AG Swap

Emily got to be the model for the outfit I made for the AG swap. I knitted the scarf and hat then sewed the blouse and jeans. The poor thing needs some shoes, but I think maybe I'll pass on that. We do have a pattern, but I don't think I have time or supplies.

Charlotte Mason quote

We read the following in school this week. It struck me that when we think the worst of someone that "worst" often comes out. Why not have high expectations instead?

"Sympathy is an eye to discern, a lever to raise, an arm to sustain. The service to the world that has been done by the great thinkers––the poets and the artists––and by the great doers––the heroes––is, that they have put out feelers, as it were, for our Sympathy. A picture or poem, or the story of a noble deed, 'finds' us, we say. We, too, think that thought or live in that action, and, immediately, we are elevated and sustained. This is the sympathy we owe to our fellows, near and far off. If we have anything good to give, let us give it, knowing with certainty that they will respond. If we fail to give this Sympathy, if we regard the people about us as thinking small, unworthy thoughts, doing mean, unworthy actions, and incapable of better things, we reap our reward. We are really, though we are not aware of it, giving Sympathy to all that is base in others, and thus strengthening and increasing their baseness: at the same time we are shutting ourselves into habits of hard and narrow thinking and living."

From Ourselves Improving Character and Conscience by Charlotte Mason

Entering a quilt give away

http://pigtailsandsnails.blogspot.com/2008/10/quilt-giveaway.html

I'm entering this give away. But please don't enter because that lessens my chances of winning. : )

Encouragement

This week's Marriage Memo began this way:

Where Is Your Trust?
Dennis Rainey
October 13, 2008
Are any of you a little weary of bad news right now?
For the last month, and especially during the past few weeks, negative news about our economy has battered us unrelentingly. The October 10, 2008 edition of the Wall Street Journal, for example, began with a huge headline: “Market’s 7-Day Rout Leaves U.S. Reeling.” Other headlines last week included, “Crisis Threatens Defense Programs,” “Economists Expect Crisis to Deepen” and “Searching for a Silver Lining: Prices Drop, Taking Spirits With Them.”
That last one is truly an understatement.
How much bad news can you take? Have any of you turned off your television or pitched the newspaper to the side and said, “Enough”?
But this is more than just bad news—it hits us personally. At times like this, it’s natural for us to be worried. Many of us are counting on our investments for helping our children with college and for living expenses in our later years.
At times like this, we need some perspective. Last week I received an email from Stephens, Inc., an investment firm in Little Rock, that included a memo written by W.R. “Witt” Stephens after the stock markets fell on “Black Friday” in October 1987. Witt Stephens has since passed away, but the firm thought it was appropriate to revive his memo, saying, “His wisdom and good advice lives on.”

In order to read Mr. Stephens's memo and the rest of the article, click on the following link. Due to copyright issues I'm not allowed to put in on my blog. Please read it.

http://www.familylife.com/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=dnJHKLNnFoG&b=3781137&ct=6087127

AG knitting

When you take this yarn...
And this yarn...
And put them together...
You get this. It's a scarf for the AG sewing swap. It's probably hard to see the colors as well as in person, but I love the way they combined.

History of the current economic mess

I received the following in an email from a friend.

Dear Friends,

I am sounding an alarm! For the life of me, I cannot figure out why this is not being discussed on the media or why conservatives leaders are not making their case: Most of America leans conservative and THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!!!! The following is a condensation of a series from the Investor's Business Daily explaining 'What Caused the Loan Crisis':

1977: Pres. Jimmy Carter signs into Law the Community Reinvestment Act the foundation and cornerstone for the impending disaster.. The law pressured financial institutions to extend home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify.

The publicized premise: Home ownership would improve poor and crime-ridden communities and neighborhoods in terms of crime, investment, jobs, etc.

The Results: Statistics bear out that it did not help.

How did the government get so deeply involved in the housing market?
Answer: Bill Clinton wanted it that way.

1992: Republican representative Jim Leach (IO) warned of the danger that Fannie and Freddie were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the principals and the stock holding few.

1993: Clinton extensively rewrote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's rules turning the quasi-private mortgage-funding firms into semi-nationalized monopolies dispensing cash and loans to large Democratic voting blocks and handing favors, jobs and contributions to political allies. This potent mix led inevitably to corruption and now the collapse of Freddie and Fannie.

1994: Despite warnings, Clinton unveiled his National Home-Ownership Strategy which broadened the CRA in ways congress never intended.

1995: Congress, about to change from a Democrat majority to Republican, Clinton orders Robert Rubin's Treasury Dept to rewrite the rules. Robt. Rubin's Treasury reworked rules, forcing banks to satisfy quotas for sub-prime and minority loans to get a satisfactory CRA rating. The rating was key to expansion or mergers for banks. Loans began to be made on the basis of race and little else.

1997 - 1999: Clinton, bypassing Republicans in Congress, enlisted Andrew Cuomo, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Dev elopement, allowing Freddie and Fannie to get into the sub-prime market in a BIG way. Led by Rep. Barney Frank and Sen. Chris Dodd, congress doubled down on the risk by easing capital limits and allowing them to hold just 2.5% of capital to back their investments vs. 10% for banks. Since they could borrow at lower rates than banks their enterprises boomed.

With incentives in place, banks poured billions in loans into poor communities, often 'no doc', 'no income', requiring no money down and no verification of income. Worse still was the cronyism: Fannie and Freddie became home to out-of work-politicians, mostly Clinton Democrats. 384 politicians got big campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie. Over $200 million had been spent on lobbying and political activities. During the 1990's Fannie and Freddie enjoyed a subsidy of as musch as $182 Billion, most of it going to principals and shareholders, not poor borrowers as claimed.

Did it work? Minorities made up 49% of the 12.5 million new homeowners but many of those loans have gone bad and the minority homeownership rates are shrinking fast.

1999: New Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers, became alarmed at Fannie and Freddie's excesses. Congress held hearings the ensuing year but nothing was done because Fannie and Freddie had donated millions to key congressmen and radical groups, ensuring no meaningful changes would take place. 'We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage our credit and interest rate risks,' Fannie CEO Franklin Raines, a former Clinton official and current Barack Obama advisor, bragged to investors in 1999.

2000: Secretary Summers sent Undersecretary Gary Gensler to Congress seeking an end to the 'special status'. Democrats raised a ruckus as did Fannie and Freddie, headed by politically connected CEO's who knew how to reward and punish. 'We think that the statements evidence a contempt for the nation's housing and mortgage markets' Freddie spokesperson Sharon McHale said. It was the last chance during the Clinton era for reform.

2001: Republicans try repeatedly to bring fiscal sanity to Fannie and Freddie but Democrats blocked any attempt at reform; especially Rep. Barney Frank and Sen.Chris Dodd who now run key banking committees and were huge beneficiaries of campaign contributions from the mortgage giants.

2003: Bush proposes what the NY Times called 'the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago'. Even after discovering a scheme by Fannie and Freddie to overstate earnings by $10.6 billion to boost their bonuses, the Democrats killed reform.

2005: Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan warns Congress: 'We are placing the total financial system at substantial risk'. Sen. McCain, with two others, sponsored a Fannie/Freddie reform bill and said, 'If congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole'. Sen. Harry Reid accused the GOP ;of trying to 'cripple the ability of Fannie and Freddie to carry out their mission of expanding homeownership' The bill went nowhere.

2007: By now Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee over HALF of the $12 trillion US mortgage market. The mortgage giants, whose executive suites were top-heavy with former Democratic officials, had been working with Wall St. to repackage the bad loans and sell them to investors. As the housing market fell in '07, subprime mortgage portfolios suffered major losses. The crisis was on, though it was 15 years in the making.

2008: McCain has repeatedly called for reforming the behemoths, Bush urged reform 17 times. Still the media have repeated Democrats' talking points about this being a 'Republican' disaster. A few Republicans are complicit but Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats, regulated by Democrats, largely run by Democrats and protected by Democrats. That's why taxpayers are now being asked for $700 billion!!

If you doubt any of this, just click the links below and listen to your lawmakers own words. They are condeming!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68D9XrqyrWo&feature=related#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIgqfM5C8lY#

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9juJr8CSY4&feature=related#

Postscript: ACORN is one of the principle beneficiaries of Fannie/ Freddie's slush funds. They are currently under indictment or investigation in many states. Barack Obama served as their legal counsel, defending their activities for several years.

Dreams

For my dreaming friend.

"Some dreams and wishes, I believe, are of the dormant, time-released variety. They aren't forgotten over many years or through many changes in life. They don't shrink during their hibernation. They simply wait to come true when the dreamer and the wisher need to believe all over again." p. 1

"That's when I understood that sometimes a hibernating dream or dormant wish must be ushered out of its cavelike sleeping chambers and nudged right up to the cliff's edge of possibility. It must take a deep breath and step off the edge into nothing but untamed air. In that risk-taking moment, the wish just might discover its wings and fly." p. 2

From Sisterchicks Go Brit! by Robin Jones Gunn