.......why the following statement made by your arch villian Nancy Pelosi is all false and completely inaccurate when describing the Bush administration and the Republican party's role in the current financial crisis. I know that somehow policies and laws promoted by the Clinton administration are chiefly responsible and the GOP party always of course has the best interest of the average American at heart....not just the upper echelon greed mongers and power brokers. Now seriously....I want to hear everything righteous and good that Cheney/Bush and the GOP has done in the last 8 years to prevent the crisis that has befallen us. Please refrain from the usual blog inspired rhetoric if you choose to answer this......I am interested only in factual statements.
Interestingly Harry Reid also damned the GOP and esp John McCain for the crisis on Wall Street. He blamed McCain for the loosing of the regulations regarding the banking industry/Wall Street ...getting rid of the Glass-Seggall Act or something like that. A little research showed that the bill that did that was voted in 90-9 in the Senate and that Harry Ried himself voted for and it was signed into law by Pres Bill Clinton. How about that??
Ask Chris Dodd or Barack Obama...the top two recipients of money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the past 9 years...and Obama accomlished it in only 3 of the 9 years. And yes, Republicans are in on it also. The best thing we could do is make the two parties quit trying to blame this entire mess on each other and realize that it was a total failure of the system...and fix it. Sen. John McCain (2005): note the reference to Franklin Raines, who is Barack Obama's chief economic advisor And the another CEO of Fannie Mae, James Johnson, has also been involved in his campaign... Here is a recent link: http://digitalartpress.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/obama-against-severance-for-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-except-his-friend-jim-johnson/ My post is getting too partisan as well...Congress (both Reps. and Dems.) were falling all over themselves pressuring banks to issue risky and low interest loans...by telling them that Fannie and Freddie would buy up all the bad paper and sell it to investors. It was a house of cards caused by government interference. Both parties played a role in it, going all the way back to the Clinton administration. We need to right the ship...make those issuing the loans hold the paper...and thus assume the risk of the loan they tendered. When asked the other day if politicians in her party should shoulder any blame in this incident, your heroine Nancy Pelosi gave the following extensive comment..."No." Just spare me the hypocracy of talking about "crony capitalism" when there has been just as much, if not more, in your own party, Nancy.
Thanks for the replies. I'm on the run ( heading to Dallas ) and I will read and digest when I get back.
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This bailout proposed now of 700 billion is scary stuff. One of the most important aspects to me is the restrictions on executive compensation. I have been howling about that for a long time as I have never trusted the system in place the last few years to do anything but reward those at the top exorbitantly while at the same time keeping as much as possible from the rest of us. Trickle down is just that.....it's a trickle by comparison to the real riches hoarded by a select few. Jobs are cut and people's livelihoods are expendable as long as a few jerks get filthy rich in the process. I have never felt that was what George Washington and Ben Franklin had in mind.
No, and neither did they probably envision fat-cat senators being driven in limousines to 3 martini luncheons and taking money to vote down bank reform legislation...and then take credit for saving us with the bailout whereby we get to pick up the pieces with our own money.
you get what you pay for, you put unreasonable limits on compensation, you will get unreasonable limits on talent for those leadership positiions......that will surely fix the problem.
Is that a bad thing? Where's the "talent" in those who caused this mess? We've talked about this before, BT. For many years I've believed that bankers as a group have a strong tendency to make bad decisions. As individuals they may be brilliant, but together they fall prey to the sheep mentality and every couple of decades cause an uproar. This is by far the biggest one yet. They allowed the intoxicating notion of income and profits to blind them to the risks inherent in moving away from the fundamentals, and now they and we are paying the price for their failures. For the record, you cannot lay this at the feet of the president any more than you can blame the Clinton administration for failing to see the warning signs of a pending terrorist attack on our soil.
Sid, I don't disagree with the herd mentality at all....it's been proven every 10 or 15 years or so since time began and it will happen again.....my point is a simple one. Many of these institutions are deeply troubled and will require strong, skillful leaders to help restore them as solid competitive, taxpaying corporate citizens and employers. I don't believe that you can attract the kind of leadership talent required if you are unwilling to provide compensation that would be attractive to them.....human behavior such that it is, why would it be in their interest to leave their current situation? imho, that would be a very shortsighted, "penny wise and pound foolish" solution.
Sure. Why would someone with the responsibility of running a multi-billion dollar business employing thousands of workers ever be paid as much as the third baseman on the Yankees?
"Is that a bad thing? Where's the "talent" in those who caused this mess?" These guys might have a hard time finding a decent job anywhere else but possibly as the head of a crime family. Stealing and ruthlessness seems to be their talent.
There are plenty of guilty parties in this most recent of credit meltdowns including both private and public sectors.....bankers, investors, borrowers and regulators all have played a role, imho.