Nuance

I’m not going to say that the most frustrating arguments are the ones where your opponent reduces your case to its most absurd extreme.

You:  I think it’d be fun to go to Burger King.

Opponent:  Why do you hate McDonald’s?

You get used to arguments like this if you have junior high kids, psychotic neighbors…

…and if you’re a conservative blogger.

Penigma, writing at Penigma, kinda goes there in a piece that eventually gets around to its real point, his thesis that government regulation had NOTHING to do with the meltdown of the financial system.

I said eventually.  He leads off by accusing me of sophistry, which is fine but incomplete (I got to sophistry after freshmanstry.  But then I proceeded to juniorstry and seniorstry), and more or less irrelevant – because unlike so much that goes on at SITD, it’s not about me.  It’s about my longtime blog associate Johnny Roosh:

JR apparently holds some sort of position in financial services, and has described himself as being a “financial planner.” We’ve asked a few times what licensure he holds (Series 7 would be pretty standard) – but he hasn’t answered.

Nor should he.  It’s nobody’s business.  I’ll vouch for Roosh’s credentials as a financial planner – he’s got golf clubs, even!

Now, Penigma does skirt close to a serious point, here.  I’ve bagged on anonymous bloggers.  But the problem is the ones that use their anonymity to take cheap, defamatory personal shots at other people while shielding themselves from consequences.  There are a few of them in the Twin Cities leftyblogging community; fearless about going after other people, but queasy about their blogging affecting their day jobs.  My answer has always been that nobody should write anything for which they’re not ready for the real consequences under their real name.  Roosh (and First Ringer, another SITD writer who stays under the radar for vocational reasons) meet that standard.  Otherwise I’d have never invited them to join SITD.

And as it happens, Roosh’s “anonymous” (but, I assure you, extant) credentials have no bearing on the issue in Penigma’s piece.

But since we’re on the subject, Penigma claims second-hand expertise on the subject at hand:

I can’t claim to be a great expert on financial services – I work in investment banking, dealing with large cash movement and the reasons for the appetite (or lack) of banks for deposits and the desires of brokers to make ‘spread revenue’ with the cash they have on hand. But, I DO work with some people who are VERY experienced in financial services, people reasonably well-known on Wall Street.

Now, Roosh’s license as a financial planner doesn’t necessarily make him an expert on macroeconomics in and of itself; being literate about economics does.

But claiming to know all sorts of well-known people on Wall Street – Republicans, no less! – is another thing altogether.  So it’d be useful for Penigma to provide the names of these Wall Street sources, so that people can gauge their, and his, credibility.

Because so much of what they (via Penigma, natch) say beggars reason so completely.

I’m not sure he is properly licensed, and frequently he makes comments which belie the suspicion that he is not, for he, like our former pest troll KR, claims that it was governmental regulation which caused the recent econimic meltdown/catastrophe.

This takes us back to my first paragraph; Penigma has reduced Roosh’s argument (and mine, and King Banaian’s, and that of virtually every conservative with an interest in the issue) to an absurdly simple, and utterly misleading thesis, which Penigma helpfully reprises:

Yet, when you want to hate the government, you look for any excuse.

Never chalk up to “hate” what can be better explained by “reason”.

I don’t know a whole lot of people, outside of blog comments, who say that government regulation, alone and by itself, caused the meltdown.

But it’s a simple fact that behind each of the factors that Penigma cites that Penigma’s powerful but anonymous Wall Street friends cite for the meltdown, the hand of the Fed lurks.

2. People were overly incented to do deals – so they did bad deals when the good deals ran out.
Some of these kinds of deals were:
a. Many companies sold their bad debts off to other companies packaged up into deals with many parts, claiming they were good investments (i.e. derivatives)

Right.

And what incented companies to go for these deals?

The fact that government, via a series of initiatives during the Clinton and Bush administraitons – promised to underwrite the deals.

b. Other companies effectively sold their debt exposure (insurance against loss) telling the buyer they were good ideas to hold the risk (Credit Default Swaps).

And what was the initial impetus for these sales?

The government mandate, driven by Clinton/Bush-era legislation, for Fannie and Freddie to underwrite all this debt.

c. Still more companies bet long with what was supposed to be ‘low risk’ money – namely money market funds. When their bets failed, the underlying money fund collapsed.

Why was the money supposedly low-risk?  Because the government artificially lowered the risk.

d. Still MORE companies wrote mortgages with zero income to debt requirements, or wrote HELOCs with equity percentages above 100%, or agreed upon mortgages with HUGE balloon payments that they should have had zero expectation the customer would be able to pay when the interest rate or the balloon shot up.

And why did these companies change their policies?

Because the government mandated Fannie and Freddie assume the risk!

Second – Wall Street knows it full well too. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone worth a damn actually blame CRA

Well, perhaps among Penigma’s legions of powerful-yet-anonymous Republican friends on Wall Street.

Elsewhere?  Not so much.

Note to Penigma:  please provide the names and credentials of anyone laughing.

Audio, too.

62 thoughts on “Nuance

  1. Mitch, I’ll take the smile with the furrowed brow.

    I thought you made a good point about not accepting anonymous sources. Since they were not my sources to share, I gave a heads up to Pen, asking him to share them – you deserved that, and I thought it was something I could contribute to both of you AND the discussion by suggesting it.

    What I had lost track of was that Pen was tied up in meetings out of town; I try not to disturb him under those circumstances out of respect and courtesy for his schedule – my bad, to have made the mistake, and I apologized profusely.

    But as always, he responded even though he was busy. And he was both prompt and gracious about it instead of being annoyed with me. So I think it is only fair that you acknowledge his courtesy with more than ‘enh’.

    I absolutely have come to expect you, like Pen, will be patient with me and kind and gracious, way beyond anything I deserve. I’m rotten spoiled, I admit it. I fully expect that your glowering brows will be transient, and the smile will be heartfelt and lasting. God knows why because I don’t, but I’m very blessed in my friendships with each of you that way.

    You aren’t going to change now on me are you?

  2. So Dog Gone claims ACORN did nothing wrong yet Pettengill and Durand are criminal scam artists.

    Mitch, you should hear DG go on and on and on and on and on about what some guy named “Steve” said about a certain Faux Newz contributor.

    Wow, folks, you just can’t make this shit up.

    Attention: deegee/peevee, you’ll ruin any credibility you might have had by telling people CRA had absolutely nothing to do with the ‘crisis’.

  3. KR, you clearly have not read any of the court docments relating to Pettengill and Durand and their associates. You clearly are unaware of, just for example, Pettengill having admitted in court to deceiving and swindling banks in the course of his activities described by both the feds and the plaintiff attorneys as a ‘scam’.

    But heck KR, when would you let facts interfere with your opinions? Never.

    Because you and Swiftee apparently foolishly believe that anyone who is conservative (or in the case of Durand and Pettengill, Cook and Kiley, who preys on conservatives) is some kind of saint, and anyone who isn’t is the worst kind of sinner.

    News flash gentlemen – there are good and bad people on both sides of the political spectrum. If you believe otherwise, you’re an idiot.

    As to believing that O’Keefe faked the impression given by the videos, unlike you fools I took the time not only to watch the videos but to compar the transcripts provided by O’Keefe to the videos. Some interesting things turn up when you do that -he transcripts don’t match the videos, making it clear that someone changed both the audio and the video. If you look at the transcripts, the dialog doesn’t track right. And if you look at the dialog, only O’Keefe and Giles are talking about criminal activity. The ACORN employees are talking about protecting Giles’ income from her abusive pimp, about dependents who are underage getting legal ID, going to school, etc. The only conversations about prostitution appear to be related to paying taxes on illegal income – which is the advice they are supposed to provide. Only someone gullible would believe without question what someone goes to such lengths to show them when it is clearly altered to such a large degree.

    I did my homework KR, in looking at why ACORN wasn’t found to have acted criminally. You? No. You not only don’t need facts, you avoid them.

  4. KR, CRA was minimal in impact; it was statistically pretty insignificant compared to other factors. But again – you wouldn’t want to get too close to facts, would you?

  5. A philosophical observation Mitch. Enemies and adversaries are a kind of blessing – the prickly unpleasant kind. But they are useful challenges to us to improve and test ourselves, and our argments.

    Friends who challenge us have all those same benefits, but less prickly and unpleasant. I view challenges to an argument to be an occasion to test my thoughts, to examine facts in a fresh light. When someone does that thoughtfully, with good sources, it is a sign of respect, a sort of compliment; from a friend, it’s something to be valued and cherished, not resented.

    Friends who agree without challenging us, they make us comfortable but they are not so very useful.

    I guess that is why, sooner or later, I expect that I might cross Mitch’s threshold for mock-strangling me. And why I’m sure it will be as gentle a mock strangling as a person could receive. Because a

  6. Because agree or disagree, I’m fiercely loyal to my friends; I cherish and respect them.

  7. Dog Gone-
    What criteria are being used to measure the impact of CRA that you cite?

  8. Dog Gone, the reason I ask is that it is certain that, at the bottom of the financial crisis there were mortgages sold to people who could not afford to pay them if interest rates went up or home values failed to go up. CRA was designed to give banks an incentive to underwrite mortgages for people they would otherwise not underwrite.

  9. Dog Gone said:

    “You? No. You not only don’t need facts, you avoid them.”

    Pretty strong words for someone who seems to get most of their Bachmann info from Dump Bachmann. *shrug*

  10. DG,

    CRA was minimal in impact

    That’s one of the strawmen the left keeps throwing out there to try to insulate itself from blame. And it’s true, as far as it goes. It’s accurate to say the CRA wasn’t solely responsible. It was just one of many pieces of legislation, government subsidies, failures in regulation and, yes, greed. (Greed that was enabled by government’s mandate to deregulate profits but socialize losses – which wasn’t strictly the CRA, but closely-related enough).

    Roger Simon explained the whole thing pretty well.

  11. “The ACORN employees are talking about protecting Giles’ income…”

    So, Deegee, the truth comes out; you don’t seem to have a problem with ACORN wanting to help a whore keep her illegal prostitution ‘earnings’.
    And Bwaney Fwank did NOTHING wrong either, clean as a whistle, eh deegee?
    YOUR true colors are shining through.

    U
    G
    L
    Y

  12. “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Bwaney Fwank, “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

    Just how did Fannie and Freddie keep the housing market prices flat?

    Hey, deegee, don’t let anyone tell you unemployment rate is high and a serious problem… heck, you wouldn’t believe them anyway, well, at least as long as your Obama is in office.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.