Dear Mr. President

People on these bogs are fond of saying that the current economic meltdown was caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwriting bad mortgages. While Fannie and Freddie obviously are guilty of writing bad mortgages, and worse, guilty of lobbying Congress to allow them to do so with impunity, their actions are just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to determining who (or what) caused the financial crisis we face today.

In 1929 the stock market crash caused the banks to fail, because the banks were in bed with the stock market. Back then, banks owned investment houses, so when the stock market fell, the banks fell too. This triggered the Great Depression. So in 1933 the Congress wrote laws that regulated banking, making it illegal for banks to own investment companies, mortgage guaranty companies or insurance companies. The idea was to keep key industries separated by a fire wall, so that if one industry failed the whole economy would not go down in flames.

But the Republicans under Bush deregulated the banking industry. Senator Phil Gramm wrote legislation (the Gramm Rudman Act, the Gramm Leach Biley Act, etc.) that stripped away the regulations in the financial and insurance industies. He pushed them through the Republican Congress and they were signed into law by Geo. W. Bush. John McCain voted in favor. Everybody said how great it is to deregulate and create free markets.

Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch each gave over a million dollars to Senator Gramm's re-election campaign.

The economic collapse that happened later was a direct result of the deregulation, and here's how: the banks wrote bad mortgages, then bundled the mortgages into investment vehicles that they sold all over the world, and they even got firms like AIG to insure the investments. It was all a house of cards.

If there had been no deregulation, sure we would have had a bunch of bad mortgages, and the mortgage guaranty and real estate industries would have suffered, but there would not have been a global financial meltdown, since the problem would have been contained in one sector of the economy. You can thank Geo W. Bush, Sen. Phil Gramm and Sen John McCain for the meltdown, since they were strong proponents of deregulation.

Furthermore, although Fannie and Freddie are now holding the bulk of these bad mortgages, Fannie and Freddie did not originally write most of these mortgages. They bought them after the fact, bundled by banks/investment companies. Fannie and Freddie got screwed by the Wall Street fat cats. And so did you, if you pay taxes.

What is Phil Gramm doing today? He works as a lobbyist in Washington, trying to make it legal for the Swiss bank he represents to sell Death Bonds in the United States. Nice guy, Phil Gramm. Incidentally, John McCain has said that he wants to appoint Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary. Some people just can't learn from their mistakes.

People on these bogs are fond of saying that the current economic meltdown was caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwriting bad mortgages. While Fannie and Freddie obviously are guilty of writing bad mortgages, and worse, guilty of lobbying Congress to allow them to do so with impunity, their actions are just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to determining who (or what) caused the financial crisis we face today.

In 1929 the stock market crash caused the banks to fail, because the banks were in bed with the stock market. Back then, banks owned investment houses, so when the stock market fell, the banks fell too. This triggered the Great Depression. So in 1933 the Congress wrote laws that regulated banking, making it illegal for banks to own investment companies, mortgage guaranty companies or insurance companies. The idea was to keep key industries separated by a fire wall, so that if one industry failed the whole economy would not go down in flames.

But the Republicans under Bush deregulated the banking industry. Senator Phil Gramm wrote legislation (the Gramm Rudman Act, the Gramm Leach Biley Act, etc.) that stripped away the regulations in the financial and insurance industies. He pushed them through the Republican Congress and they were signed into law by Geo. W. Bush. John McCain voted in favor. Everybody said how great it is to deregulate and create free markets.

Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch each gave over a million dollars to Senator Gramm's re-election campaign.

The economic collapse that happened later was a direct result of the deregulation, and here's how: the banks wrote bad mortgages, then bundled the mortgages into investment vehicles that they sold all over the world, and they even got firms like AIG to insure the investments. It was all a house of cards.

If there had been no deregulation, sure we would have had a bunch of bad mortgages, and the mortgage guaranty and real estate industries would have suffered, but there would not have been a global financial meltdown, since the problem would have been contained in one sector of the economy. You can thank Geo W. Bush, Sen. Phil Gramm and Sen John McCain for the meltdown, since they were strong proponents of deregulation.

Furthermore, although Fannie and Freddie are now holding the bulk of these bad mortgages, Fannie and Freddie did not originally write most of these mortgages. They bought them after the fact, bundled by banks/investment companies. Fannie and Freddie got screwed by the Wall Street fat cats. And so did you, if you pay taxes.

What is Phil Gramm doing today? He works as a lobbyist in Washington, trying to make it legal for the Swiss bank he represents to sell Death Bonds in the United States. Nice guy, Phil Gramm. Incidentally, John McCain has said that he wants to appoint Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary. Some people just can't learn from their mistakes.

After 9/11, the US government started rounding up Muslims without cause and without due process of law, like we did to the Japanese Americans in WWII. The Bush administration called it's main internment camp Guantanamo Bay. While there are certainly many guilty terrorists held in Guantanamo, there are also many innocent American citizens who have been held illegally for years without even being charged with any crime. They have been tortured by our government. Some of them have died.

Recently the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration in the matter of Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court Justices were NOT on the side of the terrorists. They were on the side of the Geneva Convention, that says you can not torture POWs, and on the side of US laws that state you can not imprison a person without charging them with a crime and bringing them to trial. I'm sure that like most Americans, the Justices who voted against the illegal, immoral doings at Guantanamo didn't feel sympathy for the terrorists. They felt sympathy for the laws of AMERICA, the land of the FREE, where even rat finks get a fair trial.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the Bush administration is busy trying to build a smokescreen to hide the CRIMES they have committed. Those pesky weapons of mass destruction. Just think, the National Debt went up over 6 trillion dollars under Bush. More than 2 TRILLION of it went directly into the pockets of Halliburton, a corporation owned by the Cheney family. Halliburton is now a DUBAI corporation and therefore is not subject to US taxes. All that money they took out of the US Treasury is going into the coffers of a MUSLIM country.

Did you hear about how the US government is being charged millions for Halliburton deliveries of sand into Iraq from Kuwait? Sand. Like there is a shortage of sand in Iraq? Another contractor shipped sand from Idaho to Iraq at our expense. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses these and other excesses of our current government's out of control spending in Iraq.

Your grandchildren will be working like slaves to pay off this debt, so that the Bushes and Cheneys can live the high life in Dubai.

Yeah, they're patriots, Bush&Co. They wear flag pins. And hide the money they stole from America in Dubai.

And they want me to believe that Obama is a socialist. Right.

In case you think McCain is any different than Bush, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w

After 9/11, the US government started rounding up Muslims without cause and without due process of law, like we did to the Japanese Americans in WWII. The Bush administration called it's main internment camp Guantanamo Bay. While there are certainly many guilty terrorists held in Guantanamo, there are also many innocent American citizens who have been held illegally for years without even being charged with any crime. They have been tortured by our government. Some of them have died.

Recently the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration in the matter of Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court Justices were NOT on the side of the terrorists. They were on the side of the Geneva Convention, that says you can not torture POWs, and on the side of US laws that state you can not imprison a person without charging them with a crime and bringing them to trial. I'm sure that like most Americans, the Justices who voted against the illegal, immoral doings at Guantanamo didn't feel sympathy for the terrorists. They felt sympathy for the laws of AMERICA, the land of the FREE, where even rat finks get a fair trial.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the Bush administration is busy trying to build a smokescreen to hide the CRIMES they have committed. Those pesky weapons of mass destruction. Just think, the National Debt went up over 6 trillion dollars under Bush. More than 2 TRILLION of it went directly into the pockets of Halliburton, a corporation owned by the Cheney family. Halliburton is now a DUBAI corporation and therefore is not subject to US taxes. All that money they took out of the US Treasury is going into the coffers of a MUSLIM country.

Did you hear about how the US government is being charged millions for Halliburton deliveries of sand into Iraq from Kuwait? Sand. Like there is a shortage of sand in Iraq? Another contractor shipped sand from Idaho to Iraq at our expense. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses these and other excesses of our current government's out of control spending in Iraq.

Your grandchildren will be working like slaves to pay off this debt, so that the Bushes and Cheneys can live the high life in Dubai.

Yeah, they're patriots, Bush&Co. They wear flag pins. And hide the money they stole from America in Dubai.

And they want me to believe that Obama is a socialist. Right.

In case you think McCain is any different than Bush, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w

See also
http://www.newsweek.com/id/164732 from this web site. (oops!) stating that Freddie Mac was spending tax payer money to target Republicans in 2005 who were trying to regulate Fannie and Freddies fraud. Democrats were not targeted, as the were all in the tank with Fannie and Freddie to kill the regulations. Hear that, the article admits that Republicans were trying to regulate Freddie and Fannie, and Democrats were trying to stop it from happening as a means to facilitate the Community Reinvestment Act.

See also: http://www.newsweek.com/id/164972
Stating that Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act wasn't what caused the meltdown, and noting that "economists on both sides of the political spectrum have suggested that the act has probably made the crisis less severe than it might otherwise have been."

In the exchange with "Joe the plumber" we find out that Obama really is as radical as his early political acquaintances, Davis, Ayers, Wright, etc., and that he is into the failed economic policy of wealth redistribution. Obama's tax and spending plans alone would be bad enough, but add Reid and Pelosi to the mix, with the three of them controlling both houses of Congress and the executive branch without any effective restraint, and you have something that should causes concern even among moderate Democrats.
See Wall Street Journal: A Liberal Supermajority:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html

Their failed policies are what brought us to ruin. Even Bill Clinton says so. Obama and a supermajority of Democrats simply is not the change we need, nor is it change we can afford.

I think this article underlines something soo important..
It's the economy..stupid...
and the economy is COMPLICATED.

Too much vigorous action on the part of government can result in destabilization.

Too little action on the part of government can result in the economy guttering to a stop.

Too many regulations can strangle growth in equity and job creation.

Too few regulations allows these corporate raiders to gut banks and companies for their own profit leaving shareholders (and ultimately tax-payers) holding a bag with no value, but stuffed to the gills with bills.

And saying Ok 50/50 then, just doesn't work out either. Sometimes the necessary balance is 70/30..and sometimes its 20/80..or anywhere in between.

And in my opinion..and I admit to never having won a Nobel Prize for anything..so far..
We need oversites and regulations..not necessarily to "control" the economy, but rather as a framework so that we have a way to "examine" and "track" the current state of the economy.

And, just as a side note...try to keep in mind that too little regulation allows most companies to "keep their dirty little secrets" under wraps, eventually ruining the company..and losing jobs. So this ranting that any regulation or taxation of businesses kills jobs is valid..but so does the opposite.

Americans, myself included, need to get a much better basic grasp of these things before we start buying into bumper sticker slogans for fixing anything nearly as complex as the economy...

People on these bogs are fond of saying that the current economic meltdown was caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwriting bad mortgages. While Fannie and Freddie obviously are guilty of writing bad mortgages, and worse, guilty of lobbying Congress to allow them to do so with impunity, their actions are just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to determining who (or what) caused the financial crisis we face today.

In 1929 the stock market crash caused the banks to fail, because the banks were in bed with the stock market. Back then, banks owned investment houses, so when the stock market fell, the banks fell too. This triggered the Great Depression. So in 1933 the Congress wrote laws that regulated banking, making it illegal for banks to own investment companies, mortgage guaranty companies or insurance companies. The idea was to keep key industries separated by a fire wall, so that if one industry failed the whole economy would not go down in flames.

But the Republicans under Bush deregulated the banking industry. Senator Phil Gramm wrote legislation (the Gramm Rudman Act, the Gramm Leach Biley Act, etc.) that stripped away the regulations in the financial and insurance industies. He pushed them through the Republican Congress and they were signed into law by Geo. W. Bush. John McCain voted in favor. Everybody said how great it is to deregulate and create free markets.

Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch each gave over a million dollars to Senator Gramm's re-election campaign.

The economic collapse that happened later was a direct result of the deregulation, and here's how: the banks wrote bad mortgages, then bundled the mortgages into investment vehicles that they sold all over the world, and they even got firms like AIG to insure the investments. It was all a house of cards.

If there had been no deregulation, sure we would have had a bunch of bad mortgages, and the mortgage guaranty and real estate industries would have suffered, but there would not have been a global financial meltdown, since the problem would have been contained in one sector of the economy. You can thank Geo W. Bush, Sen. Phil Gramm and Sen John McCain for the meltdown, since they were strong proponents of deregulation.

Furthermore, although Fannie and Freddie are now holding the bulk of these bad mortgages, Fannie and Freddie did not originally write most of these mortgages. They bought them after the fact, bundled by banks/investment companies. Fannie and Freddie got screwed by the Wall Street fat cats. And so did you, if you pay taxes.

What is Phil Gramm doing today? He works as a lobbyist in Washington, trying to make it legal for the Swiss bank he represents to sell Death Bonds in the United States. Nice guy, Phil Gramm. Incidentally, John McCain has said that he wants to appoint Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary. Some people just can't learn from their mistakes.

People on these bogs are fond of saying that the current economic meltdown was caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwriting bad mortgages. While Fannie and Freddie obviously are guilty of writing bad mortgages, and worse, guilty of lobbying Congress to allow them to do so with impunity, their actions are just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to determining who (or what) caused the financial crisis we face today.

In 1929 the stock market crash caused the banks to fail, because the banks were in bed with the stock market. Back then, banks owned investment houses, so when the stock market fell, the banks fell too. This triggered the Great Depression. So in 1933 the Congress wrote laws that regulated banking, making it illegal for banks to own investment companies, mortgage guaranty companies or insurance companies. The idea was to keep key industries separated by a fire wall, so that if one industry failed the whole economy would not go down in flames.

But the Republicans under Bush deregulated the banking industry. Senator Phil Gramm wrote legislation (the Gramm Rudman Act, the Gramm Leach Biley Act, etc.) that stripped away the regulations in the financial and insurance industies. He pushed them through the Republican Congress and they were signed into law by Geo. W. Bush. John McCain voted in favor. Everybody said how great it is to deregulate and create free markets.

Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch each gave over a million dollars to Senator Gramm's re-election campaign.

The economic collapse that happened later was a direct result of the deregulation, and here's how: the banks wrote bad mortgages, then bundled the mortgages into investment vehicles that they sold all over the world, and they even got firms like AIG to insure the investments. It was all a house of cards.

If there had been no deregulation, sure we would have had a bunch of bad mortgages, and the mortgage guaranty and real estate industries would have suffered, but there would not have been a global financial meltdown, since the problem would have been contained in one sector of the economy. You can thank Geo W. Bush, Sen. Phil Gramm and Sen John McCain for the meltdown, since they were strong proponents of deregulation.

Furthermore, although Fannie and Freddie are now holding the bulk of these bad mortgages, Fannie and Freddie did not originally write most of these mortgages. They bought them after the fact, bundled by banks/investment companies. Fannie and Freddie got screwed by the Wall Street fat cats. And so did you, if you pay taxes.

What is Phil Gramm doing today? He works as a lobbyist in Washington, trying to make it legal for the Swiss bank he represents to sell Death Bonds in the United States. Nice guy, Phil Gramm. Incidentally, John McCain has said that he wants to appoint Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary. Some people just can't learn from their mistakes.

Eat the rich, out of the palace and into the ditch.

Agree 100% with Professor Krugman of Princeton. The first 3 months or 100 days of the new President in office must be a whirlwind of action in the areas he cites. If not, our country will suffer beyond any one person's comprehension.

One serious omission is the opinion of Yogi Berra, 'the future is hard to predict, especially when it hasn't happened yet'. All of these economists assume the future will be a reiteration of the past. None take into account failure. Alan Greenspan is shocked that his models failed to forsee this 'tsunami', but we are almost guaranteed other 'tsunamis'. Global warming is a tsunami generator. Earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornados are proven threats that could occur to further obstruct recovery. Global expectations for prosperity have been raised and people are going to react violently when they realize that they will not be experiencing it.

This would be a good time for the President and all people to fall on their faces before God. We have torn control of our lives from His hands and arrogantly claimed independence. The Presidents heart is guided by God like a river is guided by its banks, it would be a good time for us to acknowledge this.

This election is being watched by the world with the same hopeful anticipation as the first moon landing. This will be a day when the earth stands still. ...........................

http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/10/24/the-day-the-earth-stood-still/

This is Good that Wall Street heads for big decline as recession fears stir panic. In order to get out of an recession is to allow the markets around the world to go under and let Infation increase as far as it can go. Once the world is in a tailspin, like the depression of the '30's, a world war is needed to revive the global economy. This is how jobs are produced and people will have money to spend, the markets will begin to improve.

After 9/11, the US government started rounding up Muslims without cause and without due process of law, like we did to the Japanese Americans in WWII. The Bush administration called it's main internment camp Guantanamo Bay. While there are certainly many guilty terrorists held in Guantanamo, there are also many innocent American citizens who have been held illegally for years without even being charged with any crime. They have been tortured by our government. Some of them have died.

Recently the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration in the matter of Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court Justices were NOT on the side of the terrorists. They were on the side of the Geneva Convention, that says you can not torture POWs, and on the side of US laws that state you can not imprison a person without charging them with a crime and bringing them to trial. I'm sure that like most Americans, the Justices who voted against the illegal, immoral doings at Guantanamo didn't feel sympathy for the terrorists. They felt sympathy for the laws of AMERICA, the land of the FREE, where even rat finks get a fair trial.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the Bush administration is busy trying to build a smokescreen to hide the CRIMES they have committed. Those pesky weapons of mass destruction. Just think, the National Debt went up over 6 trillion dollars under Bush. More than 2 TRILLION of it went directly into the pockets of Halliburton, a corporation owned by the Cheney family. Halliburton is now a DUBAI corporation and therefore is not subject to US taxes. All that money they took out of the US Treasury is going into the coffers of a MUSLIM country.

Did you hear about how the US government is being charged millions for Halliburton deliveries of sand into Iraq from Kuwait? Sand. Like there is a shortage of sand in Iraq? Another contractor shipped sand from Idaho to Iraq at our expense. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses these and other excesses of our current government's out of control spending in Iraq.

Your grandchildren will be working like slaves to pay off this debt, so that the Bushes and Cheneys can live the high life in Dubai.

Yeah, they're patriots, Bush&Co. They wear flag pins. And hide the money they stole from America in Dubai.

And they want me to believe that Obama is a socialist. Right.

In case you think McCain is any different than Bush, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w

congrats to krugman on winning his nobel prize.
heres something I can assure you will never win one-- because its too accurate.
written 6 yrs ago, long before any serious mainstream criticism of the foundations of the economy.
nice to see the future finally catching up. read it for much that is still yet in store.
a paper I wrote called "fractional reserve banking as economic
parasitism"

http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/wpawuwpma/0203005.htm

endorsed by two phd economists. printed in nexus
magazine, 60k world circulation. #1 top downloaded
economics paper. used by economics
teacher in australia as standard classroom material.

recent supporting material:

Web of Debt-- How Banks and the Federal Reserve are Bankrupting the Planet, by Ellen Brown
http://www.webofdebt.com/

The Shock Doctrine: Naomi Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/1411235

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/05/149254

Behind the falsification of US economic data
Peter Daniels
http://www.infowars.com/?p=2525

Money as Debt, video by Grignon
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

Obama in this video, addressing his work with ACORN litigation relating to the community reinvestment act and the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as they relate to the current real estate and financial crisis, states that, and I quote:

???Subprime lending started out as a good idea, helping Americans buy homes who previously could not afford to. Financial institutions created new financial instruments that could securitize these loans, slice them into finer and finer risk categories, and spread them out among investors and around the country, as well as around the world. In theory, this should have allowed mortgage lending to be less risky, and more diversified.???

??? The original idea was a good one, which was, lets see if we can distribute risk more broadly, and make it easier to provide loans to people who otherwise might not be able to get one.???

Listen for yourself. You cannot dispute the mans on words recorded live:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=related


Obama in this second video is campaigning at a convention of Acorn and I believe two other ???Community Activist??? organizations. Ask if he will be their ally if he becomes President, Obama says, quote:

???Yes, but let me say that before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we are going to be calling all of you in to help us shape the agenda. We???re going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.

See and hear it for yourself. Obama promised that Acorn and other groups like it will setting his agenda if elected:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vJcVgJhNaU
See also: http://www.newsweek.com/id/164972
Stating that Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act wasn't what caused the meltdown, and noting that "economists on both sides of the political spectrum have suggested that the act has probably made the crisis less severe than it might otherwise have been."
See also:
http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/thread.aspx?threadid=808692&boardsparam=Page%3d2

Below is a link to C-SPAN video clips of the Congressional hearings at roughly the time McCains attempt at S.190. to fix Fannie and Freddie. See for yourself who said what.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
See also
http://www.newsweek.com/id/164732 from this web site. (oops!) stating that Freddie Mac was spending tax payer money to target Republicans in 2005 who were trying to regulate Fannie and Freddies fraud. Democrats were not targeted, as the were all in the tank with Fannie and Freddie to kill the regulations. Hear that, the article admits that Republicans were trying to regulate Freddie and Fannie, and Democrats were trying to stop it from happening as a means to facilitate the Community Reinvestment Act.

Obama's tax and spending plans alone would be bad enough, but add Reid and Pelosi to the mix, with the three of them controlling both houses of Congress and the executive branch without any effective restraint, and you have something that should causes concern even among moderate Democrats.
See Wall Street Journal: A Liberal Supermajority:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html

Dont believe me? See Barney Franks comments on the news, including face the nation last week, stating that Democrats in Congress intend to raise taxes and go on a spending spree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Mazjm_A5k

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

You will also hear him try to shift the blame away from himself, but what was he saying in 2003 when problems in Freddie and Fannie first started to surface:

"I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two government sponsored enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury.
I must say we have an interesting example of self-fulfilling prophecy. Some of the critics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say that the problem is that the Federal Government is obligated to bail out people who might lose money in connection with them. I do not believe that we have any such obligation. And as I said, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy by some people."