Obama balmes Repub for Wall Street???

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"This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy," Obama said after the shock-wave announcements that financial giant Lehman Brothers was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy while titan Merrill Lynch was being bought by Bank of America for about $50 billion.

Obama's statement, issued as he prepared to fly to Colorado to begin a swing through contested Western states, was intended to serve two purposes: to link McCain with the unpopular presidency of George W. Bush and to express sympathy with the anxiety of most Americans who say the economy is issue No. 1 in the election.

"The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store," Obama said in a statement. "Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression." .

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9374EMO0&show_article=1

While nothing in his statement explains WHY he blames the Repubs, it is interesting that as a Senator, he and his running mate were in important positions of oversight. (McCain also).

Yet, he does not place any of the blame on the legislators?

This man is a fool and can not be trusted.

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Type: Discussion • Score: 2 • Views: 3,596 • Replies: 42

@Woiyo9,

In a more macroscopic sense, I believe the bubble in real estate and questionable lending that fueled it was to a large part due to extreme deficit spending. One argument for tax cuts is that it spurs investment by making capital available. Unfortunately, that means the government has to borrow to make ends meet, essentially increasing the money supply. For the last several years, there has been an excess of capital floating around Wall Street looking for a home. The pressure to get this capital in play led to some unusual behaviors including lending to anyone who had a pulse.

That doesn't mean it was the Republicans per se who drove the mortgage industry to this place. Clinton faced the same thing with the dot com meltdown and it was related to many of the same reasons. Still, the current administration has promoted a lassie faire business climate where companies who take reasonable precautions with their investors' money are chided for underperforming while the gamblers who hit the short term jackpot are lauded.

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@Woiyo9,

Quote:

This man is a fool and can not be trusted.

He's no fool, but I agree that he can't be trusted, just like most other politicians. For a long time, he thought that he had a lock on the election. Now he is starting to realize that he is not going to win so easily. So what he is attempting to do is say anything that might get a rise out of the voters, and turn some of the undecided his way.

As they used to say, he is "throwing it against the wall, and see what sticks".

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@Woiyo9,

The executive branch is in charge of oversight in the financial markets Woiyo. The SEC is part of the executive branch. The President appoints the SEC commissioners.

In 2007 and early 2008, Bush left the 2 Democratic commissioner slots open for several months. He didn't provide nominees to Congress until March of 08.

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@parados,

Current SEC Commissioners

The Securities and Exchange Commission has five Commissioners who are appointed by the President of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate. Their terms last five years and are staggered so that one Commissioner's term ends on June 5 of each year. To ensure that the Commission remains non-partisan, no more than three Commissioners may belong to the same political party. The President also designates one of the Commissioners as Chairman, the SEC's top executive.

Wrong again. Is it possible for you to ever be objective?

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Regardless of party, the SEC wasn't going to step in and force these companies to make good loans. Nor were they going to prevent the formation of questionable derivatives to market these loans to greedy, unsuspecting banks. There would have to be a broad policy of regulation and significant resources dedicated to enforcing them and I don't see either party going there.

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"It is essential for us to make sure that the U.S. remains the pre-eminent financial market of the world. This will be a highest priority of my administration. In order to do this, major reform must be made in Washington and on Wall Street," McCain said in his statement.

He added: "The McCain-Palin administration will replace the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street. We will rebuild confidence in our markets and restore our leadership in the financial world."

Over the weekend, advisers both to McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama said they did not favor a government bailout of Lehman Brothers like that previously provided to Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac. (FRE) The government also help engineer the recent sale of Bear Stearns Cos. to J.P. Morgan & Co.

"I am glad to see that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have said no to using taxpayer money to bailout Lehman Brothers, a position I have spoken about throughout this campaign," said McCain. "We are carefully monitoring the financial markets, including the duress at Lehman Brothers that is the latest reminder of ineffective regulation and management. Efforts must also be focused on ensuring that the deposits of hardworking Americans are protected."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080915/D9375B500.html

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@Woiyo9,

Woiyo9 wrote:

"It is essential for us to make sure that the U.S. remains the pre-eminent financial market of the world. This will be a highest priority of my administration. In order to do this, major reform must be made in Washington and on Wall Street," McCain said in his statement.

He added: "The McCain-Palin administration will replace the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street. We will rebuild confidence in our markets and restore our leadership in the financial world."

Over the weekend, advisers both to McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama said they did not favor a government bailout of Lehman Brothers like that previously provided to Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac. (FRE) The government also help engineer the recent sale of Bear Stearns Cos. to J.P. Morgan & Co.

"I am glad to see that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have said no to using taxpayer money to bailout Lehman Brothers, a position I have spoken about throughout this campaign," said McCain. "We are carefully monitoring the financial markets, including the duress at Lehman Brothers that is the latest reminder of ineffective regulation and management. Efforts must also be focused on ensuring that the deposits of hardworking Americans are protected."

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080915/D9375B500.html

McCain earlier this year -

Quote:

The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should.

Damn straight. It's as if he somehow forgets which branch runs the SEC and the Fed. It's the Executive branch. This has all gone down on Bush's watch, and he bears some responsibility for it.

It's funny, because McCain today said 'the fundamentals of our economy are still strong,' on the same day his campaign put out an ad which says 'the economy is in crisis.' Which is it, John?

Cycloptichorn

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@Woiyo9,

What did I get wrong?

There are presently 5 commisioners. One left August of 2007 and wasn't replaced until June/July of 2008. Another left Jan of 2008 and wasn't replaced until June/July of 2008. Both of those were democrats.
http://www.sec.gov/about/sechistoricalsummary.htm

There were a total of 3 commissioners appointed in 2008. The republican commissioner's term expired and a new one was in place in less than a month.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Did Senator Obama do anything to prevent this?
Did Obama see the hand witting on the wall and alert anyone?

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@H2O MAN,

H2O MAN wrote:

Did Senator Obama do anything to prevent this?
Did Obama see the hand witting on the wall and alert anyone?

Actually, Obama has been calling for tighter regulation of the industry for his entire campaign. McCain has ran on deregulating the industry, and his top advisor - Gramm - probably had more to do with bringing about this failure then anyone else in Washington. McCain is intimately tied up in this scandal through his advisers.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Woiyo9,

Quote:

McCain guru linked to subprime crisis
By: Lisa Lerer

March 30, 2008

The general co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign, former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), led the charge in 1999 to repeal a Depression-era banking regulation law that Democrat Barack Obama claimed on Thursday contributed significantly to today’s economic turmoil.

“A regulatory structure set up for banks in the 1930s needed to change because the nature of business had changed,” the Illinois senator running for president said in a New York economic speech. “But by the time [it] was repealed in 1999, the $300 million lobbying effort that drove deregulation was more about facilitating mergers than creating an efficient regulatory framework.”

Gramm’s role in the swift and dramatic recent restructuring of the nation’s investment houses and practices didn’t stop there.

A year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed the old regulations, Swiss Bank UBS gobbled up brokerage house Paine Weber. Two years later, Gramm settled in as a vice chairman of UBS’s new investment banking arm.

Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.

During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.

For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more than $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=F62F8AB5-3048-5C12-00C51D7B8EEA6033

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

H2O MAN wrote:

Did Senator Obama do anything to prevent this?
Did Obama see the hand witting on the wall and alert anyone?

Actually, Obama has been calling for tighter regulation of the industry for his entire campaign.

I don't care about Obama's campaign, I'm interested in what he did while he was an active senator.

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@H2O MAN,

What did you expect him to do, H2O? It isn't as if Senators control the SEC, and Obama wasn't on the committee that oversaw it either.

Here he is a year ago, talking about the sorts of problems we see today - you could almost say predicting it

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

What did you expect him to do, H2O? It isn't as if Senators control the SEC, and Obama wasn't on the committee that oversaw it either.

He did nothing!

What good is this guy?

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@H2O MAN,

The same question can be addressed to the ruling juntas for all the financial failures for the past 8years.
Should a civilized country allow avarious, greedy gangs to manipulate the world economy?
Why the hell they respecued( Pure English nationalizecd 2) and leave the other greedy foolish institution in the lurch?
When barbaric free maket decides the fate of innocent workers why this nonsensical election drama with millions and millions of dollars.

"US government bailed out mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, but it refused to save Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy this weekend. Should the government be doing more to stabilise the financial markets?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/poll/2008/sep/15/lehmanbrothers.wallstreet

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@H2O MAN,

H2O MAN wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

What did you expect him to do, H2O? It isn't as if Senators control the SEC, and Obama wasn't on the committee that oversaw it either.

He did nothing!

What good is this guy?

There was nothing he COULD HAVE done. Why don't you suggest what he should have done, as you seem to be so knowledgeable about the subject? While you are at it, perhaps you could point out what McCain has done during the last 12 years on this subject?

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@Cycloptichorn,

Same as Obama.No a thing.

So why should we support Obama again?

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@Woiyo9,

Woiyo9 wrote:

Same as Obama.No a thing.

So why should we support Obama again?

Because he knows a hell of a lot more about the economy, what went wrong, and how to fix it, then the guy who says he 'doesn't understand much about economics' and relies on those who created and exacerbated the current situation - such as Gramm- for advice on how to fix it.

Simple answer, Woiyo.

Cycloptichorn

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@Woiyo9,

Picking up a person to ruin the global admosphere is personal chaoice.
But making the politicians to observe the reactions of the decent, cultured, innocent citizens ( by voting all the aspirants is my choice)

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Obama balmes Repub for Wall Street???

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