Attitudes caused the current depression

When one of the current middle generation loses their home to foreclosure, the discussion goes something like this:

"when we get rid of this expensive house let's celebrate!" "Won't it be wonderful not to have the big payment every month?"
"Let's go out and have an expensive dinner--and don't you need a new gown to wear? One of our credit cards still has several thousand on it!"
Rick and Joanie on Doonesbury had a similar conversation as this.

Another example is Mr. Giuliani, the republican candidate for President that most of them wanted for some unknown reason, has been hired by India to lobby Washington to allow Indian generic drugs into the USA! Mucho big salary!

I simply refer you to what Harry Truman said when he retired:
When swamped with offers of positions with large enterprises, he said, "you don't want me for whatever expertise that I may have, you want the former President of the United States, and that is not for sale!" He took none of them.

Nitpickers's blog | login to post comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Phil Gramm, McCain's former economic advisor
Main Stream's picture
Submitted by Main Stream on Fri, 09/19/2008 - 12:34pm.

Yesterday, McCain came out blasting his guns at SEC chair Christopher Cox, saying he should be fired immediately, and then today, McSame cools his heels a bit over Cox and in his statement, along with plugging the book he wrote, starts yammering about Eisenhower and the invasion of Normandy. He is trapped in a mental, military time warp and can't get his brain around the current economic problems facing our country without invoking some reference to the military or battlefield. (McCain: "Let's all take off our civilian hats and put on our military helmets"). Most every speech or townhall gathering includes war and battle references - "fighting" and "bombing", Normandy and Eisenhower, P.O.W. camps and torture, "I've fought worse enemies", he's the only candidate who has "really fought for you." He has no grasp of current affairs and relates every crisis we are facing, economic-social-fiscal, to the damn battlefield or a P.O.W. camp. He has truly lost his bearings.

McCain (I was FOR de-regulation, before I was against it), has surrounded himself with economic advisors who prove to be inept, like Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. Phil Gramm is being referred to now as "the man who broke the economy" mostly due to the fact that he co-sponsored and helped to push through a last minute 262-page amendment in Congress, back in 2000, that would keep financial institutions/derivatives from being properly regulated:

"McCain's former economic adviser is ex-Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. On Dec. 15, 2000, hours before Congress was to leave for Christmas recess, Gramm had a 262-page amendment slipped into the appropriations bill. It forbade federal agencies to regulate the financial derivatives that greased the skids for passing along risky mortgage-backed securities to investors.

On Monday, McCain issued a tough-talk statement that he was "glad" that the feds "have said no to using taxpayer money to bail out Lehman Brothers, a position I have spoken about throughout this campaign." On Tuesday, the government did the daddy of all bailouts. It took over AIG, fearing its bankruptcy could set off a cataclysmic chain of events.

And do you know where the problems lay at AIG? They weren't in its main insurance business. They were in its derivatives-trading unit.

Last February, Fortune Magazine called Gramm "McCain's Econ Brain." Gramm lost the official title of economic adviser for making an impolitic remark about this being "a nation of whiners." But Gramm's belief in letting speculators do as they please was never an issue. And even after he left the campaign, Gramm had been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary in a McCain administration."

And that, my friends, is why everything's falling apart. That is why the taxpayers are now on the hook for the follies of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns and now the insurance giant AIG to the tune of $85 billion.

Concern with Gramm-McCain economics may explain why three former SEC chairmen, appointed variously by Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush, took the unprecedented step of jointly endorsing a candidate for the Presidential race: Barack Obama, whom they praised for his “reasoned approach” to “the current financial crisis and the need for balanced regulatory reform.” Other Obama backers are Paul Volcker, ex-Federal Reserve head, and Vanguard founder John Bogle, who said “We need some regulation! . . . I’m a Theodore Roosevelt Republican, and the party has abandoned me.”

Our country is broken. Our banking and financial system is falling apart. The Treasury Department is printing money like its toilet paper, more and more jobs are being lost each month, foreclosures by the thousands, bank failures, companies closing, plus, we continue to spend billions each month in Iraq, and almost half of the country will vote for more of the same in November.

Incredible.

.....Links:

Phil Gramm

John McCain and Phil Gramm

Gramm Slammed by Economists

Gramm's Fingerprints on Current Market Mess

-------
"You can lead a Republican to the truth, but you can't make him think."


login to post comments
Duh! Obameconomics
Fyt35's picture
Submitted by Fyt35 on Fri, 09/19/2008 - 12:55pm.

You are mistaken Main, if the anointed one is elected pre4sdent,we will be settling for increased taxation, unfunded government healthcare, socialist programs to help those who do want to help themselves, more jobs going overseas because of company closures, the disappearance of the middle class since under Obameconomics if you earn more than $220K you are rich.

Sure let’s not vote for the same, let’s put the inexperienced one in office to face a financial crass or an attack on our land. After all, being a community organizer should help them or the fact that he has never managed a budget should be a plus.

Duh! Obameconomics


login to post comments
Actually Fyt35
JeffC's picture
Submitted by JeffC on Fri, 09/19/2008 - 2:03pm.

The largest tax increase being proposeded is McCain's plan to make you count employer provided health insurance as ordinary income for tax purposes.


login to post comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.