Just to be clear, the Bush White House ultimately admitted that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was both made, and hung, at the behest of the administration. Of course, they tried to blame it on the sailors when it became obvious just how premature the banner, and Bush's speech, actually were.
I read recently that they are debating whether, or not, to hang the banner in the Bush Library. Personally, I believe that it belongs there. Because, while the message conveyed certainly didn't apply to events in Iraq, it most certainly has applications here at home.
By setting in motion a train of events that culminated in a disastrous financial crisis, the Bush administration laid the groundwork for an unprecedented right-wing assault on this country's social-welfare system. If the economy continues to deteriorate, we will see spending cuts to programs previously thought to be untouchable. Not defense spending or aid to Israel, mind you. But, all of the so-called "entitlement" programs that serve to soften the sharp edges of our capitalist economy will be targeted.
To put it in much cruder terms, Grover Norquist's wet dream will become our collective nightmare...
Once again, Bush takes the blame?
ReplyDeleteFor over half a century the wheels have been put in motion for the crisis we suffer today.
I would agree that Bush failed to stop the disaster, and in many ways accelerated its arrival; however, it was precisely the policies of the left, that President Bush allowed to continue, and often supported, that has done this to us.
The ridiculous notion of universal home ownership, the insane belief that the printing of money and easy credit increases wealth, and the unsustainable ponzi schemes run by the Federal government known as "social programs".
Do you place any blame on those who promoted the Community Reinvestment Act? How about Chris Dodd or Barney Frank?
You can take a piece of paper, whether it be a stock certificate, bond, or currency, and pretend it is worth whatever you wish. You can trade it back and forth among friends and actually give it the appearance of great value. But if the underlying falth and/or credit of whatever that paper represents is nonexistent, eventually the pyramid base will become smaller that its peak, and it will fall.
Charles Ponzi's family should sue anybody who uses the term "Ponzi Scheme" to describe this system, it is damaging to his name, as it is far worse than anything Ponzi ever devised.
I've noticed that a favorite line-of-attack among conservatives lays the blame for the subprime mess at the feet of Democrats like Dodd and Frank. I will concede that these men certainly deserve some share of the blame, most particularly for their opposition to tighter lending requirements. Ostensibly, they were championing the people who had trouble qualifying for a traditional mortgage, but in reality they were doing the bidding of Wall Street.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the lead of predatory non-bank lenders, such as Countrywide, venerable Wall Street investment houses completely lost their collective minds. Absent Wall Streets insatiable appetite for debt that it could bundle and securitize, the whole mess would never have happened in the first place. You want to talk about a "Ponzi Scheme". Well, I have one for you. How about bundling thousands of bad loans together, getting Moody's to slap a tripe A rating on it, and then peddling it to unsuspecting investors across the globe?
The role Dodd, Frank, and others played was that of bit players. Yes, they did enable the crime, but so did many others. Starting with Alan Greenspan, a man who should have known better, but apparently didn't.
The purpose of bundling was not to "bundle thousands of bad loand together", it was, more precisiely to tie bad and good loans together to cloak the risky paper by wrapping in inside the good paper.
ReplyDeleteThe left always want to blame business for doing exactly what business is supposed to do: earn a profit!
In the absence of profit, there really is not much of a point in building a business or investing in one.
The governemnt forced banks to write bad loans to losers who should have remained renters. If a bank decined dead-beatts, they were accused of "red-lining".
If a business is forced to write bad agreements by a government (and Jessie Jackson), and that same government decides also to start guaranteeing much of that paper, how can you blame those seeking profit for taking advantage of the system.
A business has no conscience, and to expect such is not naive, it is just plain stupid.
If you rub a bloody steak all over your body and proceed to dive into a shark-infested pool, you would become a laughing stock when blaming the sharks for any injuries that might occur.
The governemnt's involvement was, and is, far more than just a "bit part". They are the pusher and supplier.
Wall street firms simply did what they had to to earn as much as possible in order to compete with one another. It's that simple.
When the Democratic party stops setting out massive salt-licks, the deer will eventually stop feeding in their yard.
To blame poor people, who were given mortgages under the worst possible terms, for the financial crisis that unfolded in 2007-2008, simply does not add up. In any event, most of the mortgages issued during the peak years of the real estate boom did not even go to home buyers. They were either refinances of existing mortgages, or they were being given to speculators who had no intention of ever living in the houses they were buying. Fraud was rampant at every level of the process.
ReplyDeleteMortgage-backed securities became literal "financial instruments of mass-destruction". Surely you are familiar with Derivatives? Credit default swaps? How about Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)?CDOs Squared? All of these wonderfully exotic things traded virtually without any regulations whatsoever. Because each and every attempt to impose some sort of oversight was met with ferocious resistance from the financial services industry, and that resistance was led by none other then the Fed Chairman himself Alan Greenspan.
When lenders held the mortgages that they issued, the rates of default were almost insignificant. It wasn't until someone realized that these loans could be sold, that the potential for a crisis like the one we just experienced became real. I will not defend the GSEs, because their existence was a huge part of the problem. The "implicit" government guarantee of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused no end of grief. But, that sorry state of affairs was a fully bipartisan mess. I fail to see how you justify putting all the blame on the Democrats. Wasn't it Bush 43 who launched what he grandly called "The Ownership Society".