I think we can both agree the repeal of Glass-Steagall (G-S). The G-S repeal effectuated by the passing of Gramm-Leach-Biley Act (GLB) which was signed into law by Clinton. According to Wikipedia here Democrats agreed to support GLB in exchange for "strengthen provisions of the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act". Therefore, without the desire to force banks into more low income lending, the G-S repeal would never have happened.

rickyp wrote:All right. This wa a first step. But notice, whatever the "motivation" it was the act of deregulation that set things on their course...

rickyp wrote:Low income housing may have been the motivation. But there is no record of any legislation forcing banks to lower lending standards.Only govenrment assistance with down payments.
And it wasn't until non-traditional financial institutions got into place that stinky mortgages got going./quote]
I have to disagree with this as well. The problem with the NYTimes analysis is it doesn't look to the Bush Administration attempt to adjust regulations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I am pretty sure it was MinX on the old Redscape that showed most of the problem loan products orginiated in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and then other banks began to use them as well. Further, I believe he also showed that Fannie and Freddie did this in furtherence of the CRA's minority homeownership goal.

rickyp wrote:The Time analysis does leave out the inital deregulation, perhaps because it starts with Clinton.

Of course but the motivation of the deregulation is the important point.

rickyp wrote:I would point you to the reagan revolution for the motivation. for those on the right. Deregulation for the sake of freeing the markets" Wisdom of the markets. etc. Those who bought that didn't need any justification or motivation whatsoever. They simply believed the nonsense. And they were in the majority. And they would have deregulated everything. Just say the word.

rickyp wrote:But don't think for an instant that Country Wide was motivated by altruism when it set out making subprime, and new structured mortgage loans... They thought they had a way to make an easy buck and the deregulation and creation of CSD's allowed them to believe there were no consequences....

rickyp wrote:The central point one should take away isn't that trying to put poor people into homes was a bad idea... the central point was that freeing an industry to take risks that will eventually implode the system was a bad idea. It doesn't follow that the freeing of the industry HAD to follow the first idea.

The Government forced banks to make loans to people who wouldn't meet normal lending criteria

Perhaps you are correct. However, the discussion was on whether the claim that deregulation to spur low income home ownership was the cause of the housing crisis was revisionist. It is not

rickyp wrote:Until you can offer real proof, I fundamentally disagree. There was no force used, or ever required for them to create new lending requirements.

Neal Anderth wrote:This guy is already a meme, I googled a couple hundred pics he has been inserted into, some are pretty funny.

But some experts on police tactics say, depending on the circumstances, pepper spray can be more effective to de-escalate a tense situation than dragging off protesters or swinging at them with truncheons.

"Between verbalized commands and knock-down, drag-out fights, there's quite a bit of wiggle room," said David Klinger, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer and instructor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who reviewed the pepper spray footage. . . .

Klinger said the officers could have turned to other methods, such as a so-called pain compliance hold, but that would bring its own set of complications. A protester could receive a broken arm, he said, or an officer could pull a muscle.

Charles J. Key, a former lieutenant with the Baltimore Police Department who wrote the department's use-of-force manual, said that officers were clearly within their rights to use it.

After reviewing the footage, Key said he observed at least two cases of protesters actively resisting police. In one, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques, he said.

"What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure," Key said.

“I’d rather be hit with a taser,” says Geoffrey Alpert, professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. “It hurts like hell, but when the electricity goes off, it’s over and done with. The spray is so nasty.” While that may sound extreme, tasers and pepper spray are widely accepted to be on the same level of the Use of Force Continuum, a hierarchy based on recommendations by the National Institute of Justice to govern the extremity of weapons used against a disorderly person. The spectrum ranges from mere police presence, which is enough to scare some people into cooperation, up to the use of lethal force. Of course, the jolt delivered by pepper spray or a taser isn’t lethal, placing both a step below, in a category called “less-lethal force.”

However, the use of less-lethal tactics may sometimes be employed out of order. “It’s so you don’t have to put your hands on someone,” Alpert tells TIME. According to Alpert, who also teaches criminology at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, force with soft and hard hands — essentially pushing and prying people — should come well before the use of less-lethal weapons including pepper spray, tasers and batons.

But what type of situation would spark an escalation in the amount of force needed? “Pepper spray should only be used when there’s a clear threat to officers or severe-enough resistance — essentially, when the only alternative is more extreme force,” says Dr. John MacDonald, professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. “But if the only threat is time, then the best weapon to exercise is patience.”

It may have been time that was the ultimate obstruction in the UC Davis incident. Numerous cameras caught the students sitting in a circle in the middle of the university quad, arms linked and apparently engaged in an act of civil disobedience. While it’s known that the protesters overstayed their welcome on campus — they were told to move their campsite from the area by 3 p.m. but still remained at 5 p.m. when police showed up — video footage shows a majority of them making no overtly threatening gestures toward the authorities. And what about those yelling at police? Alpert invokes the “sticks and stones” proverb to identify the necessary amount of force. “Words don’t justify that kind of treatment,” he says, explaining that even if the protesters were being disruptive, there are additional ways of getting them to disperse without inflaming their eyes — or their tempers. Alpert notes that police are taught how to break up daisy chains of people, which can be done by prying apart people’s arms and legs with a baton.

Why did banks make loans to people who couldn't afford them?