More precisely, lack of oversight of the financial industry is what allowed them to cause the past, present and continuing screw-ups.
So far, the only ones being regulated to death are the little guys, like your local RIA, CFP or other financial advisor type. Meanwhile, Wall Street carries on as if nothing had happened.
The new oversight needs to be directed at the big boy level. Complete transparency for all tranches that get packaged as CDOs, CMOs, SIVs, etc.. As it stands now, most packagers of these products don't even know what they own. It's why in 2007 you kept hearing how "such and such firm now believes they have uncovered and written down all the remaining bad debt" items. No one really knew what was in the various tranches, let alone how bad it was going to be.
Any student of todays market has to now realize that the emperor has no clothes. And it's doubtful that he'll be stepping out with his new flashy wardrobe anytime soon.
You're right of course, it's both. I just meant that it's where the problem started.
I used to be a Republican. I voted for Nixon twice (the first time I was old enough to vote!). I voted for Carter, because I wanted to get us away from the problems. But I then voted for Reagan twice. Not because I agreed with his conservative views on everything, but because he was the man for the times. I voted for Bush senior, because he was a moderate to left leaning individual (his campaign coined "Voodoo Economics".
But he badly disappointed me by moving to the right of Reagan on a number of issues. I voted for Clinton twice, though I wasn't too sure of him when he first ran. I voted for Gore, and then Kerry. Both of whom should have won, so that was disappointing to say the least!
I last voted for Obama.
So it can be seen where my beliefs have moved over the years.
But really, it's not me that has changed that much, though I've moved some. It's the parties that have changed more.
The Republicans used to be known as the Rockefeller party. That is, center all the way. The democrats were still the Roosevelt party, left of center.
That's changed.
Now Conservatives rule the Republican party with an iron fist along with the Religious Right. At the same time, Democrats have moved to center. A lot of democrats are what we would have called the Rockefeller Republicans 40 years ago, and Rockeller Republicans are now considered to be leftists by Conservatives.
Even Obama isn't much off center, though Conservatives attempt to paint him as a Leftist.
If Obama is leftist, then Eisenhower was also.
I'm amazed at how some people don't understand what's going on around them, but make pronouncements as though they do.
Perhaps living through all those times, and being politically and socially active helps to allow us to see things more clearly.
I'm a pragmatist, I don't hew to any ideology. I'm much more interested in what works.
The reason why I regaled you with all that was simply to show that unlike what one or two here think, I've got no axe to grind overall. Also because I've seen this unfold over the years, rather than just thinking I know what happened.
It all started with Reagan. His line about regulation was to let the agencies in his words "wither away". He felt that business people knew how to make money and run large enterprises, so what would make more sense that to let them run government as well?
He started the deregulation of the banking industry which led to the biggest banking scandals and collapse since the Depression. He closed down the research into alternative energy and oil shale that Carter had put into place after the oil embargo.
Bush didn't do too much.
Clinton was hampered by the vicious publicity over the attempt to get national healthcare pushed through, something that now, even Conservatives are working for, and lost his majorities in Congress shortly after. He was working crippled for that last 6 years in office.
Nevertheless, both he, and Congress managed to get us out of the major deficits that Reagan got us into with his failed "trickle down" policies.
Of course, Bush just let everything go to pot (and not in a good way.).
He almost destroyed the various agencies with political appointments that were intended to bring them down. He cut spending in regulatory areas significantly. He ignored warnings about banking, mortgages, health issues, global warming, and just about everything that didn't meet his quasi-religious/conservitive agenda.
Phil Gramm, back in 2001, or so, pushed through a bill to prevent the regulation of derivatives. His wife Wendy, pushed another one through that prevented regulating Hedge funds. Two of the major causes of the present problems.
It's a good thing McCain wasn't elected, because his main economic advisor was PHd in Economics Phil (Americans are just a bunch of whiners) Gramm (one shining example of why I think so little of economists in general).
None of this would have happened in the earlier days.
The economic policies of opening up China is what is responsible for the U.S. DEFLATION we are seeing now.
It started happening with the flood of cheap Chinese goods. Then Treasury reduced the prime to stimulate the economy to keep it from going into deflation, caused a real estate bubble and inflation, (which was the goal), inflation is easier to control than deflation.
It was the failed socialist sub-prime housing attempt by Dem. Congress under Bush that made matters much much worse.
Real estate bubbles are a rich persons game of speculation, it's not designed for those who can't afford the loss. (I've been through 2 now, so I know)
After every real estate bubble, there is a post real estate bubble recession. That's a fact of history.
However in this one, because so many middle and poor income people were told they could have a loan when ordinarily they wouldn't qualify.
That was Bill Clintons revisions to the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to accept sub-prime mortgages. (in fact the first Mortgage Backed Security appeared from Bear Sterns in the year after Clinton made those law changes)
The Dem Congress (under Bush) was pushing HUD to push the GSE's: Freddie and Fannie into over-leveraging millions of sub-prime loans. The Dems wanted to be seen as the champions for home ownership, but failed to take a persons credit into account.
Naturally if banks couldn't dump their sub-primes, they wouldn't take them. But Uncle Sam was buying them and dumping them as MBS with BBB ratings. Too many sub-prime mortgages resulted in not enough investors for the BBB's, so they mixed BBB with AAA called them CDO's and gave them AAA ratings.
The world was bilked.
A corrupt capitalism response to irresponsible socialist actions.
Treasury finally had to take control of Freddie and Fannie and that caused the beginning of the end. Deflation came anyway because of the sub-prime housing meltdown. It could have been avoided with responsible lending practices.
Now we head for the Great Depression 2, which would not have been so bad (perhaps a mild post real estate bubble recession) if it wasn't for the sub-prime meltdown.
Again, if the real estate bubble would have remained in the rich persons speculative arena, there would have been little or no post real estate bubble recession.
Getting back to China, they have too many people working too cheap, thus causing the deflation in the US in the first place.
We have effectively given away our chief economy status to them. We will now be dependent upon their economy and they really don't need anything we have.
China caused the oil bubble where our gas was over $4 a gallon, they stockpiled up all the worlds oil pre-worlds fair. Then the day of the fair, stopped cold. Oil dropped like a stone. Sure speculators jumped on the bandwagon for the ride, but wasn't the chief cause.
China was exerting it's new world power with the fair.
In fact it even dropped it's prime lending to the oddball rate 6.66%, milking the effect over that.
China is evil and is practicing economic warfare on Western Nations economies.
In fact one chief economist for another nation in Asia stated "The Chinese don't give nothing back, they just take".
China wasn't going to allow it's economy to be manipulated by the US like the Japanese did when they did what the US asked them to bring their currency value up to the level of the US, resulted in their real estate bubble and ten year recession.
So you see what is going on here. Spreading our debt around.
U.S. of A is presently in danger of losing it's AAA credit rating, the stock market is dying because of the news. We only have coal and bad ass weapons as our chief resource to sell.
Iraq and Afghanistan better be paying plenty, that's all I got to say.
Iraq in oil and Afghanistan in opium to sell to the Chinese.
One thing you have to remember is that Clinton, in a number of cases, had to bend to republican will in de-regulatory areas in order to get any of his own agenda through. While it's true that some of his own team were in favor of it, if a Democratic Congress was in place, it would never have made it out of committee.
If you really think everyone is so intellectually corrupt that their understanding of right and wrong hinges only on whether they are impacted negatively by it, you must be tremendously paranoid of the guy standing behind you on the subway platform.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
But the guy that's been following me around for the past few weeks is really starting to creep me out.
You're right of course, it's both. I just meant that it's where the problem started.
I used to be a Republican. I voted for Nixon twice (the first time I was old enough to vote!). I voted for Carter, because I wanted to get us away from the problems. But I then voted for Reagan twice. Not because I agreed with his conservative views on everything, but because he was the man for the times. I voted for Bush senior, because he was a moderate to left leaning individual (his campaign coined "Voodoo Economics".
But he badly disappointed me by moving to the right of Reagan on a number of issues. I voted for Clinton twice, though I wasn't too sure of him when he first ran. I voted for Gore, and then Kerry. Both of whom should have won, so that was disappointing to say the least!
I last voted for Obama.
So it can be seen where my beliefs have moved over the years.
But really, it's not me that has changed that much, though I've moved some. It's the parties that have changed more.
The Republicans used to be known as the Rockefeller party. That is, center all the way. The democrats were still the Roosevelt party, left of center.
That's changed.
Now Conservatives rule the Republican party with an iron fist along with the Religious Right. At the same time, Democrats have moved to center. A lot of democrats are what we would have called the Rockefeller Republicans 40 years ago, and Rockeller Republicans are now considered to be leftists by Conservatives.
Even Obama isn't much off center, though Conservatives attempt to paint him as a Leftist.
If Obama is leftist, then Eisenhower was also.
I'm amazed at how some people don't understand what's going on around them, but make pronouncements as though they do.
Perhaps living through all those times, and being politically and socially active helps to allow us to see things more clearly.
I'm a pragmatist, I don't hew to any ideology. I'm much more interested in what works.
The reason why I regaled you with all that was simply to show that unlike what one or two here think, I've got no axe to grind overall. Also because I've seen this unfold over the years, rather than just thinking I know what happened.
It all started with Reagan. His line about regulation was to let the agencies in his words "wither away". He felt that business people knew how to make money and run large enterprises, so what would make more sense that to let them run government as well?
He started the deregulation of the banking industry which led to the biggest banking scandals and collapse since the Depression. He closed down the research into alternative energy and oil shale that Carter had put into place after the oil embargo.
Bush didn't do too much.
Clinton was hampered by the vicious publicity over the attempt to get national healthcare pushed through, something that now, even Conservatives are working for, and lost his majorities in Congress shortly after. He was working crippled for that last 6 years in office.
Nevertheless, both he, and Congress managed to get us out of the major deficits that Reagan got us into with his failed "trickle down" policies.
Of course, Bush just let everything go to pot (and not in a good way.).
He almost destroyed the various agencies with political appointments that were intended to bring them down. He cut spending in regulatory areas significantly. He ignored warnings about banking, mortgages, health issues, global warming, and just about everything that didn't meet his quasi-religious/conservitive agenda.
Phil Gramm, back in 2001, or so, pushed through a bill to prevent the regulation of derivatives. His wife Wendy, pushed another one through that prevented regulating Hedge funds. Two of the major causes of the present problems.
It's a good thing McCain wasn't elected, because his main economic advisor was PHd in Economics Phil (Americans are just a bunch of whiners) Gramm (one shining example of why I think so little of economists in general).
None of this would have happened in the earlier days.
You're right of course, it's both. I just meant that it's where the problem started.
I used to be a Republican. I voted for Nixon twice (the first time I was old enough to vote!). I voted for Carter, because I wanted to get us away from the problems. But I then voted for Reagan twice. Not because I agreed with his conservative views on everything, but because he was the man for the times. I voted for Bush senior, because he was a moderate to left leaning individual (his campaign coined "Voodoo Economics".
But he badly disappointed me by moving to the right of Reagan on a number of issues. I voted for Clinton twice, though I wasn't too sure of him when he first ran. I voted for Gore, and then Kerry. Both of whom should have won, so that was disappointing to say the least!
I last voted for Obama.
So it can be seen where my beliefs have moved over the years.
But really, it's not me that has changed that much, though I've moved some. It's the parties that have changed more.
The Republicans used to be known as the Rockefeller party. That is, center all the way. The democrats were still the Roosevelt party, left of center.
That's changed.
Now Conservatives rule the Republican party with an iron fist along with the Religious Right. At the same time, Democrats have moved to center. A lot of democrats are what we would have called the Rockefeller Republicans 40 years ago, and Rockeller Republicans are now considered to be leftists by Conservatives.
Even Obama isn't much off center, though Conservatives attempt to paint him as a Leftist.
If Obama is leftist, then Eisenhower was also.
I'm amazed at how some people don't understand what's going on around them, but make pronouncements as though they do.
Perhaps living through all those times, and being politically and socially active helps to allow us to see things more clearly.
I'm a pragmatist, I don't hew to any ideology. I'm much more interested in what works.
The reason why I regaled you with all that was simply to show that unlike what one or two here think, I've got no axe to grind overall. Also because I've seen this unfold over the years, rather than just thinking I know what happened.
It all started with Reagan. His line about regulation was to let the agencies in his words "wither away". He felt that business people knew how to make money and run large enterprises, so what would make more sense that to let them run government as well?
He started the deregulation of the banking industry which led to the biggest banking scandals and collapse since the Depression. He closed down the research into alternative energy and oil shale that Carter had put into place after the oil embargo.
Bush didn't do too much.
Clinton was hampered by the vicious publicity over the attempt to get national healthcare pushed through, something that now, even Conservatives are working for, and lost his majorities in Congress shortly after. He was working crippled for that last 6 years in office.
Nevertheless, both he, and Congress managed to get us out of the major deficits that Reagan got us into with his failed "trickle down" policies.
Of course, Bush just let everything go to pot (and not in a good way.).
He almost destroyed the various agencies with political appointments that were intended to bring them down. He cut spending in regulatory areas significantly. He ignored warnings about banking, mortgages, health issues, global warming, and just about everything that didn't meet his quasi-religious/conservitive agenda.
Phil Gramm, back in 2001, or so, pushed through a bill to prevent the regulation of derivatives. His wife Wendy, pushed another one through that prevented regulating Hedge funds. Two of the major causes of the present problems.
It's a good thing McCain wasn't elected, because his main economic advisor was PHd in Economics Phil (Americans are just a bunch of whiners) Gramm (one shining example of why I think so little of economists in general).
None of this would have happened in the earlier days.
bwahahahaha, obama's not a leftist? you voted for gore AND kerry?! i'm no fan of republicans these days either but, man, you need some professional help. i hate to break it to you but the government screws up everything it touches. they're all in the pockets of special interests. why anyone would vote to give them more power is beyond me. btw it was the democrats, in the pockets of the financial institutions, that guaranteed the 'sub-prime' loans, which gave them the incentive to give out loans to anything with a pulse.
Comments
More precisely, lack of oversight of the financial industry is what allowed them to cause the past, present and continuing screw-ups.
So far, the only ones being regulated to death are the little guys, like your local RIA, CFP or other financial advisor type. Meanwhile, Wall Street carries on as if nothing had happened.
The new oversight needs to be directed at the big boy level. Complete transparency for all tranches that get packaged as CDOs, CMOs, SIVs, etc.. As it stands now, most packagers of these products don't even know what they own. It's why in 2007 you kept hearing how "such and such firm now believes they have uncovered and written down all the remaining bad debt" items. No one really knew what was in the various tranches, let alone how bad it was going to be.
Any student of todays market has to now realize that the emperor has no clothes. And it's doubtful that he'll be stepping out with his new flashy wardrobe anytime soon.
You're right of course, it's both. I just meant that it's where the problem started.
I used to be a Republican. I voted for Nixon twice (the first time I was old enough to vote!). I voted for Carter, because I wanted to get us away from the problems. But I then voted for Reagan twice. Not because I agreed with his conservative views on everything, but because he was the man for the times. I voted for Bush senior, because he was a moderate to left leaning individual (his campaign coined "Voodoo Economics".
But he badly disappointed me by moving to the right of Reagan on a number of issues. I voted for Clinton twice, though I wasn't too sure of him when he first ran. I voted for Gore, and then Kerry. Both of whom should have won, so that was disappointing to say the least!
I last voted for Obama.
So it can be seen where my beliefs have moved over the years.
But really, it's not me that has changed that much, though I've moved some. It's the parties that have changed more.
The Republicans used to be known as the Rockefeller party. That is, center all the way. The democrats were still the Roosevelt party, left of center.
That's changed.
Now Conservatives rule the Republican party with an iron fist along with the Religious Right. At the same time, Democrats have moved to center. A lot of democrats are what we would have called the Rockefeller Republicans 40 years ago, and Rockeller Republicans are now considered to be leftists by Conservatives.
Even Obama isn't much off center, though Conservatives attempt to paint him as a Leftist.
If Obama is leftist, then Eisenhower was also.
I'm amazed at how some people don't understand what's going on around them, but make pronouncements as though they do.
Perhaps living through all those times, and being politically and socially active helps to allow us to see things more clearly.
I'm a pragmatist, I don't hew to any ideology. I'm much more interested in what works.
The reason why I regaled you with all that was simply to show that unlike what one or two here think, I've got no axe to grind overall. Also because I've seen this unfold over the years, rather than just thinking I know what happened.
It all started with Reagan. His line about regulation was to let the agencies in his words "wither away". He felt that business people knew how to make money and run large enterprises, so what would make more sense that to let them run government as well?
He started the deregulation of the banking industry which led to the biggest banking scandals and collapse since the Depression. He closed down the research into alternative energy and oil shale that Carter had put into place after the oil embargo.
Bush didn't do too much.
Clinton was hampered by the vicious publicity over the attempt to get national healthcare pushed through, something that now, even Conservatives are working for, and lost his majorities in Congress shortly after. He was working crippled for that last 6 years in office.
Nevertheless, both he, and Congress managed to get us out of the major deficits that Reagan got us into with his failed "trickle down" policies.
Of course, Bush just let everything go to pot (and not in a good way.
He almost destroyed the various agencies with political appointments that were intended to bring them down. He cut spending in regulatory areas significantly. He ignored warnings about banking, mortgages, health issues, global warming, and just about everything that didn't meet his quasi-religious/conservitive agenda.
Phil Gramm, back in 2001, or so, pushed through a bill to prevent the regulation of derivatives. His wife Wendy, pushed another one through that prevented regulating Hedge funds. Two of the major causes of the present problems.
It's a good thing McCain wasn't elected, because his main economic advisor was PHd in Economics Phil (Americans are just a bunch of whiners) Gramm (one shining example of why I think so little of economists in general).
None of this would have happened in the earlier days.
The economic policies of opening up China is what is responsible for the U.S. DEFLATION we are seeing now.
It started happening with the flood of cheap Chinese goods. Then Treasury reduced the prime to stimulate the economy to keep it from going into deflation, caused a real estate bubble and inflation, (which was the goal), inflation is easier to control than deflation.
It was the failed socialist sub-prime housing attempt by Dem. Congress under Bush that made matters much much worse.
Real estate bubbles are a rich persons game of speculation, it's not designed for those who can't afford the loss. (I've been through 2 now, so I know)
After every real estate bubble, there is a post real estate bubble recession. That's a fact of history.
However in this one, because so many middle and poor income people were told they could have a loan when ordinarily they wouldn't qualify.
That was Bill Clintons revisions to the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks to accept sub-prime mortgages. (in fact the first Mortgage Backed Security appeared from Bear Sterns in the year after Clinton made those law changes)
The Dem Congress (under Bush) was pushing HUD to push the GSE's: Freddie and Fannie into over-leveraging millions of sub-prime loans. The Dems wanted to be seen as the champions for home ownership, but failed to take a persons credit into account.
Naturally if banks couldn't dump their sub-primes, they wouldn't take them. But Uncle Sam was buying them and dumping them as MBS with BBB ratings. Too many sub-prime mortgages resulted in not enough investors for the BBB's, so they mixed BBB with AAA called them CDO's and gave them AAA ratings.
The world was bilked.
A corrupt capitalism response to irresponsible socialist actions.
Treasury finally had to take control of Freddie and Fannie and that caused the beginning of the end. Deflation came anyway because of the sub-prime housing meltdown. It could have been avoided with responsible lending practices.
Now we head for the Great Depression 2, which would not have been so bad (perhaps a mild post real estate bubble recession) if it wasn't for the sub-prime meltdown.
Again, if the real estate bubble would have remained in the rich persons speculative arena, there would have been little or no post real estate bubble recession.
Getting back to China, they have too many people working too cheap, thus causing the deflation in the US in the first place.
We have effectively given away our chief economy status to them. We will now be dependent upon their economy and they really don't need anything we have.
China caused the oil bubble where our gas was over $4 a gallon, they stockpiled up all the worlds oil pre-worlds fair. Then the day of the fair, stopped cold. Oil dropped like a stone. Sure speculators jumped on the bandwagon for the ride, but wasn't the chief cause.
China was exerting it's new world power with the fair.
In fact it even dropped it's prime lending to the oddball rate 6.66%, milking the effect over that.
China is evil and is practicing economic warfare on Western Nations economies.
In fact one chief economist for another nation in Asia stated "The Chinese don't give nothing back, they just take".
China wasn't going to allow it's economy to be manipulated by the US like the Japanese did when they did what the US asked them to bring their currency value up to the level of the US, resulted in their real estate bubble and ten year recession.
So you see what is going on here. Spreading our debt around.
U.S. of A is presently in danger of losing it's AAA credit rating, the stock market is dying because of the news. We only have coal and bad ass weapons as our chief resource to sell.
Iraq and Afghanistan better be paying plenty, that's all I got to say.
Iraq in oil and Afghanistan in opium to sell to the Chinese.
One thing you have to remember is that Clinton, in a number of cases, had to bend to republican will in de-regulatory areas in order to get any of his own agenda through. While it's true that some of his own team were in favor of it, if a Democratic Congress was in place, it would never have made it out of committee.
I'm new to this site, but I've noticed that threads often go way off topic and stay there. Is this true or just my imagination?
Both.
Both.
I was just sent this from Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/...partner=alerts
If you really think everyone is so intellectually corrupt that their understanding of right and wrong hinges only on whether they are impacted negatively by it, you must be tremendously paranoid of the guy standing behind you on the subway platform.
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
But the guy that's been following me around for the past few weeks is really starting to creep me out.
Aw... forget it. Deleted. (I promised.)
NO
we won't forget your 8 pages long fight with mel. forcing us to read that or those long replies that never really mean anything .
you can't just walk away . get back in here and finish it . you was about to tell us where jimmy hoffa was buried ...
NO
we won't forget your 8 pages long fight with mel. forcing us to read that or those long replies that never really mean anything .
you can't just walk away . get back in here and finish it . you was about to tell us where jimmy hoffa was buried ...
I was foolish enough to commit to PG4G to stop on this topic (but, on this thread only). I will stick to my commitment.
Just so you know, I wrote up and deleted at least two more posts!
I was foolish enough to commit to PG4G to stop on this topic (but, on this thread only). I will stick to my commitment.
Just so you know, I wrote up and deleted at least two more posts!
yes i read them /sadly they were your finest hour .
I'm new to this site, but I've noticed that threads often go way off topic and stay there. Is this true or just my imagination?
Nah, it's just your imagination.
Now, as I was saying.... when you look at the effect of global warming, one must consider the true cause of...
You're right of course, it's both. I just meant that it's where the problem started.
I used to be a Republican. I voted for Nixon twice (the first time I was old enough to vote!). I voted for Carter, because I wanted to get us away from the problems. But I then voted for Reagan twice. Not because I agreed with his conservative views on everything, but because he was the man for the times. I voted for Bush senior, because he was a moderate to left leaning individual (his campaign coined "Voodoo Economics".
But he badly disappointed me by moving to the right of Reagan on a number of issues. I voted for Clinton twice, though I wasn't too sure of him when he first ran. I voted for Gore, and then Kerry. Both of whom should have won, so that was disappointing to say the least!
I last voted for Obama.
So it can be seen where my beliefs have moved over the years.
But really, it's not me that has changed that much, though I've moved some. It's the parties that have changed more.
The Republicans used to be known as the Rockefeller party. That is, center all the way. The democrats were still the Roosevelt party, left of center.
That's changed.
Now Conservatives rule the Republican party with an iron fist along with the Religious Right. At the same time, Democrats have moved to center. A lot of democrats are what we would have called the Rockefeller Republicans 40 years ago, and Rockeller Republicans are now considered to be leftists by Conservatives.
Even Obama isn't much off center, though Conservatives attempt to paint him as a Leftist.
If Obama is leftist, then Eisenhower was also.
I'm amazed at how some people don't understand what's going on around them, but make pronouncements as though they do.
Perhaps living through all those times, and being politically and socially active helps to allow us to see things more clearly.
I'm a pragmatist, I don't hew to any ideology. I'm much more interested in what works.
The reason why I regaled you with all that was simply to show that unlike what one or two here think, I've got no axe to grind overall. Also because I've seen this unfold over the years, rather than just thinking I know what happened.
It all started with Reagan. His line about regulation was to let the agencies in his words "wither away". He felt that business people knew how to make money and run large enterprises, so what would make more sense that to let them run government as well?
He started the deregulation of the banking industry which led to the biggest banking scandals and collapse since the Depression. He closed down the research into alternative energy and oil shale that Carter had put into place after the oil embargo.
Bush didn't do too much.
Clinton was hampered by the vicious publicity over the attempt to get national healthcare pushed through, something that now, even Conservatives are working for, and lost his majorities in Congress shortly after. He was working crippled for that last 6 years in office.
Nevertheless, both he, and Congress managed to get us out of the major deficits that Reagan got us into with his failed "trickle down" policies.
Of course, Bush just let everything go to pot (and not in a good way.
He almost destroyed the various agencies with political appointments that were intended to bring them down. He cut spending in regulatory areas significantly. He ignored warnings about banking, mortgages, health issues, global warming, and just about everything that didn't meet his quasi-religious/conservitive agenda.
Phil Gramm, back in 2001, or so, pushed through a bill to prevent the regulation of derivatives. His wife Wendy, pushed another one through that prevented regulating Hedge funds. Two of the major causes of the present problems.
It's a good thing McCain wasn't elected, because his main economic advisor was PHd in Economics Phil (Americans are just a bunch of whiners) Gramm (one shining example of why I think so little of economists in general).
None of this would have happened in the earlier days.
Agreed to all of the above.
You're right of course, it's both. I just meant that it's where the problem started.
I used to be a Republican. I voted for Nixon twice (the first time I was old enough to vote!). I voted for Carter, because I wanted to get us away from the problems. But I then voted for Reagan twice. Not because I agreed with his conservative views on everything, but because he was the man for the times. I voted for Bush senior, because he was a moderate to left leaning individual (his campaign coined "Voodoo Economics".
But he badly disappointed me by moving to the right of Reagan on a number of issues. I voted for Clinton twice, though I wasn't too sure of him when he first ran. I voted for Gore, and then Kerry. Both of whom should have won, so that was disappointing to say the least!
I last voted for Obama.
So it can be seen where my beliefs have moved over the years.
But really, it's not me that has changed that much, though I've moved some. It's the parties that have changed more.
The Republicans used to be known as the Rockefeller party. That is, center all the way. The democrats were still the Roosevelt party, left of center.
That's changed.
Now Conservatives rule the Republican party with an iron fist along with the Religious Right. At the same time, Democrats have moved to center. A lot of democrats are what we would have called the Rockefeller Republicans 40 years ago, and Rockeller Republicans are now considered to be leftists by Conservatives.
Even Obama isn't much off center, though Conservatives attempt to paint him as a Leftist.
If Obama is leftist, then Eisenhower was also.
I'm amazed at how some people don't understand what's going on around them, but make pronouncements as though they do.
Perhaps living through all those times, and being politically and socially active helps to allow us to see things more clearly.
I'm a pragmatist, I don't hew to any ideology. I'm much more interested in what works.
The reason why I regaled you with all that was simply to show that unlike what one or two here think, I've got no axe to grind overall. Also because I've seen this unfold over the years, rather than just thinking I know what happened.
It all started with Reagan. His line about regulation was to let the agencies in his words "wither away". He felt that business people knew how to make money and run large enterprises, so what would make more sense that to let them run government as well?
He started the deregulation of the banking industry which led to the biggest banking scandals and collapse since the Depression. He closed down the research into alternative energy and oil shale that Carter had put into place after the oil embargo.
Bush didn't do too much.
Clinton was hampered by the vicious publicity over the attempt to get national healthcare pushed through, something that now, even Conservatives are working for, and lost his majorities in Congress shortly after. He was working crippled for that last 6 years in office.
Nevertheless, both he, and Congress managed to get us out of the major deficits that Reagan got us into with his failed "trickle down" policies.
Of course, Bush just let everything go to pot (and not in a good way.
He almost destroyed the various agencies with political appointments that were intended to bring them down. He cut spending in regulatory areas significantly. He ignored warnings about banking, mortgages, health issues, global warming, and just about everything that didn't meet his quasi-religious/conservitive agenda.
Phil Gramm, back in 2001, or so, pushed through a bill to prevent the regulation of derivatives. His wife Wendy, pushed another one through that prevented regulating Hedge funds. Two of the major causes of the present problems.
It's a good thing McCain wasn't elected, because his main economic advisor was PHd in Economics Phil (Americans are just a bunch of whiners) Gramm (one shining example of why I think so little of economists in general).
None of this would have happened in the earlier days.
bwahahahaha, obama's not a leftist? you voted for gore AND kerry?! i'm no fan of republicans these days either but, man, you need some professional help. i hate to break it to you but the government screws up everything it touches. they're all in the pockets of special interests. why anyone would vote to give them more power is beyond me. btw it was the democrats, in the pockets of the financial institutions, that guaranteed the 'sub-prime' loans, which gave them the incentive to give out loans to anything with a pulse.