I know the implication is to the current crisis, but to believe that sub-prime is what caused our current problems is plain incorrect. Sub-prime is to today's economic collapse as the Ferdinand's assassination was to WWI: a mere catalyst, but the system was primed by fundamental issues.
"I know the implication is to the current crisis, but to believe that sub-prime is what caused our current problems is plain incorrect... but the system was primed by fundamental issues."
You've simply stated an analogy rather than supporting facts. This does not move the discusson forward.
From the 1999 article: "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has
been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people..."
And expand them they did. The Community Reinvestment Act was signed into law in 1977 by Jimmy Carter, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress (post-Watergate). It didn't have many teeth then, though, and the damage was minimal. In 1998, Clinton signed into law a version with serious bite. It allowed "community activists" such as ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) to harass any banks they felt weren't "reinvesting" in the "community", blocking future expansions, etc.
You'll notice that, of the 5,700 retail (as opposed to investment) banks in the Federal Reserve System, only about 40 are in trouble. They just happen to be the ones operating in
America's larger cities. Rural and small town banks are
doing fine. Nor are State Banks in trouble. You'll also notice that overseas retail banks are not having problems either. Strange, no?
The retail banks in the big cities, which were subject to
pressure from "community organizers", knew the subprime mortages were garbage and looked around for ways to offload the risks forced
onto them by government, so they bundled the loans up into tranches ("securitization") and sold them to investment banks like Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley,
Northern Rock (British bank, now bankrupt), etc. Now the cancer of risk spread through the system and bodies began showing up at the morgue.
It didn't take long for the fun to start. Superior Bank of Chicago failed in July, 2001. According to a press release from the Office of Thrift Supervision,
"Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale
in the secondary market. OTS found that the bank also suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision."
George Kaufman, a finance professor at Loyola University Chicago called Superior's failure "a tale of gross mismanagement," adding that
"[Superior] was engaged in relatively unethical practices,
fancy-footwork accounting, playing it very close to the edge."
The Pritzker family, including Penny Pritzker, were fined a record $460 million for violations of the RICO Act.
Completely by coincidence, Penny Pritzker is Campaign Finance Chairpersion for a very famous
politician from the same city as Superior Bank. Who used to be a community organizer in Chicago. Who used to do legal work for ACORN. This just happens to be the same politician who received more money
from Fannie and Freddie in the last four years
than any of the other 535 members of Congress.
Of course, you've already seen all this in the mainstream
media, right? Right?
We are about to have the world's first Politically Correct
Recession, boys and girls, and You Are There.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along, move along.
If you keep stretching your pinky to the left Control key (which is used a lot in Emacs), you can actually damage your hand especially with heavy Emacs love. Mapping the Caps Lock to Control is useful because it removes the stretching and, besides, Caps Lock is used infrequently enough to not warrant its being on the home row.
(It also makes Ctrl shortcuts in other applications easier.)
That makes sense if you're using Emacs on a laptop.
However, when you're at your desk, the most awesome Emacs upgrade is to buy a Kinesis Ergo "Contoured" keyboard (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/). It moves all of the control/alt/Apple/Meta keys from all of the random locations to your thumbs and so once you get used to it, it's way, way better than anything else.
The only downside is that it only comes in one size so if you have large hands / long fingers it might be too cramped.
For the skeptics, once you get used to it, it's actually quite easy to go back and forth between the laptop keyboard and the Kinesis. I.e., very little mental dissonance.
There has been some discussion on the importance of a good chair. I find the keyboard a very important component, perhaps as much as good office furniture.
I use to half joke that my disdain for Microsoft is not as extensive as it may appear from one reading what I post (I got a -8 mod a couple days back for saying no real programmer would accept programming under Windows). In fact, I love several Microsoft products and, for me, the three best products they do today are the natural keyboards, the mice and SQL Server. In that order.
I loved the Z-80 softcard too. Would place it above SQL Server if it were still in production.
It's because they decided to focus on their more profitable software business, where they are marginally competent, while their core competency, the one they are unanimously praised for, is hardware gizmos.
That puts control on the home row. You'll be pressing / holding down control quite often in Emacs. (Frequently typed characters should be on the home row for efficiency. That's why Qwerty has semicolon on the home row.)
