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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (122639)	1/26/2012 4:26:29 PM
From: lorne	3 Recommendations Respond to of 224729

ken..Easy to see why hussein obama and soros are such good friends? And as Phony as he day is long. Soros: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac really kicked off this (financial) crisis newsgroups.derkeiler.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- •From: tabbott@xxxxxxxxxxxx •Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:48:21 -0600 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Found at: spiegel.de Soros:" These public-private partnerships are very, very dangerous. The most rotten part of the financial system in the US consisted of the government sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They really kicked off this crisis. The state should set the rules and enforce them -- but not become involved as a market player." end excerpt I don't often quote George Soros. In fact, I think this may be the first time. I think it significant that a liberal like Soros would correctly point the finger at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as being at the heart of our current financial crisis. No doubt, Soros would blame this failure on the Bush administration, but is that the case? Over the years, President Bush proposed to Congress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac be more closely regulated. I believe Bush sent such legislation to Congress on six different occasions, and the proposed reforms were rejected by Congress on each occasion. Senator John McCain also sounded the alarm about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and proposed legislation to get them under control, but to no avail as Congress again rejected these reforms. The only fault I find with the Bush administration and Senator McCain is that they did not push hard enough for new regulations, and did not holler loud enough about the consequences if reforms were not made. So who is responsible for the activities at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who is responsible for allowing them to continue to run these financial institutions into the ground? Fannie Mai and Freddie Mac were tasked with making home loans available to as many people as possible, even those who could not normally afford to buy a home. The leadership at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went overboard on these loans, for personal gain and political reasons, giving them to just about anyone who applied, regardless of their financial situation. This situation was supported by Barack Obama, Rep. Barney Frank, Senator Chris Dodd and all the other liberals in Congress who voted to allow these financial agencies to pass out money to all comers, and stopped any efforts to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dead in its tracks. Now we reap the problems associated with turning financial institutions into providing welfare payments for people who cannot afford to buy a house otherwise. Our current economic circumstances started with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, then proceeded to causing a hedge fund carrying lots of this debt to go out of business with shareholders pulling over $500 billion out of this hedge fund and causing a crisis of confidence throughout the entire U.S. financial industry, which caused everyone to stop loaning money to everyone else. Not because there was no money to lend because there was money, but because the lenders did not know what was going to happen next, so they opted to take no action and wait and see what happened, which had the effect of turning off the money spigot. I do think that our financial institutions were only a part of the larger problem. I think an even more important part was the price of gasoline as it went up to $4.00 per gallon. The crisis of confidence in the credit markets definitely had an effect, but the reason that people are being layed off from their jobs seems to me to be because the very high oil prices caused people to have to spend more of their income on gasoline and less on everything else, which naturally caused the economy to slow. And the auto makers took a double hit from this situation because fewer people could afford to buy new cars, and the higher gas prices caused those who could afford to buy to want much more fuel-efficient cars which the auto makers did not have. I have to think the gasoline prices were the major culprit since it seems those prices would effect the world economies much more that a crisis of confidence in U.S. credit markets. It would behoove us to understand what has happened, so we don't make those mistakes again. We can solve the gas problem. There are many alternatives available to us for doing this. Solving corruption and misguided largesse among our politicians will be a much harder job. The first step to a solution is to identify those at fault, and the actions they took, be they Democrat or Republican.