Dear Mr. President

Trying something over and over again that did not work in the first place is the dumbest thing. Why would a Nobel Prize economist would do that? Because Edward C. Prescott advocates to repeat the Bush economy in taxation and health care. Do you think, Mr. Prescott, that this time will come out better? Send back your award to Stockholm, please!

I have no economic background, I'm just a working class American viewing the damage to not only our economy, but our nation. I think the problem is deeper rooted then just making bad loans in order to make more profits for the companies involved so in turn they could temporarily deceive their investors for their personal financial gain. Those and similar unethical practices have been apparent in many ways in far too many of our Fortune 500 companies. The root problem is the integrity of Americans in general.
You will never make me believe that there were not many people in all of the effected companies from the credit reporting agencies to Wall Street and beyond, that did not realize that their companies had unethical and outright illegal practices in play.
The problem is people are no longer admired or respected for saying ???no, I won???t be party to such practices???. People are not encouraged to self police the actions of their superior without fear of personally devastating consequences. They are labeled as trouble makers or malcontents and they are generally demoted or fired by companies rather than being viewed as individuals with high moral and ethical standards ??? such standards that would ultimately help protect us all. Until Americans find their integrity again, all the tighter controls and fail safe methods that will come as a result of our financial breakdown, will only work until the next generation of money hungry, blameless self-serving individuals tries to again crush our nation.
Instead of viewing this national crises as the fault of the Republicans or thinking the Democrats will save us ??? we need to take a long hard look at the business practices of America in general ??? you should never profit at the expense of others ??? in time it will always end up in failure.

I have no economic background, I'm just a working class american viewing the damage to not only our economy but our nation. I think the problem is deeper rooted then making bad loans to make more profits and temporairly look good on the books. Those practices

First off, 4astrongamerica flat out gets it. Seem to be very few these days who do looking at the polls. I don't like politics as they always get in the way. I don't like big government because typically anything they put there hands on is a disaster. All I care about is having the freedom to make decisions for myself and my family in all aspects. I want to feel safe, which we have since being on the offense after 9/11. I have no problem paying my FAIR share of taxes, but to increase them at this point is sickening on anyone including corporations. Americans need to stop living beyond their means, pointing their fingers at everyone else, and waiting for a hand-out. All you people are going to vote for you who want and that is the way it is supposed to be, but do so from your own research and your own thoughts, not what the media tells you or consensus. This country has become soft and it will get worse with an obama administration and Pelosi and Reid in charge is they have an extremely liberal roadmap to spend on social prgrams with big governement. That would flat out suck and if you don't think so, just wait and you will feel it soon enough if they take over.

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

HE GREAT BUSH DEPRESSION
I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly.
He perfectly predicted the current meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen next
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 ,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch , Fanny and Freddy Mae ,AIG
The government took them over because they are bankrupt. Even with the goverment nationalizing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt the stock market is crashing
the credit markets are frozen and all of us may suffer beyond anything seen in generations
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 how its been broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use quantum 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 was the last to know somthing 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. Check out this link to the truth http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo
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 budget surplus like Bush did but a crashing 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 ?
Mccains team just said they no longer want to talk about the economy.Instead they would like to spend time talking about obama
which means running the biggest smear campaign in history.
They think they can just tell you lies and you wont be smart enough to see through it
Let's teach him we are smarter than that
Stand up and hold them accountable
Bush isn't on the ballot this year but his policies are
Elect Obama Biden 2008






Check out this video of sarah palins interview and ask your self if she understands what she is talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36Xc0GG4iQ

HE GREAT BUSH DEPRESSION
I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly.
He perfectly predicted the current meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen next
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 ,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch , Fanny and Freddy Mae ,AIG
The government took them over because they are bankrupt. Even with the goverment nationalizing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt the stock market is crashing
the credit markets are frozen and all of us may suffer beyond anything seen in generations
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 how its been broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use quantum 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 was the last to know somthing 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. Check out this link to the truth http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo
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 budget surplus like Bush did but a crashing 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 ?
Mccains team just said they no longer want to talk about the economy.Instead they would like to spend time talking about obama
which means running the biggest smear campaign in history.
They think they can just tell you lies and you wont be smart enough to see through it
Let's teach him we are smarter than that
Stand up and hold them accountable
Bush isn't on the ballot this year but his policies are
Elect Obama Biden 2008






Check out this video of sarah palins interview and ask your self if she understands what she is talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36Xc0GG4iQ

America has fallen so far since our heyday in the 50's and if we are to have any hope to returning to global supremacy we need to buoy the lower and middle classes. Pathetically if you earn more than $32,000 you are in the top half of income earners, yet the highest earners make hundreds of millions, or billions. This obscene spread between the mean and median earnings means our economy cannot be sustained as a middle class society. Lets assume the highest income is 100 million and the lowest is zero. This would put the median income at 50million, with the mean about $32,000 as referenced. If we want to consider the scope here, the median income supposed is over 1,562 times the mean. These are dollars we the underclasses are earning, but allowing the CEO's and members of America's "Aristocracy" to steal from us legally. Nobody should earn this huge multiple above their lowest paid employees. It's lost relation to the principle of merit. They earn this due to nepotism and a good 'ol boy network, not because they are so fundamentally smarter or harder working than others. The recent crisis shows they aren't that much smarter then Joe the Plumber, just more entitled. Stop the madness. A longer term mindset must be enforced in business and politics, and we must return to a society of savings and operating on capital vs. credit, particularly in government. Fed economic management is a failed experiment. A return to fundamentals and common sense is a must. Read more on my take on the economy here: http://alphadominance.com/?p=66
www.alphadominance.com

If you look at the US as one large single business, bringing it into profitability would not be easy or quick.
The US has for many years had an outflow of cash much greater than its income largely due to the flow of cash to the Middle East for crude and to China and India for goods.
Dating from the time Nixon declared the US a "service economy" and with the
Republicans in office for 30 out of the last 40 years, the US has literally given away it ability to produce a saleable product that would have resulted in profitability.

The housing crisis is the end result of a stopgap economy that provided cash flow so people could think the economy was just fine. It wasn't and all the equity has now been drained out of it. The bailout will prop up prices for a short time but nothing more. And in the long run will only add to the problem providing cash for banks to lend so the consumers can borrow go further in debt, and again have zero equity.

Trade agreements are fine, an agreement to buy and sell, the problem is America sent their products to the trade partner to manufacture and became just a buyer with nothing to sell.

When we see the basis of the economy dependant on a workforce that is as much as 25% in the banking and real estate business, another 20% in government, 25% in health care. Then I guess we have nearly achieved the Republican vision for America, we have a service economy but still have nothing to sell.

28% of America is now below the poverty level, these are the people who did not heed Nixon's Reagan's and Bush's advise to get a degree and join the "service economy" they are the people who once worked in the now nonexistent manufacturing sector that once produced products for sale that supported the whole country.

It seems the Republican vision for America lacked one thing; common sense.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27324419/

AP poll: Candidates running nearly even 10/22/08

Neck-and-neck results are a departure from many recent national polls
WASHINGTON - The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as Republican-leaning voters drifted home to their party.

............................Just look at the Bush Years to see how the Country has gone down the road on the wrong track with the Economy and with all of the other Bush Blunders. If people have not seen the news presented them and do not realize that they need to get away from the Bush Policies and Priorities it is a shame.............But maybe they have been watching FOX News, the Right Wing Propaganda Station. "Maverick" McCain has supported the Bush Administration 90% of the time even though McCain has a Song and Dance going that he is all different so that he will appear better for the Election.......McCain is an old veteran politico giving us his tricks and saying things to fool us!!!

Nasty rescession by January? My level headed, Harvard petiton carrying campus dwelling bearded friend. We are in a rescession and look to be going into a depression by early 2nd quarter. Thats all, stand corrected!