Who's most responsible for the perilous economic situation we find ourselves in today.....

[marmar]

Poll question: Who's most responsible for the perilous economic situation we find ourselves in today.....

"We are oft to blame in this. 'Tis too much proved that with devotion's visage and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself."

- Courtesy of Shakespeare and V (of V for Vendetta)

[LARED]

1. Congress - nt

[JVS]

2. The bourgeoisie

[moondust]

3. Bush and the Rubber Stamp Republican Congress.

With some Dems in Congress also wielding rubber stamps.

[Vogon_Glory]

4. Phil Gramm

I would say that arch-conservative former Texas senator Phil Gramm is largely responsible for the economic mess that the country is in today. Had the Republicans not gotten behind his legislative proposals and had former president Clinton not gone along with the repeal of the Glass-Steagal laws restricting banks from speculating in securities, I suspect that there never, ever would have been an economic meltdown of the size and scope facing the country today.

However, when I point the finger at Gramm, I think that the rest of the right wing of the Republican Party is almost as culpable. They went almost whole-heartedly behind Gramm's actions, from voting for Oxley-Sarbanes to de-funding enforcement of financial regulatory agencies tasked with preventing the abuses that brought down the financial structure.

I voted for Barack Obama not just because of the actions of a few Republican personalities like Gramm and Dubya. I voted against the whole blamed Republican thing.

:dem:

[Waiting For Everyman]

22. Seconded.

[Fire1]

36. When you site Gramm you must include Bliley.

[Vogon_Glory]

45. Who is Bliley? n/t

[Fire1]

46. Read up on the 'Gramm-Bliley Act.' 1994, I believe. Clinton

administration.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. We Are

For 28 years we voted for those who abetted the Predator Class in economic sodomy. We are getting just what we deserve for being so jaw-droppingly stupid.

The Founders gave us the vote - we need to use it wisely.

[.... callchet ....]

8. GREEEEEED

We all wanted our shot at the big time and couldn't see we were shooting ourselves in the foot. Just look at the success they have had in making Social Security look like bad doo doo. Every one out there thinks his kid can grow up to be president. Wrongo. Deregulated all the laws that stabilized our economy. Look how we let gambling become pervasive. It is hope. They lay on hope.

[NashVegas]

18. I Voted "Other"

Because we, the people, do not deserve to get off so lightly with a "but we're stupid ..." excuse.

[Fire1]

38. People also didn't expect their jobs to fall out from under them.

In terms of mortgages, homeownership has always been part of the 'american dream.' How can you blame someone for wanting to own a home? And yes, ignorance does play a big role in it b/c many were first time home buyers who were 'duped' into buying more house than they could afford with 'creative' financing, thanks to deregulation. Imo, all of these lending institutions with warehouses of inventory are now getting what they deserve. You reap what you sow.

[NashVegas]

39. The Job Situations Really Sucked

I wouldn't blame anyone for wanting to own a home.

It's beyond my understanding how anyone ever got to the age of 25 without being advised either a) affordable housing is no more than 25-30% of your pay, or b) a house you can afford to buy will be 2-3 times your yearly.

The root of "ignorance" is "ignore." Okay? It's a choice.

If the only people they hurt were themselves, I'd have nothing but sympathy; as it is, people who were advised by others who had their interests at heart to stay within a certain formula, and ignored that advice, dragged a shitload of others down with them and drove up prices so much that people who were willing to stay within their means were shut out.

[Fire1]

42. The problem lies in the fact they were 'ill advised' and convinced

with 'creative' financing to the benefit and greed of the lending institutions. If traditional financing and regulation had been in place, most people are familiar with the terms of this kind of financing. 'Creative' financing was a new ball game that most applicants didn't clearly understand in the fine print (which most people don't read or understand) and were consequently 'railroaded,' imo. Nobody in Washington (including Paulson) gave us ANY indication that there was a housing 'bubble,' which clearly took away that 'CHOICE.'

[NashVegas]

47. Screw Paulson and What He Said

"You can't cheat an honest man."

The Housing Bubble has been a hot topic since 2002. The information was out there for anyone who cared to look. People refuse to take responsibility for their poor decisions are going to put us in jeopardy again and again and again.


Again, people who got screwed when they lost their jobs (unrelated to the bubble bursting), that's a completely different circumstance and I hope they get the help they need.

[Fire1]

50. 'Hot Topic' my ass! I NEVER would've considered investing

in any property (and statistically, I'm far from alone)had there been an 'inkling' that a 'bubble' existed. On the contrary, we were LIED TO, and encouraged to INVEST, which btw, is the hallmark of the Shrub administration. WE DEPEND ON THE GOVERNMENT TO TELL THE TRUTH!! THIS IS WHY PEOPLE HAVE LOST FAITH IN THIS GOVERNMENT!!

[NashVegas]

51. We *Depend* on the Gov't To Tell Us The *Truth?*

Oh my. You really do need to cut that cord.

If most of us on this message board depended on the government's version of the truth, DU would never have existed, and millions of people wouldn't have been out in the streets, begging the rest of the country (and in other nations - UK, Italy, France) to call "Bullshit" on the Bush administration's planned invasion of Iraq.

[Fire1]

58. But notice, no one cried 'FOUL,' until Bush was forced to admit

that he was LIED TO OR 'MISINFORMED' about WOMD or so he CLAIMED! Immediately after 9/11, EVERYBODY WAS ON BOARD!!! So, don't talk to me about DU members not depending on the government's version of the truth b/c EVERYBODY FELL FOR THE LIE THAT STARTED THIS WAR, INCLUDING YOU!

[NashVegas]

62. I'm Sorry, But That's Just Not True

Scott Ritter went on national TV and said it was a lie. Said, "we know Saddam doesn't have yellow cake or other WMD, because if he did, we'd have the receipts."

Maybe you also forgot about Joe Wilson, and his wife Valerie Plame. They sure didn't fall for the lie.

[.... callchet ....]

53. You get approved for a loan

They do due diligence and when you get approved for a loan it is like getting a job. They look at you and say yes, you can do this. There is no blame on the consumer, no matter how much some of the pundits try to promote that.

[Fire1]

55. Totally agree!

[NashVegas]

57. You Decide How Much You Want to Borrow

You. Decide. Not the corrupt loan officer.

[.... callchet ....]

59. You apply for a loan,

supply all the information to them, they look at it, evaluate it and say, yes you qualify. You can do it. Here is your money. That has been the tradition. I know couples who were thrilled when they got approved for a lot more than they anticipated or even appled for. What you are alluding to is that they won the contest, but should not take the first prize ? When you apply for a job you try to get and take the highest pay you can get. You don't say, well maybe that's too much money for me to handle, maybe I shouldn't take that. Look at the executive compensation boards. Look at Stan Oneal and his $180,000,000 retirement package. It is not in our nature to take less.

[NashVegas]

63. You Apply For a Job

And if you get it, you don't have to pay the money back. It's yours, in exchange for services you provide.

When you take out a loan, you pay the money back. It's not yours. It's not a contest. It's the bank's money and it's the bank's house until you pay the balance.

[.... callchet ....]

61. You apply for a loan,

supply all the information. They tell you how much you can afford. When all this was going on, home prices were climbing. Telling someone to take less would be like saying to not invest in a climbing market. Everyone was going with the trend of the economy.. Upward and upward. Buy and sell and make money. Would be hard to tell someone to do otherwise. Wouldn't be hard today. I have written about the home market pyramid for years. You know what people told me ? They said you just don't understand how the market works. Well I did and I do. It is all a pyramid scheme. And when new money runs out, you have to start over again, and here we are getting ready to start over again. Ever play monopoly? Ever been scared, I mean really scared ? Hold on to your hat !

[EconomicLiberal]

6. Milton Friedman.

The rest were just shameless puppets of his economic philosophy.

[.... callchet ....]

17. Milton Friedman had a safety net.

The greedy only used part of his philosophy to help themselves. His theory supported one big winner, but he also supported the negative income tax. So though there was one big winner, there were no losers. He had a balance, they stripped his balance and ran with pure greed.

[.... callchet ....]

7. Have you ever been scared, I mean really scared ?

Monopoly ! ! Have you ever heard of the game ? That is what is responsible for this situation. And you have got to understand this, it is only a perilous situation for the losers. Loser being those of us now starting to lose our stability. It is unbelievable utopia for some. So why are we now just getting upset. Because it is now bothering the people that have access to a means of displaying their concern.

[machI]

9. Ronald Reagan started this bolster the rich and it will trickle down to the masses garbage

It seems that when the Republicans build up the rich, the masses get trickled on, not down to.

[HughBeaumont]

10. Combination of Friedman and the greedy and selfish "Have Mores".

Which the Bewshes and Reagan are part of.

The systemic screwing of Americans was 45 years in the making, starting with Kennedy's assasination. Each peeling away of American conscience, sense of sharing and charity and hope of opportunity for all peoples happened with a marked event in almost every year since then. This is how the phenomenon we know as the "Shock Doctrine" that Friedman economics has always fed off of replaced sensible Keynesian economics and installed itself almost permanently. The old money families and classists still thrived but felt it was never enough. With the help of political accomplices, the wealthy put a plan in place in which it would manipulate a heavy amount of the population to side with their plan without them even realizing it. How? By playing off their hatred of a created enemy or existing idea, be it foreign (Roooskies, Terrrsts, Mooslims) or domestic (LIB'ruls! YewnYuns! MINE-arities!).

They demonized civil rights leaders and silently cheered when they were killed. They demonized liberal youths and minorities while praising "upstanding Republicans" like the Reagans, Bushes and Nixons. Since they didn't swoon at the feet of the western world, the slowly impoverished USSR remained mortal enemies, with the Middle East and Northern African nations not far behind to take their place from the 80s on. The only progressive president since Kennedy was treated as a weak comedy act (even though he had a far better job creation record than even Saint Reagan's first term), thus leading the country into 12 straight years of heroically portrayed men who made hatred fashionable, charity unnecessary, minorities and liberals a pox on humanity, opulence and military conflict sexy, established fundamentalpatient groupthink into everyday conscience while engaging in high crimes behind closed doors.

They did nothing for African famine victims, the AIDS crisis, emptied mental institutions, defunded pretty much every social program imaginable, and adopted the ruthless "winner-take-everything" economics of bastards like Jack Welch and Al Dunlap to all businesses, leading to a morass of financial piracy, dismantling of unions, shipping much of our manufacturing base to a communist ready-made slave state and layoffs, layoffs, LAYOFFS!

From the late 60s onward and peaking throughout the 80s, a black cloud of constant FEAR was established. Anyone remember The Day After? Anyone go to school in the 80s and hear teachers bring up the words "World War 3", "Nuclear Holocaust" and "Armageddon" just a BIT too much?

In 2000, Reagan came back, only turned up to 100 in all the wrong directions. And every child and grandchild on this planet is going to pay either with their health, their finances or their overall quality of life. We make new enemies almost yearly and scoff at the living qualities of our allies. Corporate talking heads treat any form of European/Canadian socialism or taxation to help others and rebuild infrastructure as a horrorshow of error and praise the "free market", every-person-for-themselves chaos as practically utopian (well, it is . .. if you're well-monied).

How DARE we speak ill of the wealthy, us "jealous" plebes. After all, they work 500 times harder than us, so it's perfectly justifiable that they "EARN" 500 times more than we do. How DARE we speak of job offshoring as if it's a BAD thing. Maybe we should have been smart and achieved that easily attainable PhD; then we wouldn't BE in this mess we're all in.

"YOU have complete control over YOUR destiny, and you have no one to blame but yourself for your problems. There IS no such thing as bad luck."

I just want to kick people dead in the ass hard and repeatedly for believing this bullshit.

[.... callchet ....]

12. There are no losers

only the lucky unwilling to share their good fortune.

[.... callchet ....]

14. Winning propaganda

" you can be anything you want to be ", " better dead than red " These phrases keep the poor in line, tell them that failure is their own fault, make people hate any kind of social program, casts aspirations on Social Security.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

27. Did you get that bolded quote off of DU?

Because I know I've read that bullcrap here on more than one occasion. :puke:

[napi21]

11. It began with Reagan and doing away with those pesky regulations

that kept business down, and the destruction of those pesky unions. It took 30 years, but we see the final results.

[blm]

13. Go back to banking crimes of BCCI's international players including the funding of global terrorism.

Bush's, Bin Ladens, Dubai and Saudi royals, AQ Khan.....is it just coincidence these figures are STILL in control of what's been going on in the world for over 4 decades?

and.....Bernie Madoff sounds an awful lot like Marc Rich, if you know what I mean.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

15. I gotta go with Milton Friedman

and those Chicago School bad boys. It was that whacky philosophy that put an umbrella over all the "disaster capitalism" Namoi Klein wrote about so articulately.

[madrchsod]

16. the mid 70`s when metal forming corporations

stopped investing profits into their united states divisions. the metal forming industry was the first to be off shored to taiwan and south korea.when trade opened with china our heavy metal industrial base was gone by the mid 80`s.

we can thank both the republicans and democrats for trade policies that led to the collapse of the middle class

[Coyote_Bandit]

19. All of the above and I would add

the preachers of the prosperity gospel.

[sendero]

43. EXACTLY...

... I've brought that up here a couple of times, nobody wants to touch it.

The Prosperity Pimps of Jesus have had a huge hand in creating this mess. They convinced legions of people that if they'd only give to their church, Jesus would reward them with "abundant life", their code word for money.

A bunch of people are about to find out that Jesus doesn't give a damn about their beamer and their tract mansion, that Jesus doesn't send golden parachutes or personal bailouts.

The mega-churches are going to be in serious decline as their sheep find that they cannot deliver on their promises.

These folks did not create the banking problem, but they most certainly fostered the entitlement attitude that made it easy for people making $50K a year think they could afford a $300K house.

[MH1]

20. What, no Bill Clinton?

Just kidding! :evilgrin:

:yoiks:

[Liberal_in_LA]

23. Obama is missing from the list also! During the campaign he was blamed for housing crisis

[MH1]

24. True!

[Le Taz Hot]

21. We are!

It is up to US to hold elected officials accountable. Instead, we get this insane rah-rah mentality over a particular political party and ignore the HUGE warning signs of many of our candidates.

Btw, "V for Vendetta" is still one of my all-time favorite movies. What an allegory.

[OwnedByFerrets]

25. Raygun began it......the rich and powerful have been

working on it ever since.

[dansolo]

26. Grover Norquist

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," he says, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

Enough said.

[JitterbugPerfume]

28. Milton Friedman

and his Chicago boys

[The2ndWheel]

29. The history, momentum, and complexity of thousands of years

Every small individual action. Every grand scheme and plan. There is no single person to blame, and we all have a hand in it, no matter what you do. You can be a massive consumer, or broke and homeless. The fact that you are part of the machine, or not part of the machine, doesn't matter, because every action, or non-action, by every person, impacts the economy. The economy is both sustained by activity, and unsustainable because of activity. This is not something that happened over the last 8 years, or the last 28 years, or the last 233 years. It's not because this or that law was or wasn't passed. It is because this or that was or wasn't passed.

It's too easy to blame someone who is the most to blame. They wouldn't have that much power if everyone didn't give it to them, directly or indirectly.

[MilesColtrane]

30. Congress...

Specifically, Phil Gramm, Jim Leach, and Thomas J. Bliley, Jr.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act essentially nullified an important component of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.

Glass-Steagall was put voted into law after the Great Depression to prevent banks from speculating.

Now that the entire economy is rapidly circling the drain, I hear no one calling for the repeal of Gram-Leach-Bliley. They're just shoveling taxpayer dollars into financial institutions without changing the fundamental reason for their breakdown.

[.... callchet ....]

31. Its a tie between bush and the greasy

but the greasy win , cause they got bush to do it for them/

[havocmom]

32. ask people, especially students and those recently out of school, who Samuel Gompers was

There is part of the answer right there. We know who's who in tabloid press, but not in our socio-economic history. And we lose because of the failure to expect people to be aware of history.

[.... callchet ....]

34. didn't understan the point

of your post.

[havocmom]

66. ignorance of the history of worker's organization and the reasons for it

along with ignorance of the efforts of those before us and the fight for what too many take for granted and are now losing in our failing economy.

We have too many people who do not understand history, and they are more easily preyed upon by the 1% because of it. Too much thinking we have to just accept what they do to us, that we don't have models for making the playing field a bit more level. We can't fix what we don't even know about.

Samuel Gompers was a labor leader. People forget that there is some power in numbers, if we get out shit together.

[JackRiddler]

33. Directly? Greenspan. As the ideological godfather? Friedman.

But this is also always true:

"I shouted out who killed the Kennedys - when after all, it was YOU and ME."

[.... callchet ....]

35. Friedman had a safety net

he was taken only for part of his philosophy. He was also proposed a negative income tax. So everybody got a living wage.

[JackRiddler]

37. Yes, well, he was happy to leave that stuff out...

when it wasn't what the power wanted. Did he criticize the incomplete implementation? No. Did he complain that Pinochet's Chile or Thatcher's England or Reagan's America weren't exactly what he meant? Not at all, he celebrated and was happy to take the credit when everyone wanted to give it to him. So...

On the other hand, if Friedman never existed, history would have been the same. Someone else would have provided the justifications for class war.

[.... callchet ....]

41. His safety net

was because he knew that some people were going to take advantage of other people. I pointed out the safety net because it points out the flaw in his philosophy. It proves he knew all the money would go to one side. I am a radical left wing liberal and that is where I am always coming from. I forget that nobody knows who I am when I am talking.

[JackRiddler]

48. Yes, I agree with your understanding of how Friedman contradicts his own...

philosophy. It's good to know and point out. Otherwise of little practical significance, since Friedman promoted and blessed the exploitation of his philosophy as practiced by the neoliberal governments from Pinochet to Thatcher and Reagan (and Deng!) forward.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

40. Other.

All of the above.
But in the larger sense this IS the nature of capitalism, especially when there is not enough money to go around in the first place.

[.... callchet ....]

44. John 12:8

Who's your daddy

[MadHound]

49. It isn't one specific person, but rather a large number of people

Yes, Reagan has responsibility for part of this mess, as does Bush I, Bush II and Clinton(who actually did more deregulation of the financial sector than Reagan did:shrug:). Also greedy corporations and foolish borrowers hold some portion of blame for this mess. As does the last dozen or so Congresses, corporate lobbies and PACS, and a number of other people.

This is, frankly, a train wreck, where the greed and stupidity of many met at an intersection, and now we're left to clean up the mess.

[.... callchet ....]

52. The train wreck isn't going to effect some people.

Some people have created dynasties that will last for a thousand years. It's only a train wreck from our perspective.

[varelse]

54. An easily duped and complacent American public

Kill your television! :nuke:

That, and Diebold. :grr:

[spanone]

56. 8 years with no oversight.....the little shit bu$h*

[nini]

60. it's a combo of many things.. but I'll add the Religious Right

They managed to brainwash many Americans into voting against their best interests all in the name of the sacred embryo and BS family values they say you have to be a repuke to have and understand.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

64. the greed and selfish "have mores" are at the top of the pyramid

Duh...

The greedy and selfish "have mores" elected Ronald Reagan, who glommed onto the idiology of Friedman and their lapdog Greenspan, who manipulated an easily duped and complacent American public, who accepted W. as their two term president. I'm certain many of you have heard that foreclosures were at a year's high in December.

I was just reading the Sunday NYT article, Bailout Is a Windfall to Banks, if Not to Borrowers and wondering what it will take to energize the duped and complacent masses to take back their country. Writing and phoning Congress is not the answer. My gawd, calls against TARP outnumbered calls in favor of TARP to the toon of 4-1, 10-1 and several hundred to one.

"At the Palm Beach Ritz-Carlton last November, John C. Hope III, the chairman of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, stood before a ballroom full of Wall Street analysts and explained how his bank intended to use its $300 million in federal bailout money.

“Make more loans?” Mr. Hope said. “We’re not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector as they see it to have us make more loans.”

<snip>

Mark Fitzgibbon, research director at Sandler O’Neill & Partners, which sponsored the Palm Beach conference, said banks seemed to be allocating the bailout money for four general purposes: increased lending, absorbing losses, bolstering capital and “opportunistic acquisitions.” He said those approaches made sense from a business perspective, even though they might not conform to popular expectations that the money would be immediately lent to consumers.

<snip>

None of the bankers who appeared before recent investor conferences offered specific details about their intentions, but recurring themes emerged in their presentations. Two of the most often cited priorities were hanging on to the money as insurance against a prolonged recession and using it for mergers.

At the Sandler O’Neill East Coast Financial Services Conference in Florida, bankers mingled with investment analysts at an ocean-front luxury hotel, where the agenda featured evening cocktails by the pool and a golf outing at a nearby country club.

During his presentation, John R. Buran, the chief executive of Flushing Financial in New York, said the government money was a way to up the “ante for acquisitions” of other companies.

“We can get $70 million in capital,” he said. “So, I would say the price of poker, so to speak, has gone up.”

For Mr. Hope, the Whitney National Bank chairman, “the main motivation for TARP” was not more loans, but rather to safeguard against the “possibility things could get a lot worse.” He said Whitney would continue making loans “that we would have made with or without TARP.”

“We see TARP as an insurance policy,” he said. “That when all this stuff is finally over, no matter how bad it gets, we’re going to be one of the remaining banks.”


I NEED AN INSURANCE POLICY: it's called a job! Jobs are the best insurance policy for the public and banks. Hoarding money to ride out the recession while making opportunitsic investments is unconscionable!


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/18bank.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

EDITED for emphasis

[melm00se]

65. people

bet on an "up and to the right" (on a graph, not political orientation) to run uninterrupted and at a historically unsustainable rate.

This drives a "bubble" mentality (similar to a mob mentality) which feeds itself - "get in - get in - get in, you can't afford not to" which drives the price up on a finite commodity inventory.

another effect of the bubble mentality is that it sweeps away common sense and the ability to analyze the situation...if those investors did look at it rationally, they would realize that 10-20-30% (or more) year over year growth is 100% unrealistic and when that has happened in the past, the bottom has fallen out.