I'd imagine you'd have to say that, without a doubt, this credit is not a good idea.
And, of course, I agree with all of the things in the bottom section that you quoted. These things are certainly important and should be pursued.
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Hey Washington, thanks but I don't need a $5000 tax credit to hire more employees. What I need is:
--Lenders that are not scared sh--less about what Washington is going to do next to hamper their businesses,
--I need to know that I'm not going to have to fund some insane health care boondoggle,
--I need to not have state governments trying to suck my blood from every orifice for any reason they can think of,
--I need to not pay my auditors tens of thousands of extra dollars because of all the overbearing regulation forced on them by the SEC
--I need to not worry about being subjected to a lawsuit every time I fire a crappy employee because he might be a woman/black/gay/Arab/etc.
Thanks for listening!
I am, obviously, 100% in agreement with all of this. (Although I don't think anyone described as a 'small business' needs to worry about overbearing regulation of the SEC)
However, we aren't talking about this, we're talking about the $5K tax credit. KD, you seem pretty definitively against it, as well as LA... Both of you see 'no' incentive in the $5K. Is there a chance that there are *any* businesses out there that would, though? It's an honest question. I've seen (well, actually Magox has seen) one estimate where 1 in 10 new hires would be directly relateable to the tax credit. Do you agree or disagree with the premise that there WILL BE some new hiring by small businesses that otherwise wouldn't based on this tax credit?
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It would be great if the tryst occurred in a service area in ....
New Jersey.
I was trying to think of a way to work one of those in! Nice job.
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I just happend across The Matrix on TV, and couldn't help noticing that with all the Zionist symbolism and the obvious themes of Zionist mind control through "plugging in" of the population to mass media, The Matrix was a clear warning of 9/11. Consider some of the lines from the movie:
"It is another training program designed to teach you one thing: if you are not one of us, you are one of them." Startlingly similar to Bush's "with us, or against us" statement, and clearly an indictment of 9/11's purpose: to "train" the American people to accept continuous war and oppression. Not conicndentally, that quote is from the infamous "Woman in Red" scene, a fine warning of how Zionist propaganda teaches us to fear those different from us.
And:
Neo: "Why do my eyes hurt?"
Morpheus: "You've never used them before."...obviously a reference to American blindness to the Zionist conspiracy that surrounds them.
Then there's the line from Agent Smith: "You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson..." Obviously, the dual existence of Neo/Mr. Anderson is a clear reference to the Twin Towers, and given that Neo/Mr. Anderson's passport expires on 9/11/01, Agent Smith is obviously communicating the inevitably of the demolition of the WTC on 9/11.
And Warner Brothers, a major player in the Zionist-controlled media, tried to suppress the project and demanded significant rewrites when they couldn't.
Coincidence? Or did the Wachowski brothers have advanced knowledge through sources in the Jewish-controlled Hollywood elite and were trying to warn us?
This is good stuff.
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Re-posting from a different thread:
Magox said: "Estimates range that one out of every ten new hirees will be cause of the $5000 tax credit."
Great!
Assume:
Five year time horizon
Cost of funds for gov't (5 yr) @ 2.23%
Average unemployment benefit is $292 for 46 weeks (because of new laws put in place during times of financial strife... I think the normal time frame is 26 weeks)
Average real federal tax rate of 20.7%
Average salary: $32,140
To break even on the $5K: 11.421% of the 'stimulus' jobs created would have to have been ONLY because of the $5K. That is very close to the 1 in 10 Magox quoted earlier. So, if 'estimates' are off by 10% (ie. 2 out of every 10 jobs are solely based on the $5K stimulus): NPV for the gov't: $4,289.
This doesn't even take into account other good things (I wouldn't even really know how to estimate this impact) associated with having people employed like: Having them spending money on LA's widgets, or having them pay into state and local taxes or keeping them in their home instead of going to foreclosure or or or (you get the point)
(Note: I got the assumptions from the first links I opened from Googling "Average Taxes Paid in the US" and "Average Salary US" and "Average unemployment benefits". I did, literally, zero fact checking, so you may quibble with the numbers somewhat, but I think the essential point still stands up if you want to change some of the assumptions)
It would appear that there is, at the very least, a decent argument to be made (strictly from the revenue side) that a $5K tax credit for small businesses per hire *might* make some sense. I'm not totally sure. I'm looking at these numbers and I think it probably does, but I haven't truly formed an opinion because I'm quite sure that I'm missing some things. Is there anything else to consider in these numbers? Any other numbers we should use? Different time horizon? Salaries? Tax Rates? Let's discuss this.
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A couple of things before we can get back to the pbills bashing.
1- My central point here is that you shouldn't bash the President when you actually agree with what he's saying. You need to give him the political cover of actually agreeing with the guy (when you do agree) so that he can and will propose things you do agree with. Otherwise, he simply won't propose anything that 'right' thinking folks will agree with... I mean, why would he? If your'e going to get bashed from the right no matter what, why even try? In fact, we have this situation going on right now. There is genuine concern from folks on the right about the deficit. When President Obama proposed putting a bi-partisan commision together to come back and give recommendations on increasing taxes and decreasing spending (you know, cutting the deficit), not a single Senator voted for that. Not one. 97-0.
2- Not central to the main point in this thread, but wanted to point this out.
Magox said: "Estimates range that one out of every ten new hirees will be cause of the $5000 tax credit."
Great!
Assume:
Five year time horizon
Cost of funds for gov't (5 yr) @ 2.23%
Average unemployment benefit is $292 for 46 weeks (because of new laws put in place during times of financial strife... I think the normal time is 26 weeks)
Average real federal tax rate of 20.7%
Average salary: $32,140
To break even on the $5K: 11.421% of the 'stimulus' jobs created would have to have been ONLY because of the $5K. That is very close to the 1 in 10 Magox quoted earlier. So, if 'estimates' are off by 10% (ie. 2 out of every 10 jobs are solely based on the $5K stimulus): NPV for the gov't: $4,289.
This doesn't even take into account other good things (I wouldn't even really know how to estimate this impact) associated with having people employed like: Having them spending money on LA's widgets, or having them pay into state and local taxes or keeping them in their home instead of going to foreclosure or or or (you get the point)
(Note: I got the assumptions from the first links I opened from Googling "Average Taxes Paid in the US" and "Average Salary US" and "Average unemployment benefits". I did, literally, zero fact checking, so you may quibble with the numbers somewhat, but I think the essential point still stands up if you want to change some of the assumptions)
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To suggest otherwise underscores a lack of understanding of what it takes (and costs) to put someone on your payroll.I swear to God, LA, not everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. You really aren't going to find anyone out there who is more pro-business than me. I'm not convinced about the $5K tax credit, but it seems ridiculous to just reject it out of hand (and the numbers seem to bear that out somewhat, no?) Especially considering it's exactly what people like you have been begging for! It's a small business tax credit for God's sake!
I'm going to start another thread specific to the $5K tax credit. I don't want to hijack this thread anymore. My main point here is stated in bullet 1. (And I don't really seem to be able to convince anyone of that, either!)
OK, back to pbills.
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Employers add staff for one reason: to expand. Employers expand to meet demands for their products or services. If there is no demand for products and services, as you see in the current economic landscape, then you're not in a position to expand. If you're not in a position to expand, why in the hell would you take on the added costs and liability of another employee? It's stupid.
So this is just like Cash For Clunkers: the majority of the small businesses that are going to take advantage of this are either already going to hire, or are replacing someone who quit. You're throwing good money after bad, just like Clunkers.
It's just that simple.
Well... that's not really how it works, is it? You don't just expand to expand, or contract to contract. You only expand if the marginal contribution of that one employee is worth more than their cost to you, but whatever. This is like pointing out that something is a tax credit and not a tax cut when the difference in meaning related to the conversation is minimal, if at all.
This will help many small businesses that are on the margins. You are correct (imo) in saying that if you definitely aren't going to expand, then this does nothing. However, if you're one of these companies that thinks 'maybe it's a good idea, I'm not sure, maybe it's not' then this tax credit might be the thing to put them over the top on hiring someone. Or do you think that there are no companies out there in this position?
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We're groaning because you don't need a degree from Harvard to understand that offering small businesses a $5,000 credit to hire someone is NOT how you address the unemployment rate. If fact, it should be embarrassing to EVERYONE in government who thinks this is a good idea in the current climate.
This is just insane, LA. How can you possibly be against this? Tax cuts for small businesses. This is what I'm talking about... My sense is that you're against this solely because it came from President Obama's mouth. This type of thing is exactly what you're looking for, isn't it?
Can you explain to me why you're against this?
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A heaping deep dish of Chicago style politics of just ramming things threw while bribing congressmen for votes, and having the backs of unions and trial lawyers.
The irony here is just... I don't know. It's in the air, I guess. Part of the reason for the 'ramming' and 'bribing' 'having the backs of' is that no matter what the President says, people like you in Congress kill him for it, rather than standing up and saying "Hey, that makes sense, I agree with this". I mean, that just makes sense, right? You buy that, don't you?
Right now, here, today (ok yesterday), you're killing the President for saying "Hey, we need to tackle the deficit". By doing so, you're giving your own leaders political cover for voting 'No' on things like creating a bi-partisan commission to make recommendations on potentially raising taxes and lowering spending in an effort to tackle the very problem that has you so fired up that you'll go to a message board and start a topic and reply several times in a thread about.
Don't you find that odd?
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...and you are instantly transformed into a quivering bowl of jello.
Did you read the rest of the post? Have YOU responded to any of the questions I've asked?
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You never answered my question, so I'll ask you once again...
How is it possible that a man who's flying in celebrity chefs on the taxpayers dime, while the economy is in the tank, we're trillions of dollars in debt, and there are approximately 17 million people out of work, have the audacity to lecture anyone about fiscal responsibility? But it's ok for him to lecture congress because it's the right message? Obama has no ground to stand on. That's like wondering why people would criticize a John Edwards lecture to congress on why politicians should be morally responsible and hold true to their marriage vows.
What's the question here? How is it possible? Well... he's the President, he opens up his mouth, his vocal chords vibrate, sound waves are created...
I understand your point. You think it's hypocritical. Fine. I get that; I've always gotten it. My point is that if you agree with him, why not say it? If all you do is B word about everything he says, even when you agree with it, how is that helpful, in any way?
If Trent Edwards finally throws a deep ball for a touchdown, do you stand up and boo that because he was unwilling to do it before?
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Yes...er, no. Maybe. What?
Apparently, we can't agree with the things we agree with if someone we don't like is the one agreeing with us.
So we've got that going for us, which is nice.
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You have to bee willing to listen to, and sometimes accept things you don't agree with. That's a price of democracy
Yes, but can't we all agree that we should agree with the things we agree with?
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I don't care what it is called. Just act on bills and get things done.
But that's the thing... How is it logical to boo the things you want?!? You'll only get less of what you want, right? You've got to agree with the things you agree with, don't you?
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Here's the thing, guys.
If you can't get on board with President Obama saying (essentially) "We've got to start being fiscally responsible", then what can you get on board with? And I ask the question sincerely because you guys will never, ever agree with him more than when he calls for fiscal restraint.
There are reasonable, intelligent people out there who believe that the stimulus bill wasn't big enough; that we'd all be better off if it had been far larger. There are reasonable, intelligent people who think that tax rates at the top of the income scale should rise significantly; that we'll all be better off with a higher marginal tax rate at the top.
The reason I bring this up is: Why should he even try to listen to the other side of those arguments if all he's going to get is criticism, even when the other side agrees with him?!? If we want the political nonsense to stop, then don't we (who aren't even politicians) have to stop the political nonsense, too? Honestly, if billsfan1 (and by 'billsfan1', I mean all of us)is playing 'politics' rather than applauding or disapproving ideas on their merits, how is it even remotely possible that a politician will? Their main aim is to stay in the job. If we (voters) won't get past 'politics' in order to get to 'policy' then how can they?
CBO Says Obama Budget Underestimates Deficit Over 10 Years
in Politics, Polls, and Pundits
Posted
Doc, this is a bad idea, for obvious reasons.