McCain has always wanted deregulation.

and mostly Senators Waxman and Dodd (who is now under investigation for his involvement)

Face it it wasnt a few bad loans that tipped over the apple cart, that is just laughable. Itwas the grand policy of war and defecit and oil prices at the worst time possible. its amazeing to me what a little propaganda can do

you would know

Umm.... mmmkay, deregulation is the problem? Who about letting the businesses take their own responsibility?

If we let them crash, would that not be natural regulation? Why do we have to reward them for their shortcomings.

I'm sick of everyone blaming deregulation on this.

"We need more government control!"

"We are too stupid to make our own decisions."

"We dont believe in a free market!"

When responsibility is taken from the people, people behave irresponsibly...

Think about it. If you coddle a child from the day he or she is born, buying what they need for them, feeding them, not letting them take any responsibility, hell dressing them, etc. Get me? Like you go overboard. Then one day it comes time for that child to go to college. 90% of the time they misbehave. It's insanity. People think that because somone is irresponsible we should all have our responsiblities taken from us. That is the most ignorant suggestion i have heard.

You dont always have to believe what mainstream media taught you... Ya know they DID try like hell to panic people into this Bailout deal (which was obviously in their best interests). When people panic, they allow for changes. Things like the "patriot act" and the "terrorist act" and the invasion of other countries etc. The free market can take care of itself...

THANK YOU!!

A Combination of all of the above. Increased government spending = inflation tax. Inflation = people not having enough money to pay for gas and food and medicine which = higher cost of living. Higher cost of living = people not being able to afford bills anymore.

Our governments answer to all this "We need more power and regulation." "We need to spend more money". I can't believe people follow Obama nad McCain after they preach this garbage to us...

First step, limit government spending, start getting us out of debt. (This means no more playing the world police, that's the U.N.'s job)

Second, bring jobs back over here. Gotta find a way to make it appealing.

Third, lower the taxes so people can afford things again. Hell if you got rid of our deficit that would negate most of our tax needs. That means no IRS which also means cutting back on government spending...

When the bubble bursts again, let the market take care of itself. Let corporations liquify their assets as needed. People will lose jobs, but it won't take long for more to appear in another place. The decreased cost of living would make unemployment stretch a bit farther too...

Except that the UN has no real power and the fact that China and Russia have to agree in the security council severely limits our options with that route.

Also, even under Clinton who had a "balanced" budget, the taxes were still higher than they are today. National debt or not, there is still the need for the taxes we pay. The IRS or another organization will always be needed to collect federal taxes to provide for public goods. It's a nice thought but you can't eliminate federal taxes altogether. Even if you could, local and state taxes would negate any difference.

Last, the bad loans are exactly what tipped the cart. The spending in Iraq has very little to do with the financial industry. Try as you'd like, you're not going to link the two. When the financial institutions fail, the economy comes with it. The government's deficit has nothing to do with it except in regards to taxation.

so did almost 80% of democrats in congress when they passed the bill that allowed the trade of mortgage-based securities.

Yeah, a trillion dollars in bad loans which caused Wachovia to go bankrupt and threatened to cause dozens of other banks to go bankrupt before the US came in to save them couldn't have caused the problem.

All the experts are wrong, the people posting of this forum have it all figured out. It was Bush, not the reckless policies of the Democrats.



Oh yeah... for you guys maintaining your self imposed blindness from seeing that actual cause of the economy's problems.

when people could no longer buy trinkets from wall mart or other things on the non esential list due to gas prices eating them alive mortgages began to fail and with the collapse of the houseing market no one could sell and if they did they took a loss. that is the domino that started it all, gas at 4 or 5 bucks a gallon due to the war of choice in Iraq. Why do you think all those people lost their homes? they just didnt feel like paying?

Well, for years I've seen McCain being interviewed about it. He was always for it.

And some were lied to about the interest rates too!

I know what you mean about the U.N. But unless we tax the rest of the world why are we stuck doing their job? We need to pull out of the U.N. and NATO if you ask me. They rarely if ever back us on anything... I say we concentrate on us first. Hell if we pull out of other countries we could have our military handle the borders, and do away with the department of homeland security. Then the NSA and FBI can actually do their jobs. Not to mention the Department of Homeland Security sucks up about 40 billion a year and they still can't figure out how to run it properly according to many congressmen...

As far as needing the IRS.... All they do is collect rederal income tax from what i understand. We have a VERY complex tax code consisting of 48,000 pages (no B.S.). Simplify the system, and abolish certain taxes. With the rebacked dollar this would force the government to keep their spending in check. Theoretically it would put more money inthe pockets on citizens which encourages more spending i would think...

well we shouldn't do their job in all cases, that's for sure and we needed to pull out about 15 years ago to be honest because we're 95% of the brute behind them. that I can agree on. we should police in some cases and I agree for the most part that while the war in Iraq is justified, it was not necessary at the time because we got into another fight when we never finished the first (afghanistan). we're still the #1 nation in the world and will have to do some policing in some situations.

and the tax code is actually around 7,500 pages (I'm an accounting major and am brushing up on the code to pass the IRS's EA exam) but it definiely needs some trimming. it could be simplified quite a bit to be honest.

Shaving the government is a great idea to me and it could do wonders for the tax code. Fun fact for you: The DHS is getting over a thousand new vehicles that are being equipped by our local prison - great way to benefit the budget in regards to prison costs - and every one is damn near fully loaded. I've been aligning the trucks/SUVs that are getting full Bilstein shock and suspension upgrades. The vehicles are nicely equipped Chargers, Tahoes, and F-350s. dual zone climate control on the tahoes? got it. CD player? it's there. 14,000 lb towing capacity with built in trailer brake? the F-350s have it. the only things missing on these are the upgraded trim, multi-disc CD/mp3 players, and carpeting/leather. I could easily shave $2000 off every one of these saving over $2 million on new vehicles alone. it's just stupid.

the big issue is that we can't pull out of Iraq right now. if we do it is certain that the government will fail and we're back to square one with 5 trillion more in debt and thousands of lives lost and wasted (a total spit in the face to our armed forces IMO). once this is finished as best we can, we do need to sit back and work on ourselves. under bush, we could have been the first in decades to truely balance the budget and start paying down the debt.

EDIT
and last, I totally agree with limiting spending in a lot of cases... another nation doesn't like us or is unwilling to help when they're able? no more money for you. social programs for people that do nothing but eat, sleep, and screw? no more. I'm all for those helping someone help themself, but too many would rather sit in poverty, blame everyone else, and get everything for free instead of making something for themself.

And I'm still waiting on this one, you're working on day two now.

Do you realy think the greatest nation on earth and the richest turned to crap over a few bad loans?

I don't believe this nation turned to crap.


a bit long but please read all of it before continuing...

what we're in is a normal economic recession - though deeper than usual, it's normal. The Dow Jones Industrials is not representative of the economy as a whole - it's only 30 large corporations. Even the S&P, though a wider sample, does not represent the nation as a whole. unemployment, while above 7%, is nowhere near as bad as it has been in, say, 1980 when Carter left office - it was around 17% then.

Boom and bust is a natural occurrance in any capitalism-based economy. It's my minor in college - i kinda know a little about it. You have to use the good to prepare for the bad.

With the current loan crisis, the main issue is the housing market. Construction was booming the last several years - actually as far back as the late 1990s during the dotcom boom. houses were built at rates that even exceeded that of the post-WWII era. These homes had to be filled and, with pressure largely from Clinton and later on W, the financial industry was pressured to "give everyone a piece of the american dream." everyone was happy - the democrats helped the less fortunate, the rich republicans made some money, and people who never should have received a mortgage got a house. This foolish lending peaking largely in roughtly 2003-2004 using teaser rates for first-time buyers and refinancing other homeowners with new-found equity under the same terms led to a ticking time bomb.

Enter the mostly republican congress of 1999 and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act. the bill overwhelmingly passes both houses (including nearly 80% of all democratic votes and mid-low 90s% of republicans) that Clinton signed into law. Now it was legal for investment banks to package large quantities of mortgages into a bundle and trade them as securities. This furtherd the risk of these high-risk mortgages.

enter 2007-2008. The housing market is over-saturated to the point that home prices begin to collapse. The loans made a couple years before are beginning to readjust from 1.5% to (for example) 8% and often nearly doubling the payment. now the family on two low-wage incomes cannot afford the house payment. often, they just stop paying. This flooding of the market with bankruptcies exasperated the issue. There are thousands upon thousands of these loans bundled into the securities but nobody has any way of efficiently tracing the loans that exist in each bundle - they've been combined and split and modified that many bundles don't even have the complete loan intact within a single security.

These bad loans created uncertainty that resulted in turmoil in the investment banks and many of them tanked. as you know, a couple went bankrupt and the others required a huge bailout (i was not for this but I understand the reasoning for it as I'm about to explain). The investment banks are the wealthiest in the nation. they are the ones that largely loan to commercial banks like bank of america and wamu. many of these banks also fell under because of their large holdings in these mixed-mortgage securities which hurt the investment banks further. the investment banks required the bailout because they were afraid to loan money to anyone out of fear the bank would go under and they would be out of money. no loans would result in other banks falling under as well as the negative result for the consumer (see, it's not just for the rich as you so arrogantly state) of no home loans, no auto loans, and likely no student loans.

So yes, I think the small percentage (i believe just under 2%) that went into foreclosure are the root of the problem that we now face. it's not the failures themselves because the percentage is too small to have that large of an impact but the bad loans that were bundled under the act passed by Clinton set up a situation that created fear. this fear led to overreaction by investors. this overreaction led to selling in the stock market (including in foreign markets). this selling led to more freakouts and more selling in the stock market. Other nations have stake in our stock market and our currency just like we have investments in theirs and they all freaked out on the same fears. The economy will recover because of capitalist ideals, not handing money to the poor. There's a whole economic theory behind it but it's longer than what I just wrote so you'll either understand that or you won't.

either way, the rise in food and fuel prices had a small impact, but since the average ARM loan rose more than the rise in food and gas prices in the last 10 years (whereas the loan adjusted price suddenly), yeah, the loans caused most of our issues.

and please, at least give me a coherent, well thought-out, logical response and not some mindless follow-the-leader blame bush ideology.

EDIT
also would like to point out that i just stated both sides are to blame for this equally. I'm not republican nor democrat and I don't want any criticism of being from the far right on this one.

understandably - regulation is against the capitalism principle. regulation is like motorcycle helmet laws: it prevents a natural selection of sorts whereas the idiot is prevented from idiotic acts. by not regulating loans, anyone who screws up like those that went under will go under and fade away with the smart banks that were behind there to pick up the pieces and grow stronger. capitalism in itself has an inherent natural regulation. sure there's economic dips and peaks, but that's just the nature of the beast.

It was a long tail of fiction. Blame the gas and food prices eating up all the disposable income and stagnant wages and the collapse of the dollar and the bankrupting needless war in Iraq. All this led to people loseing their homes at record levels saturateing the market with under valued forclosed homes. this led to a devaluation of all homes destroying equity. simple. Do you think people gave up their homes simply because the interest rates whent up on a flexible mortage? As I walked through my town today, a nice semi rual middle class 95% white neighborhood I was astounded at the number of vaccant forclosed homes. This Media lie about a small percentage of flexible mortgage homes causing this crisis is simply laughable and election year spin to switch the blame to the victims.