Thoughts on Obama SO FAR?

[PomonaCA]

As the idiots administration goes down in flames, listen for a faint "But Bush.......!"

[Solitary Brother]

This whole thing is a joke.


The real meat of the damage was done during the Clinton admin. He is the one that signed NAFTA in 94 effectively allowing corps to relocate to Mexico and the like. His admin tweaked the Community Reinvestment Act in 95 allowing lower standards/qualifications for home buyers. He signed the WTO treaty with China, lowering tariffs, and allowing them to become the mega export giant they are today. Walmart does 30 billion in commerce annually with them alone. He is the guy whos admin passed the Glass-Steagall reform, allowing banks to swallow other banks, becoming to large to allow to fail. Clinton hired Franklin Raines to head up Fanny Mae/Freddie Mac.

Whoever told you guys that those were Republican doings is wrong. That shit happened in the 90's, and came to a boiling head in the last 5 years. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi were at the forefront of the opposition against regulating the housing market.



There is Frank talking about no housing bubble in 05. There is plenty more out there. Educate yourselves.

Then when the market collapsed, these guys were all pretending like they weren't in opposition of a reform prior to the fallout. The point is the Dems were largely responsible for the crumble recently, and all the news outlets hated Bush so much, they swept all this info under the rug, and that's sad.

For me, I am worried where Obama is trying to take us. We seem to be speeding towards socialism, while most countries are heading the other direction. As a guy who dated a person from a socialist country, I can tell you that it isn't all it's cracked up to be, although they don't know any better, cause they have ALWAYS been like that.

For example, if you make 52k in germany, they are gonna take 42% of your income off the top for taxes. Then the sales tax there is 19% for items that are not considered food. Think about that for a moment, and think about the fact that you would be paying 24% taxes here, and only 7-8.5% sales tax depending where you live. All you get in return is health care, for your extra layout in cash. I don't know about you, but I could buy the best healthcare policy known to man for an extra 900 a month.

Please do your research about the "housing bubble" you DONT really know what your talking about.

People that blame this whole thing on banks lending money to "minorities" are idiots.

Im so tired of hearing UNINFORMED ignorance repeated.....read a fucking book for christsakes.

[hippifried]

Again, I think you have to go back to Aug. 15, 1971 to find the real culprit here. That was the day that Richard Nixon, by executive fiat, debased the dollar. It ended 25 years of stabile growth & started the inflationary spiral that we're still caught up in, even during the recurring recessions. The purchasing power of the currency is now less than 10% of what it was, & it's all artificial. There's no standards. There's no way to judge value, & the rate of currency decline (inflation) is set by the whims of international speculators who aren't regulated by anybody. Every currency in the world is in decline, & "FOREX" is just where you bet on the rate. It's not even real money. It's all derivatives. You have to use derivatives for any kind of international trade because you don't know what the exchange rate might be tomorrow. Whenever somebody mentions "the value of a dollar" anymore, the first thing that comes to mind is "compared to what?".

What to do? Simpliify. Start negotiating a new agreement on the lines of Bretton Woods, without the gold peg. Can't go bck to a gold standard because there's no reserves. I think that was the fatal flaw in Bretton Woods to begin with. But if you fix the exchange rates by pegging the currencies to each other, inflation could become manageable. Right now, it's not, & you can blame everything that's happening today on the financial industry trying to hedge against it.

[tslvrnyc]

The quality of life for the average German IMO is much higher than it is in the U.S.
Healthcare AND free education through college undergrad and postgrad.

Yeah, the economic collapse started under Clinton, but Dubya poured gasoline of the fire by giving U.S. corporations tax incentives to relocate their manufacturing overseas and having the Fed lowering the funds rate to 1.75% and the key interest rate to 1%, making easy credit available to everyone.

But if we're gonna say who deserves the most blame, Dubya or Clinton, it's definitely the Clinton administration that set the table for this mess.

Germany is the world's second largest exporter. Yes folks, they export more stuff than we do - not per capita, but total. Their goods are like the anti-China, they're high quality stuff. My prediction is that they'll leave the EU by 2015. They simply don't need them.

[rockabilly]

[russtafa]

all the capitalists want to set up in china wich damages the west so badly and strengthens chinas economy and worst still military

[giovanni_hotel]

Again, I think you have to go back to Aug. 15, 1971 to find the real culprit here. That was the day that Richard Nixon, by executive fiat, debased the dollar. It ended 25 years of stabile growth & started the inflationary spiral that we're still caught up in, even during the recurring recessions. The purchasingt power of the currency is now less than 10% of what it was, & it's all artificial. There's no standards. There's no way to judge value, & the rate of currency decline (inflation) is set by the whims of international speculators who aren't regulated by anybody. Every currency in the world is in decline, & "FOREX" is just where you bet on the rate. It's not even real money. It's all derivatives. You have to use derivatives for any kind of international trade because you don't know what the exchange rate might be tomorrow. Whenever somebody mentions "the value of a dollar" anymore, the first thing that comes to mind is "compared to what?".

What to do? Simpliify. Start negotiating a new agreement on the lines of Bretton Woods, without the gold peg. Can't go bck to a gold standard because there's no reserves. I think that was the fatal flaw in Bretton Woods to begin with. But if you fix the exchange rates by pegging the currencies to each other, inflation could become manageable. Right now, it's not, & you can blame everything that's happening today on the financial industry trying to hedge against it.

Agreed.........

[russtafa]

if america started to stop its rich from buying expensive foriegn cars it might help and importing cheap labour

[PomonaCA]

[goku]

Please do your research about the "housing bubble" you DONT really know what your talking about.

People that blame this whole thing on banks lending money to "minorities" are idiots.

Im so tired of hearing UNINFORMED ignorance repeated.....read a fucking book for christsakes.

It seems I know more than you think, because it was a combination of all of the above that got us in this mess. I just cited the bills passed, and (I believe) the years also.

The loans people drew up were the problem, but that had been going on since the 90's, and even the Bush admin tried unsuccessfully in both 03 and 05 to regulate that sector. They were met with harsh opposition from the Pelosi/Frank camp both times.

Couple that with people losing their jobs to outsourcing, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Now factor in that the banks that sold people the loans had grown to the point were they were too big to fail. You had bank after bank swallowing each other since the signing of that bill in 98.

People didn't default on their bad loans 6 months in. They had those loans for a few years, until the rates kicked up, and then they defaulted after awhile. Which means the meat of the damage started way before W got in office.

I don't think I said minorities were the problem.