The Dems insisted that the people without the means to repay, be allowed to borrow for a house. The bankers just found a way to make money from it, for a while. i just feel bad because Barry (short for Barack, not our beloved AuH2O) had to inherit such a mess from Bush. To bad the mess he's inheriting from himself is much worse. (check GDP and debt figures 2008 compared to 2012)
Plenty of 'fingerpointing" to go around: From factcheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html Who Caused the Economic Crisis? October 1, 2008 The Real Deal So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault: The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap. Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively. Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses. Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes. The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families. Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages. Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral. The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market. An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic. Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up. The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding
Now I did say I wasnt going to mention Bush but is it true he has the lowest IQ of an American President? If it wasnt for his dad pulling the strings he couldnt function. Reduce taxes they say, give the wealthy more money and create full employment. Its funny how in every country the opposition government offer more services for less money as the answer. Thank the lord for the money trees in the uk. Im not sure that one man can be responsible, I think those that say that the market can never be wrong are responsible. Nearly ten pages.
Where dose one find the list of President's IQs? I do know that Bush had better grades than Kerry and Gore (don't know about Obama, he wont release his transcripts) and that he could fly an F-104 Starfighter. Another thing; Reducing taxes is not giving the wealthy more money. It's simply confiscating less of what one produces. Where is the moral basis for taking a higher percentage of one person's earnings and less from another person's?
Note to David: Now that Hitler and Nazis have been mentioned, doesn't that signify the thread is over?
I think I'm smarter on some days than others. My IQ score have varied from 110, 134, 129 on the three tests I took this year. But the tests I took seemed to have a lot of math. I don't see how any politician can have a high IQ if the test has a lot of math in it. Maybe they have a special test for politicians where you can lie about the numbers or use imaginary numbers and get a higher score.
You're probably right Denise, but it's been a good fun run. Nobody has gotten really excited and nasty. And we DID go almost ten pages. Regards
Okay I'm Back, I mention George Bush had a low IQ, next thing my internet is down, my cards cancelled half a dozen black SUV's come down the drive and I'm wearing an orange boiler suit on a a tropical island!! Any way all cleared up now as long as I promise not to mention that George Bush senior had a daily update from the CIA while junior was in power. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
On the subject of the election; A local stable owner just notified all the borders that rent was to go up 35%. He stated that he has been operating at a loss, and with the coming Obama tax increases (he wrote "end of the Bush tax cuts, but I like the way I put it better) he would need a way to make up further loss of income. He ended the letter with"Elections have consequences". Sure ticked off the liberal DQs that make up about 95% of the boarders.