On his show today, Dennis Prager said, “I’ve been blessed with great friends and all of them beat up on themselves at times. Yes, you can do it too much, but that person is going to be a better person than a person who doesn’t.”
Paul Sperry published the book The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession.
Paul Sperry was on Dennis Prager’s radio show today.
Dennis: “A liberal says Wall Street deregulated and irresponsibly packaged irresponsible loans. Conservatives say banks were forced by do-gooders like Barney Frank to give loans to unworthy loan takers. What’s the truth?”
Paul: “Over-regulation of the housing and mortgage market was the problem. It wasn’t deregulation. I try to give the public the other side of the story. The prevailing false conventional wisdom is that Wall Street is to blame. The private sector is an easy scapegoat but the historical record is crystal-clear. I try to provide the other side of the story that was censored from this official government report that just parrots the conventional wisdom, this false narrative. It (the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission) covers up government’s central role in the crisis and frames Wall Street.
“A lot of people may not be aware that there was this 15-month investigation by [Nancy] Pelosi and [Harry] Reid to get to the root causes of the financial crisis. The commission cooked its investigation to help Democrats and their trial lawyer cronies sue Wall Street bankers for mortgage and securities fraud. The whole thing was designed to shake down banks from the get-go. The fix was in.
“The commission chairman was Phil Angelides, former treasurer for the state of California. His chief investigator was on leave from one of these law firms out in California that was pursuing banks and gave over $250,000 to Angelides in his run for the [CA] governorship. They both had serious conflicts of interest and should never have been allowed to run this important investigation. Both of them, along with another commissioner, were in bed with trial lawyers who are suing Goldman Sachs and Countrywide.
“When you see how this disaster was engineered, you realize it was a political scandal now being covered up by these politicians along with their bedfellows in the media.”
“In my investigation, everything pointed back to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD was pressuring Fannie and Freddie to lower their underwriting standards. Fannie and Freddie were at the heart of the subprime scandal.”
Dennis: “Did Wall Street know what lousy loans they were bundling?”
Paul: “Towards the end, they did when everything started falling apart but when the bad subprime loans were being masked by ever-increasing home values, they didn’t pay much mind.
“Those subprime securities based on those subprime loans were considered as safe as Treasuries because they were backed by Fannie and Freddie which had the backing of the U.S. Treasury.”
Dennis: “What about the ratings agencies?”
Paul: “The ratings agencies looked at these as Treasury securities. HUD plunged Fannie and Freddie into this risky subprime market. They got involved in the securities market because they were able to earn credits against these affordable housing quotas that were set by HUD by purchasing not just the subprime loans made by originators but were able to earn credit by purchasing securities that underlay the underlying assets for these risky subprime loans. Then they could get their credits wholesale against HUD’s affordable housing goals. Everything goes back to HUD.”
Dennis: “You can’t package bad loans if the bad loans aren’t made to begin with.”
Paul: “Fannie and Freddie ended up holding almost half of the bad loans that crashed the housing market.”
Dennis: “If Wall Street greed is responsible, what happened to the concept of government greed?”
Paul: “You had some serious radicals who were crafting with ACORN and their clones these reckless housing policies that incentivized perversely the private sector going into this market. Before this, it was very fringe. They avoided the subprime market like the plague.
“Andrew Cuomo at HUD jacked up to 50% all the affordable housing purchases that had to be made by Fannie and Freddie. They authorized them to buy these securities on Wall Street that were backed by subprime loans. You can get credit that way. Fannie and Freddie ended up leading the subprime market that eventually crashed the stock market. HUD was even bragging about this. None of HUD’s statements about its relentless efforts to reduce Fannie and Freddie’s underwriting standards and pushed them into subprime managed to make it into this official report that Obama is pushing out there as the truth.”
Thursday, March 03, 2011 Radio Show
20110303-01 Self-Compassion
Prager H1: Are we too tough on ourselves? That’s what a new study contends. But don’t you have to be tough on yourself to improve yourself?
Thursday, March 03, 2011 Radio Show
20110303-02 New Ideas
Prager H2: Have there been any new ideas about living a better life?.. Dennis talks to Paul Sperry, veteran financial reporter who has written for the NY Post, Wall Street Journal and many other publications. He’s also a media fellow with the Hoover Institution. His new book is The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession.
From amazon.com:
The average American household lost $123,000 in wealth during the financial crisis. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission says Wall Street stole it, appearing to confirm the narrative told by countless politicians, economists, and pundits.
The verdict seems unanimous. In fact, it’s unanimously wrong. The masterminds behind the biggest heist in history were radical social engineers on Pennsylvania Avenue, not financial engineers on Wall Street.
The Great American Bank Robbery offers the first careful and thorough analysis of public policy’s role in the calamity. With stinging clarity, it indicts the real culprits–many of whom have returned to the scene of the crime in Washington. Now they’re planning an even bigger heist in the name of “economic justice.”
Robbery also answers why:
* Asian-Americans weathered the mortgage crisis better than other groups, including whites.
* Alan Greenspan shares blame for the crisis for reasons that have nothing to do with interest rates.
* Minorities accounted for half the new homeownership growth during the housing bubble.
* 25 of the 33 counties with the nation’s highest foreclosure rates are located in California, Florida and Nevada.
* Even nonbank mortgage lenders unregulated by bank anti-redlining laws eased lending standards and waded into the risky subprime market.
* Bankers earned a reputation for lending discrimination, and why they still can’t shake it and, now for the first time, must collect and report data on minority small business lending.
The debate over what caused the crisis is heating up again, as new Republican leaders in Congress call for repealing Democratic financial reforms aimed at Wall Street and dismantling Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which escaped reform.
Veteran financial newsman Sperry’s seminal research and hard-hitting reporting blows the lid off the subprime scandal. Robbery contains more than 50 pages of footnotes, data tables, and charts backing up its numerous revelations.
From WorldNetDaily:
WND Vice President and Managing Editor David Kupelian and “Muslim Mafia” co-author Paul Sperry will be guests today on Sean Hannity’s nationally syndicated radio show.
The two will join Hannity at about 4:05 p.m. Eastern to discuss the Muslim Brotherhood and its threat not only to the Middle East but to the United States.
In a WND column, Kupelian warns of Islams’ “two-pronged attack on the West.”
“One prong is jihad, intimidation, terror. The other is infiltration, seduction and deception. Both have exactly the same goal – the imposition of Shariah on the United States of America and the rest of the world,” he writes.
Sperry is the author of “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America,”, an undercover exposé that penetrated the Council on American-Islamic Relations, documenting the group’s role as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood’s international jihad against the U.S., with the goal of transforming American society from within.
Thursday, March 03, 2011 Radio Show
20110303-03 Whither Wisconsin
Prager H3: Dennis talks to popular talk show host on WTMJ Radio, Milwaukee about the crisis in Wisconsin… Why are a million people following Charlie Sheen on Twitter?.. Dennis reviews a speech in 1985 by late Jeanne Kirkpatrick, this week’s Imprimis segment… Daniel Henninger, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, just got back from Viet Nam. He and Dennis compare notes.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011 Radio Show
20110302 – 01 Fighting Evil
Prager H1: A leading Yemeni cleric calls for the overthrow of the government and the establishment of an Islamist state. Good people may start revolutions; bad people often take them over… The only Christian minister in the Pakistani cabinet was murdered today… Two American servicemen were murdered in Germany by a Kosovo national. Since Kosovo is 90% Muslim, it is likely that this was an act of terror…
Wednesday, March 02, 2011 Radio Show
20110302 – 02 Male/Female Hour: Checking In
Prager H2: Should a husband call his wife everyday during the day as a sign of affection? And does it work the other way round? Would the husband welcome it or be annoyed?
Wednesday, March 02, 2011 Radio Show
20110302 – 03 Frankfurt Terror Attack
Prager H3: Two Americans have been murdered, two wounded in Frankfurt, Germany. Early reports suggest that the killer shouted “Allah hu Akhbar” while he fired his gun… A teenager wins the right to wear a t-shirt critical of homosexuality. Dennis is against themed t-shirts at high schools – period… Christians are being persecuted in Muslim countries. Do Christians care?.. If you’re on the Right and you’re effective, like the Koch brothers, you will be demonized by the media.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011 Radio Show
20110301 – 01 Slander
Prager H1: Last week Chris Matthews slandered Mike Huckabee, accusing him of promoting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Dennis talks to the former governor about the charge… A UK court rules that a Christian couple can’t foster children because they won’t promote homosexuality in the home… You are anti-science if you don’t fully buy into Global Warming, according the NY Times.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011 Radio Show
20110301 – 02 Foster Care
Prager H2: Dennis continues his discussion of the court in the UK banning a Christian couple from raising foster children… Consumer Reports says that the Chevy Volt is a dud… Dennis is not optimistic about a rosy outcome for the Arab Middle East…When conservatives hold strong convictions, they win.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011 Radio Show
20110301 – 03 Ultimate Issues Hour: Do Not Favor the Poor
Prager H3: Dennis examines an important, but rarely cited verse in the Bible – do not favor the poor in judgment (Leviticus 19:15). This is the fifth in Dennis’s series explaining the relevance of the Bible.
Monday, February 28, 2011 Radio Show
20110228-01 A King’s Ransom
Prager H1: Dennis congratulates the winner of last night’s Academy Award for Best Picture, The King’s Speech, a movie which he thoroughly enjoyed. Will Hollywood make more movies like this or more silly, special effects movies?… Why aren’t police evicting protestors from the state capital in Wisconsin?… David Letterman is the paradigm liberal. When he hears the facts, as does during an interview with Rand Paul, he’s flummoxed…
Monday, February 28, 2011 Radio Show
20110228-02 Only in America
Prager H2: Dennis and Hugh Hewitt, his talk show colleague, discussed religion last night at a public event. Dennis summarizes… Arizona is considering legislation which would allow students over 21 and professors to carry concealed weapons. The professors are aghast…
Monday, February 28, 2011 Radio Show
20110228-03 Reasons for Pessimism
Prager H3: DDennis is not sanguine about the chances for democracy sprouting forth any time soon in the Arab Middle East. Gaza is a good case in point. Since they were elected, Hamas has closed down bars, movie theatres, imposed speech and dress codes. And not held any new elections… Dennis talks to Michael Ledeen, senior scholar at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, about the latest from Iran and the Middle East.
Friday, February 25, 2011 Radio Show
20110225-01: What a Lousy Country We Live In
Prager H1: Diane Sawyer highlights this startling fact in her prime time newscast: the US doesn’t provide paid maternity/paternity leave for all its citizens. Sweden does. But we don’t. Somehow this has become a human rights issue and the US is sadly deficient in Diane’s enlightened view… Democratic Ohio Senator, Sherrod Brown, says that the ability for public service unions to given millions of dollars to elect the officials with whom the unions negotiate their contract is a moral issue. He’s right. It’s immoral.
Friday, February 25, 2011 Radio Show
20110225-02: Happiness Hour: Easily Offended
Prager H2: If you’re easily offended it’s very hard to be happy. People are always hurting you. And, it’s not easy to be happy around easily offended people.
Friday, February 25, 2011 Radio Show
20110225-03: Open Lines
Prager H3: Per usual, callers set the agenda. Issues raised include: why does Dennis like Christians so much; what one question would Dennis want to ask an atheist; why did Dennis’s parents name him Dennis; where does Dennis get his values.
