Monday, March 5, 2018

Chaos After Trump

From Laurie
Here is another opinion piece that I found interesting and a little depresiing in its predictions:

The Chaos After Trump

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know that things will get much better after Trump. He is a symbol and a symptom of our national decline, not just a cause. His supporters were certainly see his departure as a form of coup the result of a system rigged against him and them.

--Hiram

Sean said...

In terms of the future, the actions of Mitch McConnell are much more significant than anything Trump has done *to this point*. When Democrats someday take back the Senate, their incentives are going to be to run it with sheer partisan ruthlessness.

John said...

I would expect no less.

With our 2 primary tribes catering to their fringe elements.

Sean said...

Of course, Democrats are lousy at "sheer partisan ruthlessness" so things might not change much. They have had no strategy on dealing with Trump's appointments (Cabinet and judicial). They shut down the government, then ended up getting next to nothing for it. Heck, just today, 16 Dem Senators voted for a bill that undoes some key elements of Dodd-Frank.

John said...

Of course they did, banks give to DEMs also.

Remember how Hillary made out like a bandit with some help from her banker friends.

If you think it is going to help banks. You may want to invest here.

Sean said...

It's going to help banks until the next crisis (now likely to be a lot sooner than before). Even worse, changes in reporting requirements in the bill will make it virtually impossible to determine if banks are engaging in racial discrimination in the mortgage market.

Anonymous said...

To say Trump is catering to a fringe element is an insult to a fringe element.

--Hiram

John said...

I disapprove of racial discrimination...

However I am not sure how to identify it when there are so many other related factors that go into deciding to borrow money to a person.

Poor, low education, single parent households do make bad risks.

John said...

Hiram,

Trump caters to Trump... Maybe he hears weird voices as he sleeps.

Sean said...

"I am not sure how to identify it when there are so many other related factors that go into deciding to borrow money to a person."

That's why the data that was required to be collected was important -- including credit scores for the applicants, loan-to-value ratios, etc. It allowed you to control for those factors when you did the statistical analysis. Now that 85% of banks will no longer have to provide this data, though, you're not going to have enough data to be able to make comparisons.

John said...

This does seem unwise...

TP Bank Bill

"Housing discrimination law is already notoriously difficult to enforce. Plaintiffs must make exhaustive shows of data-driven evidence to get a court to see how they were denied credit that was made available to others with no superior qualifications but a different demographic tag. That data is already difficult to obtain. The Senate bill would ensure that most of it stops being generated at all.

The bill ends Dodd-Frank requirements for housing lenders to track the credit scores, loan-to-value ratios, and other key metrics associated with the mortgages they make, provided the lender is small enough that it makes 500 or fewer loans per year. The logic behind the eased data tracking rules for small lenders is that a lender who keeps his own skin in the game has no incentive to deceive customers and therefore doesn’t need to be policed for discriminatory practices.

But six out of every seven banks and credit unions in the country would qualify. The end of data collection on markers of discriminatory lending would negate everyone’s ability to make a discrimination case against the other categories of lenders — the big boys who are not, according to the public sales pitch here, supposed to be getting any favors off of Congress in this legislation. Someone trying to sue one of the 15 percent of banks who does have to keep tracking discrimination data would find it nearly impossible to draw vital comparisons in a statistically valid way if there is no data for the lending done by the other 85 percent of the banking business."

John said...

NYT The Departures Continue