The gall and stupidity of Nancy Pelosi never ceases to amaze me. Today, with arguably the economic welfare of the United States on the line, and for that matter, several other countries of the world, Nancy Pelosi assured the world an agreement to bail out the struggling spec market was at hand. She’d have it ready by vote time Monday morning. Apparently she was assured by someone the votes were in line to get it done. With the world spotlight shining directly on her, she gathered her wits to deliver the speech that would most likely define her time as House Speaker. This is what she had to offer those nervous and anxious legislators worried sick about whether their voters would understand what was going on and whether or not their opponents at home would use this as a political nuke:
Madam Speaker, when was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion? It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system. Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos.
The second sentence alone assured all those antsy legislators who have to answer for their actions in votes in one month that yes, this will be a political ploy to be used against them if they were Republican.
That sentence also is what amazes so many people. Even when presented the facts, that most people already know, she looks you in the eye and denies ANY responsibility other than Bush. Hell, she even denied Clinton was President in 1999. And, she completely ignores what most finance people accept as fact, it was Jimmy Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act that set this failure in motion. According to her, this whole thing started in 2001. Let’s go on a little more.
That chaos is the dismal picture painted by Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke a week and a half ago in the Capitol. As they pointed out, we confront a crisis of historic magnitude that has the ability to do serious injury not simply to our economy, but to the American people: not just to Wall Street, but to everyday Americans on Main Street. It is our responsibility today, to help avert that catastrophic outcome. Let us be clear: This is a crisis caused on Wall Street. But it is a crisis that reaches to Main Street in every city and town of the United States.
This is not a crisis caused on Wall Street, it is a crisis caused by Washington DC that forced lenders to ignore common banking principals. In other words, if Wall Street had been left alone in 1977 and 1999, Wall Street would be just fine today.
It is a crisis that freezes credit, causes families to lose their homes, cripples small businesses, and makes it harder to find jobs.
It is a crisis that never had to happen. It is now the duty of every Member of this body to recognize that the failure to act responsibly, with full protections for the American taxpayer, would compound the damage already done to the financial security of millions of American families.
That part everyone agrees on. If Jimmy Carter hadn’t forced lenders to make sub-prime loans, then the sub-prime market would never have existed.
Over the past several days, we have worked with our Republican colleagues to fashion an alternative to the original plan of the Bush Administration.
I must recognize the outstanding leadership provided by Chairman Barney Frank, whose enormous intellectual and strategic abilities have never before been so urgently needed, or so widely admired.
I also want to recognize Rahm Emanuel, who combined his deep knowledge of financial institutions with his pragmatic policy experience, to resolve key disagreements.
Barney Frank was also one of the “blame only Bush” peeps. As it is obvious now, Frank’s “outstanding leadership” produced one of the most shocking failures of Congress in my lifetime.
Secretary Paulson deserves credit for working day and night to help reach an agreement and for his flexibility in negotiating changes to his original proposal.
It can be argued that his originaly bill, that did not have a lot of the political time bombs such as the ACORN funding request at the very worst would have suffered the same fate. However, it would have happened a week ago giving legislators a chance to iron out the differences.
Democrats insisted that legislation responding to this crisis must protect the American people and Main Street from the meltdown on Wall Street.
As did Republicans. Once again, she has made this her political agenda. If Republicans weren’t going to get any credit and all the blame, why bother making her look good? A lot of them had reservations in the first place. It was her job to convince them to go against their gut instinct. Cutting them out of getting any credit certainly didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow.
The American people did not decide to dangerously weaken our regulatory and oversight policies. They did not make unwise and risky financial deals. They did not jeopardize the economic security of the nation. And they must not pay the cost of this emergency recovery and stabilization bill.
This is where she completely jumps the shark with reality. The fact is, it was people who never should have had loans defaulting on those loans that caused this. Sure, some blame exists on Wall Street for allowing them to get those loans, but, it was the Community Reinvestment Act ( a Democrat baby ), that enabled them to do so. So, in my opinion, some blame is shared by pretty much everyone who participated in this situation, Wall Street, DC, AND Main Street.
So we insisted that this bill contain several key provisions:
This legislation must contain independent and ongoing oversight to ensure that the recovery program is managed with full transparency and strict accountability.
The problem we have today was because Bush did just that in 2005. It was the sudden transparency of shady bookkeeping that started the collapse of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and others. It was also done over the protestations of, you guessed it, Barney Frank.
The legislation must do everything possible to allow as many people to stay in their homes rather than face foreclosure.
Sounds like she prefers the Community Reinvestment Act take precedance over common lending practices. Where have we heard that before?
The corporate CEOs whose companies will benefit from the public’s participation in this recovery must not benefit by exorbitant salaries and golden parachute retirement bonuses.
Our message to Wall Street is this: the party is over. The era of golden parachutes for high-flying Wall Street operators is over. No longer will the U.S. taxpayer bailout the recklessness of Wall Street.
The taxpayers who bear the risk in this recovery must share in the upside as the economy recovers.
And should this program not pay for itself, the financial institutions that benefited, not the taxpayers, must bear responsibility for making up the difference.
These were the Democratic demands to safeguard the American taxpayer, to help the economy recover, and to impose tough accountability as a central component of this recovery effort.
Where is the responsibility or consequences for those who borrowed money knowing full well they were scamming the lending institutions? Clue here, once again, Nancy, THEY ARE THE MAIN PROBLEM. No matter what form of lending you put in place, if people intend to rip it off, and she blames the lenders, we’ll be right back where we are now. The solution would be simple for the corporation, don’t lend to anyone. The way things are now, people filing bankruptcy can stall the system for years. They get a primary residence for free. The company is forced to lend to a certain amount to these people or get prosecuted by the feds for discrimination. If those bad loans stay on their books too long, the feds prosecute them by forcing them into insolvency. And now, if they do it right, and make some money, Nancy wants to punish the executives for making money. Communism is sweet compared to Nancy Pelosi’s utopia.
This legislation is not the end of congressional activity on this crisis. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will continue to hold investigative and oversight hearings to find out how the crisis developed, where mistakes were made, and how the recovery must be managed to protect the middle class and the American taxpayer.
She is absolutely clueless. A bazillion blog posts and news reports have investigated this to death. The whole country at this point knows what caused this. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were directed to accept almost any risk if a person was a minority or in an underserved location. Entire companies sprung up to do nothing but process loans and sell the risk to Fannie and Freddie. After a point, Fannie and Freddie were no longer solvent under normal business rules. Their management cooked the books to make them look better. ( Hey Nancy, their board and management were almost ALL Democrats! ) In 2005, seeing what was going on at Fannie and Freddie, Bush changed the rules to make them much more transparent in they had to report their financial situation much more frequently. That led to both collapsing. Their collapse started a chain reaction throughout the finance industry as credit tightened up. Now, traditional banks, which never relied that much on Freddie and Fannie, are eating up those companies at huge discounts. How you protect the taxpayer and middle class is very simple, THE LOWER CLASS USUALLY CAN’T AFFORD DECENT HOMES. This however, runs smack in the face of the directives of, you guessed it, the Community Reinvestment Act. So, the answer is simple. In order to protect middle class and American taxpayers, author a bill to undo the damage Jimmy Carter ( a Democrat ) caused.
With passage of this legislation today, we can begin the difficult job of turning our economy around, of helping those who depend on a growing economy and stable financial institutions for a secure retirement, for the education of their children, for jobs and small business credit.
Today we must act for those Americans, for Main Street, and we must act now, with the bipartisan spirit of cooperation which allowed us to fashion this legislation.
Is she really that oblivious, stupid, or what? Attack the Republicans by blaming it all on a Republican while actually denying any Democrat ever had anything to do with it, and then demand bipartisan spirit? Sheezus.
This not enough. We are also working to restore our nation’s economic strength by passing a new economic recovery stimulus package — a robust, job creating bill — that will help Americans struggling with high prices, get our economy back on track, and renew the American Dream.
Now, there were some who were nervous over the price tag. Her economic recovery stimulus package came with a $60 BILLION price. Needless to say, it died as well. It wasn’t even close.
Today, we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership that has left us less capable of meeting the challenges of the future. We choose a different path. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future.
She of course has to go out with a partisan bang.
Clue here Nancy, although this might assure an Obama victory, which I am quite certain that was her only goal with this speech, economically Obama will be so crippled by this situation if it’s not dealt with honestly now, he will most likely be a one-termer with the reputation of, well, Jimmy Carter.
Now, I do think Nancy Pelosi is stupid as mud. However, I also think she had no intentions of this passing. She is by far less concerned with the economy of the world than she is dogging President Bush. In her mind, I truly do believe she thought she could put all the blame on Bush while currying “bipartisan” support. She did put her neck on the line pretty much assuring its passage this morning. So, I don’t think she meant for it to fail. She however, failed to convince a huge chunk of her own party to vote for it.
And that’s where it gets even more fun to watch. I don’t think it was her plan to lose 60 of her own members. Although she may be winning the race for Obama, I am going to bet, if Obama does win, she won’t be the Speaker come January. Something about a single digit popularity rating, before this all happened, that sort of tells me something’s gotta give. Reid hasn’t faired any better. If Obama does win, look for Hillary to be Majority Leader in the Senate, and someone else as House Speaker. Although Nancy’s been toxic for the Dems in the House, she’s not really dragging down anyone. If anything, she’s probably helped Bush keep what little popularity rating he has. If Obama thinks she’ll drag him down with leadership like she displayed tody, she’ll go under that bus faster than a preacher.
In a move that surprised me, the bailout bill was voted down in Congress. It was fairly close, 228-205 I think it was. In order to get it back on track, some media are saying Pelosi expects nine Republicans to change their votes for a re-consideration. This is how she’s motivating the Republicans:
Now, slap me if I’m being stupid, but how does she expect to curry favors with Republicans when she blames every single thing on Republicans and absolutely refuses to allow any blame on the Democrats. I mean, this baby is a pure Democrat baby. It was conceived by Roosevelt, it was given unfettered loaning ability by Clinton with the fear of legal action if they didn’t loan to high risk borrowers by Clinton. This baby is all Democrat. Yet, Pelosi denies all of that. She calls McCain a blip even though he was complaining about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae three years ago.
That folks, is biting her in the ass right now. As it should be. Rather than admitting this latest fiasco, which has sent the Dow plummeting 600 points at last look, is because 90, read NINETY, members of her own party, the Democrats, voted against her. Rather than single out her party members, she once again turns on the Republicans. It’s her job to control her party, it’s Bush’s to control his.
This is sick.
29
Sep
Obama and Ahmadinejad have been intertwined quite a bit in this race. Seems kinda odd to me. First, we had Obama’s flap that he would sit down with Ahmadinejad unconditionally. He even cited Henry Kissinger as approving. That didn’t fly with Kissinger too well who denounced Obama’s claims and flat out stated McCain is right, Obama is wrong on this issue. Obama has backpeddled on the issue saying now that due diligence would be done first. Which, of course, is how it’s done now. However, I’m sure I’m not the only person scratching their head trying to figure out how you meet someone unconditionally when you’ve had your underlings discussing all the conditions first. I hear Keith Olbermann will explain that to us all at some time.
Then, there was the Palin/Ahmadinejad flap. Palin wanted to attend a rally opposing Ahmadinejad. Only problem to the organizers was they had invited Hillary Clinton as well. When Hillary found out, she backed out rather than being there with Palin. When the organizers found out Clinton had backed out, they disinvited Palin. They cited not wanting a political rally to be politicized as the reason.
Now we’ve got the flap over Obama’s primary financial guru, Penny Pritzker hosting an event that featured Ahmadinejad. According to the right, she had to know what was going on at her hotel. According to the left, she simply owns the hotel ( or not ), and since she owns lots of hotels and stuff, there was no way she would know every little detail. Now, I’ve got a problem with that logic. This was no little event. It was plastered all over the news and protested on tv. For Pritzker to not have known what was going on, especially when involved in a presidential race, is a pretty huge leap to follow. If that truly was the case, I would be firing a lot of management. Her name is now linked to Ahmadinejad whether she likes it or not.
Given the previous events, I just gotta wonder whether she does like it or not.
Joe Biden, the forgotten step-son of the Obama/Biden campaign, was highly critical of our fearless commander in chief over his handling of the finance market crisis. He had this to say:
“When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.’”
Pretty damning stuff there Joe.
Only two problems with it.
- Frankling Roosevelt wasn’t president in 1929.
- There were no tv’s in 1929. It was patented around 1938.
This is kinda nutty if you ask me:
Connecticut Dems Circulate Censure Resolution on Lieberman
Blondin said Lieberman’s speech at the Republican National Convention, in which he praised McCain and criticized Democrat Barack Obama, convinced her that state Democrats needed to take a stand.
“Our point is not that Joe should in some way be prohibited from supporting McCain or speaking at the National Republican Convention. That’s not the issue,” Blondin said. “The issue is, he’s a Democrat. And Joe, in our opinion, needs to reconsider membership in our party.”
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t “our party” according to Blondin, choose to reconsider Lieberman in 2006? And, correct me again if I’m wrong, but didn’t Lieberman ditch the Democrat Party and run, and win, as an Independent largely on the support of the Republicans. So now, the Connecticut Democrats feel compelled to censure a representative from another party.
That folks, is nuts. Whether they like it or not, thanks to their own doing, Lieberman is a Democrat in registration only. He’s not a RINO or DINO, he’s committed. In the words of Robert Downey Jr, he’s gone full-independent. Now, being as he’s gone full-independent, he’s not obligated to the Blondins stabbing him in the back and then expected him to just take it and shut up. He can do his own thing, and he is. With full independence comes the freedom I think all legislators envy in that he can hang out with and support whoever floats his boat. In this case, it’s not a member of Blondin’s “our party”. That’s just Blondin, there’s nothing the state Democrats can do about it. Sure, they can pass a censure all they want, it is meaningless and looks very petty to anyone outside of New Haven. And, it just proves the point Lieberman made when he bolted.
That may sound harsh. It could have been worse. Someone could have called them for what they are:
“Honestly, I thought that was the kind of thing that happened only in the former Soviet Union. I understand that people are unhappy, but, you know, I’m doing something that I really believe,” Lieberman told WICH-AM. “I thought in this country you don’t get punished for that. So, I hope that in the end, my colleagues will understand and life will go on either way.”
He could have called them communists or something.
Bottom line, they need to let this dead dog lie. If they keep poking at it, it’s gonna stink and the dog won’t care.
Sandra Bernhard had this to offer when defending her man, Obama:
“Now you got Uncle Women, like Sarah Palin, who jumps on the sh** and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b****! Don’t you f*****’ reference Old Testament, b****!” Bernhardt said. “You stay with your new Goyish crappy shiksa funky bulls***! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b***h! Because we have left it open for interpre-ta-tion! It is no longer taken literally! You wh*** in your f*****’ cheap New Vision cheap-a** plastic glasses and your [sneering voice] hair up. A Tina Fey-Megan Mullally brokedown bullsh** moment.”
I don’t know where to start. For that matter, I don’t think it’s necessary.
With friends like that, Obama does have to worry about the conservative voters.
The ultimate irony in all this, when looking at Hollywood as a whole, is that going into this election John McCain was considered to be a no-win candidate because he was too moderate. He didn’t appeal to the liberals because of his staunch conervative fiscal policies, and he didn’t appeal to the social conservatives because of his non-support for social conservative issues, and he didn’t appeal to the religious right at all. They were all disappointed when he won the nomination. However, Obama, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes not ( see this post ), has courted the wildest anti-conservatives you could possibly find. These people aren’t just liberal, they HATE conservatives and their values. Their actions, and with no real overt actions by McCain other than running with a conservative woman, have polarized an otherwise uncommitted block of voters.
And, if things continue the way they are, I think Hollywood ( ok, Hollywood is only symbolic of the entertainment industry as a whole ), is going to learn that conservative values are much more prevalent in the United States than the uber-liberal removed-from-reality crowds they cocoon themselves in. It will be a bitter pill to swallow, again. However, I guarantee you this, in four years, they will not have learned a thing.
21
Sep
Given it’s opportunity to see a woman advance to the second most powerful position in the world, NOW punted. She’s not “woman” enough according to them. In reality, she’s not liberal enough for them. They didn’t even bother to fact-check their opinions, they had already made up their mind. Now, most people I’m sure had always felt that NOW was much more interested in politics than women’s rights, this just nailed it.
If you’re going to debate this current financial market crisis or criticize the efforts to mitigate it, you HAVE to read this article by Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters.org:
…The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act forced banks to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, mostly in minority areas.
Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race……
That’s the guts of what’s happening now. I don’t hear Obama mentioning it. And, I guarantee you won’t hear about it on CNN, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, or Daily Kos.
Something else you won’t hear any of them mention, John McCain’s speech in 2005:
Why he stumbled on this issue early in the week is beyond me. He should have just cited what he said three years ago.
And, the very last thing they’ll mention is this chart from IBD:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financials contributions from 1989-2008 (from IBD)
Although you’ll find Barack Obama has done quite well in a very short time, you’ll also find Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have done quite nicely as well. Of course, with the media not the least bit concerned about showing their preference for the candidate of their choice, Obama has nothing to worry about.
But, if you’ve read any of this, you’ll have an answer the next time Obama blames this on McCain, or Pelosi blames it on Bush.
Fact is, this is what you get when you compel liberal policies on the private business sector.
And you know what, even in this meltdown, Democrats are STILL trying to compel lendors to expand subprime mortgage loans to high risk areas:
The heart of that? “meeting their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act“. Folks, that’s a bill submitted by Democrat Jack Reed less than a year ago. Although it’s not gotten very far, it just shows that the Democrats in Congress don’t have the slightest clue about what led to all this.
That’s what caused this meltdown. When risk based institutions are not allowed to mitigate their risk, they are compelled to fail.
Henry Paulson has crafted a plan to bail out the finance industry for the very short run. It’s brilliant. However, unless Congress has the balls to gut the Community Reinvestment Act, we’ll just be doing this again in ten years or less.
If cities and states are worried about slums and people not being able to get loans in high crime areas, then do something about the crime so that the risk is mitigated. Once that risk is mitigated, then the private sector will be more than happy to develope it.
19
Sep
Barack Obama’s milking the current financial “crisis” for everything it’s worth right now on tv. I finally had to give up even trying to listen. According to him, it’s basically time to admit defeat and gut the entire capitolist base of our economy and replace it with a pure socialist model. That would solve all the problems since there would be no stock market to worry about. Speaking of which, since a lot of people are telling us this is the next Great Depression, I figured I would put this all in perspective. So, without further ado, here is where our great crash stands percentage wise in the history of the Dow Jones:
| Greatest DJIA Percentage Losses Of All Time |
||||
| Rank | Date | Close | Net Chg | % Chg |
| 1 | 12/12/1914 | 54.00 | -17.42 | -24.39 |
| 2 | 10/19/1987 | 1,738.74 | -508.00 | -22.61 |
| 3 | 10/28/1929 | 260.64 | -38.33 | -12.82 |
| 4 | 10/29/1929 | 230.07 | -30.57 | -11.73 |
| 5 | 11/06/1929 | 232.13 | -25.55 | -9.92 |
| 6 | 12/18/1899 | 58.27 | -5.57 | -8.72 |
| 7 | 08/12/1932 | 63.11 | -5.79 | -8.40 |
| 8 | 03/14/1907 | 76.23 | -6.89 | -8.29 |
| 9 | 10/26/1987 | 1,793.93 | -156.83 | -8.04 |
| 10 | 07/21/1933 | 88.71 | -7.55 | -7.84 |
| 11 | 10/18/1937 | 125.73 | -10.57 | -7.75 |
| 12 | 02/01/1917 | 88.52 | -6.91 | -7.24 |
| 13 | 10/27/1997 | 7,161.15 | -554.26 | -7.18 |
| 14 | 10/05/1932 | 66.07 | -5.09 | -7.15 |
| 15 | 09/17/2001 | 8,920.70 | -684.81 | -7.13 |
| 16 | 09/24/1931 | 107.79 | -8.20 | -7.07 |
| 17 | 07/20/1933 | 96.26 | -7.32 | -7.07 |
| 18 | 07/30/1914 | 71.42 | -5.30 | -6.91 |
| 19 | 10/13/1989 | 2,569.26 | -190.58 | -6.91 |
| 20 | 01/08/1988 | 1,911.31 | -140.58 | -6.85 |
Pretty amazing huh?
What’s that you say? You don’t see this week?
That’s because it didn’t make it.
What people are failing to put in perspective is although the nearly 500 point loss would put this week in the tops along with 9/11, the fact is the market value wasn’t even remotely close to what it is now in very recent years. A 500 point loss just isn’t what it used to be. To put it in perspective, if the market had crashed like it did in 1929, it would have lost 1,798 points in one day.
Second clue about this “crisis”, the Dow Jones, which was hammered by AIG, will post a gain by the end of this week.
Now, what’s happening is an industry which built itself on a house of cards that was incredibly risky is collapsing in on itself. It is being absorbed by, get this, traditional lending institutions that do their very best to be risk averse.
In other words, the market is correcting with an assist from the federal government.
I think this is a win-win situation in most cases.
Now, a lot of conservatives are peeing in their pants right now because of the assist from the government part. I expect certain things to happen in order for this to have been handled as well as it could have. I expect over a period of time, just the Resolution Trust Company did, that once the situation has corrected itself, the RTC will divest itself of assets and cease to exist. People are whining about the bail-outs as hand-outs. I don’t see that as the case. I see it as coming with a heavy price for those who once owned products or stock in AIG and Bear Stearns and……. The dissolution of AIG will be ugly and done without mercy. Dow Jones has already forgotten about AIG and replaced them with a cheese maker. This is simply greasing the gears for the next financial boon that will be built on a much more solid house, over a much longer time, than what we had before. And it seems to be working. The Dow at this time is up over 400 points. Time for CBS to start touting the second Bush miracle! ( Cool out folks, 400+ points in one day won’t make the top 20 all time gains either. )
And, IMHO, it should lay to rest once and for all whether or not times were really all that great during the Clinton boon. That boon is what we have been paying for since then. Some of the growth was real, but a lot, as is evident right now, was not. It was never there in the first place. It was simply borrowed.
When the stock market tanked on news of AIG being bailed out by the government, and Lehman joining the ranks of failing spec banks, John McCain did the unthinkable, call it maverick if you will, and told the US the economy was fundamentally OK. Barack Obama immediately seized that comment and hammered away at McCain. McCain capitulated, trying to explain his comment. Obama, while offering no real definition of his own of why the US economy is not sound, still is hammering away at McCain over that comment. Now, a ew things come to mind over this exchange for me.
If Obama is truly convinced that the “fundamentals” of the economy are not sound, then he would have been saying so a while back. Changing the “fundamentals” of the US economy are huge. Changing the “fundamentals” involve things like socialism. The concept of “fundamentals” are free-trade. To an economist, they mean statistics. I don’t think McCain was referring to statistics. He was referring to the fact that every individual in the US is looking out for #1. The economy itself is a machine that just cranks out revenues and products. There are flaws and kinks in it, but “fundamentally”, there’s not a whole that can be done to stop it. Unless, of course, you eliminate those “fundamentals”. That will never happen. So, to criticize a comment that the “fundamentals” of our economy are strong is purely rhetoric. I hate rhetoric. IF Obama wants to truly seize the moment, he needs to quit being totally rhetorical and name specifics. What will he do to stop this current “crisis”? Not rhetorical stuff like “regulate”, but HOW and WHAT regulations? No one likes to be regulated. Especially if there is no real reason. Although McCain hasn’t looked too good in this exchange, I don’t think Obama has truly captured the moment because he’s done nothing but mock McCain without giving people what they want most. What they truly want from either candidate right now is assurances that things will be OK and this is how and why it will be.
As usual, this thing is being fought in purely political rhetoric without an ounce of substance from anyone. Is Obama or McCain truly a visionary for change or just hammering a political campaign ad? Let some numbers tell us what’s going on. Obama has repeatedly stated he knew this was coming and has the answers to fix it. Well, is that rhetoric or reality? You be the judge. Here’s the campaign receipts from employees of several institutions that have fallen in the last few weeks:
Obama McCain
AIG $75,899 $36,875
Lehman $313,025 $105,195
Merrill Lynch $173,234 $299,813
Bear Stearns $51,403 $88,050
Fannie Mae $80,149 $6,550
Freddie Mac $19,150 $9,100
$712,860 $545,583
So, it seems to me that although Obama claims these companies needed to be regulated, he was more than happy to accept their money. That’s a conflict of interest in my book. Sure, McCain’s got donations too, but his argument in the past has always been for a freer economy. That’s my gut feeling as well.
Lastly, I really feel that Obama is being very selfish in the way he’s handled this week. This week has been more an issue of panic than any fundamental issue. For various reasons, these companies lost the trust of their investors and money became a lot harder to come by. This has happened many times in the last seventy years. The Great Depression is only noteworthy because of the duration. We had a more catastrophic depression following World War I. The credit crisis of the late 70′s was much worse. The recession of the late 80′s was a crisis at the time, but didn’t last very long. And, people are already totally forgetting the late 90′s when we saw the financial world come crumbling down with Enron. In a time of panic, we don’t need candidates running around saying you need to panic some more. When that happens, people lose their jobs. Lives are ruined. Only for the sake of a campaign issue. We need people telling us that things will be OK pretty soon. Even if it is a lie.
The reason that lie is OK is because the lie itself would help mitigate the crisis the lie was about.
An experienced legislator apparently knows that. A sophomore legislator apparently does not. A candidate concerned about the welfare of the people knows that. A candidate only concerned with winning a race apparently does not.
If people look at what the candidates are doing and not at what their PR is promoting, this situation has exposed a huge issue that no one in the media seems to care about.
