My point is it does no good to blame the most recent “immoral” actors, things need to change on a wider scale. Symptoms/disease, forest/trees, i’m all out of analogies for today :)

Try rereading what I wrote with that in mind. I think you’ll see we’re not too off in our thinking. I remember you said you looked up Kaizen when I mentioned it another post. One of the examples from those principles that I’m going to paraphrase (was a while since I actually read info on it)…

There’s an assembly line worker sees a problem completing his task, lets say driving a bolt into a panel. He has the power to stop the line and all production stops. Plant is not making any money, no cars are coming off the line. So he tries to figure out why he’s having a hard time putting the bolt in. He checks the driver and finds out if he uses more torque he can get the bolt in. But that’s not the solution, just a temporary fix. The specs say it should be at a certain torque setting. So they keep asking why until they find the root of the problem. So they examine the bolts. Bolts look fine and are to spec. They check the threads in the panel. Oops. The threads aren’t to spec. The extra stress from a mismatched tread/bolt connection might cause the connection to fail. They check with the engineer and find out they can’t safely increase the torque because it would cause the part to fail in only 25k miles as opposed to the rated 50k miles. Not done yet. Go find out why the die isn’t tapping the right threads. Machine looks fine, operating correctly. Die does not look to be damaged and was recently changed. They find out the die came from a new supplier. OK, they have some dies from the older supplier and they put it in and restart the line. Things go smoothly but it doesn’t stop there. Why was the supplier changed? Old supplier is still in business but someone decided to save a few bucks and in the process send business to his uncle’s machine shop. Still not done. Examine this guy further and see he’s done similar things before and eventually realize he’s not fit for that position. Problem solved and future problems prevented.

This wouldn’t have happened in an old american auto plant. While they were diagnosing the problem, a dozen completed cars could have rolled off the line that didn’t. That’s a lot of money. The american philosophy was keep the line rolling. Worker would have increased the torque and kept going. But hundreds or even thousands of cars might have been affected by this flaw, and at 25k miles they’d start coming in for warranty service. Because where the part is, it requires a lot of time to fix and it causes bad publicity.

What I’m saying isn’t that the borrowers aren’t immoral, what I’m saying is it’s irrelevant and expected. The problem needs to be fixed at the root and in this case from what I can see the root somewhere among the lenders, the investment bankers, the GSE’s and the federal government.

Night -Talk later
Cindy

“The buyers that are bailing isn’t the problem.”

You see, I’m not discussing housing really.
I am discussing people..bankers, buyers. You are missing the point I was trying to make about what I see as a “problem.” It is the entire mentality of greed and moral breakdown that has been exposed through the housing crisis. It has opened my eyes.

The buyers that are bailing isn’t the problem. Like I said garbage in, garbage out. It’s like putting sand, eggs and baking soda in a pan and yelling at your oven for how your cake turned out. Or to put it another way, you can’t blame a plant for growing if you were the one who planted the seed in the first place.

From news articles I’ve posted here before, the banks didn’t have a problem with foreclosures in the past. In fact, foreclosures were good for the lenders. It allowed them to sell the property at a higher price after they had the appraisers artificially inflate the price. Then they’d collect new fees in addition to the profit when selling the foreclosure. In 2001 FHA had to put up new regulations to try and stop this practice. The term “artificially inflate” was in the FHA reports and rules when describing what lenders and appraisers were doing.

The problem isn’t that there are foreclosures, the problems, from the bank’s perspective, is they can’t find enough people stupid enough to keep driving prices up any more.

Banks were throwing money at people to buy homes to keep the housing market afloat. In many cases, buyers would walk away from a closing a few grand richer having been given over 100% financing. Here in NJ, according to the Feb 2008 data from the FRBNY, over 20% of non-prime (subprime and alt-a) mortgages had a second lien given at the time of origination of the primary loan. That’s just bad business and the reason they did that was to keep people buying houses to keep driving up prices so they could keep making money on fees and from sales of mortgage backed securities.

Part of the problem IS the market for selling the loans. When the banks held onto them themselves, they made darn sure they were good…in those days you had to go to a S&L for a home loan.

“More than two thirds of Americans say they favor increasing drilling efforts off America’s costs while only 30 percent disapprove of such action. Those numbers come the same day President Bush publicly scolded Democratic congressional leaders for not putting his proposal to expand domestic oil drilling, specifically on the outer continental shelf, to a vote.”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/30/poll-most-americans-want-offshore-drilling/

I am so freakin’ mad with this bailout package and using tax payers money to bailout greed. There is somewhere a single mother working 60hours a week surviving on one pay check to feed her children and part of her pay goes in bailing out Mozilla and gang.

What a waste..

Yes, it is. As the article stated:

The most famous – or infamous – example: former Gov. Mario Cuomo’s sale of Attica prison to a semi-independent state agency in 1991 to raise $200 million. Many critics noted that the bond sale cost the state hundreds of millions extra over the next few years.

“One gets a little concerned when ‘selling off state assets’ and ‘budget deficits’ get mentioned in the same sentence,” said Elizabeth Lynam, a state policy expert with the Citizens Budget Commission.

“If it’s used to close a budget gap, it’s a one-shot. It’s doesn’t help you in the long run. It’s a fiscal gimmick.”

I agree with New York Times (!) that MediCaid fraud (up to $18 billion annually) should be ended (and it would solve NY budget woes immediately), but I doubt Paterson is ready to confront pro-fraud special interest groups.

unfortunatly any investigation will e a dog and pony show. There is no easy way out of this mess. tthe global mess is not due to housing. housing was but a symptom.

Someone explain to me why people who are working, and living somewhat comfortably, are allowed to collect social security while they’re still working?

I dont get your point …are you saying SS should be on a case-by-case basis? But won’t that encourage people to spend like mad and then quit at 65 or whatever just so they can get SS?

I’m young enough (31) that I’m not factoring SS into my future. Hence investing in the market monthly, 401k, SEP IRA and all that fun stuff.

Maolis is back on the market. Hmmmm …

http://new.gsmls.com/public/detailLst.do?mlsNum=2519720