Desperately Seeking Stimulus

More drilling does nothing but ensure that the real power and influence stays with the oil companies. How about retooling some of these defunct factories all across America to mass produce solar energy systems?! Last I checked, sun rays were abundant, and free. That would greatly increase jobs, electric cars, while reducing foreign oil dependency, monthly electricity bills, emissions. And the best thing is that the benefits would be realized NOW and not in 12 years.

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I like the last pont, drill, baby, drill! Is it just me, or over the course of this election cycle all we have heard is DRILL. Never once have I heard anything on PRIME TIME TV or RADIO from either side as too the REFINING CAPACITY. DRILL all you want, pump as much out of the ground as you can! What good will it do us it our REFINING CAPACITY is the same 10 years from now as it is at the present time. Typical CRAP coming out of the mouths of our POLITICIANS!

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

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.

Yeah, let the government tell us how to spend our money by taking it away from us. At the same time they can give us all pacifiers. Man, we are so messed up we actually allow insane ideas like this to be portrayed as solutions!

I really think the gas tax is a great idea. We really need to ensure that the SUV does not make a comeback and that efficient cars are on the new thing. The high gas prices this past summer put the sledgehammer on the SUV and we can only hope that our dependence on foreign oil will not only be because we produce more oil, but that we (as the US) consume much less. Of course, I'd be concerned that the GOP will have a knee jerk reaction against any tax as they have in the more recent past. Then it would become a democrat idea only and the whole partisanship situation comes back.
As for the Soc Sec idea, it is a good one, but one that fails to come to complete grips with the demographic reality that Americans are just plain living longer....we need to see that the recipients are getting much more back than they put in if they are living to the ripe old ages that are common. Soooo, it seems to me that in addition to Robert's idea, we'll have to move back the normal retirement age a bit. It also seems the way to solve the Soc Sec problem is to address it from lots of different perspectives from what we pay, to what we receive in benefits, to Cola calculations (one percent less than what we get now?) and perhaps a host of other items....I like McCains idea to get a committee like the BRAC situation.

We are that bad off and we will apprehend that in the coming years. Americans cannot come to grips with the fact that we are $10+ trillion in debt (and raWe are that bad off and we will apprehend that in the coming years. Americans cannot come to grips with the fact that we are $10+ trillion in debt (and rapidly increasing it), and we ceded our manufacturing economy for a shell game services one and are now in a deep ditch without a shovel. Stimulating and producing goods we can sell to the world are not the same thing. All the shells are turned over and there's nothing under them. America is in for one very hard landing.pidly increasing it), and we ceded our manufacturing economy for a shell game services one and are now in a deep ditch without a shovel. Stimulating and producing goods we can sell to the world are not the same thing. All the shells are turned over and there's nothing unde over and America is in for one very hard landing.

<table>
<tr>
<td> NYMEX FUTURE:&nbsp;&nbsp; </td>
<td> $ PRICE:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </td>
<td> &nbsp;$ UP:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </td>
<td> as %: </td>
</tr>
<td>Crude: </td>
<td> 68.69 </td>
<td> 5.96 </td>
<td> 9.50 </td>
</tr>
</tr>
<td>Heating Oil: </td>
<td> 204.68 </td>
<td> 13.48 </td>
<td> 7.05 </td>
</tr>
</tr>
<td>Natural Gas: </td>
<td> 6.58 </td>
<td> .39 </td>
<td> 6.37 </td>
</tr>
</table>

The gas tax, offset by tax cuts, is a good idea. However this will need bipartisan support if it has any chance of getting through. Democratic majority or not, you know the Republicans will demagogue the issue right through 2010 if they are not clearly on board with it.

What we need to do in order to keep the fires burning in our economy is to spend *moderately*.

No more credit cards, no more balloon ARMS, and don't take that lavish vacation - but don't start putting money in a box in the backyard either. If we all stop buying then the economy chokes and asphyxiates and we all lose.

My advice is, buy yourself something nice once or twice a month if you can, with cash and not credit. Go out to a restaurant a few times a month. Spend WITHIN your means. But don't freak out and start hiding wads of cash in your floorboards. We're not that bad off yet, but we will be if everyone stops spending. That's what really kicked off the Depression - the credit crisis then and the four-years-long consumer spending freeze that Hoover didn't know enough to stop.

Amen