economy, the big republican desaster

ngaspero, Thank you for providing your international insight to this situation. It shows me that our international friends are just as influenced by the US mainstream media as our citizens are. I do not know what the media is like in Italy, but here they are very liberal. Which means they are always going to slant away from Republicans and toward Democrats. CNN as much as any other. The truth is that the president has relatively little impact on the economy. The truth is that the Fed and congress have more involvement in the economy. But the media will always blame the Republican. They are very reluctant to place blame when a Democrat is involved. You probably didn't hear much about the several terrorist attacks on our country during Bill Clinton's terms in office. There was no blame placed then. But Bush has been the target f much blame for 9/11. But that is just an example. Our current economic problems are due to all of our political leaders pretending that the problems were not as big as those of us in the financial world were saying they were. While in office politicians don't want to be the bearers of bad news. They don't want to have to act decisively since they could act wrongly and be held accountable for it. So the pretend it doesn't exist. And now that the problems are huge, the place blame rather than offer solutions. So the bottom line is that it is not President Bush's agenda that caused this, it is congress's inaction. What the media wont tell you is that the Democrats hold the majority in congress. Another bit of truth is that President Bush's approval ratings are currently 31.9%. Congress's approval rating is only 20.7%. One other point of fact. As you know Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have just been bailed out by the US government. This is having a huge impact on the mortgage industry and by connection, the housing market. It is the decline of these two markets that played a large role in the Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch problems (and others). Get this. The former CEO of Fannie Mae was on Barrack Obama's VP search team. And Fannie Mae is the Obama's second biggest contributor. I only share that because the strongest links to this economic problem are not to the Republican party or President Bush. Who can we best trust to get this sorted out? Someone who owes his political life to those that had a hand in causing the problem? These are truths that the mainstream US media is not reporting.

The current economic crisis is not the result of the actions of either political party, but is rather a culmination of many years of Americans living well beyond their means and becoming dependent on credit. If there is anything in this that should be blamed on our government, it would be allowing our country to become dependent on foreign oil. That also can not be blamed on just one political party as it has spanned many administrations. Contrary to the attacks aired by Obama, McCain and Palin are not "more of Bush" - not that I think that is a bad thing. Why would they use him as part of their campaign - he's not running for office! Obama seems to focusing his campaign only on attacking Sarah Palin - not on the issues. I don't believe he is the "take-charge" kind of person we need in the White House right now.

But Senator Obama said he was going to raise taxes. How can he possibly win the election saying he's going to raise our taxes when we have a "disastrous" economy? And what do you mean by Republican disaster? Don't you know that about the only Republican in the House right now is President Bush? The Democrats won control of the House in 2006, you should see if from our country, it's like deer caught in headlights. Republicans have been trying to pass bills and laws for years now trying to prevent something like this from happening.

If you are referring to the big Wall Street bailout, I think there is non partisan blame all around on this one. It has its roots in the repeal of a key piece of FDR legislature (Glass Steagall Act) in 1999 when Bill Clinton was president. Not that Clinton had much say in the matter. The new law was initiated by Republicans and approved by a non partisan committee making it impossible to veto. The upstart was the creation of FDIC insured universal banks that were able to make risky investments never intended for FDIC insurance. (eg. in sub prime real estate loans) Basically, everybody thinks they can use their money to create wealth without exposing themselves to any risk. FDIC is now expected to insure investments in subprime mortgages. Initially, it was spelled out that only low interest, low risk accounts in retail banks were fully insured by government but that safeguard was removed in 1999. Henry Paulson is doing what he knows he has to and I expect he is probably one of Bush's more competent appointments. Still, I don't see anybody putting the safeguards back into the system. Politicians from John McCain to Nancy Pelosi are calling for regulations but they are just telling us what we want to hear. Nobody is happy about the gold parachute crowd getting away with billions and nobody wants to see the little guy ruined. I think Democrats and Republicans would agree on this. But more important, who is going to restore the firewall to the system that was removed in 1999? What is in place to protect a run on the banks that could set off another depression?

Our economy can't be blamed on one person and it's going to take more than one person and more than 4-8 years to fix it. we have lived way beyond our means and we have stuck our noses up at people for too long. now we need help and who's going to help us?

Lol your title is priceless. Anyways i think the prez is definitely responsible for the poor economy we have. Some say it may never recover and when that happens they say that many big powerhouse countries might find that the perfect opportunity to destroy the US. Im not jumping to conclusions here just saying what i read. The economy is so messed up but John McCain claims that the economy is sound and there is nothing wrong with it so i guess he is right :D LOL I think both ppeople running for president are underqualified but the better candidate sees to be barrack i guess. Since he actually knows how the country is coming about.

I think private enterprise, fat CEO paychecks and greed were the downfall leading to the current economic crisis. Although I'm not a Bush fan, it seems that these days he gets the blame for everything. This collaspe has been coming for a while. I work in the mortgage business and have seen during the past few years the reckless lending practices of lenders, getting people into more than they can handle. We are all overextended, have too much debt and there is no easy way out. Sadly the government must bail out these lenders to avoid a total collapse of the system, however in order to prevent this it means the government will have to have a "hands on" policy in private enterprise. Government running private enterprise is a total anti-American concept and certainly something people don't want either. It's a very tough situation for whoever steps into the White House next January. It's certainly taking the focus off of the war. I've noticed that even the news media has been keeping the war coverage on the back burner this week.

Ngaspero, First, let me dispel any notion that the current mortgage crisis is in any way the fault of just one party because it is not! The democrats probably shoulder most of the blame although the republicans can't be held blameless either! This started in the Clinton years in the whitehouse and it started as all democrat ideas do; with good intentions. The problem was that congress along with the president and the controller of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, made it possible for almost anyone with a pulse to get a home mortgage! This led to further deregulation which led to the creation of many unscrupulous lenders and mortgage companies! It took this long (about 15 years) for all of this to snowball into what we have today, a national crisis! What the democrats and Barack Obama don't want you to know is that president Bush and his advisers and also John McCain saw warnings of some sort in the economy as early as 2003 and tried to do something about it and congress shot him down! Senator McCain also tried to "head this off at the pass" in 2005 but was also voted down by congress! Amazing isn't it how the people responsible for one of the worst economic crisis' since the great depression want to point the finger at someone else? I have two links to sites which will show you of attempts by Bush and McCain to keep this crisis from happeneing! Here they are: http://sweetness-light.com/archive/bush-mccain-tried-to-reform-housing-finance http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

Well McCain is trying to stay away from Bush because he doesn't want people to think of him as Bush but, that's too late for people that aren't die hard conservatives. When the economy is bad people vote for Democrats so we will have to wait and see what happens.

Hmmm, the Bush administration inherited a budget surplus and government making positive reforms. He has turned the surplus into a record deficit, and it's clear he has more damage to do. He has run "his" administration (he has always been quite possessive about it) into the proverbial ground--just as he did his oil businesses back in Texas. By the way, even Texas too seems to be digging out from (Governor) Bush-era excesses.