At least Obama's from flyover state
IndyMac Bank was put into receivership by the FDIC because of the bank's focus on mortgages based on lies and no-document loans. The bank is headquartered in California, the west coast. Countrywide Mortgage held by many to be the largest non-GSE (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being the largest GSE's) to be responsible for the subprime and Alt-A mortgage meltdowns was originally headquartered in California, on the west coast. The mortgage initiator was purchased by the Bank of America, once a California institution now headquartered in North Carolina, which is on the east coast. Washington Mutual suffered much the same fate as IndyMac Bank. While not headquartered in California its headquarters in on the west coast in Washington state.
Three of the four states with the largest percentage of housing foreclosures are in the west, California, Arizona and Nevada. The state of California is on the verge of bankruptcy based on a budget shortfall of $41 billion. California is already at the bailout window looking for help. Fly across the country to the east coast and you have Wall Street, enumerating the financial meltdown of all those institutions would take a full page, the SEC, which oversaw nothing, including the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme and the rating agencies, i.e. Standard & Poor's. You also have the fourth state in the foreclosure sweepstakes, which is Florida. Notice anything? The country's problems and the results thereof have their roots in what is commonly referred to as the left coast and the right coast. It is the looked-down-upon rubes of the middle of the country that have to suffer the indignities perpetrated on us by the elitists of both coasts.
Dig a bit deeper and you'll also see that the states at the center of this debacle are run predominately by Democrats. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) may pontificate all he wants on lax regulation of the markets, under the Bush administration but I am sure a search of his campaign funds would find New York institutions at the crux of this mess ponying up large contributions. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut), east coast, is hip deep in a Countrywide mortgage provided to him on highly favorable terms yet he deems himself an expert on resolving the country's financial problems.
Maybe "fly over country" should be given the opportunity to see if we can set things straight since our coastal elitists have proven capable stewards of creating this crisis but show little evidence of being able to get us out of it. One can only hope that our "fly over country" president, Barack Obama, can straighten this mess out. But wait. He's from Illinois and we all know how well things have been running here, with a Democrat-controlled state legislature.
Middle America, what chance do we have.
Steve Sarich
Grayslake