Let's cut the bull shit and get down to the truth. The beginning..

[Listening]

The REAL truth, is what we had under Clinton created the most booming economy we have ever seen. Everyone pays their fair share, we support those that are the real job creators, small business, and support those that make american great, the middle class.

Didn't you read the thread title.

This is nothing more than horsecrap.

Read The Agenda or All To Human and you get a real sense the White House was in total Chaos. First on the agenda....Gays in the Military.

What happened was that Clinton got his democratic majorities in the House and Senate washed away in 94 and it was Clinton cooperating with a determined congress that got us everything you describe.

Cut the crap...that is what PreFan asked for.

 

[PredFan]

Let's see if this group can actually do this. I want us to get to the root of problems and weed out the truth. Not the truth according to the left or the right, but the truth.

I am conservative but not an idealogue. If we can get to the truth here, I can accept it.

First issue on the table:

What caused the recession?

No one thing. A long list of Factors played a Part. One of which was Decades of Bad Government Policy.

I agree with this here. I want to have them spelled out though, for reference.

 

[Listening]

As good a summation as I have ever read, Lowly carpenters I talked to knew it was coming a long time before I ever heard a banker even mention the word bubble. You can't build spec houses forever, had to end up with someone holding the bag, never would have guessed we would have unconditionally bailed them out so completely that they would not even take a lesson from the whole mess.

And yet we still have Social Security and Medicare to deal with.

The bust is still coming.

 

[PredFan]

Let's see if this group can actually do this. I want us to get to the root of problems and weed out the truth. Not the truth according to the left or the right, but the truth.

I am conservative but not an idealogue. If we can get to the truth here, I can accept it.

First issue on the table:

What caused the recession?

I think youll take my honest answer as partisan propaganda but here it is:

The Depression ( its not a recession ) was caused by financial institutions taking on far too much risk and when they lost their bets they didnt have the wallets deep enough to get them out of it.

There once were laws in place to prevent those institutions from taking on that much risk but those laws were either relaxed or repealed entirely. One could point to the repeal of Glass - Steagal ( Republican Congress, Democrat president, Bill Clinton, who PRAISED the repeal ) as the most obvious cause.

There you go. though I laid blame on a Republican Congress AND a Democrat President, Im sure many on this board will jump up and label me a lefty for not defending the finacial institutions.

I agree with your points, and have read them stated previously in this thread. I would call it a fair assessment, fair but incomplete.

Thanks

 

[Listening]

Pubs' and their cronies' corruption and incompetence, putting their pals in charge of the henhouse - greedy corrupt private institutions taking over the real estate market from Fannie and Freddie. F+F did get into it late, but it was only 20% them.

Boosh and Co couldn't shoot straight, period.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[PredFan]

Thanks all, there is a lot to sort through here but I think I have an answer. Hopefully I can get it into something that is useful as a reference.

 

[Listening]

Everyone is welecomed to an opinion on the topic.

How it actually combined and fell out will likely be the subject of several books, many of which will not agree with each other.

The seeds of recession are in the growth of the economy.

Every economy corrects.

We have several factors that contributed....

What is more scary is that we don't have the horsepower to get out.

We don't have an educated work force.

We have far to many people on entitlements.

We have a huge divide in ideologies.

This is getting real bad.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The business cycle causes recessions.

 

[pvsi.]

Let's see if this group can actually do this. I want us to get to the root of problems and weed out the truth. Not the truth according to the left or the right, but the truth.

I am conservative but not an idealogue. If we can get to the truth here, I can accept it.

First issue on the table:

What caused the recession?

I like your thread. I believe recession was caused by the bankers and special interests who profit and prosper from the misery of others. I believe recessions are completely avoidable

 

[P F Tinmore]

I don't agree that this caused the recession. For one thing, Clinton enjoyed then benefit of luck. He was potus during the Dot Com boom which had absolutely nothing to do with him or his policies. I am pretty sure that it was the housing situation that caused this mess. I am sure because people smarter than me have stated such. I won't totally discount your theory, but I'll have to hear more than that to convince me, and your avie kind of detracts from your credibility.

That's incorrect. Clinton/Gore funded massive telecommunications upgrades and expanded access to the internet. That along with providing funding for re-training of people displaced by NAFTA. Most wound up training for Information Technology.

There was also a huge paradigm shift in the financial markets...in that they went from an analog way of doing business to a digital one.

Bullshit... the AOL's, UUNETs, Qwests, Compuserves, etc had influxes of capital from venture capitalists, larger existing firms etc... Coming from someone IN the business (as I have been since 94), there was not 'help' from the government on this

All this investment money had to come from someplace. We saw the income and wealth in the investor class rise dramatically while the income of the consumer class was stagnant and many times declining. Our economy was thrown out of balance. This left us ripe for malinvestments, i.e. investment bubbles.

 

[blackhawk]

There were a number of things that caused it some regulations having banks giving out loans to people that should not have qualified for them people accepting loans they knew they weren't financially equipped to handle a lack of regulation in other areas that allowed these loans to be shuffled all around lack of oversight on Fannie and Freddie these things and other's combined to create the perfect storm. It's like asking what caused Pearl Harbor there were many things that contributed to it not one single thing.

 

[P F Tinmore]

The business cycle causes recessions.

True, but what causes business cycles?

 

[Moonglow]

The REAL truth, is what we had under Clinton created the most booming economy we have ever seen. Everyone pays their fair share, we support those that are the real job creators, small business, and support those that make american great, the middle class.

From Clinton's strong progressive view the economy skyrocketed, we had the biggest surplus in US history, employers were nearly begging people to work for them, 10$ an hour to start signs in McDonald's windows,...it was great times.

From there W came into office and decided to throw Clinton's game plan to have the nation debt free into the trash and decided to go back to the proven failed GOP "trickle down" economics. Once enacted things began to plunge.

Now that W slashed revenues, he decided to go on a spending spree by enacting medicare part D, and going to war with afganistan, and the big one, the false war in Iraq.

To insert the cliffs notes, Bush allowed the big banks to run wild with predatory loans, destroyed the housing market, enacted TARP giving trillions to bail them out, and so the frat boy party is over, leaving the nation in shambles because of the republican way of doing things.
Spend like maniacs, but don't have a way to pay for it.

I don't agree that this caused the recession. For one thing, Clinton enjoyed then benefit of luck. He was potus during the Dot Com boom which had absolutely nothing to do with him or his policies. I am pretty sure that it was the housing situation that caused this mess. I am sure because people smarter than me have stated such. I won't totally discount your theory, but I'll have to hear more than that to convince me, and your avie kind of detracts from your credibility.

then with tha logic it is Obama's bad luck to be president mow.

 

[Billo_Really]

The REAL truth, is what we had under Clinton created the most booming economy we have ever seen. Everyone pays their fair share, we support those that are the real job creators, small business, and support those that make american great, the middle class.

From Clinton's strong progressive view the economy skyrocketed, we had the biggest surplus in US history, employers were nearly begging people to work for them, 10$ an hour to start signs in McDonald's windows,...it was great times.

From there W came into office and decided to throw Clinton's game plan to have the nation debt free into the trash and decided to go back to the proven failed GOP "trickle down" economics. Once enacted things began to plunge.

Now that W slashed revenues, he decided to go on a spending spree by enacting medicare part D, and going to war with afganistan, and the big one, the false war in Iraq.

To insert the cliffs notes, Bush also allowed the big banks to run wild with predatory loans, destroyed the housing market, enacted TARP giving trillions to bail them out, and so the frat boy party is over, leaving the nation in shambles because of the republican way of doing things.

Simply put, the economic crisis was caused from the GOP slashing revenues, while at the same time spending like lunatics.

I'm a liberal and I agree with everything you just said, with one caveat...

...Bill Clinton did sign into law the Gramm-Bliley Bill, thus putting the nail into the coffin of Glass-Steagall.