Health Care

[Manseed]

Shit just got real.

[chthonic-anemos]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

Your point being? Are you saying these recent protesters have started lynching blacks?

Yes skin heads kill minorities.

Let's be honest here. You're not dumb, you just wanted to post some naked dudes.

[Manseed]

Originally Posted by chthonic-anemos

Yes skin heads kill minorities.

It's good to see more liberals on this board turning into IRB.

[chthonic-anemos]

Originally Posted by Manseed

It's good to see more liberals on this board turning into IRB.

I'm not a liberal but if you think

Originally Posted by I'm Rich Bitch

The Plot to Kill Barack Obama - ABC News

is equal to rainbow parades then you might be retarded.

[GrobbeeTrull2.0]

This just in: Make Love Not War = Lynching and assassination attempts

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

And passing that trillion dollar bailout(lol same cost as TWO wars), appointing that racist "wise latina" to the SC, magically pulling dozens of "czar" positions out of his ass, nationalizing corporations, and other faggotry like nationalized healthcare are anything to scoff at. Bush no doubt did some retarded shit in his 8 years but Obama is already at his level at half a year into his first term.

Bailout part 1, the first 700 billion, was done by Bush when Bush was still in office. Bailout Part 2 + Stimulus came out to another 700 billion total, and the stimulus has actually started working, unlike the Bush bailout part 1 which the banks went through in a couple months and accomplished nothing.

[Ashes Emberblade]

Originally Posted by Mist

Bailout part 1, the first 700 billion, was done by Bush when Bush was still in office. Bailout Part 2 + Stimulus came out to another 700 billion total, and the stimulus has actually started working, unlike the Bush bailout part 1 which the banks went through in a couple months and accomplished nothing.

You're out of touch, like Obama.

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

They aren't comparable because you're comparing effects to intentions.

Let's do the same from my perspective!

George W. Bush toppled a socialist dictatorship, held aloft by a police state, and created a functioning democracy that Iraqis had never before dreamed of. During his tenure he responded to the worst terrorist attack on American soil by quickly destroying al-Qaeda's training camps and base of operation, and further intercepted several plots for further attacks on US soil.

In Obama's 200 days in office he has increased the federal budget deficit to unprecedented levels and overseen the biggest loss in jobs, wages, and GDP since the Great Depression.

There's no bonus for "trying." I'm not going to give Obama kudos for his intentions. This health care reform bill is fundamentally flawed, bad for our economic future, and an incremental step towards greater government control of our lives. I would prefer that Obama just stop "trying."

Except your perspective is fucking retarded. Iraq is an Islamic Republic that could still erupt in civil war at any time with little warning. It has slightly more democracy than Iran, and we've seen how theirs works. The only plots that were intercepted were a shoe bomber and three old guys that wanted to blow up an oil tank at JFK airport, meanwhile, our allies in Europe were attacked by Islamic terrorists 5 times.

Bush increased the deficit to unprecedented levels while he was still in office. Now it's even worse, yes, but what exactly are the Democrats supposed to do, "Uh, we know you guys elected us, but there's no money left to fix anything so we're just gonna go home for the next 4-6 years and hope the whole thing sorts itself out." The stock market crashed while Bush was still in office, job loss was an inevitable repercussion of that, and that job loss has hence slowed down dramatically since the stimulus money started to get out.

PS: You're stupid.

[Agraza]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

You're out of touch, like Obama.

Great rebuttal. A+

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Ashes Emberblade

You're out of touch, like Obama.

Out of touch with what? You're just spouting completely ignorant nonsense. How can you possibly be more out of touch than that?

[Arbitrary]

TARP1 was a godawful piece of shit that didn't even do what it was supposed to do. The second stimulus bill was risky because if the economy was recovering anyway than such actions make the market volatile and foster more bubble generation. I don't think that was the case but it's a standard criticism on Keynesian flavored meddling. Not all the money was spent as well as it could have been and that's always a downer but that's just how Congress works. The system takes terrible bills and great bills and grinds them up until all we get are bill after bill of C- quality legislation.

[Zora]

Originally Posted by Manseed

Good job you found some random idiot who had never debated a thing in her life and put her on hardball.

Score one democrats, am I right?

C'mon, she's hardly "random." She stood up at a televised town hall meeting and read--very emotionally--from her notes to her Senator about how we need to go back to the Constitution the way the framers meant for things to be. And how she didn't want to turn into Russia, etc. Then she agreed to appear on Hardball on CNN. So, yes, you might infer that she could discuss/explain/debate her comments & viewpoints.

[Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Mist

Bailout part 1, the first 700 billion, was done by Bush when Bush was still in office. Bailout Part 2 + Stimulus came out to another 700 billion total, and the stimulus has actually started working, unlike the Bush bailout part 1 which the banks went through in a couple months and accomplished nothing.

Yes because it worked oh so well;
Toxic Loans Topping 5% May Push 150 Banks to Point of No Return - Bloomberg.com

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) –– More than 150 publicly traded U.S. lenders own nonperforming loans that equal 5 percent or more of their holdings, a level that former regulators say can wipe out a bank’s equity and threaten its survival.

The number of banks exceeding the threshold more than doubled in the year through June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as real estate and credit-card defaults surged. Almost 300 reported 3 percent or more of their loans were nonperforming, a term for commercial and consumer debt that has stopped collecting interest or will no longer be paid in full.

The biggest banks with nonperforming loans of at least 5 percent include Wisconsin’s Marshall & Ilsley Corp. and Georgia’s Synovus Financial Corp., according to Bloomberg data. Among those exceeding 10 percent, the biggest in the 50 U.S. states was Michigan’s Flagstar Bancorp. All said in second- quarter filings they’re “well-capitalized” by regulatory standards, which means they’re considered financially sound.

“At a 3 percent level, I’d be concerned that there’s some underlying issue, and if they’re at 5 percent, chances are regulators have them classified as being in unsafe and unsound condition,” said Walter Mix, former commissioner of the California Department of Financial Institutions, and now a managing director of consulting firm LECG in Los Angeles. He wasn’t commenting on any specific banks.

Missed payments by consumers, builders and small businesses pushed 72 lenders into failure this year, the most since 1992. More collapses may lie ahead as the recession causes increased defaults and swells the confidential U.S. list of “problem banks,” which stood at 305 in the first quarter.

Cash Drain

Nonperforming loans can eat into a company’s earnings and deplete cash, leaving banks below the minimum capital levels required by regulators. Three lenders with nonaccruing ratios of at least 6.2 percent as of March were closed last week. Chicago- based Corus Bankshares Inc., Austin-based Guaranty Financial Group Inc. and Colonial BancGroup Inc. in Montgomery, Alabama, each with ratios of at least 6.5 percent, said in the past month that they expect to be shut.

“This is a fairly widespread issue for the larger community banks and some regional banks across the country,” said Mix of LECG, where William Isaac, former head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., is chairman of the global financial services unit.

Ratios above 5 percent don’t always lead to failures because banks keep capital cushions and set aside reserves to absorb bad loans. Banks with higher ratios of equity to total assets can better withstand such losses, said Jim Barth, a former chief economist at the Office of Thrift Supervision. Marshall & Ilsley and Synovus said they’ve been getting bad loans off their books by selling them.

Exclusions

Bloomberg’s list was compiled by screening U.S. banks for nonperforming loans of 5 percent or more, and then ranked by assets. The list excluded U.S. territories and lenders that have already failed. Also left out were the 19 lenders that underwent the Treasury’s stress tests in May; they were deemed “too big to fail” and told by regulators that government capital was available to keep them in business.

Excluding the stress-test list, banks with nonperformers above 5 percent had combined deposits of $193 billion, according to Bloomberg data. That’s almost 15 times the size of the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund at the end of the first quarter.

About 2.6 percent of the $7.74 trillion in bank loans outstanding in the U.S. at the end of March were nonaccruing, the highest in 17 years, according to the most recent data from the FDIC. Nonaccrual loans peaked at 3.27 percent in the second quarter of 1991, during the savings and loan crisis, and averaged 1.54 percent over the past 25 years.

‘Off the Charts’

“These numbers are off the charts,” said Blake Howells, an analyst at Becker Capital Management in Portland, Oregon, referring to the nonperforming loan levels at companies he follows. Banks are losing the “ability to try and earn their way through the cycle,” said Howells, who previously spent 13 years at Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp.

Corus, with more than two-thirds of its loans nonperforming, has the highest rate among publicly traded banks. The company said last month that it’s “critically undercapitalized” after five consecutive quarterly losses tied to defaults on condominium construction loans. Randy Curtis, Corus’s interim chief executive officer, didn’t respond to calls for comment.

Marshall & Ilsley, Wisconsin’s biggest bank, reduced its nonperforming loans last month to 5.01 percent from 5.18 percent after selling $297 million in soured loans, mostly residential mortgages in Arizona, the Milwaukee-based company said Aug. 10.

Deadline for Nonperformers

The bank has “been very aggressive in identifying and tackling credit challenges,” Chief Financial Officer Greg Smith said in an Aug. 12 interview. Smith said 26 percent of loans classified as nonperforming are overdue by less than the industry’s typical standard of 90 days. With those excluded, the ratio would be around 3.7 percent, he said.

Synovus, plagued by defaulting construction loans in the Atlanta area, said nonperforming loans rose to 5.4 percent in the second quarter from 5.2 percent the previous period. Disposals of nonperforming assets reached $404 million in the quarter ended in June, the Columbus, Georgia-based company said.

Synovus is selling troubled loans and will continue its “aggressive stance on disposing of nonperforming assets” as long as the level is elevated, spokesman Greg Hudgison said in an e-mailed statement.

Michigan Home

Flagstar is based in Troy, Michigan, the state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate. Flagstar has $16.4 billion in assets and reported last month that 11.2 percent of its loans were nonperforming; about two-thirds were home mortgages. Flagstar CFO Paul Borja didn’t return repeated calls for comment.

The bank’s allowance for loan losses was 5.4 percent of total loans at the end of the second quarter, compared with 3.3 percent at Synovus and 2.8 percent at Marshall & Ilsley, according to company filings. All three reported at least three straight quarterly deficits.

The FDIC doesn’t comment on lenders that are open and operating and doesn’t disclose which banks are on its problem list. The agency will probably impose an emergency fee on the more than 8,200 banks it insures in the fourth quarter to replenish the insurance fund, the second special assessment this year, Chairman Sheila Bair said last week. The FDIC attempts to sell deposits and assets of seized banks to healthier firms to avoid eroding the fund, said agency spokesman David Barr.

Capital Levels

To determine which banks are most troubled, regulators compare the ratio of nonperforming loans to the percentage of equity a firm has relative to its assets, said Barth, the former OTS economist. A company with 5 percent nonperforming loans and equity of 8 percent is better positioned than one with the same amount of troubled loans and equity of 4 percent, he said.

Flagstar’s equity-to-assets ratio in the second quarter was 5.4 percent, Synovus’s was 8.9 percent and Marshall & Ilsley, which raised $552 million through a stock sale in June, was at 11 percent, according to the banks.

The three lenders that failed last week –– Florida’s First State Bank and Community National Bank and Oregon’s Community First Bank –– all had nonperforming loans above 6 percent and equity ratios below 4.5 percent.

“The nonperforming ratio, in and of itself, should be a great concern,” said Barth, a professor of finance at Auburn University in Alabama and senior finance fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, California. “It becomes even more troublesome when it goes above 3 percent and the equity-to-asset ratio is quite low.”

Toast Time

While 5 percent can be “fatal” for home lenders, commercial real estate lenders may be able to withstand higher rates, said William K. Black, former lawyer at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and the OTS. Commercial loans carry higher interest rates because they’re riskier, he said.

“At the 5 percent range, you’re probably hurting,” said Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “Once it gets around 10 percent, you’re likely toast.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy5@bloomberg.net

[Mist]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

Yes because it worked oh so well;
Toxic Loans Topping 5% May Push 150 Banks to Point of No Return - Bloomberg.com

Did you just link a completely random article? Bush signed the bailout that handed 700 billion to the banks without any preconditions on how they would spend that money, with absolutely 0 help for the rest of the economy.

[Chrisb3]

BBC reported yesterday that the US are using the UK health care system as an example of why not to have free health care?

We pay 50% less for health care than Americans, we are higher up the WHO league table by about 15 places...
And we don't have "death boards" that decide if you can have treatment or not, yet again Sarah Palin is a retard.
The NHS wouldn't leave Stephen Hawking to die either, in fact the NHS is where he got his treatment.
No system is perfect, and we have our fair share of short term problems but it's quite weird to see all your right wing nuts demonizing the UK

I actually found it quite sickening to see Americans saying "why should we pay for other people's health care".
The UK is a very charitable nation, I don't think anyone here who has been healthy 100% of their life cares if they paid a little extra tax to save other people's lives.