Economy economy economy economy

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Economy economy economy economy
139
Tue, 10-28-2008 - 10:54pm

economy economy economy economy. That's what this election is about.

This election is a referendum on Bush and the economy. It's about Bush, with the full backing of McCain on his tax cut, big spending budgets, expensive war in Iraq and economic policy.

So if you think things are great and that after 8 years we've got a strong economy to show for Bush and McCain's economic policy, go ahead and vote for McCain and the Republicans.

If you are like the rest of us you know what happened. Bush, McCain and the Republicans deregulated us into the worst economic mess since the Great Depression. It was a giant, free-for-all spending spree for the super rich while everyone else, including the Republican "regulators", watched. Now everyone else is paying the price for the greed and incompetence that the Republicans fostered.

So go ahead and vote Republican and reward them if you are happy with their job. Or go ahead and make lots of excuses for them if you like. Complain about all the things that happened to them rather than holding them accountable for steering our ship. You know these Republicans are out there in the life boats watching everyone else in the boat go down.

Or vote for Obama and the Democrats if you want to bring back balance, competence and fairness to our government and our society.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 8:42pm

I know he is a blogger for the site but haven't found any substantial proof to back it up this accusation

 

 

Guild Member since 2009

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 8:48pm

You keep trying to pass off blame on our Republican leaders for the economic crisis.

What were the Republicans doing the past 8 years when they controlled the White House? And until just two years ago they controlled Congress too. If Republicans didn't cause the problem, why didn't they at least try to stop it? Where was the oversight?

And the truth of course is that 8 years is a long time and Republicans bear a lot of responsibility for what happened.

The Republicans deregulated us into this mess. Just last Spring John McCain was telling us more deregulation would be the cure to all our economic problems. Just a few weeks ago John McCain told us the fundamentals of the economy are sound.

Want more proof of how the Republicans deregulated us into this mess? Here is a nice summary of how the Republicans and their Republicans appointees let industry run amok:

"Drive to Deregulate

The commission’s decision effectively to outsource its oversight to the firms themselves fit squarely in the broader Washington culture of the last eight years under President Bush.

A similar closeness to industry and laissez-faire philosophy has driven a push for deregulation throughout the government, from the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency to worker safety and transportation agencies.

“It���s a fair criticism of the Bush administration that regulators have relied on many voluntary regulatory programs,” said Roderick M. Hills, a Republican who was chairman of the S.E.C. under President Gerald R. Ford. “The problem with such voluntary programs is that, as we’ve seen throughout history, they often don’t work.”

As was the case with other agencies, the commission’s decision was motivated by industry complaints of excessive regulation at a time of growing competition from overseas. The 2004 decision was aimed at easing regulatory burdens that the European Union was about to impose on the foreign operations of United States investment banks.

The Europeans said they would agree not to regulate the foreign subsidiaries of the investment banks on one condition — that the commission regulate the parent companies, along with the brokerage units that the S.E.C. already oversaw.

A 1999 law, however, had left a gap that did not give the commission explicit oversight of the parent companies. To get around that problem, and in exchange for the relaxed capital rules, the banks volunteered to let the commission examine the books of their parent companies and subsidiaries.

The 2004 decision also reflected a faith that Wall Street’s financial interests coincided with Washington’s regulatory interests.

“We foolishly believed that the firms had a strong culture of self-preservation and responsibility and would have the discipline not to be excessively borrowing,” said Professor James D. Cox, an expert on securities law and accounting at Duke School of Law (and no relationship to Christopher Cox).

“Letting the firms police themselves made sense to me because I didn’t think the S.E.C. had the staff and wherewithal to impose its own standards and I foolishly thought the market would impose its own self-discipline. We’ve all learned a terrible lesson,” he added.

In letters to the commissioners, senior executives at the five investment banks complained about what they called unnecessary regulation and oversight by both American and European authorities. A lone voice of dissent in the 2004 proceeding came from a software consultant from Valparaiso, Ind., who said the computer models run by the firms — which the regulators would be relying on — could not anticipate moments of severe market turbulence.

“With the stroke of a pen, capital requirements are removed!” the consultant, Leonard D. Bole, wrote to the commission on Jan. 22, 2004. “Has the trading environment changed sufficiently since 1997, when the current requirements were enacted, that the commission is confident that current requirements in examples such as these can be disregarded?”

He said that similar computer standards had failed to protect Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, and could not protect companies from the market plunge of October 1987.

Mr. Bole, who earned a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Chicago, helps write computer programs that financial institutions use to meet capital requirements.

He said in a recent interview that he was never called by anyone from the commission.

“I’m a little guy in the land of giants,” he said. “I thought that the reduction in capital was rather dramatic.”

Policing Wall Street

A once-proud agency with a rich history at the intersection of Washington and Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission was created during the Great Depression as part of the broader effort to restore confidence to battered investors. It was led in its formative years by heavyweight New Dealers, including James Landis and William O. Douglas. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt was asked in 1934 why he appointed Joseph P. Kennedy, a spectacularly successful stock speculator, as the agency’s first chairman, Roosevelt replied: “Set a thief to catch a thief.”

The commission’s most public role in policing Wall Street is its enforcement efforts. But critics say that in recent years it has failed to deter market problems. “It seems to me the enforcement effort in recent years has fallen short of what one Supreme Court justice once called the fear of the shotgun behind the door,” said Arthur Levitt Jr., who was S.E.C. chairman in the Clinton administration. “With this commission, the shotgun too rarely came out from behind the door.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&sq=sec%20basement%20leverage&st=cse&scp=2

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-02-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 8:49pm
My grandmother's do
iVillage Member
Registered: 01-05-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 8:52pm

<>


Why?

 

 

Guild Member since 2009

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-02-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 8:56pm
Yep, I think polls are great and all but people really did live during that time and have personal feelings about what was happening to them.
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-02-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 9:00pm
My husband was and is still an underwriter.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 9:19pm

"I have the gall to criticize FDR and will continue to criticize him. Many economists that aren't driven by umm groupthink"

To all those who haven't yet made up your mind who to vote for, please read this carefully. Consider that if the Republicans had their way a few years ago, your Social Security for retirement would be invested in the stock market right now. Thank goodness for the Democrats in stopping that.

And what were the Republicans thinking in trying to tear down your retirement safety net? That safety net was put up by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in the aftermath of the Great Depression because people saw the ugliness of what happened without it.

Here is what the Republicans were thinking. They were going after FDR. FDR is commonly accepted as one of America's top 3 Presidents ever. FDR got us through the Great Depression and then led us to victory in World War II to boot.

The Republicans hate FDR and how he stuck up for the little people who Republicans feel don't need any help and should all pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And the Republicans almost succeeded in tearing down FDR's safety nets right before this horrible economic crisis.

Republicans now try to explain away FDR's programs as unnecessary government spending. These Republicans would rely instead on our genius economists - the same ones that didn't see the Great Depression coming or this current economic crisis coming either (no economists haven't gotten any better over the past 70 years). Yes these Republicans say all our genius economists need do is pull a few magic economic levers here and there and poof, we never have any recessions anymore. But wait? How come our genius economists could not avoid this recession? The house of cards is falling down.

When in the Great Depression there were refugee camps in Central Park and homeless wandering the countryside going from hand to mouth, what would the Republicans have done? Nothing. That's right. Nothing. They would let our genius economists cure it all. The same genius economists who could not stop, much less even see the recessions coming! Just a few weeks ago McCain with his genius economists (including the one who called us a nation of whiners in a mental recession) said the fundamentals of our economy are sound.

And by the way who are these Republicans to talk about the need to curtail government spending. Republicans are happy to spend money just as fast as the Democrats as long as it's on wars. That's right. Bush spent just as fast as Clinton. Only Bush hocked America's farm to dole out massive tax cuts that disproportionately benefitted the super rich. Bush doled out these tax cuts just when they were not needed during a period of economic growth, like throwing oil on a fire and now we are seeing the burned out result after the blaze.

And now when ordinary people need the money, then Republicans say, oh no, let's not be like FDR, let's let the economists wave their magic wands to fix it all. These Republicans are just like Herbert Hoover, one of the worst do-nothing know-nothing lost-in-denial Republican Presidents ever who came right before FDR.

Who will look out for ordinary Americans? Those who hate FDR and try to tear down Social Security? I think not.

And who will do better for ordinary Americans? The numbers don't lie. Here they are. And they show that under Republicans the super-rich do well at everyone else's expense while under Democrats everyone does well including the super-rich, but the super-rich don't do AS well as under the greed-mongering Republicans.

"It is well known that income inequality in the United States has been on the rise for about 30 years now — an unsettling development that has finally touched the public consciousness. But Professor Bartels unearths a stunning statistical regularity: Over the entire 60-year period, income inequality trended substantially upward under Republican presidents but slightly downward under Democrats, thus accounting for the widening income gaps over all. And the bad news for America’s poor is that Republicans have won five of the seven elections going back to 1980.

The Great Partisan Inequality Divide is not limited to the poor. To get a more granular look, Professor Bartels studied the postwar history of income gains at five different places in the income distribution.

The 20th percentile is the income level at which 20 percent of all families have less income and 80 percent have more. It is thus a plausible dividing line between the poor and the nonpoor. Similarly, the 40th percentile is the income level at which 40 percent of the families are poorer and 60 percent are richer. And similarly for the 60th, 80th, and 95th percentiles. The 95th percentile is the best dividing line between the rich and the nonrich that the data permitted Professor Bartels to study. (That dividing line, by the way, is well below the $5 million threshold John McCain has jokingly used for defining the rich. It’s closer to $180,000.)

The accompanying table, which is adapted from the book, tells a remarkably consistent story. It shows that when Democrats were in the White House, lower-income families experienced slightly faster income growth than higher-income families — which means that incomes were equalizing. In stark contrast, it also shows much faster income growth for the better-off when Republicans were in the White House — thus widening the gap in income.

The table also shows that families at the 95th percentile fared almost as well under Republican presidents as under Democrats (1.90 percent growth per year, versus 2.12 percent), giving them little stake, economically, in election outcomes. But the stakes were enormous for the less well-to-do. Families at the 20th percentile fared much worse under Republicans than under Democrats (0.43 percent versus 2.64 percent). Eight years of growth at an annual rate of 0.43 percent increases a family’s income by just 3.5 percent, while eight years of growth at 2.64 percent raises it by 23.2 percent.

The sources of such large differences make for a slightly complicated story. In the early part of the period — say, the pre-Reagan years — the Great Partisan Growth Divide accounted for most of the Great Partisan Inequality divide, because the poor do relatively better in a high-growth economy.

Beginning with the Reagan presidency, however, growth differences are smaller and tax and transfer policies have played a larger role. We know, for example, that Republicans have typically favored large tax cuts for upper-income groups while Democrats have opposed them. In addition, Democrats have been more willing to raise the minimum wage, and Republicans have been more hostile toward unions.

The two Great Partisan Divides combine to suggest that, if history is a guide, an Obama victory in November would lead to faster economic growth with less inequality, while a McCain victory would lead to slower economic growth with more inequality. Which part of the Obama menu don’t you like?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/business/31view.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1225764122-4Kmvk1avkF/98XsW7FIqWw

So next time you hear Republicans talking about how they are going to trickle down wealth on you, think twice, and vote Democratic.

And please don't get distracted by all the phony talk by Republican politicians about religion. David Kuo, the former White House faith-based advisor, worked in the White House and quit in disgust. He wrong about how Karl Rove walked around the White House calling the religious right "the nuts."

""National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ridiculous, out of control, and just plain goofy," Mr Kuo wrote, according to MSNBC television, which obtained an early copy of the book. In particular, he quotes Karl Rove, the president's long-serving political adviser and mentor, as describing evangelical Christians as "nuts"."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/14/usa.midterms2006

"Review
Read Tempting Faith, written by a real compassionate conservative, and weep for the loss of what could have been. Then beware of those who would manipulate genuine faith for partisan political purposes."
-- Jim Wallis, bestselling author of God's Politics

"The best kind of sermon, the most revealing and meaningful kind of testimony. At call for action, you want to give a loud 'amen.'"

-- The Hartford Courant

"Though Tempting Faith is a story about the Bush presidency, it is even more a story about Mr. Kuo. As much as it is a story about politics, it is also a story about faith."

-- The New York Times

"Tempting Faith is one of those rare Washington books that is worth reading -- clearly written, disarmingly honest, thoughtfully introspective, and unusually substantive.... A refreshingly honest account of how politics can seduce the best intentioned and the most naïve."

-- The American Conservative

Product Description
David Kuo came to Washington wanting to use his Christian faith to end abortion, strengthen marriage, and help the poor. He reached the heights of political power, ultimately serving in the White House under George W. Bush. It was a dream come true: the chance to fuse his politics and his faith, and an opportunity for Christians not just to gain a seat at the proverbial table but also to plan the entire meal.

Yet his experience was deeply troubling. He had been seduced, just as so many evangelical conservatives had been seduced by politics. Tempting Faith is a wrenching personal journey and a heartfelt plea for a Christian reexamination of political and spiritual priorities."

http://www.amazon.com/Tempting-Faith-Inside-Political-Seduction/dp/0743287134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225764929&sr=8-1

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 9:43pm
We'll see the final f-you from GWB with the relaxing of the environmental regulations
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-02-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 9:49pm
You may see that as a cuss word I see that as thank goodness.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-20-2008
Mon, 11-03-2008 - 9:57pm

"We'll see the final f-you from GWB with the relaxing of the environmental regulations before he leaves.... "

I am sure we will see Bush try to pull some stunts before he leaves. The Republicans say they are not going to go on a deregulation binge before they leave. The Washington Post found out that was a lie:

"The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January.

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103004749.html

The Republicans are going to lie to us to the very bitter end of their current reign. It's sad. I wish they were better. I wish they were more classy. And yet they aren't. There is only one way we can help them help themselves. Accountability. Vote them out. Show them that this behavior means you don't get to run our government anymore - you don't get to keep spending our hard earned tax dollars and sending our young people into wars. The Republicans need to be put on the sidelines for a while so they can regroup, and so someone with a fresh perspective can try some new approaches.

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