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| 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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The 'head of cabbage' comment was geared more towards how poor a job Bush has done and how disliked he is, not so much a shot at the dems.
You have said time and again that UNDER the Bush /Cheney administration there were deregulations that caused the current crisis. Again what are those, how do they relate to the current mess,
Well, I guess you've wisely dropped your grossly incorrect argument about McCain somehow not being a deregulator. Now, what was your next question? Oh, yes, where was the deregulation? Where were you?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&sq=sec%20basement%20leverage&st=cse&scp=2
"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.”"
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