Of course a president has to deal with what has come before him, but he is legitmately evaluated on what he did with what he was dealt. When you sign up to be president, the expectation is you'll make things BETTER. Obama got a 7.7% unemployment rate, and it went up to 10.6% max in january 2010, and is 9.1% now. Obama got an $8 trillion national debt and pushed it up to over $14 trillion. Millions of people have been evicted since he took office. His surge in afghanistan has failed, and now he's doing a drawdown with the taliban and al qaeda undefeated, and likely to take over when the US leaves. He simply lied about his "shovel ready" jobs - the money mostly went to bail out states near bankruptcy because of greedy government employees. To think people want four more years like the last four years, except the koolaid lemmings, is beyond belief. In other than good times, the US electorate focusses on the economy, and holds the president responsible. In 2012, obama's gone.
Bush ruined the economy buy got lucky and got out of dodge before the shit hit the fan. 10.6% unemployment was on Bush as any honest person will tell you. Obama has many faults, no need to make stuff up.
Bullsh_t. The economy was crashed by leftwing meddling in the housing market on behalf of their minority political clients, and also the Fed keeping interest rates too low for too long - had nothing to do with Bush.
So the economy crashing as soon as Obama came into power before he had a chance to even pass TARP (his 1st major legislative accomplishment) is his fault? So if I cut your brakes it's your fault you crash?
Did I say it was HIS fault? I don't remember saying it was HIS fault. But he signed up to deal with it when he became president. What's your view: that a new president can ignore everything that is a current serious problem because he didn't cause it? He's completely failed to deal with it.
Why are you two arguing along political lines? That just avoids reality. BOTH parties were involved over the course of a few decades. The housing bubble was blown up largely due to the Fed's low rates which BOTH parties generally stood by. Particularly, BOTH Obama and Bush were with Greenspan and did not criticize his policies. Obama and the Democrats largely pushed the growth of Fannie/Freddie (one point that Bush actually pointed out months before 9/11, but with Afghanistan plans to reduce their size were forgotten). That does not change the fact that on the other end, Bush still supported Greenspan during his presidency. Now going back a little before, Clinton signed Graham-Leach-Bliley which undid part of Glass-Steagall and allowed commercial and investment banks to operate as one. Let's not pretend this is the fault of Democrats or Republicans- it is the fault of BOTH. To not see that is to continue playing their little game as they keep selling out to special interests.
Furthermore, Patrick while a President's actions affect change during his term, so do the actions of past Presidents. Again, not seeing that is not accepting reality. But once more, it is good for political leverage with people who don't yet realize that.
Furthermore, Patrick while a President's actions affect change during his term, so do the actions of past Presidents. Again, not seeing that is not accepting reality. But once more, it is good for political leverage with people who don't yet realize that.
No, I've already stated that a president must deal with the consequences of decisions made before he was in power, but that's not a permanent built-in excuse for HIS failure. Obama's re-election campaign slogan can't be "It's All Bush's Fault".
The repeal of part of Glass-Steagall as a cause is just an invention of leftwingers to deflect blame from themselves, and had nothing to do with the crash, which is east to demonstrate. The first banks to fail, eg Lehmann Brothers, were purely investment banks and wouldn't have been prevented from anything they did, had Glass-Steagall been in effect.
As for the Bush administration, some members of it became concerned with the behavior of Fanny Mae in acting as a secondary market for millions of subprime loans, and repeatedly complained to democrat Barney Frank, House Financial Services Committee chairman, who brushed them off as one brushes off a fly.
As for the federal reserve, it is an independent regulatory agency and does not take orders from anybody.
The roots of the crash lie in the community reinvestment act, originally passed by a democrat congress and signed by jimmy carter in the 1970s. It was relatively harmless, but a succession of amendments in the 1990s, and Bubba Clinton's appointment of Franlkin Raines as fanny mae head, with marching orders to buy up trillions of dollars of risky subprime loans is what set the disaster in motion, which finally came to a head with the crash in 2008.
As is their long-time custom, leftwingers obscenely blamed "capitalism" and "lack of regulation" for the crash, exactly the opposite of what happened.
True, but that just means you have to judge what his actions do relative to what those of others might have done. Not saying Obama has done good, but generally, a President can preside over a bad time and still have done good.
Absolutely not. The pooling of those assets and companies affected every major bank on Wall St. involved in the housing market. It created moral hazard due to standing FDIC insurance, fractional reserve banking, GSEs, etc. In many ways comparable to the S&L crisis after Reagan's attempt at deregulation, but on a bigger scale. Both cases had deregulation that might have worked had it not been for existing government-created moral hazard. Also, Lehman wasn't the start- forgot Bear Stearns?
They clearly didn't make a big enough issue as they should have. None of them saw the bubble coming still.
The President can still criticize them. They could also try to counter what was happening over at the Fed in terms of blowing up the housing market by changing what Fannie/Freddie did.
It was deregulation coupled with government moral hazard. It was an unsafe middle. You can point fingers either way, but both parties still played a great role and both are to blame.
Oh, sorry about that if it was from the server end. If you are still on the same session hitting backspace to the page might leave your old response there.I responded to the above in detail, but this site lost it with it's timeout.
As I said, Bush had talked about it, but never did anything. Let's not pretend that Frank was the leveraged politician in this case because the administration had much more power. They could have made speeches, raised public awareness, etc. No one talked enough- they were too busy doing other things even months after September 11th which might have been the only plausible excuse.
And even then, NONE of them predicted a bubble. They wanted to reduce the size of the GSEs, but NONE of them saw the growing problems in the housing bubble- in fact, many took credit for the rise in home ownership. Very few people on either side saw it coming and said so- especially amongst Congress and the administration where maybe 1-2 Congressman at max even hinted at it.
At the least he could have tried. We would have remembered if he had. But he didn't because he didn't even know what the hell was going on. And stop with blaming the Democrats, I am a registered Republican, but give credit where it is due. And in this case neither side deserves credit- they BOTH failed. They BOTH added to it, they BOTH let the GSEs get as big as they did and let the Fed do what it did. They BOTH also were happy to take credit for the housing boom- until it went bust of course when neither side was responsible.
Short version of my post which got deleted:
1. Again: The Bush administration DID try to stop the GSE excesses, but got brushed off by the entity capable of doing it, the Frank-ruled House committee.
2, The size of the GSEs wasn't per se the problem - for many years, they promoted home ownership unheard of in other countries. It was when they became politicized under Clinton to underwrite subprime loans to buy minority votes that the problems started.
3. Re your S&L reference: this debacle, like most such, was due to government regulation of S&Ls, just the opposite of the myth promoted by the lib media. How? During the hyper-inflation started in the carter years and continuing into the 80s, depositors demanded high interest on passbook accounts (typical: 15%) to cover the inflation. In order to pay these rates, S&Ls had to get even higher rates from their borrowers. Higher rate = riskier loan - at that time to mostly home builders. Nobody with their head screwed on straight would have given money to the S&Ls under those circumstances, but they did since their money was covered by the FLSLIC. Depositors' attitude therefore was "hey - loan it to the mafia - I'm covered". Essentially, taxpayers were covering S&Ls casino bets. Of course, when THAT crash came, the libs and their media shills did the usual thing - blame it on "capitalism" and "deregulation" when in fact the truth was the opposite.
1. Again: The Bush administration DID try to stop the GSE excesses, but got brushed off by the entity capable of doing it, the Frank-ruled House committee.
2, The size of the GSEs wasn't per se the problem - for many years, they promoted home ownership unheard of in other countries. It was when they became politicized under Clinton to underwrite subprime loans to buy minority votes that the problems started.
3. Re your S&L reference: this debacle, like most such, was due to government regulation of S&Ls, just the opposite of the myth promoted by the lib media. How? During the hyper-inflation started in the carter years and continuing into the 80s, depositors demanded high interest on passbook accounts (typical: 15%) to cover the inflation. In order to pay these rates, S&Ls had to get even higher rates from their borrowers. Higher rate = riskier loan - at that time to mostly home builders. Nobody with their head screwed on straight would have given money to the S&Ls under those circumstances, but they did since their money was covered by the FLSLIC. Depositors' attitude therefore was "hey - loan it to the mafia - I'm covered". Essentially, taxpayers were covering S&Ls casino bets. Of course, when THAT crash came, the libs and their media shills did the usual thing - blame it on "capitalism" and "deregulation" when in fact the truth was the opposite.
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