Obama '08?

I can't disagree with your scenario, it makes total sense. And I don't blame Obama for the national debt up to the point of his presidency, but sheesh, its as if he has thrown all caution to the wind and has decided to take whats left and throw it away at several times the rate it was happening already. So I hope people wake up and sweep Congress clean in the next 2 year cycle, so we can stop this whole disaster, or at least slow it down.

there's no other alternative but to spend and increase our national debt.

okie wrote:

I can't disagree with your scenario, it makes total sense. And I don't blame Obama for the national debt up to the point of his presidency, but sheesh, its as if he has thrown all caution to the wind and has decided to take whats left and throw it away at several times the rate it was happening already. So I hope people wake up and sweep Congress clean in the next 2 year cycle, so we can stop this whole disaster, or at least slow it down.

yeah, it stinks. we're all gonna take gas on this one. i just don't see that we have much of an alternative. we can either put it all on the line or go the way of the roman empire.

we're pulling lever A because lever B is worse.

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

okie wrote:

I can't disagree with your scenario, it makes total sense. And I don't blame Obama for the national debt up to the point of his presidency, but sheesh, its as if he has thrown all caution to the wind and has decided to take whats left and throw it away at several times the rate it was happening already. So I hope people wake up and sweep Congress clean in the next 2 year cycle, so we can stop this whole disaster, or at least slow it down.

yeah, it stinks. we're all gonna take gas on this one. i just don't see that we have much of an alternative. we can either put it all on the line or go the way of the roman empire.

we're pulling lever A because lever B is worse.

There was a Lever C.

What would have happened if President Obama had pulled the plug on unregulated, insufficiently monitored bail outs before any more damage was done and said okay, here's what the government can do. We're going to use the authorized funds to mitigate damage to the financial institutions on the toxic debt that the government improperly encouraged and authorized. We will issue a cross the board tax cut for corporations and businesses to help them weather the down turn and start hiring again. We will freeze spending across the board in government and cut spending wherever we reasonably can to mitigate the hit on the treasury. And now people, it is up to you to do what you do to create a strong, thriving economy.

Had he done that, I believe we would be on our way out of the recession now and the prospects would be much brighter. Obama would also have gained the #1 spot as the all time best President ever.

This whole idea you have, that the government somehow encouraged companies to make poor choices, and therefore should be blamed, is a joke. It is indicative of a basic misunderstanding of the financial situation of the country, and one in which you have allowed your ideology to trump what little common sense you possess.

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This whole idea you have, that the government somehow encouraged companies to make poor choices, and therefore should be blamed, is a joke. It is indicative of a basic misunderstanding of the financial situation of the country, and one in which you have allowed your ideology to trump what little common sense you possess.

it is a chicken/egg thing.....was it wall street who pushed idiot government into allowing and even cheering outrageous risk taking with the financial system, or was it government who went to wall street demanding growth and Wall Street providing said growth the only way that was available, which was by turning Wall Street into a casino????? Are you one hundred percent sure that you are right and Fox is wrong? I am not.

Please detail the ways in which government demanded growth from wall street - specifically

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Please detail the ways in which government demanded growth from wall street - specifically

Government had as much to gain by growing the GDP via wall street as wall street had to gain by the profits that they skimmed off of the GDP growth. We know that the executives and the Government financial experts are from the same population, it has long been a revolving door between government and the private sector. What we don't know is who's idea was such nonsense as 1) removing risk from the bank balance sheet by way of sham credit default swaps, 2) not regulating or even demanding visibility of said swaps 3) Bush's "ownership society" were everybody was to be encouraged to own homes regardless of their ability to pay mortgages 4) the creation of the almost completely unregulated shadow banking system 5) not barely applying regulation the the regulated banks 6) ending the separation between the segments of the financial system that were set up in response to the last depression 7) allowing executives of private firms obscene compensation that was pegged to virtual profits (as in not real) 8) allowing raiders to submerge whole sectors of American Businesses in such debt that they became at risk of failing (by way of purchases that swapped equity for debt), 9) paying firms to move American jobs overseas thus weakening America 10) allowing the debt rating companies to become completely corrupt by letting most of their profits come from the companies that they were supposed to be monitoring .....

Regardless of who's idea it was, all concerned for decades told the American people that all this was a good idea, that this was progress. It was in Governments interest so long as the scheme did not collapse on their watch, and it was in the executives and corporate owners interest as for years they took huge amounts of wealth for themselves.

It's not that I disagree with you about corporate greed, and our government's long-standing partnership in allowing greed to go unchecked; but it's fallacious to say that the Government forced people to make bad investments. They most certainly did not. The most you can say is that they did not prevent it. I'm willing to accept that, but that doesn't place the blame for bad investments in the lap of the government by any means.

changes made in law, the tax code, changes the regulating abilities of government agencies, fed policy, and funding priorities of the US government all encouraged the bad behavior.

Even encouraging bad behaviour is not the same as forcing someone to behave badly - which is the argument that has been made repeatedly. It's like saying that the guy who left his car unlocked and the motor running forced the guy who stole the car and used it in a bank robbery to commit that crime. That just doesn't fly.

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It's not that I disagree with you about corporate greed, and our government's long-standing partnership in allowing greed to go unchecked; but it's fallacious to say that the Government forced people to make bad investments. They most certainly did not. The most you can say is that they did not prevent it. I'm willing to accept that, but that doesn't place the blame for bad investments in the lap of the government by any means.

Bullshit, changes made in law, the tax code, changes the regulating abilities of government agencies, fed policy, and funding priorities of the US government all encouraged the bad behavior. Failure to prevent the Government from becoming corrupted by the Corporate culture is the root problem...who do you blame most, the party that allowed themselves to be corrupted or the one who was doing the corrupting? Chicken/egg, either point of view is equally valid.

Well, it wasn't illegal! And the government should have been paying better attention to me, heck, they practically forced me to do this thing by not stopping me from doing it!