Fox & Friends' Carlson allows guest to misrepresent speech to claim Obama engaged in "class warfare"
SUMMARY: On Fox & Friends, Gretchen Carlson allowed Steve Adubato to misrepresent President Obama's February 24 address to Congress in order to claim that Obama engaged in "class warfare." After Adubato suggested that Obama did not refer to people who "bought houses they shouldn't have bought because they can't afford them," Carlson responded: "Good point." In fact, contrary to Adubato's suggestion, Obama did refer to people who "bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway."
During the February 25 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson allowed author Steve Adubato to misrepresent President Obama's February 24 address to a joint session of Congress in order to claim that Obama engaged in "class warfare."
After Carlson played a clip from Obama's address, Adubato, the author of What Were They Thinking? Crisis Communication -- the Good, the Bad, and the Totally Clueless, claimed, "There it is. Listen, I hate to call it class warfare. It's class warfare." Adubato later asserted that Obama is "smart enough to know that you can't say negative things about the people, even though a lot of people made the bad loan -- a lot of people bought houses they shouldn't have bought because they can't afford them." Carlson responded: "Good point." In fact, contrary to Adubato's suggestion that Obama did not mention people who "bought houses they shouldn't have bought because they can't afford them," Obama stated in his address that "[p]eople bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway."
From Obama's February 24 address to a joint session of Congress:
The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.
In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.
From the February 25 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
CARLSON: Let's talk about another part of the speech that you thought worked, because when he talked about the banks, which a lot of people have a lot of anger about right now, here's what he said.
OBAMA [video clip]: I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you. I get it. ... That's what this is about. It's not about helping banks. It's about helping people.
STEVE DOOCY (co-host): All right, sir.
ADUBATO: There it is. Listen, I hate to call it class warfare. It's class warfare.
DOOCY: Sure.
ADUBATO: He's saying, "Listen" -- and the banks have screwed up. The banks have not given out the credit that they should after they got that TARP money -- but here's the thing: Where are people getting their money? From the banks.
He's smart enough to know that you can't say negative things about the people, even though a lot of people made the bad loan -- a lot of people bought houses they shouldn't have bought because they can't afford them.
CARLSON: Good point.
ADUBATO: It's not the people, it's the banks. It's not the people, it's the CEOs. They took all the money they shouldn't have.
Listen, he's actually correct to a degree, but he's smart enough to know that you draw that line down the middle and say, "I'm with the people; I'm not with the banks." It's good rhetoric. It's good theater. It played well.
DOOCY: All right, there you got analysis on how he performed.
I have to wonder... has anybody collected the stats on how many troubled mortgages were given to people who "knew" they couldn't afford the house and lied on their applications?
On the flip side, how many people were mislead by the lenders... perhaps told that the house would go up in value enough that they could use the equity to refinance and make up the difference?
I think those facts are relevant.
Or, how about a study of people who at the time they bought their house they could afford it, and then circumstances surrounding their income and ability to pay changed.
Exactly. I strongly suspect that the number of people who fall into the alleged "deadbeat" category is pretty small.
How about a study of insurance companies totaling an asset, making a check out to the bank, and the bank not bothering to do their job and just signing the check over to the business making the claim rather than using the check to pay off the bank loan associated with the asset? And then getting all indignant when the business subsequently defaults on that loan?
ADUBATO: It's not the people, it's the banks. It's not the people, it's the CEOs. They took all the money they shouldn't have.
Did I miss something about this quote, last time I checked it was the people not paying their mortgage. If they had not taken out loans they could not pay, it is their fault. Yes agree their were bad folks pushing bad loans, but you still had to agree to them, there was not a gun to their head saying either sign or be shot!
"If they had not taken out loans they could not pay, it is their fault."
Well, it's not that simple. True enough, the flashpoint of this crisis rests in the high mortgage default rate. The reasons why these people are defaulting are probably as diverse as the people themselves. Maybe some lied about their income, maybe some were "flippers" who got caught in a declining market, maybe some were truly misled by the lenders.
That's the flashpoint, but the accelerant that turned the mortgage problem into a worldwide financial bonfire is found in Wall Street's ravenous appetite for CDOs, and the rating agencies who inexplicably rated these investment AAA when they clearly were not.
Nerzog, the banks should have said no. The biggest issue I have with most of these banks is that they were intimidated by groups and lawyares willing to sue if they were not lending out money to certain individuals. If that person could prove they could afford the house, then yes they deserve the loan, but if the bank could show that the individual had either a bad credit rating, or could not prove steady income, then the banks should have just said no.
Intimidated by lawyers, a claim you have yet to prove. Your link yesterday was about a lawsuit against banks for not giving out loans to minorities even though they could prove they had the same economic means as white people who were getting loans. When you can cough up a case showing otherwise let us know, we're waiting with baited breath...
From the poem "Cruel Clever Cat":
Snoopy, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
Now that's the way to wait with "baited breath"...those darn cats are too clever.
That's why I like you wes! You know me so well.
But I wouldn't exactly call mark "nice"! ;)
"intimidated by groups and lawyers"
Nice Replutocrat talking point. Unfortunately, it's mostly bullsh*t. Wall Street's greed is what drove this train off the tracks, not "groups and lawyers".
Mark,
The reality is that the number of loans made (which are now in default) because of government pressure is miniscule. It would be nice if assigning the blame were that simple because it would be much easier to fix.
If they had not taken out loans they could not pay, it is their fault. Yes agree their were bad folks pushing bad loans, but you still had to agree to them, there was not a gun to their head saying either sign or be shot!
If YOU decide to loan someone money, don't you think YOU should figure out whether they can pay you back or not BEFORE making the loan?
This pathetic attempt to place ALL the blame on folks who took out mortgages defies COMMON SENSE, since it's the bank that will not get paid if they make a bad loan.
If a bank, who's responsible for their depositors money, can't determine a persons ability to repay a loan, they SHOULDN'T be in CONTROL of their depositors money!!!!!!!!!!
I see this all the time from the cons together with the banks being FORCED to loan to unqualified applicants. Seems to me, that the lenders (who are experts I would think) can't properly vet applicants then maybe more oversight is needed.
I understand in Canada they changed their laws to stipulate lenders cannot lend to people in a "no money down" home purchase and the mortgages can't be ammortized for a period longer than 35 yrs.
That's Canuckastan for ya.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/09/mortgage-rules.html
http://theshiningcityblog.com/2008/09/25/barney-frank-in-2003-frannie-mae-freddie-mac-a-okay/
Right, you dismiss things from "liberal" sources and I 'm supposed to swallow this tripe? Please.
And as far as freddy/fanny goes, it's been pointed out that the vast majority of sub-prime loans came from entities that weren't freddy/fanny and weren't subject to the same oversight as banks.
Today's sub-prime mortgage situation has its roots in the failure of market-based restraints on the riskiness of loans that lenders could make. Before securitization, sub-prime mortgage lenders retained the loans that they originated and, therefore cared deeply about credit quality. Following the rise of securitization, bond insurers constrained subprime lenders from making unreasonably risky loans. The bond insurers did so through their pricing decisions and through limits on their appetite for risk. Later, sophisticated investors from the mainstream MBS area started taking credit exposure to sub-prime mortgage ABS by purchasing subordinate tranches from uninsured deals. Like the bond insurers, they were experts in mortgage credit risk and that expertise was reflected in their risk appetite and pricing behavior.
However, starting in 2004, CDOs and CDO investors became the dominant class of agents pricing credit risk on sub-prime mortgage loans. Their assessments of risk were based on a different approach than those of the bond insurers and traditional investors whom they replaced. The CDOs essentially drove the bond insurers and the traditional subordinate investors out of the market. The departure of the bond insurers and the traditional subordinate investors left a void, because the CDOs were less discriminating and selective in allowing high risk loans to be included in securitizations. In the absence of restraints, lenders started originating unreasonably risky loans in late 2005 and continued to do so into 2007.
http://www.securitization.net/pdf/Publications/Sub-prime_Problem_8Jan08.pdf
Pointed out by whom, you? The Democrats? That the Democrats were not behind stopping regulation of Freddi and Frannie? Just sad you beleive this, would you like us to roll the tape. Johhny roll the tape.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxMInSfanqg
Ah, once again the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 rears its head. Yes, Democrats were against it. Why? Because it was another Republican boondoggle, a DE-regulation bill dressed up as regulation. Don't believe me? READ the text of the bill and discover this gem:
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“SEC. 205. EXCLUSION FROM CERTAIN SECURITIES REPORTING REQUIREMENTS.
(a) IN GENERAL- The Federal Home Loan Banks shall be exempt from compliance with--
(1) sections 13(e), 14(a), 14(c), and 17A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and related Commission regulations; and
(2) section 15 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and related Commission regulations, with respect to transactions in the capital stock of a Federal Home Loan Bank.”
Read between the bull and you’ll notice the chief purpose of this bill was to form an agency OUTSIDE the constraints of the 1934 SEC act, including exemption from Section 15 which governs FRAUD in the regulation of securities brokers and dealers. The Democrats killed this abomination because it was deregulation disguised under a diaphanous veil of “Regulatory Reform”, two perfectly helpful and decent words used in the title of a bill designed to do the opposite. How typical Orwellian of the GOP. Clean Skies Initiative, anybody?
Randy
Please excuse the copy and past GIGO after the colon.
Randy
By RENAE MERLE
The Washington Post
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
WASHINGTON — Many homeowners who have been given a break on their troubled mortgages quickly end up in trouble again, a growing problem that is bedeviling efforts to stem rising foreclosure rates.
A recent study by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that more than 50 percent of troubled homeowners had missed at least one payment six months after a lender modified their loan, and lenders and other researchers report similar default rates on modified mortgages.
Pearleane, Personal Responsibility something that seems to be leaving American on daily basis, so let me you ask you this, so if the banks who you say are the bad guy here, redoes a persons loan and the person again defaults on the loan, who fault is it then? The bank has tried to help and people are still defaulting.
Wouldn't you agree that its kind of hard to repay a loan when you've LOST YOUR JOB?
Why would he care? He thinks that person should sell off everything they own to pay it back, and if it isn't sufficient, they should lose their home. As long as it isn't him personally, he'll fight for that tooth and nail. Expect some claim about how he's got money, or something else, that will somehow prove he will never fall into the same category though.
Mark, it's funny you mention responsibility.
You seem to forget that many loan modifications took place BEFORE we had massive unemployment. There were 1.9 MILLION JOBS lost in the final 4 months of 2008 which made a total 2.6 MILLION JOBS lost in 2008.
Using just a little commons sense thinking, if you don't have a JOB, you can't pay your modified mortgage.
And just think.........IF banks had done THEIR JOB........NO bad loans..........No bad loans............NO financial meltdown...............NO housing meltdown.
And NOW those same banks who made BILLIONS off of THEIR bad loans want BILLIONS to CTA?
And YOU want to discuss personal responsibility?
OR Pearlene if the homeowner had done theirs and read he Loan Documents ....Loan Documents ..... Load Doucments..... they would have releized they could not afford a 500K home. By tour logic, there are only 2.6 million defaulted then loans then, only those that lost their jobs defaulted?
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com senior writer Last Updated: December 9, 2008: 5:11 PM ET
The report, which will be released in full next week, covers nearly 35 million loans worth a total of $6 trillion - or 60% of all primary mortgages in the United States.
I could be wrong here but based on your numbers but 17 Million people did not lose their jobs in the last quarter of 2008. So these folks that defaulted had a job and still defaulted.
If you had read just a little bit more, you would have that in some cases the banks made the same mistakes they had made before:
Markbfoot199, you just got owned.
Wow...so Craig are you saying that Mark took a quote out of context to push his own narrow agenda? I am shocked! I wonder where he learned to do that?
Also, this "creative quoting" doesn't even take into account shedding of jobs that occured after many of the loan modifications (as other posters have pointed out).
Craig, so you say that the homeowner whom now knows that they are having problems paying their mortgage, now thinks they have the money to do so? Just read the loan documents, if you can not pay the monthly payment, then do not sign. So it is not the persons fault for signing the paper AGAIN?
What is the alternative Mark? Not signing the loan and being foreclosed on? If my monthly payment was $1000 a month and I couldn't afford that and the bank agreed to modify my loan to say $800 a month I would sign on the dotted line because now I have to come up with $200 dollars less a month; and even if I couldn't afford the modified agreement it at least betters my chances that I might be able to make the payments. Contrast that with the alternative: I tell the bank I can't afford the $800 payment either and I am foreclosed on. I'm all for personal responsibility, but don't you think we should help our neighbors that have fallen on tough economic times stay in their houses?
I'm just saying that the responsiblity for defaults on modified loans is often shared by both borrowers and lenders just as it was in the case of the original loans.
I think I lot of people were gullible and they just wanted to own a house. That said, I don’t think we should be helping people who purchased a house they couldn’t afford.
Well, there's another aspect involved. Did all of these people really know they couldn't afford the house? How many were convinced by the lenders that they really could afford it by using exotic mortgage configurations?
One example is known as the "Negative Amortization" loan. In essence, you make a smaller payment than the minimum each month, and the difference is added to the principle. The theory is that the house will appreciate so that you can refinance later and use your equity to pay down the principle.
Now, how many self-delusional home owners would come up with something like that? Somewhere around zero. The lenders thought up that stuff.
Clearly, time and space don't permit listing the things you've "missed", little fella.
Feel free to cough up just who and what was forcing these banks to lend to unqualified borrowers.
Take your time. Like this gop-slop spew about Jimmy Carter's CRA, you ain't goin' nowhere.
who and what was forcing these banks to lend to unqualified borrowers.
That's an easy one. GREED was "forcing" them and the transfer of risk through the securitization of mortgages allowed them to sleep well at night.
JW, Please list the things I missed. So what I will cough up for you is a simple question. When the individual signed the loan document, did they have a gun to their head? Was there someone there forcing them to sign? The answers are NO! I know in your mind everyone should own a home and that type of thinking is what got us into this mess. Now, with Obama going to take away all advantages of owning a home, you will see even more folks defaulting on loans. Now take your time with this one, it will take you a while to know the answer. IF you were to buy a product that does not gain value, does not offer any tax incentives to own, but instead it cost you more to maintain and upkeep, you have to pay yearly taxes on and is owned by a government bank. WOuld you buy it? Why , not incentive to own when you could just rent for a lower cost. This is were Obama is taking homeownership, down.
I can recall, from personal experience, that to get a loan from a bank, I had to prove I didn't need the money.
Also, when I bought my house on Long Island in 1969, I could only get a mortgage that was twice my annual income. Of course, that was 40 years ago.
Mad Dog, you had to prove you didn't need the money? Lost on that one.
When we bought our first home, we couldn't even qualify at about 1.8 x annual income from a financial institution. Luckily for us, a private lender and the home seller stepped in. How things have changed in 40-45 years!!! If those same rules had been followed for the past dozen or so years, home prices wouldn't have gotten so high and the defaults would be way down.
I remember when Adubato was sane.
He use to be on our local PBS.
Class warfare from the Democrats? Big surprise!
Yes, anyone pointing out inequities is engaging in class warfare.
Warren Buffett is on record saying "Of course there's class warfare, and my class has been winning all along."
Maybe the lunatic-fringe likes of Steve Adubato or some other fixed news nitwit can set him straight on how the economy works.
Don't you mean class envy rather than inequities?
Whats to envy? Always wearing a mask, maintaining an rigid image? Having peers whose fondest dream is to transfer all of your resources to them. Keeping up with the very rich Jones? Life in a stiffilling bubble.
Most of us would settle for much less. A livable wage. A chance to not to see our children turned into serfs. A sense of being within and part of our comunities. Having a voice and a place for it to be heard.
Wow - that's quite a leap. So you think anyone that sees an unequal society can only be envious? Just wow.
Nonsense. Who would be envious of not having to work till they die?
Randy
Looks like it's gonna be a long eight years for you, Oskie boy.
Gee, that's a shame.
Oh, I hope it's a long eight years, would certainly like time to start slowing down a little, the past 16 years have spun by so fast.
...with the smooth delivery, etc.
Wasn't he great...? I'm so glad we no longer have to listen to a President who had trouble finishing a sentence.
I'm just glad no one unplugged the telepromter.
And Bush never read from a teleprompter? Ever? Yet in spite of a teleprompter, Bush managed to sound like the village idiot talking to us like WE are the village idiot.
Randy
10 minutes late, eh? From the C-Span website:
And that's 2006. I'm sure Republicans were ducking down in their seats to avoid shaking Bush's hand.
Actually, I think he was about 10 minutes late entering the Chamber, the start of the speech was even later.
I don't think so. I remember looking at the clock moments before the start of the speech when Jim Lehrer said the speech would be about fifty minutes, and did the math and figured Obama would finish around ten (as I remember it was eight or nine after).
Moreover, I didn't notice anything different from previous SOTU speeches. The coverage began at the top of the hour. After some brief opening comments by Lehrer, Obama was announced, entered, and gladhanded his way across the chamber before beginning the speech.
And even if I remember wrongly, it's still a petty swipe, grouchy.
I've noticed for years now that the REPUBLICANS have always been accusing the DEMS on the "class warfare" issue when ,in reality it is them( the REPUBLICANS) practicing it.
It's not class warfare - it's just actually looking at class in a more realistic way. I have been wishing some attention would be paid to bringing back a strong middle class, and having that as the American Dream rather than the bankers and bonuses. I guess that's somewhat what Obama was talking about in his speech. Read a great essay on "Strengthened Middle Class" by Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Amy Traub in this book: Thinking Big, there's a podcast on the same at that site.
Oh my - you seem confused. I bet by "his group" you mean ACORN. And as for people making choices didn't the lenders make choices? Like to lend an amount of money more than a home was worth?