Can anyone debunk this Liberal claim thank you ?

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We've been over this.

Countrywide wasn't required by anyone to issue so many liar loans. Non-FDIC insured entities are not subject to the community reinvestment act, and regardless, CRA-related loans are both a very small subset of the sub-prime mortgages, and one of the best performing subsets of the sub-prime mortgages.

The housing bubble was caused by a regulatory environment that rewarded unchecked greed.

If all loan originators were required to hold a mortgage for 5 years after issuance, that regulation alone would have prevented it.

Actually they were required to make the loans, or suffer retailiation from the Feds. Yes, we've already been over this a dozen times, and I've posted sources each time, and your side posted no sources in response.

Earlier this week I noted that I had changed my mind on the Community Reinvestment Act.

Contrary to my initial conclusion, the evidence is overwhelming that the CRA played a significant role in creating lax lending standards that fueled the housing bubble. Once I realized this, I had to abandon my suspicion that the anti-CRA case was a figment of the rhetoric of Republicans attempting to distract attention from their own role in the mortgage mess.

So I laid out the facts and arguments that had convinced me to switch sides in the CRA debate. It was a long series of posts that generated hundreds of responses and counter-arguments. Felix Salmon’s response is here, Barry Ritholtz’s here, Mike Rorty's here, Ryan Chitum’s here, and Matthew Wurtzel’s here. All of my posts are here. Henry Blodget's earlier post on the CRA, with which I largely agreed until recently, is here. If you carefully run through these posts and the accompanying comments, I think you'll see that every argument raised by the "Defend CRA at all costs" crowd has been refuted.

For people with less time on their hands, here's a quick guide to the main points raised by the CRA defenders and the arguments that refute them. If I’ve left out any salient points, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra- ... z1ZBFwp1Wb

I suggest you read the article this time, unlike the last dozen times I posted it.

A house is a investment. Supposedly buildings pay themselves up after 200 years by mere use.

But shoes? I just don't get why would anyone recommend getting credit for that. I mean, really. Yet people are doing every time.

If you have no shoes and no cash, though, buying a pair of reasonable shoes on credit is a good investment.

If you own a car that you need to have working in order to do your job and get paid, you should have at least one credit card, just in case of an automotive emergency.

I commute 40 miles each way. I do this to bring home more money than i've ever made before with a company that has existed for generations and which is extremely cash positive, and appears to have a work atmosphere where I'm pretty sure that if i do my job and keep certain people happy, I can work here forever. I have a 401k AND a pension AND stock. Not stock options - actual shares that vest after 6 months. Lately i have been getting pelted with kudos and attaboys at a rate i find downright unnerving.

If i suddenly need to spend $400 on my car and don't happen to have $400 in my bank account, i guarantee it will go on plastic and my car will be running again as soon as it is physically possible.

Fortunately that doesn't come up a lot. I typically have no unsecured debt at all. Right now i have some airfare on the visa strictly because the booking site didn't like my visa check card and i have been too lazy to transfer between accounts for the last, uh, week. I think i've cost myself a few pennies in interest.

If my current car suddenly needs replacing, you can bet your ass that I'll be on the dealer's used lot in a flash and filling out loan application forms, because most of Utah still does not have what i would call reasonable public transportation.

If you have no shoes and no cash you have no credit.

s**t happens.

I've spent several months unemployed in the last 10 years. Sometimes the budget runs real thin, but the plastic doesn't go away just because you lost your job.

Edit: And i should point out that i have never not paid my bill. Eventually.

I'm not saying that the USA should not have entered World War II.

You're claiming that the war brought an end to the depression. How did the war accomplish this? Obviously through massive government spending. You can't fight a war without massive government spending. However, massive government spending is possible without a war.


And how do you propose to make sure that everyone can afford to buy the numerous goodies that industries can produce?

Something like the Milton Friedman negative income tax. It is redistribution, but it almost eliminates the burocrats and it puts money in the hands of the least employed. It is a way of keeping the pot boiling. It is a virtually automatic system and there are no bleeding hearts telling us how mean were are to the X's where X is your favorite minority for whom you make excuses.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

ruveyn

I'm okay with that.

Only an idiot pays himself a salary out of the business that goes beyond the threshhold of the highest tax bracket.

A smart proprietor extracts wealth from the company in ways that will attract no tax liability, or significantly reduced tax liability.

1) Expenses. The more of your daily living costs that can be paid by the company, the lower your cost of living.
2) Dividends. Most countries provide dividend tax credits that incentivize extracting income as dividends rather than salary above a certain threshhold.
3) Sale of capital. The Holy Grail (tm) is to sell the business as a going concern.

But the fact remains that wealthy individuals are actually responsible for a pitifully small amount of job creation in the United States.

The largest employment sector is small business, and the vast majority of small business owners--especially small businesses that create jobs, such as retail, food service, wholesale and small scale manufacturing and services--are solidly entrenched in the middle class where they do not benefit from tax concessions to wealthy individuals.

Meanwhile, large scale businesses are capitalized through publicly traded securities, the largest holders of which are pension funds and mutual funds.

If the argument for tax breaks for the rich is that the rich create jobs, it is a spectacular failure as an argument. If the government is going to use tax policy to create jobs (a dumb idea, but let's leave that aside) then the place to do it is to reduce taxes on corporations.

A whole discussion that seems to fail to understand the role of taxes in decision making. I advise people on this stuff. There is no tax deduction for leaving the money in the business so the sole issue is how the tax rates out of the business (individual income tax rates) compare to tax rates inside (if a C corp, the corporate tax rates). This structure was vastly different in the 1980's so any discussion going back then makes little sense today.

I have a work deadline and can't get much further into it, but little in this thread reognizes the real factors I would use in advising someone if they should keep their money in the company, or move it out (although visagrunt does list some, just US isn't the same as Canada).

Go through the steps, and consider who pays what tax when.

The point is that when individual tax rates are low IN COMPARISON to corporate tax rates, the incentive for the owner/entrepreneur is to pay the money out as salary. When the flip exists, the incentive is to keep the money in the business and pay the corporate taxes, or invest and expand. I think that statement is true, but it is not the only consideration, and it was definitrely a different world back in the days of a 70 percent top bracket.

I favor keeping the top rates equal because I don't think taxes should be involved in these decisions, it should be solely economic. I know tweaking economics through tax policy is tempting, but I don't think it is smart long term.

A lot of what the government does, though, is tweak things through tax policy. That's why income tax forms are so complex.

President Bush wanted to give huge tax breaks to his friends who made their livings through capital gains and playing the stock market. It really made a mess for those of us who did this on a small scale.