http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/17/news...ion=2008111705

Bush really fouled things up. It will probably take a couple terms to
get America back on track.

wrote:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/17/news...ion=2008111705

Bush really fouled things up. It will probably take a couple terms to
get America back on track.

Not to worry. Obama will wave his magic johnson on January 20 and all will be well
with the world.

wrote:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/17/news...ion=2008111705

Bush really fouled things up. It will probably take a couple terms to
get America back on track.

This economic mess is the result of 25 years of Voodoo Economics; to
blame an idiot like Li'l Bush is to ignore the failings of Raygun
Reagan, Herbert Herbert Bush, and Bubba Clinton; corporate whores one
and all.

On Nov 17, 6:05*am, wrote:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/17/news...y/?postversion...

Bush really fouled things up. *It will probably take a couple terms to
get America back on track.

Heil Hitler! (get usedto it!)

CNN? - bwaHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!

The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities

http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_...on_dollar.html

sehr verboten

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson093008.html
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archive.../09/021644.php

Bankrupt "Exploiters"

Pt.1
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/T...upt_exploiters

Pt.2
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/T...oiters_part_ii

Who is to blame?

http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2...-to-blame.html

The recent heads of Fannie and Freddie were political appointees,
mainly by Democrats: Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick, and Jim Johnson
- all Obama advisors.
__________________________________________________ _______________________

Dispelling The 'Deregulation' Myth

A dubious and dangerous idea seems to be gaining strength — that
government caused the financial crisis by giving capitalism free rein.
If anything, it hasn't done enough of that.

OK, we'll say it if no one else will: Thank heaven for Gramm-Leach-
Bliley. If you've been listening to the fulminations from Congress and
the campaign trail, you know that we're talking about the 1999 law
that dismantled the Depression-era barriers between commercial and
investment banking.

Democrats largely supported it at the time, and one of their own, Bill
Clinton, signed it. Now they frame it as a Republican bill that helped
send the nation on the path to perdition.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said it's time to roll it back: "The
system of regulation of these integrated banks has failed, and it is
clear that much stronger firewalls are needed." Majority Leader Harry
Reid — one of 90 senators who voted for the bill in its final version
— took off after its co-sponsor, Phil Gramm, who Reid said "was
responsible for deregulation in the financial services industries that
paved the way for much of this crisis to occur."

Maybe they know better, but they just can't resist kicking Gramm, who
was dumped from John McCain's campaign back in July after suggesting
that America had become "a nation of whiners." You don't scold voters
in an election year, and Democrats still seem to think they can score
points from Gramm's gaffe.

This is no way to start a serious policy debate. And to suggest that
the free-market principles embodied by Phil Gramm in his Senate career
are at the root of the current financial crisis is not only dubious,
but also dangerous. If people are convinced that capitalism is the
problem, they'll accept a regulatory regime that sharply pulls in its
reins, shifting power from business owners to union bosses such as
Sweeney.

So it's time for some fact-based discussion of Gramm-Leach-Bliley and
the whole policy trend called "deregulation."

First, that bill didn't make regulation go away. It modernized the
rules to fit the realities of the financial markets. Washington
doesn't always get the rules right, but in this case it did.

Also, Gramm-Leach-Bliley didn't take down the firewalls between
deposit-based banking and investments. Banks can't play the stock
market or trade credit default swaps with your savings account.
Investment and banking operations run under one corporate roof, but
otherwise stay separate.

So why did banks and investment houses get into so much trouble? It
will take a long and exhaustive post-mortem to answer that question
fully, but one point is already clear: They made mistakes that had
nothing to do with the 1999 law.

Commercial banks threw lending standards out the window in their rush
to get new business. Like S&Ls of the 1980s, they would have gone wild
without Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Washington, if anything, egged them on,
but not because of free-market dogma. Banks and mortgage brokers were
pumping up the homeownership numbers in America, and politicians were
eager to take credit for that.

[Who is to blame?]
http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2...-to-blame.html
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...06370789279709
http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/541234
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/T...upt_exploiters
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/T...oiters_part_ii
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1906.cfm
http://www.demographia.com/db-overhang.pdf

Wall Street, meanwhile, became a victim of its own innovation. It
created new classes of derivative investments that spread — and,
through leverage, amplified — the risk from the subprime mortgages
produced by the banks. A new multitrillion-dollar market emerged
almost overnight, lacking in transparency and reliable price signals.
With their asset values in doubt, investment banks lurched toward
insolvency.

If regulators failed here, it wasn't because of policies adopted years
before. It was more of the same story that has played itself out over
and over in modern finance: Innovation races ahead of the rules.
Crises tend to take almost everyone by surprise — including the major
players as well as the regulators.

Careful study in the aftermath can lead to smart policies that cushion
the blows of future shocks, but it doesn't prevent them entirely. Nor
should it. Capitalism needs some room for trial and error, bringing
out new ideas and testing them in adversity.

In this respect, Gramm-Leach-Bliley has turned out to be smart policy
indeed. By repealing the rule against banks owning investment firms,
it has led to at least two crucial mergers — JPMorgan Chase absorbing
Bear Stearns and Bank of America merging with Merrill Lynch. Morgan
Stanley may be the next investment house to find shelter in a well-
capitalized commercial bank.

You can spot the theme he By taking down an outmoded firewall, the
law is helping the financial industry cope with a once-in-a-lifetime
crisis. Far from being the cause, this instance of deregulation, or
whatever you call it, is part of the cure.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...06716557967194

The Real Culprits In This Meltdown

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, September 15, 2008 4:20
PM PT

Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic
financial turmoil on the market. But if it's dysfunctional, Democrats
during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of
subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and
specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration,
which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism,
that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped
create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like
a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered
institutions.

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they
had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that
sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was
either that or face stiff government penalties.

The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President
Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-
intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership.
And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime
loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but
"predatory."

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the
secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities
traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton
and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this
slow-motion financial train wreck.

And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-
governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the
real estate market in America.

As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999
at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank,
looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the
time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.

Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick,
padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.

Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he
and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.

In the end, Fannie had to pay a record $400 million civil fine for SEC
and other violations, while also agreeing as part of a settlement to
make changes in its accounting procedures and ways of managing risk.

But it was too little, too late. Raines had reportedly steered Fannie
Mae business to subprime giant Countrywide Financial, which was saved
from bankruptcy by Bank of America.

At the same time, the Clinton administration was pushing Fannie and
her brother Freddie Mac to buy more mortgages from low-income
households.

The Clinton-era corruption, combined with unprecedented catering to
affordable-housing lobbyists, resulted in today's nationalization of
both Fannie and Freddie, a move that is expected to cost taxpayers
tens of billions of dollars.

And the worst is far from over. By the time it is, we'll all be paying
for Clinton's social experiment, one that Obama hopes to trump with a
whole new round of meddling in the housing and jobs markets. In fact,
the social experiment Obama has planned could dwarf both the Great
Society and New Deal in size and scope.

There's a political root cause to this mess that we ignore at our
peril. If we blame the wrong culprits, we'll learn the wrong lessons.
And taxpayers will be on the hook for even larger bailouts down the
road.

But the government-can-do-no-wrong crowd just doesn't get it. They
won't acknowledge the law of unintended consequences from well-
meaning, if misguided, acts.

Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more
interference in the market will solve the problem their policies
helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional
wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-
government solutions.

While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a
home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and
tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of
billions in subprime bilge.

Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government's
fingerprints all over it.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArti...06370789279709

wrote:

As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999
at Fannie Mae, for example, he used it as his personal piggy bank,
looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the
time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.

I suspect you didn't write this yourself.

$20 million/year was the going price for a top-tier CEO during the time
in question. Are you jealous?

"RHF" wrote in message
...
OSDD - On 20 JAN 2009 The Baracking© Escalates :

Baracking© of the Obama Presidency :
The Obama Depression To Be Long and Painful, Economists Say

The present depression started before Obama was elect!
Obama does not become president until Jan. 20 2009!

Baracking© The Obama Regime : A For Profit Corrupt
Criminal Socialist Political Enterprise
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.r...e63e0b06a8d24f

Hatelful propaganda!

The Obama Gang of Thieves : Biden, Emanuel, Hillary?
.. . . [The Baracking© of the Obama Presidency]
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.r...f37db6f5a0f572

Hatelful propaganda!

The Baracking© of the Obama Presidency has begun :
Bring-on the Ugly Dogs of Fear and Hate ~ RHF
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.r...f37db6f5a0f572

He isn't evn president yet!

OSDD - On 20 JAN 2009 The Baracking© Escalates :

Baracking© of the Obama Presidency :
The Obama Depression To Be Long and Painful, Economists Say

Baracking© The Obama Regime : A For Profit Corrupt
Criminal Socialist Political Enterprise
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.r...e63e0b06a8d24f

The Obama Gang of Thieves : Biden, Emanuel, Hillary?
.. . . [The Baracking© of the Obama Presidency]
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.r...f37db6f5a0f572

The Baracking© of the Obama Presidency has begun :
Bring-on the Ugly Dogs of Fear and Hate ~ RHF
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.r...f37db6f5a0f572

"Bill M" wrote in message
. ..

The present depression started before Obama was elect!
Obama does not become president until Jan. 20 2009!

Well, let's not get hysterical. This is not yet a "depression"! When
unemployment hits 25%, then you can call it a "depression". This is the
more-or-less standard issue "end of a 2 term Presidency" recession.
Clinton inherited one from Bush 1. Bush 2 inherited one from Clinton.

Even Carter's 1980 numbers of 8% unemployment, 20% interest rates and 13%
inflation was still a recession, not a "depression".

I wassssss sittin in Miami,,,,,,,, drinkin blended Whissy
downnnnnn,,,,,,,
cuhulin

On Nov 17, 7:05*am, wrote:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/17/news...y/?postversion...

Bush really fouled things up. *It will probably take a couple terms to
get America back on track.

This is a once in a century event;

-Some suggest stocking up on dry food;

a years worth of supplies.

For investments

BEARX