The Fall of America, Inc.

Big Iron, even when it was clear that the American public wished for other, smaller cars. They had the warning of the 1970's oil embargo, and what did they give us? Rust buckets like Mavericks, Pintos, Comets, Corvairs, and Vegas, while the Japanese built dependable cars that could run 130,000 to 150,000 miles before giving up the ghost, and do it cheaply to boot. My analysis is government, which some say comprises 20% and some 30& of our economy MUST be reduced. Plus, financial regulatlion of Wall, Street, no short selling, no exotic, hot-air financial instrument, and lastly, the rich must pay their fair share, plus corporatioins must give up their fake off-shore tax havens. Enough said..This is a continuation of my previous post, which somehow went into a Send mode.

In the main, I can agree with the ideas in this article, but there are a few that have not been touched upon sufficiently, or not at all. Suffice it to say that the complex of the problems we face is enormously complicated, not easily resolved. At base, of course, is the overwhelming greed of the financial sector, plus the materism of the public at large. We are a society that lives to much on promissory notes, the extension of credit beyond all reasonable lengths.Like, "No interest until 2011!." This is insane...What ever happened to the axiom of Pay As You Go? Secondly, government in America has for a long time been virtually bankrupt, hence our borrowing and ever rising deficit, which, in the end will result in China and other countries pinning down the tangibles like our infrastrucure as the see the value of our dollar falling. This is already happening. Thirdly, we must stop adhering to the myth that globalizations benefits outweigh its disadvantages. Globalization only works equitably when countries allow foreign goods to compete in their markets, raise their workers' wages to comparable levels with their world trading partners, and equalize tarrifs in world commerce. The U.S. for example, has allowed states' interests to supercede those of Americans in general, as in the building of foreign automobiles in lower-wage non-untionized plants, typically in the south. Access to ocean for freightage, warmer climates to lower energy costs, non-union work forces to cut production costs--oh no, the Asian car makers are no dummies. Worst of all, Detroit, mainly under the impetus of rich shareholders, boards of directors, and performance-paid CEO's and CFO's, persisted in selling the profitable

So today we have some billionaires who are now millionaires - cry me a freaking river, I've $3268.00 in the bank.

We have to stop the blackmailing going on in the senate and congress. Since when an EMPLOYEE put conditions to do his/her job?, Since when an EMPLOYEE has to get something in return, besides salary and benefits, in a blackmailing way?

This is what they have done with this 700 billion bailout, and it is a standard practice that won change overnight, if one wants to be realistic, BUT IT HAS TO CHANGE!!!!

Specially those red states (yes Alaska included) that do not want government intervention, well pay your stuff with your own money then. Don t come to WA asking money from blue states taxpayers.

Let s stop help to all corporations and all states (except catastrophic event). It is hypocritical for republicans to say no government intervention and behind taking billions if not trillions in corporate help, no-bid contracts, laws benefiting them etc and pork to the red states as well. You can t have it both ways and that s what is happening now......

Flip-flop Mccain encouraged deregulation. Now he is against deregulation... It seems that he will say ANYTHING to increase his polls....AMERICA WAKE-UP and STOP LISTENING TO THIS LIAR! (he even lied to David Letterman!! - Shame on you!) - Just tell the truth!! We need a leader that we can trust. not dissect of what is fact and fiction!

politicaladattacks.blogspot.com


politicaladattacks.blogspot.com

PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT:
Palin???s model for debate: BUSH! From Countdown MSNBC Oct, 3-08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f_SmsXgzvg

Rolling Stone Magazine: Make ???believe Maverick, A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.
By TIM DICKINSON
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain?commentPage=8#rate

Please post it everywhere, so people can read it all: republicans, independents, democrats, libertarians, non-denomination...you name it.

Yes republican say to believe each has to be responsible and therefore I though that EVERY republican would be ASHAMED by now as consequence of their poor judgement electing a president everyone knew was not to the task. I tough they would be crestfallen and ACCEPT THEIR MISTAKE....
But hell no!!! There they are, like the problem is not theirs, like this administration has been wonderful so we need 4 more years of the same!!!! SHAME ON YOU!!!
The Karl Rove tactics is to enrobe you with a flag, veteran theme and Country first, so you would fell LESS GUILT and YES VOTE AGAIN FOR THEM!!!!
Recognize that republican are good by campaigning with the tear down approach, not the issues (and fraud...) and DON T KNOW HOW TO GOVERN!!!!
Like this article explains, de-regulation started with REAGAN! And less government and bringing democracy around the word. Which has produced the ever growing government size, all the wars, the biggest financial crisis and again the low taxes for the wealthiest, big corporation, oil companies, pharmaceutical, insurances, armaments & war supplies sellers. Main street? On its own, unemployment, foreclosures, uninsured, out of college, out of gas, divorced families, decaying infra-structures at its highest. That the BOTTOM LINE of the republican agenda, so no wonder they don t talk about issues!!!
While must countries around the world have PROSPERED, we are going down the tube, that s not patriotism, that s not country first.

This is one if not the most important election in recent times, vote to take control back of this country by the people and not the special interest in WA of the richest and powerful companies that can afford lobbyist, vote for Obama and democrats that will put PEOPLE FIRST, your interest first, that will bring jobs and prosperity again like when Clinton.

The proof is in the pudding, every time we have republican, it is recession, war, decline and with democrats peace, economic growth, jobs...
IT IS THE ECONOMY STUPID.......IT IS THE HISTORY STUPID......

My goodness - "racist right"! I would assume you are a white male, with "white guilt". Guess what, white guy? I am white. And I don't have any "white guilt", and you. Put that in you pipe and smoke it.

Deregulation turned out to deregulate only certain aspects of societal behaviour. The basic, and often implied, assumption is that shared interests, like infrastructures, are best served by profit-driven corporations. Shared interests not to be confused with the latest model of a vacuum cleaner as a beside. Deregulation in most cases overnight destroyed the possibilities to discuss the scope, the specifics and the costs of shared interests and how to distribute those costs. The political infrastructure, the core of democracy, suddenly was left without most of the material basis it relied upon. One can argue, for instance, to what degree housing is a infrastructure. But without a general housing infrastructure, it is hard to see a society functioning. To leave the infrastructural aspect of housing solely in the hands of deregulated corporations that are profit-driven and not cost driven is turning a blind eye to the democracy as a means to discuss housing as a common interest. So, as a European, I don???t think that the failure to adequately regulating the financial sector led to the demise of the ???Reagan-Thatcher??? idea of democracy. That idea already was under siege for decades at the same time as it was embraced by the former ???socialist??? parties in Europe. One of the battle cries is ???cowboy capitalism???. What was postponed was the proof of the pudding. At this moment it seems that the taste is really as bad as we thought. Freedom of expression or individual entrepreneurship is not the point of discussion. I assume that America and Europe in general share their ideas on these matters. Serving the common good by profit-driven special interest groups who gain their profits at the cost of the people they are supposed to serve by blocking their say made a mockery out of democracy. We are probably looking at the next round of discussing what democracy and the common good is, this time in a global setting and one more lesson learned about how not to proceed. And after the lesson that centrally planned (???illusion-based???) economies were hardly successful as well. Good branding is what kind of democracy serves the common good best. And that will most probably not to the pursuit of profits at the cost of our neighbour or our environment.
Ivo Vos - Netherlands

Deregulation turned out to deregulate only certain aspects of societal behaviour. The basic, and often implied, assumption is that shared interests, like infrastructures, are best served by profit-driven corporations. Shared interests not to be confused with the latest model of a vacuum cleaner as a beside. Deregulation in most cases overnight destroyed the possibilities to discuss the scope, the specifics and the costs of shared interests and how to distribute those costs. The political infrastructure, the core of democracy, suddenly was left without most of the material basis it relied upon. One can argue, for instance, to what degree housing is a infrastructure. But without a general housing infrastructure, it is hard to see a society functioning. To leave the infrastructural aspect of housing solely in the hands of deregulated corporations that are profit-driven and not cost driven is turning a blind eye to the democracy as a means to discuss housing as a common interest. So, as a European, I don???t think that the failure to adequately regulating the financial sector led to the demise of the ???Reagan-Thatcher??? idea of democracy. That idea already was under siege for decades at the same time as it was embraced by the former ???socialist??? parties in Europe. One of the battle cries is ???cowboy capitalism???. What was postponed was the proof of the pudding. At this moment it seems that the taste is really as bad as we thought. Freedom of expression or individual entrepreneurship is not the point of discussion. I assume that America and Europe in general share their ideas on these matters. Serving the common good by profit-driven special interest groups who gain their profits at the cost of the people they are supposed to serve by blocking their say made a mockery out of democracy. We are probably looking at the next round of discussing what democracy and the common good is, this time in a global setting and one more lesson learned about how not to proceed. And after the lesson that centrally planned (???illusion-based???) economies were hardly successful as well. Good branding is what kind of democracy serves the common good best. And that will most probably not to the pursuit of profits at the cost of our neighbour or our environment.
Ivo Vos ??? Netherlands

It is The Russian Federation's era
Many people around the world hate America, The U.S. Government lost it's previous reputation...

I agree with e-thawt's critique of the article. Just as history did not really end a decade ago, the current crisis does not represent the fall of the principles of capitalism upon which American economic expansion was based. And while the conventional wisdom is that absence of government regulation led to the problems in the housing market, the truth is that much of the blame lies with government intervention in the market through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and other programs that incentivized and/or required financial institutions to make loans that could not be underwritten using traditional commerical lending standards. Like Reagan said, if you subsidize something you get more of it - it's no surprise that subsidizing bad mortgage loans eventually leads to a mortgage crisis. Finally, while it's unfortunate that many, apparently most, of Wall Street took irresponsible risks, the market "worked" in the sense that the value of those firms have evaporated. They tried to get huge rewards by taking huge risks; when the market moved against their positions, they lost everything. And that's as it should be.

I thought this was a very, very poor article. And very disappointing, I have read three of FF's books, the End of Ideology, etc., the Great Disruption and his very impressive book on bio-technology. Good and provocative. So what is going on? One guess is that he's stretching himself too thin. He's a philosophy guy. Economics is tricky. It's one of the newest social sciences, largely, perhaps, because so much is counter-intuitive. Almost no one, for example, is born thinking that free trade is a good idea. Supply and demand wasn't fully articulated until 1890 with Alfred Marshall. Yet people who know very little about the subject still feel free to offer their opinions in ways tha they would not with medicine, for example, or engineering.

The odder thing is that Fukuyama, as per books above, abandons here much of his previous world view. Think about it, for all the faults of this adminstration, we appear to be on the verge of creating a functioning represenative government in the Arab Muslim world, and the cradle of civilization. This is so bad? see Walter Russell Mead on this. As for housing, yes we have behaved badly. But step back and think how we got here. As much of the reporting is beginning to make clear, even in the NYT, most of the blame is on the government invervention side. Anyone who bothers to read an elementary economics textbook, and thinks for himself or herself, will recognize that housing is not a public good. It's excludable and rivalrous, so the idea that the free marketeers are the problem is ridiculous.

Lastly, what about family values? It's collapsed, and it's bi-partisan, I suppose. But in his book on bio-tech, he he makes reference to filial piety in Asian ethical systems and references Glaucon in Plato's Republic, who wants government to raise children. Hint: it doesn't work.

In sum, this jeremiad on behalf of Obama is thin and unpersuasive.

Democratic Presidents tend to produce better economic results than Republicans, see -- http://tlrii.typepad.com/theliscioreport/2008/07/presidential-ec.html -- This current debacle spells the end of the political career for anyone who make deregulation their theme. It also will lead to increased regulation in energy, conservation, health care, education, social services, and other areas. I mean, if the government steps in to socialize the mortgage industry, why should it not step in to finally end homelessness? Thanks to George W Bush, the US economy will more closely resemble the Europeans in the next few years.

First the myths: I saw Reagan on stage with Gorbachev. A frail and coached non leader, because the other leaders had already started to unwind the cold war. You are totally forgetting the Gorbachev had already written his books where he published his idea and he had already warned East German Leaders that they will not support East Berlin and the Honegger regime any more. Reagan had clearly missed the boat. He was actually instrumental of extending the Cold War when he parked nuclear missiles in German and brought down a leftist German government that had started dialog with the east and was successful. It is a misperception to think that Reagan actually did nothing else but redirect money from the poor to the rich. The assumption that wealthy people share their wealth with the lower classes is a myth proven through history as wrong. Be it the Farmer wars in the middle ages or the founder years of the mid to late 19th century, rich people tend to forget people that work to manufacture their products because they must and pay them little because of supply and demand put them to the shorter end of the stick. The deficit spending became the plundering of the treasury and the destruction of the very foundation on which this country is built on: the government became an abstract evil force that had to be cut to pieces. Ideologically it turned over the civil rights movement and democracy as a whole since "we" are actually considered the government. Now of course it is bureaucracy that Republicans denouncing but they helped eagerly to increase it and with it liabilities. Europeans regard Americans as superficial and uneducated and Reagan as the figurehead. While Americans still role in the nostalgia of liberating Europe, this time is long gone and the welcome is outlived. While Americans were obsessing with big cars and horsepower, Europeans have developed green technologies. I do not see your euphemism in the future. Technologies have been outsourced to the point of agriculture being our largest export, like in third world countries. Special Visa immigrants return to their countries to build for their communities. People thinking about others What a concept. When I came back from a stay in Asia after four years, I found the spirit gone. I find myself thinking to go to Europe or Asia nowadays. I just does not feel like "justice for all" and "pursuit of happiness".

First the myths: I saw Reagan on stage with Gorbachev. A frail and coached non leader, because the other leaders had already started to unwind the cold war. You are totally forgetting the Gorbachev had already written his books where he published his idea and he had already warned East German Leaders that they will not support East Berlin and the Honegger regime any more. Reagan had clearly missed the boat. He was actually instrumental of extending the Cold War when he parked nuclear missiles in German and brought down a leftist German government that had started dialog with the east and was successful. It is a misperception to think that Reagan actually did nothing else but redirect money from the poor to the rich. The assumption that wealthy people share their wealth with the lower classes is a myth proven through history as wrong. Be it the Farmer wars in the middle ages or the founder years of the mid to late 19th century, rich people tend to forget people that work to manufacture their products because they must and pay them little because of supply and demand put them to the shorter end of the stick. The deficit spending became the plundering of the treasury and the destruction of the very foundation on which this country is built on: the government became an abstract evil force that had to be cut to pieces. Ideologically it turned over the civil rights movement and democracy as a whole since "we" are actually considered the government. Now of course it is bureaucracy that Republicans denouncing but they helped eagerly to increase it and with it liabilities. Europeans regard Americans as superficial and uneducated and Reagan as the figurehead. While Americans still role in the nostalgia of liberating Europe, this time is long gone and the welcome is outlived. While Americans were obsessing with big cars and horsepower, Europeans have developed green technologies. I do not see your euphemism in the future. Technologies have been outsourced to the point of agriculture being our largest export, like in third world countries. Special Visa immigrants return to their countries to build for their communities. People thinking about others What a concept. When I came back from a stay in Asia after four years, I found the spirit gone. I find myself thinking to go to Europe or Asia nowadays. I just does not feel like "justice for all" and "pursuit of happiness".

n a few weeks we will make a choice that will decide our future.
I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly.
Also, he perfectly predicted the current real estate market meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen in the next couple years
is terrifying.He thinks it will be worse then the great depression.
The banks in the U.S. are going under one after the other. Countrywide the largest morgage bank in the world,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch which are 3 out of the top 5 wall street firms. Also, Fanny and Freddy Mae which hold 50 percent of the home loans in the United States.
The government took them over because they are essentially bankrupt.If they didn't the entire financially system would virtually shut down, the stock market would crash and we would suffer beyond what any of us have seen before.

McCain just like Bush " doesn't understand the economy".
That not just my opinion its his own words. Not only does he not understand how to fix it but he does not understand exactly what is broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use complex mathematical models very few people understand.
Bush and McCain both can take the credit for this mess since they helped deregulate the laws that were protecting us.

Bush's economic advisor Phil Graham wrote the deregulation bill that allowed banks to take huge risks with all of our future.
Now, Phil Graham is the head of McCain's economic policy.He is also McCain's choice for the next secretary of the treasury.
No one in this country can afford for that to happen. The last time Bush met with his economic advisors was in March. He either didn't care or didn't realize that anything was wrong. Phil Graham had the guts to say that we are in a mental recession after he helped create the worst economy meltdown in our lifetime.
It will take the best and brightest minds in the world to get us out of this nightmare. As bad as Bush has done, McCain would be
even more destructive because things are in much worse shape. The next president will not inherit a surplus like Bush did but a tanking economy and a 11,600,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars deficit. Most of it Bush created and it will take decades to pay it back.
If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got.
When it comes to policy Bush and McCain are the same 90 percent of the time.
So why are the polls even close then ?





The chairman of McCains campaign recently said that people don't vote on issues they vote on a personality composite. Which means he is trying to sell you personality instead of results.






Let's teach him we are smarter than that .


Elect Obama Biden 2008




Check out this video of sarah palins interview it will blow you away


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36Xc0GG4iQ

I have read most of the comments on this thread and no one has brought up the corrupting influence of the lobbiest sytem on our government. We are getting the government that the lobbiests bought and paid for.