How do we know where we are going if we don't know where we have been??

[kentuck]

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

Sub-prime mortgages was a big part of the problem but not the major part. A bigger part was the middle and upper-middle class couple that bought a home when both were doing well and then one of them lost their good paying job and they were not able to make the payments anymore. It is a myth that the poor black folks or the poor white people bought homes they could not afford and that is why the banks failed. Some failed to keep their homes but many are still making payments today.

The banks failed because Phil Gramm and Robert Rubin convinced Bill Clinton to sign the bill that repealed the Glass-Steagel Act that had forbidden banks, after the Great Depression, into getting into businesses other than banking. There were lessons of history that people forgot. History is important. It was this de-regulation that allowed the problem to happen.

It was the financial investment firms, like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, CitiGroup and others, not our local banks, that started selling mortgages to any sucker that was willing to buy it. Then those geniuses figured out how to bundle up all the mortgages into one big group and sell them as securities around the world. And AIG, the insurance company, offered to insure them through credit default swaps, even though they did not have the assets to back up their promise.

And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decided to get in on the deal. After all, why should all the financial investment firms make all the money? And Freddie and Fannie held more mortgages than any other bank or group in America... After AIG failed, they all fell like dominoes.

That was the scenario when Bush and Paulson made their announcement around the middle of September. that our entire economic system, our capitalist way of life, was in danger of collapsing. Jaws hit the floor. And John McCain post-poned his campaign for the Presidency to rush back to Washington to support the $700 billion dollars that Bush and Paulson wanted. Later, he had second thoughts. This was the turning point of the campaign. Obama showed leadership and others did not. Some might call it BS or something else??

Obama negotiated with Bush and Paulson to use only half of the $700 billion and leave the other half in the TARP fund to use to save our entire banking system and capitalism as we know it. The stock market was just over 7900 the day Obama was sworn into office. It had shrunk from over 14,000 just a year before. It would sink to below 7000 before it would start up once again. This was Bush's final act before he would depart the scene.

At the time of the initial bailout, we were already running a deficit of almost $500 billion dollars. The $700 billion dollars handout would run Bush's final deficit to $1.2 trillion dollars. This is what Barack Obama inherited. It was not a little bump in the road. It was a cliff that we were about to drive off.

Obama decided to put Timothy Geithner, former head of the Federal Reserve in New York City, in charge at the Treasury.. And Bernanke, Bush's man, stayed on at the Fed. They decided to save the banks instead of the homeowners...

Most of the economists that were giving Obama advice recommended that our economy was going to go into the same depths as the Great Depression if we did not have a huge, monstrous stimulus bill. Obama's first budget has been made public and it is for $3.2 trillion dollars, the largest in history...so far. So next year's deficit, it is true, is estimated to be over a trillion dollars! It's unbelievable although many, if not most, economists say it is necessary. President Obama says that he plans to cut this deficit in half by the end of his first term.

However, we all know how promises go. You might promise the wife a new car but then you lose your job. Then you get sick and have these humongous hospital bills to pay. Do you still get your wife the car?? Of course not. And that is exactly what happened to the promises of Barack Obama.

[truedelphi]

1. YOU say:

"How do we know where we are going if we don't know where we have been??"

Are you trying to confuse me? I am here, like be here now. Full moon. Thinking opening a beer good idea.


Obama not interested in sorting out the past. He would do well to ask the architect of the S & L recovery, Mr Black for advice, as Black thinks looking into the past helps you learn what good things are worth repeating and what bad things that happened should be avoided.

But Barack seems to think that would stall the handover of Main Street's monies to Wall Street.
(Your estimate of under 4 Billion is very conservative - there have been at least one unreported 3.8 Trillion dollar purchase of the banksters' losing assets - and some say the figure is around 14 Trillion.)


Anyway, it is up to the President and his Goldman Sachs team of loyalists to keep on keeping on screwing the middle class. Gotta make sure the middle class ain't anywhere any more.

[Jeep789]

2. Yeah, that is what Obama has been doing

drinking six packs and accomplishing nothing. :sarcasm: If you want us to take you seriously, perhaps you shouldn't resort to dis-acknowledging what the President has accomplished.

[truedelphi]

5. I don't really care if Obama is working hard, or drinking up a storm or

Getting high on crack - I want him to stop molly-coddling the parasites on Wall Street, and get rid of his mis-appointments like Geithner, Rubin, Summers, et al.

I Could care less if he works hard or hardly works, as long as smart decisions are made. But when he hands over the economy to the same group of people who have destroyed economies (including ours!) in the past, I find it upsetting.

Geithner was sent by the IMF to Asia to help Japan out of their mess in the nineties. Geithner had two models to choose from, and he chose the one that worsened their economy.

[Mike 03]

6. I wish you would think carefully about what you are suggesting, because if he did as you are

suggesting, it would tank the entire global economy.

This would not simply be a United States problem but a global disaster.

[truedelphi]

7. Mike03, that is what the media wants us to think.

There are many options other than the whole economy of the world tanking.

Number one is to make sure whoever is in charge is not a criminal. Is not in bed with Goldman Sachs.

One thing that several experts, including Black, who handled the S & L recovery, keep suggesting is that we simply utilize the laws that are on the books in order to revive the economy. These protocols are already laid out for Obama inside the regulations passed at the time of the
S & L meltdown. You have the governors of each state charter a bank for each region in tehir state, and then the Federal Reserve makes a deposit to that bank, and they loan directly to the people.

You really should take the time to watch the Moyers/Black interview. It is enough to make you wanna march to Washington and burn the town down.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz1b__MdtHY

Or if Obama doesn't like that option of using the S & L protocols, then he could choose some worthy people who would go in to the firms and through the powers of the Federal government, take over the banks and financial investment firms that are failing but deemed too big to fail.

What is happening instead is that we are handing over between 3 to 14 Trillion dollars to people who already set up our economy so that it had to collapse. Why give it to them? Isn't the definition of insanity "doing the same thing that was done before, but expecting different results?"

Also what is happening is that many of the measures being taken are ILLEGAL. Did you know that the government asked Chrysler to come up with some investors and to meet a certain monetary mark and bring that money into their company through having the investors capitalize Chrysler? And Chrysler showed the Feds how it could comply. But then in response, the US Federal Government said, "NO we don't like these investors of yours; we insist you file for bankrupcy."

In response, Oppenheimer Fund is now suing the government. This fund knows that what the government is doing is wrong. It is what we used to accuse the Old Politburo of doing. Choosing favorites and sides and setting things up for the good of the few.

This doesn't even begin to get into a discussion of how much of these trillions went from AIG to Goldman Sachs. (AIG serving as a pass through.) Goldman Sachs' people are Bernanke and Paulson.

Sooner or later the repurcussions of this will out. It will be front page news. Probably around the FALL OF 2010 WHEN THE CONGRESSIONAL CONTESTS ARE HEATING UP. If Obama doesn't get the economy right, then he will see the Democrats lose many of their seats and once the legislaters are all Repugs again, the good things that Obama is doing will be rolled back. Because it usually doesn't matter how many good things a President does about the social situation - in the end, as we Dems once told George Bush Sr, All about the economy, Stupid.

[truedelphi]

8. Also Kitty Wampus' post and the entire OP here

http://tinyurl.com/r7nu72

would be a good thing to read.

[Psychic Consortium]

3. Obama will be one of the greatest American presidents.

The amount of reformation and change he brings
will be astounding.

It is only 100 days and he works a great deal behind the scenes. Give him time to turn the ocean liner around.

[applegrove]

4. I had a poster on my wall in my bedroom when I was 11 that said "if you don't know where

you are going you'll probably end up somewhere else".