The Falling American Economy

Off-Topic Off Topic
#1

The American Economy is causing people to go crazy. The Bail out did not pass. Now What?. What does this mean for us? What will the Impact be to Canada and other countries. Will the Stock Market Crash?

I think the Bail out of $700 Billion will eventually be passed but I wonder what effect it will really have. I think Canada and other countries will feel a pinch too. I don’t know why America owes billions to China. These are crazy times . What a hell of a job for any new American President to be heading into. I don’t know much about stocks but I doubt it will be anything like the Depression. I hope the American Economy improves Fast.

#2

What the most powerful nation in the world is in trouble,yes i knew.
Well what goes around comes around,may be this may cause america to loss its power.
Australia of cause be effected cause were always jumping up there arse.

#3

Toronto Star Newspaper:
"A stunning rejection of a $700 billion financial bailout package by the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday sparked a historic North American stock market selloff, and left the United States in a crisis with no end in sight.

During an emotional afternoon in which the House dissolved into partisan finger-pointing, the bill was defeated 228-205 and, even before the voting was complete, the Dow Jones index began a freefall that ended with a loss of 777 points and $1.2 trillion in market value."

Have we seen the end of this?..Has the WAAR in Iraq caused or escalated this problem, or has war production helped?..I don’t know. I wish I knew. The moon is falling, so said Chicken Little

#4

The market goes up and down and when its down…I’m just buying more stocks…next time it goes up…I make my money…BUT This is what happens when you give home loans to people based on their skin color, regardless weather they have a good credit score or their ability to pay the loan back, no down payment to buy a home…NO PROBLEM…bad credit score…NO PROBLEM…if the interest rate changes, you wont be able to make your payment…NO PROBLEM…Don’t earn enough to buy a home…NO PROBLEM…

Both republicans and democrats are to blame, and it all started with Clinton. This is an article that is dated 1999…

"September 30, 1999

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
By STEVEN A. HOLMES

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.

‘‘Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990’s by reducing down payment requirements,’’ said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ‘‘Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.’’

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.

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.

‘‘From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,’’ said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ‘‘If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.’’

Under Fannie Mae’s pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 – a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990’s. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants."

I HOPE SOMEONE GOES TO JAIL FOR THIS SCAM

#5

Yes how about the American Government-not the normal Americans.
Meaning going too jail.

#6

Um, it largely started with Reagan (in the US) and massive deregulation. It’s not just about high risk loans (which most lenders welcome because of the lucrative, high interest rates). It’s a global credit crisis…

#7

Following the problems in the sub-prime lending market in America and the run on Northern Rock in the UK, uncertainty has now hit Japan.

In the last 7 days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches.

Yesterday, it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song, while today shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived.

While Samurai Bank is soldiering on following sharp cutbacks, Ninja Bank is reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black.

Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.

#8

Will the American economy be as SLOW to recover as the speed on this website?..I could walk faster, I swear.
Anyways,now it’s a trillion dollars to patch up the economy. Before it was 750 Billion. Just like the Iraq war, the number escalates and escaltes…by the time the new president is sworn in, it will be 2 trillion dollars.

#9

please don’t bring your personal sexual activities in to this thread!

only joking and lest you get the wrong idea, I said it to you because I think you have a good sense of humor, and will enjoy it as a joke!

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#10

Good news for all of us?

House approves financial bailout bill
White House promises quick enactment for massive Wall Street rescue
BREAKING NEWS
By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
updated 1:31 p.m. ET, Fri., Oct. 3, 2008

The House passed a $700 billion bailout of the financial services industry Friday, reversing itself after members who voted to kill the measure earlier in the week came around to a Senate version that offered more protection for individual investors and small businesses.

Stocks were up sharply in anticipation that the measure could help thaw frozen credit markets.

After a week of reversals and intense lobbying, the measure ended up passing comfortably by a vote of 263-171. After seeing the bill go down to defeat Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had said she would not let it come up for a vote Friday unless it was clear that it would pass.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said President Bush would “like to sign it as quickly as possible — as soon as they get it to us.” House staffers said it would be sent to the White House as early as Friday afternoon for Bush’s signature.

Under the plan, the Treasury Department would be authorized to spend as much as $700 billion to buy bad mortgage-related securities, which have slowed and, in some cases, dried up the flow of credit.

The Senate dramatically changed the measure Wednesday, adding an additional $110 billion in additional tax breaks, incentives and other measures, including an expansion of coverage of individual bank deposits by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Leaders sought 12 new votes
The calculus for Pelosi and other House leaders was whether the additions would lure enough support to overcome new objections from conservative members to the added costs.

“House and Senate leaders promised the bill wouldn’t be a Christmas tree of add-ons, and in a matter of days it’s gone from a Charlie Brown Christmas tree to Rockefeller Center,” said Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio, who led efforts to strip out what he called “egregious” tax breaks. “It’s Christmas in October.”

But Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said compromise was needed. He said that while he strongly opposed the Senate’s decision to pay for many of the tax breaks with debt, he could not forget everyday Americans at home who were struggling.

“For their sake, we must act,” Hoyer said in a floor speech shortly before the vote.

Only 12 more votes were needed; in the end, the measure picked up an extra 55.

Pelosi said the difference was lawmakers’ work to shift the focus from the bailout of financial companies to the boost it would give homeowners, small businesses and individual investors.

“All the attention was on Wall Street, and we wanted to turn that attention,” she said after the vote.

Financial institutions were “recently left unregulated and undisciplined and unsupervised, and they created chaos,” Pelosi said. “That was then. This is now. We’re about the future.”

Bad news spurs urgency
Pressure on holdouts grew Friday after the Labor Department said the economy lost 159,000 jobs in September, the most in more than five years, a worrisome sign that the economy is hurtling toward a deep recession.

That came on top of Thursday’s Commerce Department report that factory orders in August plunged by 4 percent.

Bush lobbied aggressively for passage of the bill, which Fratto, his spokesman, said was not necessarily intended to boost the economy. “It’s to avoid a crisis,” he said.

The two major party presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also supported the bill and worked to ensure its passage.

The vote was House leaders’ second stab at the legislation after the Senate jumped the line and passed its revised version Wednesday.

“The Senate may have taken us hostage,” said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the Banking Committee. “They may have us at arrow-point, and we may have to vote for this even with their obnoxious provisions.”

Some of those provisions were not so obnoxious to business owners like Carl Adams, a real estate agent in Paducah, Ky. Preserving banks’ ability to fuel the economy is crucial, he said, but to do that, the banks have to stay healthy.

“If the banks’ money dries up — in other words, they can’t afford to lend us money for our clients — then you’re going to see everything snowball from there,” he said.

Tom Costello, Mike Viqueira and John Yang of NBC News and the following NBC affiliates contributed to this report: KSBH of Kansas City, Mo.; WBIR of Knoxville, Tenn.; WKYC of Cleveland; WOAI of San Antonio, Texas; and WPSD of Paducah, Ky.

MSNBC

#11

Quite simple really, most people in China don’t have very much money at all so they can’t buy stuff, whilst they have been making lots of stuff and selling it to America. Also what has not helped either is that the big issue with Iraq was not defeating Saddam Hussein’s military but how Iraq was going to be transitioned to a more peaceable and civilized society after the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s military and in that task the Bush administration failed miserably and thus spent much more money than they would otherwise have needed to and got a much worse result than they could have achieved.

Best and Warm Regards
Adrian Wainer

#12

Adrian, Excuse my ignorance on economics, but if USA owes China 350 Billion Dollars as I read today, then why doesn’t China DEMAND it gets their money? Why does it owe China Money in the first place? China has a lot of people and I am sure the Government could use that money to help its people, build roads, better medicare, better everything, so why doesn’t China tell Bush to give it their money?..Why?..your answer didn’t click with me…What am I missing. ???

#13

Well if they demanded immediate repayment, [ which they may or may not have the contractural right to do ], well even if they had the contractural right to do it and did it, their own economy would collapse because they would have no market to sell their products to. Also you are supposing that wealthy and politically connected Chinese, would care about the situation of Chinese workers. Also whilst many chinese who work in factories today often have a very difficult situation as compared to the likes of unionized American and European Workers, even if they have enough money for their basic needs plus a little extra for a luxury like a television set or a 50cc moped this is big progress for them from the era of Mao’s so called cultural revolution in which millions of Chinese died in a famine largely artificaly created by the lunacies of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party.

Best and Warm regards
Adrian Wainer

#14

Thank You for that response. America should do more to give back the money it owes to China. That way, the Chinese can move to Toronto and buy up our expensive houses like the way they already are doing!..The chinese in my town have LOTS of Money and they rule the Markham area like you wouldn’t beleive. They are a very strong presence North of Toronto and they all say they get their money from business back in Hong Kong. Starnge how the Chinese over here are the wealthiest and drive the best cars and their women are so hot looking, yet in China their poor sorta …strange in deed…Long Live China!

#15

Ha ha ha ha ha:D. I wish i was more Sexual, but im actually shy. Cheers

#16

From today’s Toronto Star Newspaper…more proof that we are going to hit a Great Depression!!
Oct 06, 2008 02:10 PM
Comments on this story (1)
David Friend
THE CANADIAN PRESS
Economists from Canada’s Big Five banks say they expect little or no growth in the near future and they warned today that the domestic economy’s current gloom will likely deepen into something worse than a recession.
The word “recession” wouldn’t describe the deep structural problems affecting everything from the U.S. housing sector to the Canadian oil industry, said Bank of Nova Scotia chief economist Warren Jestin.

“You have to invent a new word to describe what we’re in now,” he said after the banks presented their perspectives at the Economic Club today.

“It’s being driven through the financial markets into the real economy. All of those things suggest that it’s entirely different than what you might expect from a typical recession.”

In their most recent economics forecast, Scotiabank economists predict recessions for both the U.S. and Canada, economic slides that will require central bankers in both countries to cut interest rates by at least a full percentage point.

All agree that a slide in commodity prices bodes ill for the Canadian economy, which is heavily dependent on the production and export of oil and gas, metals and minerals.

#17

On the bright side…maybe this means the price of WWII militaria is going to come down. have you priced an ORIGINAL German Paratrooper or SS helmet lately?

#18

New look on the American Dollar!!
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#19

Iceland has gone bankrupt!..California is going bankrupt!..The world is going bankrupt!

From Bllomberg.com.
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) – Trading in the Icelandic krona came to a halt after the government seized control of Kaupthing Bank hf, the nation’s biggest lender, as the financial crisis deepens.
There haven’t been any so-called krona spot trades today, or transactions in which currency must be exchanged immediately, according to Stockholm-based Nordea Bank AB and TD Securities Ltd. in London. The last spot trade was at 340 krona per euro, Nordea said. Regulators earlier this week took over Iceland’s second- and third-largest lenders, Glitnir Bank hf and Landsbanki Islands hf, which acted as krona clearing houses.
Effectively the krona can't be traded at the moment because there are no more banks to clear the trade,'' said Mick Ankjaer, a foreign-exchange dealer in Copenhagen at Nordea, Scandinavia's biggest lender. The bid/ask spread for the krona against the euro, or the price at which traders are willing to buy or sell, was 225 per euro to 400 per euro as of 11:52 a.m. in Reykjavik, according to Antje Praefcke, a currency analyst in Frankfurt at Commerzbank AG, Germany's second-largest lender. The krona plummeted to 350 per euro this week in trading between banks outside of Iceland, Praefcke said. Icelandic banks may still be trading with each other, she said. Foreign banks have cut credit lines with Icelandic banks so they can’t settle trades,’’ Praefcke said.
The Reykjavik-based central bank, Sedlabanki, yesterday abandoned a peg to the euro after just a day when it became unable to defend the rate of 131 krona per euro. Fitch Ratings yesterday downgraded Iceland’s foreign and local-currency debt ratings to BBB- and A-, respectively.
No Confidence
Nobody wants to hold the currency unless they have to,'' said Beat Siegenthaler, the London-based chief strategist for emerging markets at TD Securities Ltd. Something has to be done to restore a minimum level of confidence in the currency.’’
Iceland will start talks with Russia on Oct. 14 to secure a loan of as much as 4 billion euros ($5.48 billion), Prime Minister Geir Haarde said yesterday. The government hasn’t asked the International Monetary Fund for a standby loan or an economic program, he said.

#20

The loonie has now fallen by more than a quarter since hitting an all-time peak of 110.3 cents US last November after a rapid three-month rise. Canada’s dollar was last below 83 cents U.S., on Feb. 21, 2003.

Why is My Dollar losing ground?..because we spend all our money feeding and clothing the cave dwellers in Afghanistan!