Mac1958
Diamond Member
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There are obviously people who want to absolve Bush of any responsibility regarding the global meltdown, and I suppose that's understandable given the long and clear history of dishonesty that is partisan politics. My guy did nothing wrong, it's all your guy's fault.
Funny thing is, this behavior illustrates an abject ignorance these folks have of the nature of the meltdown.
Obama didn't cause this, nor did Bush. Surprise! It was decades in the making and it could easily take that long for its affects to disappear.
One of the many problems with partisan politics is that it oversimplifies everything it touches. I'm sure that makes things nice and simple of the incurious, the simplistic and the intellectually lazy, but dishonesty advances or improves nothing.
But, by all means, let's continue with the silliness.
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Enlighten us into the cause, no platitudes please.
Sure. Not sure that I really need to, but sure.
The meltdown is the result of a combination of powerful factors:
Ineffective regulation - Whether it was not enough regulation or poorly enforced regulation, I'll let the partisans wrestle over it. Regulators were simply unable to keep up with changing financial instruments over time and allowed those selling those instruments to essentially run amok within the financial system. Whether it was exotic CMOs or ratings agencies that were giving AAAs to shit securities packages, it was up and down the system. Still is.
Ineffective governance - There are politicians who are on record as pushing mortgage lenders to relax standards in the interest of "fairness", only to see those mortgages do precisely what anyone could have told them they would do, collapse essentially across the board.
Government borrowing - Across the globe, governments continued to spend far more than they were taking in, as politicians continued to be afraid to say "no" to pretty much anyone. Balanced budget requirements would certainly have helped us avoid that, but few have the guts to push such an idea. Balanced budget requirements would force conservatives to justify spending cuts, and would force liberals to justify tax increases. Too much pressure.
Cheap and easy money - The Fed's fixation on interest rates combined with politicians' fixation on legislated "fairness" ultimately flooded markets with easy cash and created impossible distortion in money markets, adding considerably to the torque of what was to come.
Business greed - Global markets now are so stuffed with artificial securities (those that are based purely on betting and speculation), that it's easy for people whose only priority is income to take advantage of the system, to bend the rules, to justify any business practice.
But all of those significant elements of the meltdown pale in comparison to:
Consumer greed - We have created, supported and advocated a culture in which what you own, what you eat, what you watch, and what you want to buy supposedly tell us more about you than your character. We're incredibly fat and lazy, we care more about how Kim Kardashian is getting along with her mom than we do about how are kids are doing in school, we're terrified of "offending" someone with mere words, we're obsessed with buying the latest and newest Apple product. We try to shoe-horn ourselves into mortgages we know damn well we can't afford, and we sacrifice the equity in our homes so that we can pay off our credit cards and run them back up to purchase shit we don't need. Our culture is in swift decay, and that decay is being directly reflected in our economy.
All of these issues have been festering and growing over decades.
Or, wait, forget all that. It's all Obama's fault.
Good gawd.
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