patrick.net

duxbury001 says

Buddy, they called it “Sub-Prime” for a reason… they were lending to people, primarily minorities. The banks were facing constant litigation.. Jesse Jackson had an office on Wall Street extorting the cash cow banks into making dumb loans. A friend of mine worked for a “black owned” firm that was making millions skimming action working with Jackson. Wall Street lives under a PC tyranny and it blew up lending standards. Bush was just as guilty letting it slide hoping to turn minorities into republican homeowners “ownership society”. fannie mae… etc… left wing corruption rackets funneling money to community organizers in big cities making loans that would never be paid back as payola.

I don't want to get into this again. It's been disproved countless times. I'll just give you one actual fact. The default rate on loans made to CRA qualified areas was LESS than those made to non-CRA areas.

Forget the propaganda and do some actual research.

Any discussion of cutting spending that doesn't include military can't be taken seriously.

I don’t want to get into this again. It’s been disproved countless times. I’ll just give you one actual fact. The default rate on loans made to CRA qualified areas was LESS than those made to non-CRA areas.
>>>

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1469092

Sub Prime was about getting minorities mortgages because banks were under the gun. Then, of course, lending standards must be debauched for all.

>Then, of course, lending standards must be debauched for all.

utter non-sequitur.

duxbury001, your thesis doesn't account for the fact that the debt orgy hit all sectors of the lending market, from immigrant strawberry pickers in Central California buying $700,000 houses to major league baseball players borrowing $17M for mansions in Thousand Oaks.

The people running Washington Mutual, Countrywide, Wachovia, and other private corps into the ground didn't need to have a gun pointed at their heads to make their shitty loans, they were making tons of money doing so.

Blaming it on "subprime" minority borrowers is just an attempt to obfuscate the total failure of government to police the mortgage industry, from top to bottom -- appraisers, mortgage brokers, loan underwriters, ratings agencies, Wall Street financial engineers -- the whole thing was entirely crimonogenic thanks to the ideologues and industry players the Republicans put in place to oversee the industry, 2001-2006.

Minority borrowers didn't double the asset value of real estate from $12T in 2000 to $24T at the peak in 2005:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/REABSHNO

that was an economy-wide debt bubble prompted by the tax cuts, lower interest rates, liberalized lending to prime borrowers (no-down, negative-am, stated-income), and defacto deregulation.

To blame it all on the poor people is quite comical actually. This was purely a failure of government.

http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2008/01/23/subprime_bailout

this one... pretty much says the story. Banks had "lending affirmative action" foisted upon them and the drop out rate was much like affirmative action drop out rates at colleges.. utterly disastrous.

Aside from CRA, it is true that the Bush Admin (along with the Dem minority in Congress) wanted to see more minorities buy homes 2001-2006.

But this wasn't a primary driver of the bubble. It was contributory, in that moving new people into homes provided more market liquidity on the way up. Plus thanks to the lower lending standards the final bagholders of 2004-2007 were often subprime borrowers rooked into borrowing more than they could afford due to either greed and/or being lied to by the REIC.

When listing the causes of the bubble like above, there's so many that I always leave one out. Eg. I forgot to list the bond insurers like AIG writing checks their balance sheets couldn't cash. . .

I said subprime "lit the fuse" to blow up the market. It began as a "sub prime" crises, then the overall market imploded. Of course if you are compelled to lower standards it has to be open to all. As time went on the sub prime issue fed on the fumes of the housing market and became industry wide and lending standards collapsed.

All banks face harrowing litigation and regulatory threats. Welcome to America.

I said george bush supported these programs to make minorities homeowners. He's just a as complicit. Fannie mae, etc.. democrat rackets. George Bush supported the mortgage interest tax deduction to inflate housing.

As far as policing... after 9/11 FBI was looking for terrorists, not mortgage fraud. Hence banks got away with it. Banks were forced to make crap loans.. so of course they tried to rig the system to get away with it. It wasn't an "ideology"... investment bankers were overwhelmingly democrats at the time.

The underlying problem is the united states, with trillions spend of government employees and transfer payments to the elderly isn't productive anymore... we're broke. Union workers get $70/hour.. unionized teachers (including benefits) probably over $100. Trial lawyers run amok. In this environment the rackets are too powerful and your country is dead. Industry is finished by unions and free trade. All you had left in the 00's was finance and housing (both basically unproductive). So now there are no significant productive growing elements other than software / technology.

one question: where did subprime loans come from? They came from CRA.

duxbury001 says

Banks were forced to make crap loans..

No they weren't. Like I said above, why would they complain about being forced to do something that was making them billions of dollars?

At any rate, subprime alone was a small part of the $24T asset bubble. Subprime didn't force anyone to make suicide loans, and it was suicide lending that pushed prices up 2003-2005 and kept them there in 2006 and half of 2007.

duxbury001 says

we’re broke.

No we aren't. The top 10% is still doing very well, better than ever, TYVM.

But I agree that the current situation is unsustainable and taxing the shit out of the rich would only be a temporary solution.

If we want a middle-class society again we're going to have to figure out how to get economic opportunity back.

I don't think we can get there from here, actually. The wealthy have successfully captured the debate.

Just look at the bumrush of apologists for wealth in this thread, LOL.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/10/04/us-usa-foreclosures-race-idUSTRE6930K520101004

>>
No they weren’t. Like I said above, why would they complain about being forced to do something that was making them billions of dollars?
>>

Banks in the 90's and early 00's were subject to constant litigation and legal threats to make affirmative action loans. Later subprime became industry standard. I am not saying that this CAUSED the problem.. but lit the fuse. CRA introduced lax lending practices to the banking sector.

http://www.sherdog.nets/f54/affirmative-action-lending-blame-mortgage-crisis-848758/

As for the US being broke... no, we are absolutely bankrupt. Our transfer obligations to the elderly / pensions to overpaid gov't workers / other debt... range from 55 trillion to 75 trillion.. which is roughly the value of all US assets.

Rich people already pay for most of the taxes. Nearly every public sector in major states has an annuity value pension of over $1,000,000.. so they are your millionaires and why you are broke.

duxbury001 says

Banks in the 90’s and early 00’s were subject to constant litigation and legal threats to make affirmative action loans. Later subprime became industry standard. I am not saying that this CAUSED the problem.. but lit the fuse. CRA introduced lax lending practices to the banking sector.

I've heard this argument before at Pat.net, but I've never been able to understand it.

What you're saying is that the government forced a bank to make a handful of loans it didn't want to. And then because they were forced to make a handful of loans against their will, they then decided to go ahead and make thousands more freely on their own? Why exactly would they do that?

duxbury001 says

Our transfer obligations to the elderly / pensions to overpaid gov’t workers / other debt… range from 55 trillion to 75 trillion.. which is roughly the value of all US assets.

Most of that is simply medicare . . .$36T in unfunded liability over the next 75 years.

That's $480B per year or almost five million $100,000/yr jobs, LOL, just the "unfunded" part of it.

This is an utter joke and given we've got 80 million baby boomers starting to turn 65 this year like I said above we just can't raise taxes to pay for this, we're going to have to work on the sector's profit margins too.

This is not to say that the public sector is not too big now. That we are spending $5.5T on government (ex-SSI) this year is mind-boggling -- that's $50,000 per household.

I think we need to close the $1.6T deficit with $800B in spending cuts and $800B in tax increases, falling on the rich but not exclusively. There was nothing wrong with the Clinton tax brackets, they were adequately funding the government.

Alas, cutting $800b in spending is going to throw 5 to 10 million people out of work. . . there are really no easy answers now, anybody who thinks they have the solution just doesn't understand the problem.

PasadenaNative says

Tea Party folks are undereducated, ignorant, and driven by fear. Enough said.

A well thought out statement if there ever was one. It's nice to know there are people on this site that don't ever make ignorant, generalized statements. LOL

I’ve heard this argument before at Pat.net, but I’ve never been able to understand it.

What you’re saying is that the government forced a bank to make a handful of loans it didn’t want to. And then because they were forced to make a handful of loans against their will, they then decided to go ahead and make thousands more freely on their own? Why exactly would they do that?
>>>

Good question. Circa 1975 banks were rather staid. CRA, fannie, eventually banks became a plaything of the left to extort, harass, shakedown and cajole. The industry morphed over time under huge pressue to loan to minorities. Minorities default at much higher rates, but minority politicians want to extort and shakedown the banks, so banks lowered standards.

http://www.libertynewsonline.com/article_301_29075.php

When the housing market exploded, homes became an appreciating asset to collateralize.. so they lowered standards for all. Lowered standards became industry standard. The reason the housing market took off in the first place and became a boom was lowered standards cajoled by politicians, mortgage deduction, easy money. Regulation limited land use, boosting housing costs (particularly in california). What began as a policy to encourage housing created a housing bubble.

Without CRA, fannie, playthings of the left, you would have never had a boom and never had a debauch of lending standards. When the housing market weakened, the first domino to fall was subprime... with vast numbers of minorities who got their loans in the 90's and 00's. So debauched lending helped cause the boom and the bust.

You were bitching earlier about no Republicans posing serious cost cutting ideas, yet the Republican controlled House just submitted $60 billion in cuts to the Democrat controlled Senate.

Yeah, if you scroll up you’ll find I talked about it.

$61 billion in cuts on a $1.6 trillion deficit wont even pay for the Bush tax cut extensions for a single year.

This entire charade is a joke.
>>

As opposed to the democrats? Whose spending philosophy is slam on the gas until we fly off the cliff?

The republicans won't touch entitlements for a few years. They were burned in '86, '96,'00,'08... psychotic leftists will tear them to pieces. You can't cut teachers from 100k to 95k in benefits without commie jihad in wisconsin. You think the country is ready for responsible governance? I don't think so.

duxbury001 says

So you don’t think there are consequences to CRA, figting redlining, etc? You think that boosting lending to minorities is risk and cost free? You think it doesn’t debauch an industry? Pass the bong.

You completely misrepresent what actually happened. Again--CRA loans defaulted at a rate less than non CRA loans. How do you explain that??

Your theory is interesting, but is completely refuted by the actual facts.

Cuts? I don’t favor any cuts. I think the government needs to monetize the debt and tax rich people again.

As for California, the solution to our problem is to repeal prop. 13.
>>>>

prop 13 is the only reason california hasn't fallen into the ocean. if property taxes go up, cost of ownership increases and housing prices implode.

Cali's economy is already dead, boosting taxes will kill it more.

Got news for you.... global economy.. you can't raise taxes because people can move. They are already fleeing cali's trial lawyer/public union thugocracy (so fast it cause a housing boom in AZ in NV).

Therefore you have to lower costs... bloated public sector pensions, paying elderly social security to watch TV and live an extra two months for 100k in medical bills, paying welfare to minorities and illegals to have kids (future democrats).

You completely misrepresent what actually happened. Again–CRA loans defaulted at a rate less than non CRA loans. How do you explain that??
>>>

You are saying that CRA was a moneymaker for banks? Blacks have triple to default rate so someone is cooking the books or has a biased sample. Banks were losing money with their inner city lending and making up for it in the suburbs. This is common knowledge.

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/FoxNewsMortgagesReg091808.html

My argument is that the culture of banking got debauched by the political pressure to make bad loans and the housing boom was let loose.

Who's the Tea Party idol?

The sort of clown who thinks it's perfectly reasonable to espouse voting rights be restricted to property owners only.

duxbury001 says

My argument is that the culture of banking got debauched by the political pressure to make bad loans and the housing boom was let loose.

Your argument is avoiding the central fact that the bankers and the post-2001 regulators were in on the scam.

Obfuscating it, in fact.

The government de-regulated in 1998-2008, and the eventual catastrophe was entirely predictable.

Unregulated markets always blow themselves up. It is their nature. If someone can safely steal $10M, they will. That's enough to not have to work again in this life.

duxbury001 says

prop 13 is the only reason california hasn’t fallen into the ocean. if property taxes go up, cost of ownership increases and housing prices implode.

nah, higher taxes would just lower home values. They key thing with Prop 13 is the lost revenue on non-owner occupied housing. Corporations can buy land and then rent it out for all time at a protected tax rate.

Ditching Prop 13 for SFH would have marginal effects compared to the billions of lost revenue on commercial and rental properties.

duxbury001 says

Got news for you…. global economy.. you can’t raise taxes because people can move.

When you go can I have your house?

Troy said:
"nah, higher taxes would just lower home values."

Which in turn means lower property tax revenue coming to the State. Not to mention higher taxes chasing away even more California businesses to Texas, Arizona and Nevada.

Is it just a coincidence that the biggest Blue States with the highest taxes and union obligations are the most bankrupt and dysfunctional? (California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York.....)?

How much more empirical evidence do we need that simply raising taxes is not a solution? Where has it worked in recent years?

socal2 says

Is it just a coincidence that the biggest Blue States with the highest taxes and union obligations are the most bankrupt and dysfunctional? (California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York…..)?

And yet... why do these dysfunctional Blue States continue to let it slide that they contribute more in Federal revenues than they receive back? Time for Blue States to stop letting slackers in Red States sit around, they are like Welfare Queens griping while they hypocritically gobble up all they can from the trough. I believe the imbalance is sufficient that if we cut that dead weight we'd be instantly in balance.

socal2 says

Which in turn means lower property tax revenue coming to the State.

Not when properties enjoying original 1978 valuations + 2%/yr are reassessed . . . 32 years of 2% raises have only resulted in ~80% increases in assessed value, about 40% of what inflation has wrought.

Not to mention higher taxes chasing away even more California businesses to Texas, Arizona and Nevada.

um, the beauty of land value taxes is that . . . YOU CAN'T MOVE THE LAND.

Higher taxes on commercial property would come entirely out of rents. This is an iron law of economics, one of the more settled questions. By taxing landlords more we could tax their tenant's income less.

The LVT is a beautiful thing. Waay too sensible to ever be considered any more. The entire field of economics was altered to eliminate its arguments, LOL.

How much more empirical evidence do we need that simply raising taxes is not a solution? Where has it worked in recent years?

Oh, the US 1995-2001, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark . . .

ISTM the higher the taxes, the more sustainable the economy. Funny, that.

Your argument is avoiding the central fact that the bankers and the post-2001 regulators were in on the scam.

Obfuscating it, in fact.
>>>>>>

I agree with you on that.

I do not understand why you insist that free markets implode? Before leftists and george bush II
took the morgage industry as a plaything it was doing fine.

Governement intervention caused the crisis (as it usually does)
1) fannie
2) fha
3) fed easy money
4) subsidies-- mortgage tax deduction
5) cha, lending affirmative action
6) ignoring mortgage corruption

so gov't caused the housing boom and therefore the crash. You wonder why no one banker is going to trial? Madoff is already talking about the gov't being a ponzi scheme (how dare he state the obvious!!!). Bankers will never go on trial because they will put the gov't on trial. Without gov't intervention this would have never happened. the tea partiers are 100% correct, government has no place in housing where it will just be manipulated by corrupt politicians.

Vicente says

Time for Blue States to stop letting slackers in Red States sit around

Right you are, Ken.

California loses ~20% of its Federal tax dollars, Michigan 8%, New Jersey 40%, New York, 20%.

The LVT is a beautiful thing. Waay too sensible to ever be considered any more. The entire field of economics was altered to eliminate its arguments, LOL.

How much more empirical evidence do we need that simply raising taxes is not a solution? Where has it worked in recent years?

Oh, the US 1995-2001, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark . . .

ISTM the higher the taxes, the more sustainable the economy. Funny, that.
>>>>>

Government spending is climbing exponentially for 50 years. You cant raise taxes out of that. You need to cut costs? Personally I think liberals are just psychos and like to raise taxes because it is legalized theft. Then give it to the public union and trial lawyer extortionists (the backbone of the mobster democrats).

duxbury001 says

so gov’t caused the housing boom and therefore the crash.

Nope. Government FAILURE TO ACT in 2003-2006 caused the housing bubble/crash.

Government policy had some contributory elements to the bubble, but government policy had NOTHING TO DO with suicide lending. CRA and "subprime" had nothing to do with that. Subprime loans tended to be better-underwritten than prime and Alt-A loans.

It was suicide lending -- roping borrowers into 2-5 year loans that they had no hope of being able to fully service -- that was the primary cause of the bubble.

You can tell what the suicide lending was because these forms of loans were banned in the bubble aftermath.

Government basically spun the wheel in 2001-2002 and walked away from the table in 2003. The FIRE sector had their fun 2004-2007, raking in their cut of a TWELVE TRILLION dollar bubble.

Your 1-5:

1) fannie
2) fha
3) fed easy money
4) subsidies– mortgage tax deduction
5) cra, lending affirmative action

were "sustainable" interventions, to a great extent at least. GSEs didn't cause the housing bubble of 2002-2004, they only got in the game in 2005 and 2006.

FHA was a total non-entity during the bubble, losing market share to private label mortgage houses with looser rules.

Fed easy money 2001-2004 was an indirect cause, but "easy money" didn't make home prices go past affordability -- rate resets haven't been the problem, it was people paying more than they could afford, and the interest rate is orthogonal to that.

Likewise, the MID raised prices but didn't force borrowers to borrow more than they could pay back.

All this "government intervention" crap is perfectly disproven by the fact that Texas did not suffer a bad housing bubble. The Texas market has TONS of government intervention -- both high property taxes and very strict rules about home equity extraction.

What really turned the bubble into a catastrophe was the feedback that home equity withdrawals were having, 2004-2006. This kept the bubble going much longer and made it twice as big as it should have been.

duxbury001 says

I think liberals are just psychos and like to raise taxes because it is legalized theft.

I like to raise taxes because I think government should be paid for, and when it IS paid for we get better government because without taxes there is no feedback on the citizens. Having to pay for Iraq as it happened would have educated people to not fall for the warmonger's call again.

I also think taxes should NOT be too "progressive". I think everyone should pay their fair share and I also believe that tax cuts on the poor is just a backdoor subsidy for the rich since every dollar not taxed just ends up in land values and the rents poor people pay.

I would move to Norway, Denmark, Sweden, or Germany in a heartbeat if I could. They've got their act together. The US? Not so much.

Troy - you don't need to move land to move your business. Businesses have been fleeing California for the last several years.
http://jan.ocregister.com/2010/02/24/list-names-100-companies-leaving-california/31805/

As others have pointed out, government costs and spending have exploded. For instance, we spend more now per student then we did 20 years ago in inflation adjusted dollars for education. Yet the quality of our schools are worse today despite spending more money. Is the solution to raise taxes and spend more on education?

It just boggles the mind that so many folks really seem to believe that our State, Local and Federal Government doesn't need to reform and reduce costs. Virtually every country in Europe has implemented austerity programs to scale back their welfare states and the Private sector has cut to the bone.

But we are being told that the US Government is just find and dandy and no cuts need to be made.

FFS - the new GAO report today shows that Medicare Fraud alone is $48 BILLION a year. That is over 4X the combined profits of the top 10 insurance companies. Just imagine what the waste is going to be once Obamacare is fully implemented?

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11430t.pdf

currently your grandkids pay for it with deficit spending. leftists love big government following lenins maxim "the worse the better"

ultimately exponentially exploding gov't costs, entitlements, regulatory state, trial lawyer litigation state will destroy what's left of the private sector. unions rightly view themselves as adversaries to the private sector, whom they despise ("the rich"). So they don't care if their policies are utterly reckless.

as for europe, they aren't corrupt like us. american goverment is 21st in the world corruption wise (and this understates it). include collusive trial lawyer/ union rackets... we are one of the most corrupt country on earth. 4 of the last 5 governors of illinois are in jail. no other western nation can touch the democrats in terms of gangsterism.

So we cant do what canada or denmark do. we are a kleptocracy, so socialism here is just an invitation to more corruption. so the US needs radical laissez faire with an emphasis on catching corruption. Higher taxes will just be squandered on rackets and hoaxes. Hence the tea party argument is correct. Limit government. No gov't in housing.

duxbury001 says

4 of the last 5 governors of illinois are in jail. no other western nation can touch the democrats in terms of gangsterism.

Actually the only former Governor of Illinois currently in jail is a Republican.

socal2 says

But we are being told that the US Government is just find and dandy and no cuts need to be made.

I don't say that. I post here every day how I'm simply flummoxed by the $5.5T total government spending going on this year. That's $50,000 per household, a totally insane number.

I'm perfectly open to see spending cuts. We need to cut $500B/yr from defense for starters. Move everyone into Medicare and wring profit margins out of that sector like Japan has, we'd get another $500B/yr in savings.

That leaves $500B more to cut, I'm sure we could find it.

Just imagine what the waste is going to be once Obamacare is fully implemented?

Probably more because private insurers need a large topline to get that 20% MLR working for them.

There are ways to fix this but this country is far, far from being able to see the fixes. Our loss!

Rate of growth isn't that much of a news. if I have a dollar and get 2 more its a 200% increase, but not worth writing home about.

There is a piece on some news channel about stuff thats "made in america" and how an average household doesn't own a single item made in US; everything they own is made elsewhere. Well I looked around our household and I have to say that absolutely nothing I own is made in USA as far as I can tell.

The only thing American in our house are food items, and to get even that far I have to avoid certain stores that sell food that comes from either China or other countries.

I really think US Manufacturing is going away, a lot due to tax policy which provides benefit to capital gains and shrinks labor and manufacturing.

http://seoblackhat.com/2008/12/09/4th-illinois-governor-in-35-years-headed-to-prison/

with blago... 4 out of 5.

an illinios republican is a de facto democrat. illinois, like new york, detroit, cali... is just a progressive gangster state.

Government spending is just a criminal enterprise that cannot be contained and voters want their free lunch. Our only hope is the tea party against the big spending corrupt politicians. Politicians get payola back on every dollar of gov't spending and handouts are a narcotic. The intellectuals are psychotic and self-destructive. We are finished and breakfast for China barring a tea party revolution.

Seems a lot of "low comment" number posters popping up these days, delivering broadsides of Fox News talking points.

duxbury001 says

http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2008/01/23/subprime_bailout

this one… pretty much says the story. Banks had “lending affirmative action” foisted upon them

No. You're just repeating lies that are written by people with a political agenda that have no interest in facts.

Even the Republican dissenting report from the recent Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission agreed this was not a significant cause.

Neither the Community Reinvestment Act nor removal of the Glass-Steagall irewall was a significant cause.

http://c0182732.cdn1.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/fcic_final_report_hennessey_holtz-eakin_thomas_dissent.pdf

I think this Republican "dissent" is even better than the majority report. Notably:

....This conclusion by the majority largely ignores the global nature of the crisis. For example:

• A credit bubble appeared in both the United States and Europe. This tells us that our primary explanation for the credit bubble should focus on factors common to both regions.

• The report largely ignores the credit bubble beyond housing. Credit spreads declined not just for housing, but also for other asset classes like commercial real estate. This tells us to look to the credit bubble as an essential cause of the U.S. housing bubble. It also tells us that problems with U.S. housing policy or markets do not by themselves explain the U.S. housing bubble.

• There were housing bubbles in the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, France and Ireland, some more pronounced than in the United States. Some nations with housing bubbles relied little on American-style mortgage securitization. A good explanation of the U.S. housing bubble should also take into account its parallels in other nations. This leads us to explanations broader than just U.S. housing policy, regulation, or supervision. It also tells us that while failures in U.S. securitization markets may be an essential cause, we must look for other things that went wrong as well.

• Large financial firms failed in Iceland, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom, among others. Not all of these firms bet solely on U.S. housing assets, and they operated in different regulatory and supervisory regimes than U.S. commercial and investment banks. In many cases these European systems have stricter regulation than the United States, and still they faced inancial irm failures similar to those in the United States.

These facts tell us that our explanation for the credit bubble should focus on factors common to both the United States and Europe, that the credit bubble is likely an essential cause of the U.S. housing bubble, and that U.S. housing policy is by itself an insufficient explanation of the crisis. Furthermore, any explanation that relies too heavily on a unique element of the U.S. regulatory or supervisory system is likely to be insufficient to explain why the same thing happened in parts of Europe. This moves inadequate international capital and liquidity standards up our list of causes, and it moves the differences between the regulation of U.S. commercial and investment banks down that list.

If you want to blame US government housing policy for the housing bubble, you MUST explain how that also caused a bubble in commercial real estate, and a housing bubble in many other countries. All at exactly the same time.

socal2 says

did you see the GAO report I linked? The fraud and incompetence in government run Medicare is 4 times higher than the top 10 biggest insurance company’s profits alone!

You seem to think that "fraud and incompetence" doesn't exist in the private sector too?

Thing is, this nation is paying twice as much as the rest of the world for health care.

I consider universal coverage non-negotiable, and the only functional examples of this are single-payer systems like those found in Japan, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and France.

All these pay $3000 per capita for health care. We pay $6,000 and don't cover tens of millions of the underclass at all.

Also, you're ignoring private insurer's high overheads:

Wellpoint: $9B in overhead / $5B in profit on $55B in revenue
Cigna: $7B / $2B on $21B
Aetna: $6.5B / $2.6B on $34B
UHC: $4B / $2B on $24B

So Medicare's $50B in waste (10%) was less than half of private insurer's take (~25%).

Sounds like a slam-dunk for Medicare for all!

MarkInSF says

I think this Republican “dissent” is even better than the majority report. Notably:

yeah I read it and thought it was pretty innocuous. There's a 2nd dissent from the AEI guy that of course goes beyond the bend tho.

MarkInSF says

you MUST explain how that also caused a bubble in commercial real estate

Frankly I think the equity being liberated 2002-2007 was the primary driver of everything else.

Home prices ratcheted up in response to the tax cuts and interest rate drops of 2001-2003.

Here's a fun graph: Homeowner equity, 1990-2010

The equity bubble jumped from $10T in 2001 to $16T in 2006 -- and this $1T per year of free money was really hitting the economy.

People say China was importing our inflation, but they were also exporting it back to us by partially funding our housing bubble. Same thing with the oil exporters, they were also cycling their trade surplus back to us via debt.

This bubble economy then extended to other sectors -- CRE -- and also propagated to other economies.

So the mortgage rate falling from 7.5% to ~5% was a really massive global stimulus. It gave the US consumer a big hit on the meth pipe that lasted right through 2007.

What also was happening was the bubble blow-off of 2005-2006 was being supported by fraud. This allowed the early movers of 2001-2004 to "cash out" as it where as the credit cycle started eating itself and buyers started leaving the building.