peter_puck

No, but I think it ranks closer to prosperity theology than bank deregulation. If you want to go back to the 70's to explain the cause, you have to explain why nothing happened until Bush came to office From what I remember that was not a housing bubble like what we have to day. It was an economic downturn with badly run financial firms. To avoid the mess we are currently in. Again, I don't fault Bush for creating the mess. I fault him for not responding when things started to go off the rails. Nobody could have predicted the interaction between banking laws and macro economic conditions 30 years down the line. Everybody knew there was a housing bubble. The government should have known that banks were finding ways around regulations and should have plugged the holes. Bush could have shown some guts, fixed the mess and took a recession (and maybe lost a reelection bid). History would have been kinder to him.

This really needs a who cares emoticon. No campaign pays attention to these small donations, especially online. I think Michael Moore used to send out donations in names like "child molesters for Bush"(forget the actual names) and those cheques got cashed.

You're just talking out of your anti-Bush ass.....come back with some facts about how NINJA loans happened, including the Community Reinvestment Acts. The Community Reinvestment Acts may have prevented "red lining" among major banks, forcing them to lend more to the ghetto than they wanted, but there were all sorts of other companies that specialized in these types of loans because there was big money in it, not because they were forced to. Besides, the retail banks are holding up rather well compared to the investment banks. Was there a housing bubble full of lousy loans during the Carter administration ? NO. How about the Regan, Bush I, Clinton? NO! Did any of those administrations do anything about this obvious problem? NO Only one president since Carter had a giant housing bubble. That president did nothing to stop it. What next, are you going to blame gun violence on the Chinese for inventing gun powder? I bet you would if Bush said it. :-)

I got a picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. Do you have one of Obama shaking hands with Ayers. I am sure there is a whole war room of Republican candidates doing the 6 degrees of seperation thing trying to find out if one of Obama's grade 4 chums ever molested a child. Its not a story however. Also, do you have a link to the MSM reporting that Palin's daughter was really her grandchild. Certain extermist blogs did I know.

Are you serious ? Do you think the Liberals came up with the name green shift by looking through a directory of tinny companies and saying "ah ha! , there is a name we can steal.? Do you think it is possible that people will confuse a company with a political idea ? I think that lawsuit is political anways. "Green shift " has been used as a political term before. There is a real international company named Green Shift. That lawsuit is like the inventor of the toliet (John Crapper) suing the earlier Reform/Conservative alliance when its initials were CRAP.

Did you even watch the comparison.....it was brutal

Bush (Jr) and Quayle had no substance. They were certainly the but of a few jokes.

The crisis may have roots going back decades, but the tree sprouted during the Bush administration and they did nothing about it. They did nothing about it for political reasons. It hid the rot inside the economy (the rot itself was really nobodys fault) In Canada, income trusts got out of control. The governments at the time (both Liberal and Conservative) dealt with the problem. In Ontario, mortgage laws that had been on the books for years all of a sudden became a tool for crooks. The government reacted. In the US the government failed to react because the bubble allowed the administration to lie to an ignorant public about the true state of the economy. Both Carter (though it is a massive partisan stretch to blame any of this on him) or the Republicans who pushed for deregulation had no idea this would happen when the passed the laws. Bush saw it happening and did nothing.

I believe I replied to those quotes before. Even if those quotes were about the issue we are facing today (which they aren't), and even if the people making those statements actually had any power (they didn't - it was during a Republican majority), this is not a just a Fannie and Freddie problem. We have banks failing all over the planet. There are problems with asset backed paper and now credit cards. The problem was that people were allowed to cheat the system with a wink and a nod from the government. "liar loans" were just that --FRAUD. How many mortgage lenders were prosecuted for that ? How many of this no income housing moguls were prosecuted ? Why the heck didn't somebody pass a law against these no-doc mortgages ? It is not like it flew under that radar. People new this was a bubble for years. The reason nobody in power (ie BUSH) did anything about it was he was the main beneficiary. Take away the housing bubble and he would have one of the worst economic records since Carter (or even before). The people in power could have banned no doc loans. They could have tightened mortgage restrictions. The could have actually prosecuted the people involved in the fraud. The reason they didn't was they were part of the game. The little trust fund baby was not going to go down like his father - who faced a recession, told the truth and got turfed for it.

It wasn't Harper. Even if he was that sleazy, he would not be that stupid. Politicians have speech writers. Some of them are lazy (and dumb). Of course when this happened to Biden, the neo-cons went nuts.

Who will then be poor and have more babies of their own. I have a bunch of people in my family with Phd's but no kids. Someone I went to grade school with failed grades twice and had 6 kids by the time she was 24. (I think I went to high school with her before she dropped out in grade 9 ). While these are extreme examples, the truth is the individual on welfare has more kids than the person with the Phd. This is only going to encourage the trend. Someone I wonder how Darwin would look at this situation. Survival of the laziest.

Hmmm...when was the last time the market "painfully solved" a banking crisis ? 30's something wasn't it ?

If this would just result in the weak perishing, I would be happy to watch em burn. The problem is the weak got golden parachutes while the strong are having a hard time finding credit. The bottom lines is that the banking system is what holds up the economy. Thats why they should be one of the few industries with heavy regulation - you can't let banks fail. Failing to regulate them was the first mistake, allowing a banking crisis would be the second. $700 billion is nothing compared with what the market lost in the last few hours. It would be a mere fraction of the cost of a severe recession.

Politicians playing chicken with the economy for partisan reasons. The Democrats have agreed to this, the Republicans have agreed to it. Its now left up to a bunch of individual representatives who know it is needed, but are going to vote no to look good on reelection.

remove double post

Dam, you are right, it was their fault. Just like the Sponsorship scandal was Brian Mulroney's fault (he promoted Chuck Guite). With your twisted logic and taking quotes out of context, I could probably prove anything. Some things to think about: Did any of the above people have any real power during the housing bubble ? (Republicans had majority control of the Senate/House and executive branch). The comments of the above people were only really commentary. Were the quotes above in any way related to the housing bubble/credit crisis ? No, they were really part of the previous accounting scandal. The debate was about the behavior of Franklin Raines. If the housing bubble was about the accounting methods of Franklin Raines, it would be over by now. You are taking quotes from one debate and inserting them into another. It makes about as much sense as blaming the Democrats for Iraq by picking up quotes from the first Iraq war.

Those were softball interviews too. Imagine what could happen at a press conference or *gasp* a debate.

Extreme wealth? Having a little bit more than your Social Security (aka the other shoe) and pension is not extreme wealth. Capitalism, while the best system developed so far only works in a transparent environment. It is based on a certain amount of trust. If I can't trust a balance sheet, I am not going to buy a stock or a bond. Without investors, you cannot have large companies. If I can't trust my money is safe in a bank, I won't put it there. Without money in banks, the economy would shrink dramatically. If I am unsure if I am going to get paid, I am not going to work. Lets say you go to your broker tomorrow and find out that what they told you was a money market fund earning 1 % was really a Nigerian mutual fund that earned a max of 1%. The money disappeared and the broker went broke after paying everyone a $100 000 bonus to each employee and $1 000 000 to the owner (because the Nigerians paid them a 40% commission to invest ). Would you not be pissed ? Would you be shy about investing knowing you hard earned dollars You got something different than what you were told you were buying. Somewhere along the line so did the plumber.

Not at the same rate. I was responding to a point about the economic disadvantages of Obama. I pointed that universal health care would most likely make the US economy better. It also works better for Americans who flee north to Canada. Ontario had to reissue most health cards primarily because of Americans borrowing them. There are probably people over here who have had their tonsils removed 3 times according to government records. Because they are already awake worrying about their own. What if I loose my job..... What if my insurance company won't pay for the operation..... Last time I thought about health care was when Gulianni made his stuipid comment.

Because people die, babies die and the economy suffers. I think your reading someones talking points. But even if it is the "worst performing universal access health care system in the developed world" it is still better than yours, and you pay a lot more for it. If Canada "gets less", why is your infant mortality rate 30% higher (yours is even higher than Cuba's) ?

Problem is that these things were never sold as "high risk". If nobody had lied, they would have not been high risk. I don't think any "geezer" was 100% exposed to this mess, but these types of "safe" investments were part of many low risk mutual funds. The deal was low return, low risk. What they ended up with was low yield/high risk. What good would bankruptcy do for this guy ? He paid his bills all his life. He saved up for a comfortable retirement and his money went up the nose of some Wall Street banker. The banker lied and got rich. The no-brain amateur real estate speculator lied and got rich. The poor salt-of-the-earth plumber for Cleveland got screwed. So much for those Horatio Alger stories we read to kids.

Private health care in the US is a disaster. They pay the most, but don't get anywhere near the best results. Bloated health care costs put the US at a competitive disadvantage. If I were the average US employer, I would look forward to health care costs going down. Not that I am a fan of a lot of Obama's other stuff, but you have to be a pragmatist.

No, not that rube. He deserved what he got. With the Enron/accounting debacles, it was the speculator's that got nailed. This time we have two classes of people. You have the high school drop out who thought he could become a millionaire by lying on mortgage applications and flipping houses. He filed for bankruptcy (he had no assets to begin with) and will be on to the next great thing in a few years. The other person caught up in this is the guy who is 70 years old and retired. He worked all his life and saved his money. He needed the money to retire on, so taking his brokers advise he bought save, conservative investments. He did not want an Enron driven portfolio, all he wanted was a safe single digit return. The bottom line is the guy who did the wrong this has been made whole by the bankruptcy process, while the poor guy who did the right thing got fleeced. Can you say "moral hazzard"?

That wind turbines kills birds things is a myth. It takes something like 30 turbines to kill one bird a year. My front window has killed two this year. The wild cat that roams around has killed a lot more. Do you propose banning cats and windows for sake of the birds ?

The people responsible aren't getting hair cuts. They are sipping martinis in Florida. The taxpayer is getting a haircut. How many executives and CEO's have gone to jail over this? How many have gotten golden parachutes ? How many people with little income who lied to get a $500 000 house hoping to flip it have gone to jail. How many sleazy mortgage brokers who lied to their clients have gone to jail ? The bottom line is that out there right now, some poor stiff who worked his entire life and lost his life savings in this mess is giving himself a haircut because he can't afford a barber.