# Canada Has a Surplus?



## longknife (Oct 18, 2014)

How can that be? I was quite surprised to read about this in CBC News. The article says the surplus – amount unknown – came about because of – ready for this? - Conservative tax cuts!


Hunh? Maybe we ought to send some of our Congresspeople up there to check it out?


Anyhow, read more @ Federal government still mum on how to spend surplus - Politics - CBC News


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 18, 2014)

The Canadians went through a traumatic period back in the 90s when they altered their fiscal course. They came to a new understanding of the role of government in their lives and cut back severely. Since then, with a new course set, they've sailed along that new heading and have smartly managed their public finances.

They also don't have a black and Hispanic underclass to carry along, they don't have a Democratic parasite class to enrich, no ACORNS up there, they actually deport people who sneak in and become a drain on the public.

They're more united up there than we are because they're not as multicultural as we are, so they don't have the overlay of a who:whom battle taking place. They have a stronger sense of community than do Americans and so that works to their advantage in terms of shared ideals and sacrifices and honest management of government. Here, it's every man for himself and "how much can I take from government and stick the other guy with the taxes to pay for it."


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## Mr. H. (Oct 18, 2014)

A stronger "sense of community" yes, but there's still the Quebec thing...


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## Toro (Oct 18, 2014)

The article does not say there is a surplus because of tax cuts. 

The article says that the surplus will be used to pay for tax cuts. 

BTW none of you will likely know this, but the Liberal government originally balanced the budget roughly a decade ago, and did it through a combination of spending cuts AND tax increases. Spending cuts were about 3x tax hikes, but taxes did go up.


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 18, 2014)

Toro said:


> BTW none of you will likely know this, but the Liberal government originally balanced the budget roughly a decade ago, and did it through a combination of spending cuts AND tax increases. Spending cuts were about 3x tax hikes, but taxes did go up.



That was the very first thing I noted in my first sentence of my comment.

BTW, it was a 7:1 ratio of cuts to tax hikes:

"*Canadians have told us that they want the deficit brought down by reducing government spending, not by raising taxes,* and we agree," Mr. Martin said. The new administration slashed spending. Unemployment benefits were cut by nearly 40%.* The ratio of spending cuts to tax increases was nearly 7-to-1*. Federal employment was reduced by 14%. Canada's national railway and air-traffic-control system were privatized.

The economy rebounded. Between 1995 and 1998, a $36.6 billion deficit turned into a $3 billion surplus. Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio was cut in half in a decade. Canada now has faster economic growth than America (3.3% in 2010, compared to 2.9% in the U.S.), a lower jobless rate (7.2% in June, when the U.S. rate was 9.2%), a deficit-to-GDP ratio that's a quarter of ours, and a stronger dollar.​


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## Dragonlady (Oct 26, 2014)

There has been no mention of the regulation of our banking system.  In the late 90's, when US banks were being deregulated, Canadian bankers asked Paul Martin to do the same for Canadian banks.  Without deregulation, Canadian bankers could not compete globally, with the banking deregulation becoming all the rage.  Martin said "No", and it is this single decision, more than any other factor, which is credited with saving Canada from the worst of the global financial crisis in 2008.

Now governments from all over the world are looking at the regulation of Canada's banking system as an shining example of fiscal responsibility.


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 26, 2014)

Dragonlady said:


> There has been no mention of the regulation of our banking system.  In the late 90's, when US banks were being deregulated, Canadian bankers asked Paul Martin to do the same for Canadian banks.  Without deregulation, Canadian bankers could not compete globally, with the banking deregulation becoming all the rage.  Martin said "No", and it is this single decision, more than any other factor, which is credited with saving Canada from the worst of the global financial crisis in 2008.
> 
> Now governments from all over the world are looking at the regulation of Canada's banking system as an shining example of fiscal responsibility.



It helped Canada tremendously that they are less corrupt in government than the US and that you didn't have a large black and Hispanic underclass who couldn't save enough money to put down payments on homes and so your government didn't force your banks to make loans to uncreditworthy borrowers.

You not having a black and Hispanic underclass saved your Canadian Bacon.


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## mamooth (Oct 27, 2014)

Well, that's a particularly delusional rewrite of history. Instead of blaming the deregulation of the banking industry and the flagrant corruption and mismanagement that followed, you've managed to concoct a fable where you blame the blacks. Way to shift blame away from the catastrophic policy failures of the conservatives.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-005.pdf
---
We find no evidence that lenders increased subprime originations or altered pricing around the discrete eligibility cutoffs for the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) affordable housing goals or the Community Reinvestment Act. Our results indicate that the extensive purchases of risky private-label mortgage-backed securities by the GSEs were not due to affordable housing mandates
---


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 27, 2014)

mamooth said:


> Well, that's a particularly delusional rewrite of history. Instead of blaming the deregulation of the banking industry and the flagrant corruption and mismanagement that followed, you've managed to concoct a fable where you blame the blacks. Way to shift blame away from the catastrophic policy failures of the conservatives.
> 
> http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2012/2012-005.pdf
> ---
> ...


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 27, 2014)

Wall Street Journal:

Between 2006 and mid-2011, 5.2% of Luther's single-family residential mortgage loans went to African-Americans and Hispanics, compared to an average of 41.7% for other lenders in the area.* The complaint doesn't cite evidence of intentional discrimination because there wasn't any.*

Luther Burbank might not have been in this business were it not for government. The bank was largely focused on multi-family mortgages *until its regulator, the former Office of Thrift Supervision, asked the lender to diversify its portfolio in the mid-2000s. *Luther Burbank then hired a team to do "nontraditional" loans such as interest-only or option adjustable-rate mortgages that the bank would keep on its own books. Yes, this is the same stuff that eventually blew up the housing market.

Luther Burbank wasn't a fly-by-night operator that marketed those loans to any and all. The bank insisted on a minimum $400,000 loan amount and made loans with an average 680 FICO score and 67% loan-to-value. Over the period that Justice examined,* Luther Burbank foreclosed on a mere 11 borrowers out of 629 loans outstanding—a loss ratio of 1.75%. In a normal world, Luther Burbank would get a medal from regulators for its risk management, having chosen borrowers even at the height of the housing mania who could meet their monthly payments. *

But Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez has a different priority:* He wants banks to meet lending quotas to minorities—regardless of whether those borrowers can afford the loans. Many minority borrowers have low incomes that make them riskier lending bets. Is that a bank's fault?*

Luther Burbank admitted no guilt and said it settled to avoid costly litigation, which makes sense for a small, local lender that has to worry about its reputational risk.* The bank has agreed to ratchet down its minimum loan to $20,000 and will now commit $2.2 million to a "special financing program" for "qualified borrowers," payouts for local community groups, and "consumer education programs." Justice has the final say on who gets that money.*

Bankers can be forgiven if they can't figure out this regulatory whipsaw.* They get punished if they make loans that are too risky, but they also get fined if they don't make risky loans to enough minority borrowers based solely on some Washington quota. *The courts need to address Justice's use of disparate impact against banks because it is turning into nothing more than a government order to make certain loans—or else.​


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## mamooth (Oct 27, 2014)

You're cherrypicking with all your might, as that is your favorite technique, but the cumulative hard data still says the CRA had zilch to do with the housing bubble.

Maybe you can explain why commercial real estate bubbled up even higher than residential. No CRA there. Or why the housing bubble was global, occurring in every western nation that deregulated banks. It notably did not occur in Germany, which kept banks tightly regulated.

As others noted, nothing about tax cuts causing the surplus in Canada, just that tax cuts are planned. Nobody except the craziest of crazies still tries to claim tax cuts create revenue, not after the abject failure of supply-side in the USA not just once, but twice.

So why can Canada balance a budget? Defense spending, 1.0% of GDP for Canada, 3.8% for the USA. Might have a bit to do with it.


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 27, 2014)

mamooth said:


> You're cherrypicking with all your might, as that is your favorite technique, but the cumulative hard data still says the CRA had zilch to do with the housing bubble.


You have the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development crowing about forcing banks to make risky loans. That's not cherrypicking.

Canada didn't have to contend with what Cuomo did.  It's really simple - when banks have to answer to one Master, their shareholders, then they don't make risky loans. When they have to answer to two Masters - shareholders and government and are tasked with two mutually incompatible goals, 1.) make safe and profitable loans, and 2.) Make risky loans to minority borrowers in order to meet "social justice" mandates or face fines, then that distorts lending practices. They can't now turn away risky white borrowers while granting mortgages to risky black borrowers with even lower credit scores for that would open them up to yet a new lawsuit for discriminating against whites.










> Maybe you can explain why commercial real estate bubbled up even higher than residential. No CRA there. Or why the housing bubble was global, occurring in every western nation that deregulated banks. It notably did not occur in Germany, which kept banks tightly regulated.



Can a smoker develop BOTH lung cancer and colon cancer or does a simultaneous discovery of both cancers always indicate the same cause? Commercial real estate value inflated due to a massive inflow of capital into the US, not due to deregulation of the banking sector. It was an asset bubble caused by too much money chasing too few properties.



> So why can Canada balance a budget? Defense spending, 1.0% of GDP for Canada, 3.8% for the USA. Might have a bit to do with it.



Um, our deficit ran up to 10% of GDP, the difference in military spending between Canada and the US, using your figures, is only 2.8% of GDP. That leaves us with a 7.2% of GDP difference even when we equalize our military spending to Canadian levels.

The last estimate I saw had America suffering a 5% GDP penalty caused by our multicultural population lowering our economic efficiency. That's on the production side, but who knows how expensive it is to carry 40% of your population who need all sorts of subsidies and impose costs on society. Those subsidies and costs are what constitute a large part of the deficit that we carry and that Canada doesn't.


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## mamooth (Oct 28, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> You have the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development crowing about forcing banks to make risky loans. That's not cherrypicking.



"Cherrypicking" is probably the wrong word. "Red herring" is closer.

80+% of the lending institutions were not governed by the CRA, yet they bombed as well. How then can the CRA be responsible?

The CRA was at its largest expansion in the 1990s. Those loans had a very low default rate.

The percentage of minorities who defaulted on mortgages is not a relevant statistic, unless you can show that percentage suddenly skyrocketed due to government-forced loans being handed out, and that the additional money lost was a significant portion of the total. That will be difficult, given that CRA banks actually had _lower_ default rates than other mortgage lenders, due to the more strict regulation on them.

http://www.traigerlaw.com/publications/traiger_hinckley_llp_cra_foreclosure_study_1-7-08.pdf



> Canada didn't have to contend with what Cuomo did.  It's really simple - when banks have to answer to one Master, their shareholders, then they don't make risky loans.



Quite the opposite. Shareholders demanded the quickest buck possible, so lenders were under pressure to make the maximum number of loans, meaning the riskiest loans.

Prior to deregulation, lenders had to hold on to their own loans, which gave them incentive to make good loans.

After deregulation, lenders could securitize loans, pass them off to someone else, and the loan was then someone else's problem. That removed all incentive to make good loans. Under shareholder pressure, lenders switched to a policy of giving everyone a loan, no matter how insane the risk. Big bonuses for everyone today! Capitalism at its finest! Since you're going to cash out soon, who cares if the firm goes belly up after you leave?


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 29, 2014)

mamooth said:


> The percentage of minorities who defaulted on mortgages is not a relevant statistic.



Of course it's relevant. Government forced banks to lower their lending practices and credit assessment procedures PRECISELY to gran MORE mortgages to minorities who weren't credit worthy. When you lower standards for one group, those uniform standards have to be applied across the board. 

When the day of reckoning arrives, defaults for everyone increase but we really see how ill-suited minorities were in regards to taking on these obligations.

Canada didn't have that problem - their government doesn't have to bend Canadian banking standards in order to help uplift dysfunctional population groups. Canadian banks aren't doing the bidding of their government in terms of advancing social policy and so their standards were not corrupted.  Try to train a dog to have two masters who continually give the dog contradictory orders and see what happens to the dog. Eat, Don't Eat. Bark, Don't Bark. Let's Go For A Walk, Let's Stay Inside. That doing is going to develop a unique response to two masters giving contradictory orders. Canada's government is less corrupt than ours and it benefits from not having to "do something": to address 40% of its population who suffer from varying degrees of social dysfunction. This means that Canadian banks can remain professional in how they manage their affairs.

Look at that Cuoma clip, he's gleeful about forcing banks to make risky loans. Look at the WSJ report where a safe, well managed bank is sued by Obama's Justice Department because it's default rate was too LOW and now it has to pay millions in penalties because it didn't make risky loans to blacks/Hispanics and has to pledge to make risky loans to these groups in order to keep the government happy. Do either of these examples point to professional governance? IF a corrupt government has a gun to the head of the bankers, then the bankers dance to the tune set by the government.



> Quite the opposite. Shareholders demanded the quickest buck possible, so lenders were under pressure to make the maximum number of loans, meaning the riskiest loans.



Are you like 19 or something? Just entering the world and discovering sex and profit and corruption? Shareholders have been demanding profits from the businesses they own for thousands of years. It's not just this generation of shareholders who've discovered that they want corporations to earn profits.

Prior to deregulation, lenders had to hold on to their own loans, which gave them incentive to make good loans.



> After deregulation, lenders could securitize loans, pass them off to someone else, and the loan was then someone else's problem. That removed all incentive to make good loans. Under shareholder pressure, lenders switched to a policy of giving everyone a loan, no matter how insane the risk. Big bonuses for everyone today! Capitalism at its finest! Since you're going to cash out soon, who cares if the firm goes belly up after you leave?



That's not capitalism, that's government infecting the banking market with new rules, rules focused on "social justice" and then bankers finding a way to maximize their profits under the new rules.

Look at the recent calls from government to have banks once again lower lending standards in order to increase the minority home ownership rate.  The Democrats haven't learned. 

The proper way to help blacks become homeowners is to appropriate money in Congress and then give blacks grants to use as down payments in order to qualify for safe mortgages. That approach though is politically difficult and so liberals push unfunded mandates onto banks. Look at the Cuomo video and the private lending standards which evolve from that unfunded mandate. 

Nothing in life is free. If blacks don't qualify for mortgages, and government doesn't give them down payment grants to help them qualify, and instead liberals force banks to do the bidding of the social justice warriors, then when blacks start buying homes under this new order, that free lunch is being paid by someone at some time in the future. Standards exist for a reason, political directives don't erase lending standards anymore than a law declaring people can fly will enable people to fly.


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## Dragonlady (Oct 30, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> It helped Canada tremendously that they are less corrupt in government than the US and that you didn't have a large black and Hispanic underclass who couldn't save enough money to put down payments on homes and so your government didn't force your banks to make loans to uncreditworthy borrowers.
> 
> You not having a black and Hispanic underclass saved your Canadian Bacon.



Having a black and Hispanic underclass is a CHOICE Americans made a long time ago.  The US economy has always depended upon a large base of low paid/slave labour to keep prices of good and services artificially low. 

Canada is also a nation of immigrants, and large percentage of whom are ethnic minorities.  In Toronto, white people are the minority.  And yet our ethnic minorities are not being held back by systemic racism.  Our inner city schools receive the same amounts of funding as our wealthy neighbourhoods.  Teacher in disadvantaged areas are paid the same as teachers in wealthy suburbs.

Our universities are all publically funded.  There are no "Ivy League" schools to give the children of the wealthy an advantage over kids who went to State universities.  There are private grade schools and high schools, but no private universities.

Our system genuinely does give everyone a fair chance.  The wealthy will always have advantages, but the children of the poor aren't being handicapped by receiving a third class education in a crumbing inner-city school.  They don't live in crime infested ghettos, where drive by-shootings are an everyday occurrence.  Subsidized, low-income housing exists in "mixed" middle-class neighbourhoods.  Toronto did have low-income government owned "projects" and found them to be a haven for crime.  They are being torn down and replaced with more mixed neighbourhoods.

Americans created their underclass by denying both education and opportunities to the children of the poor.  By letting crime fester in poor neighbourhoods.  And best of all, you blame the poor for being poor.


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## Rikurzhen (Oct 30, 2014)

Dragonlady said:


> Rikurzhen said:
> 
> 
> > It helped Canada tremendously that they are less corrupt in government than the US and that you didn't have a large black and Hispanic underclass who couldn't save enough money to put down payments on homes and so your government didn't force your banks to make loans to uncreditworthy borrowers.
> ...



And Canada is exercising the same choice now with its immigration patterns drawing from Third World countries. Your only blessing is that you've not traveled as far down that sorry road as the US, but you're heading to the same destination.



> Canada is also a nation of immigrants, and large percentage of whom are ethnic minorities.  In Toronto, white people are the minority.  And yet our ethnic minorities are not being held back by systemic racism.



No minority group is the US is held back by systemic racism. Racial wage discrimination disappeared from the American labor market back in the early 1970s:

The analyses of the General Social Survey data from 1974 to 2000 *replicate earlier findings* from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth that* racial disparity in earnings disappears once cognitive ability is controlled for.* The results are robust across many alternative specifications, and further show that *blacks receive significantly greater returns to their cognitive ability than nonblacks*. The trend data show that there was *no sign of racial discrimination in the United States as early as 1970s*. The analyses call into question the necessity of and justification for preferential treatment of ethnic minorities​
Speaking of Toronto, how's your Afro-centric school system working? We don't have any of those here in the US where our Supreme Court ruled that "Separate but Equal" was not a permissible policy vehicle:

_*The black-focused school is a go.*_​
After a heated but civil debate, Canada's largest school board voted 11-9 last night to open an alternative *Africentric school to help fight a 40 per cent dropout rate among Toronto's black teens.*

An elated parent, Donna Harrow, said she is thrilled the proposal she and fellow parent Angela Wilson had pushed for got through, despite fierce opposition and cries of segregation.

"I'm ecstatic, but the struggle continues and we want this school to open in 2008, not 2009," said Harrow.

Trustees voted on a sweeping package of programs to make schools more relevant to black students, including opening an Africentric school in September 2009. . . .

Yet human rights activist Vicky McPhee said an Africentric school "is a right," and the only type of school to which she wants to send her 6-year-old child. She called for these schools in each of the city's 22 wards.

Twelve of the 20 speakers urged the board to open an alternative Africentric school as a way to fight an estimated 40 per cent dropout rate among Toronto's black students.

Longtime community leader Murphy Browne said she was alarmed at the high number of youth being "pushed out" of school by a European-centred system, who then get "caught up in the school-to-jail pipeline."​
I believe you were blowing some hot air about "systemic racism?" A 40% black drop-out rate in Canada, heavens to Betsy, how is that possible. Why it's almost like you're copying the American experience with our black population.

Thankfully for you your bureaucrats don't seem to be as pussy-whipped by political correctness as American politicians and bureaucrats and so some common sense emerges in government policy at the Federal level in Canada. From Macleans:

Midway through last summer, when much of official Ottawa was away at the cottage, a revealing document landed on the desk of Canada’s top immigration bureaucrat, deputy minister Neil Yeates. Prosaically titled “Social and Economic Outcomes of Second Generation Youth,” the four-page memo showed* little regard for the political correctness typical of government correspondence*. “Chinese and South Asians are the most likely to have university degrees or higher, and to be employed in high-skilled occupations,” observed the summary, which was* prepared by departmental bureaucrats* and released recently through access to information. *Second-generation youth of Caribbean and Latin American origin don’t fare so well, the memo went on; they tend to obtain lower levels of education than native-born Canadian kids and wind up in less skilled jobs*.

For years, the government has been gathering data on the performance of newcomers and their children based on ethnicity, he notes, and while immigration officials deny they use information to identify the best countries from which to recruit, the numbers tell a different story. Since 1999, China and India have been the top two source countries for immigrants to Canada, averaging about 60,000 landings per year, *while the number coming from the Caribbean has fallen sharply. Immigration from the West Indies had fallen 45 per cent below levels seen in the early 1990s*, according to figures compiled by Statistics Canada.​See, Canada is less corrupt than the US, less beholden to racial lobbies, and so Canadian government officials can do what is best for Canada and that includes not nurturing the growth of low performing population groups, like those from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.



> Our inner city schools receive the same amounts of funding as our wealthy neighbourhoods.  Teacher in disadvantaged areas are paid the same as teachers in wealthy suburbs.



That's odd. Some of our poor neighborhoods get MORE funding from the State than do wealthy neighborhoods:

Abbott districts are school districts in New Jersey that are provided remedies to ensure that their students receive public education in accordance with New Jersey’s state constitution. They were created in 1985 as a result of the first ruling of Abbott v. Burke, a case filed by the Education Law Center. The ruling asserted that public primary and secondary education in poor communities throughout the state was unconstitutionally substandard. . . . increased spending such that *Abbott district students received 22% more per pupil (at $20,859) vs. non-Abbott districts (at $17,051) in 2011.*​


> Our universities are all publically funded.  There are no "Ivy League" schools to give the children of the wealthy an advantage over kids who went to State universities.  There are private grade schools and high schools, but no private universities.



That's certainly one way of championing mediocrity. Boo on Excellence and Elitism. Yay on everyone being mediocre and not drawing attention to one's excellence.



> They don't live in crime infested ghettos, where drive by-shootings are an everyday occurrence.



Look, keep importing Africans and Jamaicans and Toronto will look like Chicago. If your population consists of people from the Third World then your society will function like a Third World society. There isn't anything magical about the air in Canada which transforms people when they breath it - a nation is made up of its people.



> Subsidized, low-income housing exists in "mixed" middle-class neighbourhoods.  Toronto did have low-income government owned "projects" and found them to be a haven for crime.  They are being torn down and replaced with more mixed neighbourhoods.



Liberals are inflicting that on us down here too. Liberals seem bothered by people fleeing crime and dysfunction so liberals set out to inflict crime and dysfunction on innocent people. Liberals won't let anyone escape. Seems that you have that too.  Nothing like living in a safe, middle class neighborhood and then having liberals set some gangbangers loose in the neighborhood to spice up the boring lives of the middle class. See, liberals will tell you that this tactic improves the lives of the criminals and the dysfunctional, but they never actually make a case for how subsidizing criminals and dysfunctional people to live in middle class neighborhoods actually improves the lives of the people who sweated a brick to buy a home in a nice neighborhood in order to escape from the criminals and the dysfunctional.


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## C_Clayton_Jones (Oct 30, 2014)

"Canada Has a Surplus?"

And you have a thread that fails as a false comparison fallacy.

Your thread also fails as a _post hoc_ fallacy, as there's no 'evidence' tax cuts alone result in economic growth.

Well done!


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## mamooth (Nov 2, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> mamooth said:
> 
> 
> > The percentage of minorities who defaulted on mortgages is not a relevant statistic.
> ...



Again, CRA-covered banks had default rates lower than other lenders.

http://www.traigerlaw.com/publications/traiger_hinckley_llp_cra_foreclosure_study_1-7-08.pdf

Your endless race-baiting claims of how government programs for minorities were to blame are fables. Thus, you have to keep ignoring the actual evidence and running back to your red herrings.



> Government forced banks to lower their lending practices and credit assessment procedures PRECISELY to gran MORE mortgages to minorities who weren't credit worthy. When you lower standards for one group, those uniform standards have to be applied across the board.



Did I mention CRA-covered banks had lower default rates? Blacks didn't need CRA loans during the housing bubble, because there was no shortage of sleazy lenders who'd lend to anyone. The CRA banks, which were more regulated, had higher standards than private mortgage brokers.



> Look at that Cuoma clip, he's gleeful about forcing banks to make risky loans.



Look at how CRA-covered banks had lower default rates.

You can keep running from that, but I'll keep bringing you back to it. The world is not obligated to match your fantasies, no matter how enthusiastically you repeat them.



> Are you like 19 or something? Just entering the world and discovering sex and profit and corruption? Shareholders have been demanding profits from the businesses they own for thousands of years. It's not just this generation of shareholders who've discovered that they want corporations to earn profits.



Are you like 14 or something? You come across as someone who has just read _Atlas Shrugged_ for the first time.

Let's get back to the heart of the matter.



> > Prior to deregulation, lenders had to hold on to their own loans, which gave them incentive to make good loans. After deregulation, lenders could securitize loans, pass them off to someone else, and the loan was then someone else's problem. That removed all incentive to make good loans. Under shareholder pressure, lenders switched to a policy of giving everyone a loan, no matter how insane the risk. Big bonuses for everyone today! Capitalism at its finest! Since you're going to cash out soon, who cares if the firm goes belly up after you leave?



Government regulation was what previously stopped banks from making such awful loans. When the regulation was removed, capitalism failed hard, exactly as Adam Smith pointed out. By modern libertarian standards, Adam Smith, the founder of capitalism, is a raging socialist. That tells you how nutty the libertarians are. In modern times, the liberals are the ones trying to save capitalism, while libertarians and conservatives are attempting to replace capitalism with feudalism, cronyism and oligopolies.


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## Dragonlady (Nov 3, 2014)

Lenders were falling all over themselves to make sub-prime mortgages because of the huge profits to be made. There was an irrational belief that housing prices would continue to rise and any defaults which resulted would be covered due to higher prices. 

Lenders were so enamoured with subprime mortgages that they encouraged brokers to downgrade the best borrowers to subprime to increase their profit margins. 

The idea of lenders encouraging people to borrow beyond their means just to increase profits is the antithesis of sound lending practices and yet no meaningful reforms have been enacted by Congress to prevent it from happening again.


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## feduptaxpayer (Nov 11, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> The Canadians went through a traumatic period back in the 90s when they altered their fiscal course. They came to a new understanding of the role of government in their lives and cut back severely. Since then, with a new course set, they've sailed along that new heading and have smartly managed their public finances.
> 
> They also don't have a black and Hispanic underclass to carry along, they don't have a Democratic parasite class to enrich, no ACORNS up there, they actually deport people who sneak in and become a drain on the public.
> 
> They're more united up there than we are because they're not as multicultural as we are, so they don't have the overlay of a who:whom battle taking place. They have a stronger sense of community than do Americans and so that works to their advantage in terms of shared ideals and sacrifices and honest management of government. Here, it's every man for himself and "how much can I take from government and stick the other guy with the taxes to pay for it."




(X)We have thousands every year of new immigrant blacks,Asians and East Indians legal or illegal immigrating here costing the Canadian taxpayers hundreds of millions in taxdollars to carry all of them along that don't find work. We have 2 million Canadians unemployed but yet we keep bringing them in.  

We have a program called multiculturalism and has done more harm to Canada's culture,heritage,traditions and language where new immigrants that have no relation to the founding Briitish or European peoples have been keeping and assisted by the government to hang on on to their traditons and culture and don't need to assimilate. In some cases Asians and East Indians have their own TV,radio,churches,newspapers,businesses and cultural centers where they work and live and play where they don't have to have anything to do with host Canadians. They are probably annoyed at having to speak english to get by at times.  We have ghettoes thanks to multiculturalism, the great divider not uniter. You don't want multiculturalism. We have too many illegals here that try to get as much as they can from the government for free while they are here and Canadians pay for this theft of their taxdollars because when an illegal gets here they just have to shout refugee and it could take years to get rid of them and send them back from whence they came. So, as you can see we in Canada have our problems too.


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## initforme (Nov 11, 2014)

Canada has it figured out


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## feduptaxpayer (Nov 13, 2014)

initforme said:


> Canada has it figured out




Yup, they sure do, pardner.


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