• 12 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Everyone should meet someone that worked in the mortgage industry pre 2008. The number of things that were not only allowed, but perfectly legal were absurd.

    • appraisal was basically a bribe for any number you wanted.
    • no document loans were far more available for anyone.
    • mortgages had no real chain of custody after sale.
    • there wasn’t any real way to verify the risk of a mortgage security pre 2008.
    • variable rates didn’t have lifetime caps on rates, and reporting the details of how they functioned weren’t required.




  • Bernie should be aware of the war powers act. It’s one of the worse pieces of legislation ever, but it makes the whole declare war thing largely meaningless.

    The act gives a president the ability to perform military actions provided Congress is notified within 48 hours of the action happening. Then the president gets a free 60 days to do whatever without additional approval. Then there’s a further 30 days where forces should be withdrawing if there is no further congressional approval. However, that timeline doesn’t really matter, as the Supreme Court ruled under Clinton that of troops are gone by the time the case gets to them then it doesn’t really matter that the law was violated.




  • Global power doesn’t tend to be a peaceful transition though. If China does make a play to become the dominant force by then, it’s bad news for everyone living right now.

    There are benefits China has that will go away as they transition, which could also cause them to stumble. No longer being considered a developing nation, any poverty will be 100% on them to fix, international agreements will expect them to contribute instead of receiving, emissions will be more heavily scrutinized. Other countries will not be a tolerant about the rampant IP theft and extreme protectionism of their domestic markets.