I'm sure Obama supporters will feel obligated to cover their ears, eyes, block their noses and wail. But the truth is, Bush did not even contribute to the current Economic turndown. Not his "failed policies", nor McCain.

Bush did actually do his best to do something about it and you don't have to look far at all into the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issue to know that. The housing boom was perpetuated by ease of access to credit that shouldn't have happened and which was facilitated by aggressive policies on behalf of the Clinton administration. The Bush administration actually did try to do something about the subprime lending.


These private bankers that own the federal reserve ruined the economy with subprime loans, we know this much. But this was inevitable because of the twisted economy America runs on. Now, England and Europe use this too, but America is the greatest example of it. For what its worth, this is also one of the many reasons the system is broken:



America is full of fake money. Money that has no value. All this money is invented out of thin air, because of a strange concept bankers believe in. One that made them ridiculously rich. Over a hundred years ago when Europe was expanding across the globe, gold was commonly used as currency. Or silver, as America was based on. Now, the bankers had a simple system- they kept your money in their bank to keep it safe. To prove that you had that money, they gave you a slip of paper you could redeem your money with.


However, people started trading paper instead of gold- giving shops the pieces of paper that promise them 5 gold and 2 silvers or what ever, from the bank. This money is debt- it is proof that the bank owes that person 5 gold and 2 silver. So people started trading in debt- a concept that can cause huge problems when applied on large scale.
Now when this got really out of hand, people stopped using gold. Paper was much easier to carry, fold up in their pockets and such. One day, the bankers realised they could loan out money they didn't have. They could invent new debt. As long as everyone didn't run back to the bank to collect all their money at once, a "run of the bank", it would work fine. So the bankers started giving out loans to people, loans of the gold in their bank which belonged to other people. However, because they handed out the loans as paper, they never lost any gold. When the loan was paid off, this fake debt was replaced with real money, and the bankers became rich.


...

That's a pretty basic explanation of it, but this carried onto America. America is built on this same financial system, regulated by the government. Each time a bank gives out a loan, they are able to give out 9 times their ammount of money- to create money they don't have. Yes, this truly is how banks work. They can have $1,000 of material value- of gold or silver- in their bank vaults, and give out a $9,000 loan. They create money from nowhere. Now, originally these pieces of paper could be taken back to banks and turned in for 1 silver piece of whatever, but eventually the value of the paper in terms to the bank was removed. Now it represented money you don't have, and can't claim. It was just debt, something the bank owed you, that you couldn't claim. Once you bought something of material value with that debt, you had something that WAS worth something.


Now why is this important? Other than creating an extremely fragile economic system, it creates a huge gap between the rich and the middle/working class. Because the rich are the bankers- the people with material value. No matter what happens they will always have their gold locked away in their bank vaults, their property and business shares.
However, we walk around with paper. Debt. The only valuable things you have are your house, your food, your materialistic items. If they economy collapses, we would only have our material items. The paper we carry around would go back to being just paper, worthless. Meanwhile Wall Street would loose all their debt and hang onto the bank's stock of real, valuable materials.

That's just one way the system is ridiculously broken. And when it comes to the economy, that's just scratching the surface. Past the economy there's the insane English electoral system that makes no sense whatsoever, the exploitation of third world countries, war for the sake of profit and the looming threat of a police state.



The next time you feel the need to blame Bush for everything from General Unhappiness and World Poverty to Al Gore's credibility, please ensure your statements are in line with the facts.

Your right he didn't start the recession but he sure jus helped kick start a depression, buy giving billions of tax payers dollars to those same private bankers that own the FED. And none of it will come back to the people.

Bush is not what brought this country into a recession.

I thought it was pretty obvious that the cascade which started the global downturn was mainly because of the cheap mortgages and credit that was being given to the US people and the massive spike in Oil prices last summer.

Oil went up > People couldn't pay debts > banks lost liquidity > market confidence slumped > financial institutions collapsed > global market confidence slumped > western world hits recession.

George Bush just happened to be in charge of the US when all this greed and overspending came to a head.

[edit on 9/1/09 by Dermo]