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I don't when Americans are going to realize that their only true enemy is rogue capitalism, and the captains of industry that are behind it--slashing and burning their way across the continent and the world. They've bought our Congress. Democrat AND Republican. To all of them, the American people are nothing more nor less than pesky little peasants who must be mollified from time to time with tepid promises of dribbling rewards, here-and-there. Our nation is failing, and our planet is dying, and these clowns spend their time protecting what's theirs. And I'm sorry, but it really is just that damn simple.
I don't when Americans are going to realize that their only true enemy is rogue capitalism, and the captains of industry that are behind it--slashing and burning their way across the continent and the world. They've bought our Congress. Democrat AND Republican. To all of them, the American people are nothing more nor less than pesky little peasants who must be mollified from time to time with tepid promises of dribbling rewards, here-and-there. Our nation is failing, and our planet is dying, and these clowns spend their time protecting what's theirs. And I'm sorry, but it really is just that damn simple.
That's pretty much my view of it all. We had this same mess a hundred years ago, and it got fixed then by one of the all-time great GOP presidents, Teddy Roosevelt. Ironically, the roles are reversed now; today's GOP is the party of the robber barons, and it's the DEMs who are trying to save us from the greed and criminality of the top 1% at the very top of things.
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I've seen nothing anywhere that so much as whispers anything about China having any hand in the Fannie/Freddie mess. No, that mess is self-inflicted, like all the other mess on Wall Street. Still, I hate former Senator Phil Gramm (R, TX) for his actions that gutted some of our most basic regulations during the last insane months of Clinton's administration; when no one was looking he gutted the Glass-Steagall Act which allowed rampant speculation in commodities and was largely the reason crude oil hit $144/bbl the other year, among other financial atrocities.
Fear not China. They "only" have about $1T of our debt, not enough to be owned by them. There's an old saying about banks and lenders: "Borrow a thousand dollars and the bank owns you; borrow a million and you own the bank." China has serious demographic issues, far worse than ours, where, due to their "one-child" policy they now have relatively few younger people to support a larger aging population. I don't see China as all that big of a challenger; IMO, we'll all just keep on getting along with each other.
I fault G.W.Bush for his tax cuts in 2001 that put us back into a world of red ink after Gingrich and Clinton battled the Federal budget back to surplus after years of red ink. I don't think those cuts were needed, it was just a political payback to "the base" and to upstage his father who got clobbered for raising taxes in 1991(?) as Bush-41 tried to balance the budget like any good fiscal conservative GOP leader SHOULD do. The rest is history, like Bush-43's costly insane worthless ethanol subsidy, unneeded war in Iraq (again, the family loser was trying to upstage his father who'd left Saddam in power). The red ink of Bush-43 has put us in hock for trillions, a lot of which the Chinese own, since we buy tons of their junky goods.
We're in a mess, but we will come out of it wiser (for a while), surely older, and (sadly) poorer for many.
I believe it all goes back to Sept 11. The US Govt was afraid we would slip into a major recession that they kept things going artificially low and too long. Then they could not stop the momentum.
You are correct. It started on 9/11 and the way government chose to get us out of that recession, was by creating a new bubble. But in my opinion, we were not supposed to get it so bad after 9/11 in the first place. The US economy is too fragile and volatile. Yes, it had to suffer a setback after 9/11 but not to the extend it did.
I do think that a contributing factor was "the powers that be" Telling us all to go out and spend after 9/11. Also, does anyone else remember the tax credit for SUV's? I see some complaints about the $4500 "cash for Clunkers" program but, the 2002/2003 credit was for up to 100,000. Fed Tax Break Encourages SUV Purchases - ABC News
Quote:
Congress recently passed a tax bill, as proposed in President Bush's economic stimulus plan, that offers a $100,000 tax credit for business owners who purchase any vehicle weighing 6,000 pounds or more when fully loaded.
When Wizinsky's accountant told him about the credit last year, the amount was much less, at $75,000, but it was enough to encourage Wizinsky to trade in his Mercury Marquis for the Excursion.
I do think that a contributing factor was "the powers that be" Telling us all to go out and spend after 9/11. Also, does anyone else remember the tax credit for SUV's? I see some complaints about the $4500 "cash for Clunkers" program but, the 2002/2003 credit was for up to 100,000. Fed Tax Break Encourages SUV Purchases - ABC News
Spending was encouraged as patriotic.
That "jumbo SUV" deal allowed people to write-off the full purchase price of these vehicles in the year of purchase. It added to the red ink we had to borrow from China, et al, to finance the deficits. They could've bought smaller, cheaper vehicles that got better mileage and still written off the full price of the vehicle in the usual number of years the IRS specifies, but it was another Rovian gimmick to pull votes out of nowhere for the 2004 re-election effort.
It also added to the insatiable demand for petroleum as these genius tycoons of small business tooled around at 13.5 MPG, and aided and abetted the oil speculation that climbed to $144/bbl. If the owners of these things sell them or trade them in, anything they get is considered taxable income.
There are so many sources for our current fiscal mess that the Bush years will be a case study for B-School types for as long of a time as the Great Depression has been a staple of the curricula.
All the pain has yet to be felt.
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