Matt Yglesias

23 Responses to “Questions Answered”

1. El Cid Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 8:49 pm

   Actually, although I’m no accountant or auditor, so maybe M2M should always be kept, or not, I think the movement conservatives are against it because they hate and despise all sorts of rigid accounting models such as Sarbanes-Oxley, launched after Phil Gramm’s Enron financial terrorism, which regulators impose upon corporations to try to rein them in from their worst scams.

2. Tristero Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 8:51 pm

   And the other five percent are simply wrong.

3. rapier Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 9:23 pm

   Modern corporate accounting is often absurd and rarely makes any logical sense. It’s full of things which are nonsensical and counter intuitive. It’s a joke. It’s a cesspool.

   Among the several million foreclosures to come are many so called Option ARMS. They are adjustable rate mortgages giving the borrower the option of making payments which don’t even cover the interest cost much less touch the principal. In other words each month they fell further behind.

   Indy Mac, WaMu and Wacovia were stuffed with this stool. That wasn’t the cause of their demise however because in fact as the borrowers fell further underwater they took profits on the amount the borrowers were falling behind. They were booking earnings right up to their last days on this stuff.

   First it must be understood that a loan is an asset. Then throw in that all mortgage lenders were allowed to book all the ‘profits’ from their long term loans immediately. (Every penny of ‘profit’ for all the now forclosed mortgages has already been booked, the ‘earnings’ used to give big pay to the execs and workers of the lenders) The accounting ‘logic’ allowing non paid loans, loans going underwater, backwards, was that these amounts were simply new loans, to be booked.

   Let’s not get into the Enron accounting at all the money center banks and investment banks. It would make you cry.

4. James Gary Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 9:39 pm

   …Then throw in that all mortgage lenders were allowed to book all the ‘profits’ from their long term loans immediately.

   Are you sure the niggers weren’t involved? Because back in the Carter administration, they were gettin’ mighty uppity with all that money the banks were forced to give them.

5. Bahrad Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 9:41 pm

   Can we actually just call people who think that giving black people mortgages is why we’re in this crisis in the first place are racists?

   Movement conservatives who espouse this view that somehow policies to encourage home ownership forced the creation of weird derivatives and other products and overleveraging of every commercial sector make me physically ill. I can usually stomach the National Review folks, but their intellectual and moral bankruptcy in pursuing this line of argument is a disgrace to them and any form of conservatism except for rank racism. That they would only refer to urban areas and not exurbs is abominable.

   Calling them charlatans and dullards gives them too much credit.

6. kafka Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 9:42 pm

   “…the conservative movement is, at this point, 85 percent dullards and 10 percent clever charlatans…”

   But maybe 10 percent is all it takes. After all, the “progressive” Democratic Congress is about to ship billions of your children’s money off to Wall Street.

7. JohnH Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 9:42 pm

   It’s natural in America to assume that P. T. Barnum defined the only alternatives, which Matt states succinctly. And the large numbers he assigns the sucker category rings true. But it’s still worth a second look at a student of another culture, Eric Hoffer in The True Believer.

8. roublen Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 10:05 pm

   Am I in the funhouse? Enron used mark-to-market accounting, yet Kevin uses it as an example of why to keep M2M.

   Anyway, everyone should read this great comment by Jane_in_Colorado:

   http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/10/mark_to_movement.html#comment-167162

9. Craig Says:
   October 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm

   85% plus 10% is only 95%.

   As the old joke goes………there are 3 types of people in the world. Those who can count….and those who can’t.

10. JRVJ Says:
    October 1st, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    Roublen,

    Great, great link.

    Matt, please read up on this so you have a better understanding of the issue.

    This is not your strong suit, and one thing I particularly liked in your prior blogging is that you were willing to broach information different from your usual biases.

11. Mike in MI Says:
    October 1st, 2008 at 11:13 pm

    Oh the irony (you might say hypocrisy – and I’d agree) of Republicans.

    Minorities who misrepresented their income and assets to secure mortgages caused the economic crisis.

    Corporations can now misrepresent the values of their mortgage assets in order to solve the economic crisis.

12. joe from Lowell Says:
    October 1st, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    That they would only refer to urban areas and not exurbs is abominable.

    Right. As if cheap houses in the hood were the bedrock of the lending industry. As if the housing bubble was created by mortgages on workers cottages built in 1903.

13. John from Concord Says:
    October 2nd, 2008 at 7:15 am

    “My adversaries like this st00pid idea because they are all st00pid” is hardly worthy of you or your position, Matt. I don’t have the answer to Kevin’s question — though I’ll ask around today; I work with some people who might know — but it’s a serious one worth serious discussion.

14. rea Says:
    October 2nd, 2008 at 7:42 am

    My adversaries like this st00pid idea because they are all st00pid” is hardly worthy of you or your position

    Well, youv’e got that wrong. A big part of our problem is that since 1980 or so, the Republicans have been able to talk nonsense on the national stage and get away with it. See, for example, “supply side economics”. Long, detailed explanations of why such ideas are silly simply make it seem like they are serious, debatable ideas.

    What this country needs is a few more of these clowns getting hooted off the national stage, pelted by rotten tomatos . . .

15. Just Dropping By Says:
    October 2nd, 2008 at 9:00 am

    85% plus 10% is only 95%.

    The other 5% were raptured.

16. Peter Vince Says:
    October 2nd, 2008 at 9:57 am

    A quote from Zizek:
    One cannot but recall here a witty formula of life under a hard Communist regime: Of the three features—personal honesty, sincere support of the regime and intelligence—it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive.

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