Originally Posted By fkurucz <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_13814523" target="_blank">http://www.denverpost.com/busi...13814523</a> Looks like things are gettings so dire that they've given up on the spin doctoring. Welcome to the new normal.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper "...at some point people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy...". Really? Do you really think people might START losing confidence in the US Economy? Gee, that would be terrible if that happened since the confidence is so high now! (Sorry, but that just struck me as funny...and sad at the same time.)
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy For me, it's actually refreshing to hear rhetoric like this. Remember how the last administration completely denied there were problems in the economy right up until the point where Lehman Brothers failed and the whole system spun out of control? Remember the other presidential candidate stating emphatically that the fundamentals of the economy were strong in the middle of economic collapse? At least we're not in denial anymore. You can't fix problems that you don't even acknowledge.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "Looks like things are gettings so dire that they've given up on the spin doctoring. Welcome to the new normal." OR................. This is just a warning to be careful and not to get too carried away, that this is a long and tedious process. I swear to God, you'll only be happy if we become Western China.
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 For me, it's actually refreshing to hear rhetoric like this.<< Except when it does happen the first thing his Administration is going to do is blame the Bush Administration....
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy ^^ Are you going to re-write history an pretend the Bush administration wasn't to blame for this mess. Time doesn't make facts any less factual.
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<I swear to God, you'll only be happy if we become Western China.>> So warning that we have a long and tough slog ahead of us instead of pretending that all will be fine next March means I want the country to fail? As Sport Goofy said, if we are willing to recognize the REAL situation we might actually do something to fix it, as opposed to doing nothing and pretend everything is ok. FWIW, I don't believe that year after year of trillion dollar deficit spending will get us anywhere except perhaps hyperinflation. We need to take care of ourselves and not worry so much about hurting the globalist's free trade fantasy which has done nothing but destroy jobs in the US and make us dependent on asset and debt bubbles. Sadly, I see no sign of this happening anytime soon. As we speak our incipient green industries are already being offshored to China and elsewhere.
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 ^^ Are you going to re-write history an pretend the Bush administration wasn't to blame for this mess. Time doesn't make facts any less factual.<< He is not totally to blame for this mess... Remember, he had a Democratically controlled Senate and House for the last 2 years of this "mess" All economies have rises and falls and mistakes were made that a)artifically created a rise when one shouldn't have occured, which b) is causing us to hit rock bottom at this time... The Democrats are as much to blame for this as the Republicans as for the last 2 years of his Presidency, the Democrats controlled the House and Senate. So unless this entire mess was created 4 years ago, and the Democrats have been so incompentent, they couldn't fix it yet, then it isn't entirely President Bush's fault.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << Remember, he had a Democratically controlled Senate and House for the last 2 years of this "mess" >> What legislation do you suggest that the House and Senate should have forwarded to the President to avert this financial disaster?
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder "So warning that we have a long and tough slog ahead of us instead of pretending that all will be fine next March means I want the country to fail?" You're not getting what I wrote, but it doesn't matter.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<The Democrats are as much to blame for this as the Republicans as for the last 2 years of his Presidency, the Democrats controlled the House and Senate.>> As we can see by the GOP efforts to block health care reform, the Dems can do little without 60 votes to prevent filibuster. During the last two years of Bush's presidency, the Republican Senators filibustered their brains out. From Dec 2007: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/weekinreview/02herszenhorn.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12...orn.html</a> "So far in this first year of the 110th Congress, there have been 72 motions to stop filibusters, most on the Iraq war but also on routine issues like reauthorizing Amtrak funding. There were 68 such motions in the full two years of the previous Congress, 53 in 1987-88 and 23 in 1977-78. In 1967-68, there were 5 such votes, one of them on a plan to amend cloture itself, which failed. For policy making, this is the legislative equivalent of gum on a shoe. It has produced a numbing cycle of Washington futility: House Democrats pass a bill, but Senate Democrats, facing a filibuster by the Republican minority, fail to get the 60 votes needed to end debate. Little wonder that approval ratings of Congress stink these days. Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who recently sponsored a war spending bill that died after failing to get 60 votes in the Senate, said a lack of familiarity with filibuster rules was the cause of the biggest misunderstanding Americans have about the Democratic Congress. “They think we have control of the Senate while we merely have custody,” he said, alluding to the party’s 51-49 majority. “They think that we can control the Senate when in fact we are nine votes short of having the 60 votes that you need to actually run the Senate. So the Senate is a choke point on everything.” And a choke point it is." Even when bills passed both chambers and wound up on Bush's desk, he vetoed most of them. In fact, before the Dems regained control of Congress in the 2006 mid-term election, Bush vetoed only one bill, on stem cell research funding, in May 2006. After January 2007, Bush vetoed 11 bills, four of which were overridden. This mess began on Bush's watch when the Republicans had control of both Congress and the WH. To place blame on the Dems because they had Congressional control during Bush's last two years is a fallacy, since they didn't have a filibuster proof majority at that time.
Originally Posted By ecdc This proves my point all along. We've heard, "Obama doesn't get it! He's not doing enough! He thinks that his first stimulus will do it, but it won't!" Then, after Obama acknowledges the problems, it's "See! Even Obama said it! We're DOOOOOOMED!"
Originally Posted By Mr X ***The Democrats are as much to blame for this as the Republicans as for the last 2 years of his Presidency, the Democrats controlled the House and Senate. So unless this entire mess was created 4 years ago, and the Democrats have been so incompentent, they couldn't fix it yet, then it isn't entirely President Bush's fault.*** Oh, brother. I'm going to tell you something, and then I'm going to wait and see if you'll actually admit how wrong the above propaganda is and promise to never spout it again. New Century, that "canary in the coal mine" subprime company that heralded this entire mess, collapsed AROUND THE TIME THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS WAS BEING SWORN IN. That's right, early 2007. Now, are you going to claim that somehow the Democrats hurriedly infiltrated the system like sewer rats IN THEIR FIRST DAYS IN OFFICE, in order to "muck up" the system? Do you claim they have superpowers? Like "lighting governance" or something? Do you think these sorts of problems occur over a matter of days William. Obviously not. The truth is William, that around that time New Century was the "first cough" that nobody thought was cancer at the time, but it surely was. The first CIGARETTE was smoked long before that. Years before, in fact. When the Repubs were squarely in charge. So, what say you? Will you stop with the propagandist lies?
Originally Posted By Mr X <a href="http://www.mymoneyblog.com/images/0703/new.gif" target="_blank">http://www.mymoneyblog.com/ima.../new.gif</a> Here's the chart to prove it...note the dates, the final plunge began right around February 2007, but you'll note that the price began at around $30 per share, a few months prior to that they were as high as $60 per share or so. Now, here's an interesting thing though. It's funny to see right wingers "blame the Democrats", and in particular to say they share the blame EQUALLY is just asinine. But what the election of the Dems MIGHT have been was a catalyst. The timing is pretty eerie. What I think is, the smart money got the hell out of dodge when Democrats were about to take power, knowing that the house of cards was about to be exposed, and boom, you've got a popped bubble. But consider this...the bubble was being inflated and the situation getting more and more toxic as the institutions became more and more reckless, so imagine if the Republicans HAD kept power for another 2 years (or more), how much worse that festering cancer would've become before exposure. I shudder to even think about it. Yikes.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder >This proves my point all along. We've heard, "Obama doesn't get it! He's not doing enough! He thinks that his first stimulus will do it, but it won't!" Then, after Obama acknowledges the problems, it's "See! Even Obama said it! We're DOOOOOOMED!"< Exactly.
Originally Posted By WilliamK99 As we can see by the GOP efforts to block health care reform, the Dems can do little without 60 votes to prevent filibuster. During the last two years of Bush's presidency, the Republican Senators filibustered their brains out. From Dec 2007:<< I watched the Daily Show .last night where VP Biden was complaining about how Senate has their hands tied because they don't have 60 votes, Stewart asked him how the Republicans were able to vote a plethora of bills through the Senate, even without having 60 votes and VP Biden even admitted that Stewart brought up a good point. If the Republicans were passing a whole bunch of BS through the Senate than the Democrats should have filibustered the bills. The fact that they did not flibuster, and even had some supporting some of these bills that helped cause this econonomic downturn, says just as much about Democrats as it does Republicans. While the Republicans might have done alot of the damage, they are not fully at fault here, the Democrats could have blocked anything they felt would have damaged the country, yet failed to do so.... Unless of course the Republicans had a super majority that nobody knew about... That is why I feel that both parties are to blame and not just Republicans... Unless a party has a Super Majority, they are limited in what damage they can do, unless of course the other party lets them do whatever they want.
Originally Posted By Mr X Unless you are bringing up ancient history (going back 10 years), your argument doesn't hold water. The deregulation was long since done, it wasn't as though the Repubs were pushing through new stuff that could be blocked, the Democrats HAD to wait until they were in power in order to bring up new regulation (which they did), there's no way a minority party can do such a thing. You're comparing the right winger stonewalling today to what occurred a few years ago, and they are completely different situations. If you want to go back a ways and blame Clinton for some of it, I'm on board with that. He signed off on it, after all. But as for the Democrats in the minority during the Bush years, what exactly were they supposed to filibuster?
Originally Posted By Eisner Fan 4ever "Are you going to re-write history an pretend the Bush administration wasn't to blame for this mess." This all started under Bill's admin with the repeal of Glass Stegall. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 12, 1999.The banking industry had been seeking the repeal of Glass–Steagall since the 1980s. Honestly this truly was the beginning of the fall. This set the gears in motion, allowed the environment for things to go bad. I don't really blame Clinton. I am sure he didn't realize the long term problems that would arise. But there it is. That is where the tide actually turned.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>But there it is. That is where the tide actually turned.<< While I agree that Clinton did some serious damage with that bill, I think it started under Reagan with the demonization of government, the praise of big business, and giant tax cuts for the wealthiest America.
