For the first time in years, gas stations in one U.S. state are
reportedly selling gas at less than $1 per gallon, Sputnik reports.
Stations throughout Houghton Lake, Mich., are selling gas at less than $1 per gallon.
See the report here: https://youtu.be/R5FVjsobZfA
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/us/20160118/10…
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton once said that
Wall Street did not cause the mortgage crisis that led to the financial
collapse, and she also partly blamed poor people who took out mortgages
that they could not afford.
Video of Clinton’s December 2007 speech at New York City’s NASDAQ
stock market could provide fuel both for her left-wing opponent
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
16%
and also for Republicans.
Clinton was running for president as it was becoming clear that
subprime mortgages were failing as the first part of what became known
as the financial collapse. Clinton referred in the speech to her
“wonderful donors, some of whom are here today,” and then absolved those
donors of culpability in the collapse.
In her remarks, she spoke of “an economy that in recent months has
been the subject of increasingly worrisome headlines about weakening
consumer confidence, about a declining dollar, and ballooning national
debt.”
“Now these economic problems are certainly not all Wall Street’s fault. Not by a long shot,” Clinton said (4:45 Mark In Video Below).
“Wall Street may not have created the foreclosure crisis but Wall
Street certainly had a hand in making it worse,” Clinton eventually
conceded.
Though Clinton said that Wall Street has played a “significant role
in the current problems” including the housing crisis, she went on to
partially blame homeowners for their own role in the financial meltdown.
“Now who’s exactly to blame for the housing crisis? Well, that’s
always a question that the press and people ask, and I think there’s
plenty of blame to go around,” Clinton said, pointing blame at mortgage
lenders, the Bush administraton, and rating agencies.
Then she blamed poor people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford to pay back.
“And certainly borrowers share responsibility as well. Home buyers
who paid extra fees to avoid documenting their income should have known
they were getting in over their heads,” Clinton said. (11:55 Mark In Video).
Clinton also blamed speculators who took out multiple mortgages.
“Speculators who were busy buying two, three, four houses to sell for a quick buck don’t deserve our sympathy.”
Ironically, Clinton praised the trend toward low-income home
ownership that caused the collapse. That trend started, in large part,
due to her own husband’s government lending policies.
“Good things have happened in the housing market. Home ownership is
at the heart of the American Dream, and ownership rates rose to a record
69 percent in 2006. That means millions of new stakeholders in their
communities. The largest gains were among low income and minority
families,” Clinton said.
Of course, it was President Bill Clinton’s Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) agency under Secretary Andrew Cuomo that forced
lenders into the subprime lending business.
Joseph Lawler described in The American Spectator
how a 1992 federal government mandate – which was increased by Cuomo –
forced government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to
start giving out tons of subprime loans to poor minorities who could not
afford to pay them back.
“The mandate meant that, in 1999, 42 percent of Fannie and its
counterpart Freddie Mac’s loan purchases serviced low- and
moderate-income families,” Lawler wrote.
Bill Clinton’s director of the Department of Housing and
Urban Development raised the requirement to 50 percent, funneling even
more loans to people who could hardly afford them. That director was
Andrew Cuomo, now the governor of New York and rising Democratic Party
star. Cuomo had great visions for HUD’s housing goals, predicting that
“it will strengthen our economy and create jobs.” In order to meet the
goals set by Cuomo, Fannie and Freddie had to buy riskier and riskier
loans, including subprime. Morgenson and Rosner report that GSE
purchases of subprime began increasing sharply in 1999, and in 2008
Fannie and Freddie purchased $1.6 trillion of toxic mortgages, almost
half of the entire market.
Financial expert Peter Wallison, who was warning of the housing bubble years before the collapse, described how these government mandates led America to disaster.
“Because Fannie and Freddie were the dominant players in the mortgage
markets, when they reduced their underwriting standards, so did most
lenders. Homebuyers, of course, were happy to put up low downpayments,
even if they could afford much more, and soon many of the concessionary
benefits that were intended to go to low income borrowers were going to
people who could have afforded prime mortgages,” Wallison said.
“By 2008, before the financial crisis, there were 55 million
mortgages in the U.S. Of these, 31 million were subprime or otherwise
risky,” Wallison said.
And of this 31 million, 76 percent were on the books of
government agencies, primarily Fannie and Freddie. This shows where the
demand for these mortgages actually came from, and it wasn’t the private
sector. When the great housing bubble (also created by the government
policies) began to deflate in 2007 and 2008, these weak mortgages
defaulted in unprecedented numbers, causing the insolvency of Fannie and
Freddie, the weakening of banks and other financial institutions, and
ultimately the financial crisis.
The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment for this report.
The S&P 500’s decline since last June already is more than half the length of an average bear market
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) — Bear markets don’t have to be as scary as you think.
That’s because, by the time you know for sure that you’re in one, there are decent odds that it’s close to being over.
This
is important to keep in mind, not only because bear markets are an
inevitable feature of the market landscape. It’s especially timely
today, since some market averages (the Russell 2000
RUT, -1.84%
for example) are already in
bear market territory — as defined by a decline of at least 20% — even
though the broader market averages are still above that threshold.
US:RUT
1,0001,1001,2001,3009001,400
Take the stock market’s recent decline, which began last June 23, the day that market benchmarks such as the S&P 500
SPX, -1.74%
hit their all-time high. That
was 206 calendar days ago, which — as you can see from the chart above —
is more than half the length of the average bear market of the past
century. (I was able to calculate this average courtesy of a bear-market
calendar maintained by Ned Davis Research, which counts 35 bear markets
since 1900; their average length is 403 days.)
Of course, we’re
not yet in a bear market. If, and when, the S&P 500 drops to 20%
below the June high, even more time will have transpired.
This is
precisely what happened in 2011, the year of the last bear market in
the U.S. The early-October day when the S&P 500 fell to 20% below
its late-April high turned out to be the day that bear market breathed
its last gasp.
Not all bear markets work out this neatly,
needless to say. But, not infrequently, a bear-market declaration often
amounts to little more than closing the barn door after the horses have
left.
We should all be asking: What were Wall Street’s latter-day bears saying last June, when the market was at an all-time high?
The answer is that bears were few and far between. On the contrary, bullishness was at close to extreme levels.
None
of this is to minimize the pain and suffering caused by bear-market
losses. But there should be at least some solace in knowing that, even
if it is eventually determined that a bear market began last June, if
it’s no worse than average it’s already more than half over.
A woman broke down in tears while speaking at the Rural Debt and Drought Taskforce in Ayr.
ABC News
Graziers struggling with debt in drought-declared North
Queensland have lashed out and broken down in front of visiting
politicians and economists.
The Rural Debt and Drought Taskforce
met about 40 farmers in Ayr on Thursday to discuss what some called
"criminal" and "disgraceful" behaviour by banks.
"You will starve —
the whole country will starve" if governments do not "pull their heads
in" and bail out the industry, one man warned.
Another said he was
forced to eat sandwiches every day because he could not afford anything
else and was offended by the catered spread at the meeting.
The
gathering heard some lenders were devaluing properties across the region
by up to 30 per cent, forcing graziers to pay higher interest rates
because the loans were now considered higher risk.
Taskforce
chairman and Mount Isa MP Rob Katter again argued the Queensland
Government should set up its own bank to takeover loans from private
lenders.
"These things are effective instruments. They keep industries going," he said.
Mr Katter said the risk would be low for taxpayers.
"There's
no alternate use on these grazing properties out in the west and you've
got some people who don't pay themselves wages but they're willing to
stay out there paying taxes," he said.
"They just need a leg up after a few bad years."
'Kids know what's going on'
The
ABC met one farming family struggling with drought in debt after eight
years on their property near Ravenswood, east of Charter Towers.
ABC News"It [the drought and debt] affects everyone," mother of three Jess Rich said.
"The
kids go out into the paddock and tell us about the day's duties and
what they've seen and some days what they say is quite hard to take."
The Rich family supports calls for government support.
"Farmers
aren't silly people. The money that they make is invested back into
property and family. It's not spent on lavish holidays or anything like
that," grazier Jono Rich said.
The taskforce will continue its tour of regional Queensland and report back to the State Treasurer in about two months.
