Tomorrow the Dow below 7000 for the first time since April of 1997

Originally posted by bpg131313

So.. yes, banks are to blame. Sadly, people are equally to blame. What happened to personal responsibility?

The government no longer believes in personal responsibility. That's part of the 1000 page stimulus bill that no one read, and the president signed (just like your example of a mortgage being put in front of people and they sign without reading it). Instead, the government will give our money away to banks, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, and foreign companies because they, too, have no personal responsibility.

But what ever we do, we MUST NOT LET THEM FAIL!!!! It might hurt their feelings.

Again, I am not saying that the banks or the government don't play equal parts in this serious issue. I'm saying that your average Joe Citizen who bought a home without reading a contract, who lied about their income or bills, or who got 19 credit cards and maxxed them out, are equally to blame. That's it. Instead, all I hear is about how evil and terrible the government is, and how the bankers should be strung up.

And even funnier stuff like "I won't pay my credit card bill!" Yea.. that's personal responsibility for you. Got the card... maxxed it out.. didn't read THAT contract either (that said they had right to raise the rate if you didn't pay on time, or after a period of time), and suddenly it's the credit cards companies fault.

And hell, my wife and I DO have a couple credit cards, and they DID raise the rates. Guess what... we'll pay them off and never get another card. It's OUR FAULT! Not theirs. Are they crooks? We sort of think so, but we willingly allowed them to do business with us. Oops? Our bad. Time to pay up. I suggest others do the same, and stop lamenting about how it's everyone's fault but their own.

Originally posted by fleabit

Again, I am not saying that the banks or the government don't play equal parts in this serious issue. I'm saying that your average Joe Citizen who bought a home without reading a contract, who lied about their income or bills, or who got 19 credit cards and maxxed them out, are equally to blame. That's it.

And I'll give you that. I agree with you. I personally believe all of those people ought to be out on their @$$es for it rather than being given extra tax breaks that people following the rules don't get. Private citizens shouldn't be bailed out either. They will never learn unless they are allowed to fail. I'm not going to lose sleep over the fools that signed for the loans they couldn't afford. They deserve the failure, not a bailout. I apologize for making it sound like I was only against the corporations and government. The people are equally to blame for this, and need to be dropped on their @$$es accordingly.

And even funnier stuff like "I won't pay my credit card bill!" Yea.. that's personal responsibility for you. Got the card... maxxed it out.. didn't read THAT contract either (that said they had right to raise the rate if you didn't pay on time, or after a period of time), and suddenly it's the credit cards companies fault.

These people are the ones I was talking about above. The ones who think they are somehow entitled to everything and never have to pay. I know several of these people and I'm furious that they are being bailed out too. They need to be evicted, their property and assets seized to get some money out of them, and they need to suffer for their idiocy.

Am I also aware that several people DID play by the rules and are still in this mess? Absolutely, and it's those people I would personally help out. But the vast majority need to get what they deserve, and nothing less.

As the stock market continues to dive, this will become more and more common. We've stepped off the ledge way back at 14,000. We've got a very long way yet to fall. March is going to be a bloody month.

Originally posted by Anonymous Avatar

Originally posted by audas
Bush is responsible for this it happened on his watch - he drives the economy straight over a cliff and then hands the wheel to obama - and you blame obama for getting in the car ?

No wonder America is a basket case with people like you posting...seriously.

You might want to educate yourself in the ways of our current banking system before righteously declaring this is Bush's fault.

No I dont, the regulation of the banking system was systematically dismantled, hindered and outright obstructed by Bush - its a ell known and accepted fact. There is no doubt that Clinton attempted to pursue a wider distribution of housing ownership howeer it was BUSH who insisted on Market self regulation.

Enrons collapse should have been the alarm bell that never stopped ringing - someone put a sock in it and allowed industry self regulation and reduced oversight to almost nothing -
I understand your system better than you.

Originally posted by bpg131313
They didn't care. That isn't a Bush issue. That isn't an Obama issue. This issue isn't Republican or Democrat. It's a business issue that the American people need to seriously deal with, and that's going to hurt a lot of people because bringing down these giants is going to send ripples throughout the globe. It's going to be huge. But that's what really needs to happen.

Was it not both their fault? The Community Reinvestment Act was inexorably linked to the failure of the credit market. I don't care what the FED has to say about any of this, they're in on it. And people are ignoring this issue because either it has fallen out of popular opinion by the mainstream media, or that it is reviled as "fringe economics", especially in the face of growing counter-culture pressure from the socialist environment we face here in the U.S. The point was to make low-income housing more affordable. It was definitely a bipartisan effort, on behalf of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to exert pressure on large financial institutions. They eliminated market dynamics from the mortgage and securities market. The market was transformed something grossly familiar to a welfare counter. The tax payers of the country thought they deserved better housing, but the problem was they didn't deserve it based on the equity they owned.

That's the problem with having a pot full of cookies, and giving everyone access to it regardless of their merit. Those that didn't do the work, say those that didn't bake them, don't appreciate the value of each item. They'll expunge the pot of all its contents without realizing the full affect of their decisions.

thebulletin.us...

“There was a lot of pressure from Congress and generally everywhere to make homeownership affordable for poor and low-income people,” he said. “Some mortgages were made that would not have ordinarily been made.”

As far as the CRA is concerned, he said that if a commercial bank received CRA credit for making or buying a CRA-mandated loan, they did it. It would help them get a good score from the government.

“When a bank made a decision to purchase mortgaged-backed securities, they would somehow determine if some of them were in zip codes covered by the CRA, and therefore they could get CRA credit,” said Mr. McTeer.

Government shouldn't have a role in market dynamics. Obviously, it was all their fault. Business would have otherwise operated as usual. In fact, the private corporations might have been encouraged to follow suite with the CRA-backed securities, so that they could compete for all the customers being taken away by the federal government. They saw a market in sub-prime lending, because they believed the government would have their backs if it failed. And guess, what, who is being nationalized now? The very same private corporations that thought they could follow a strategy such as this and succeed. Ironic, isn't it, how the very effort to support low-income families is now backfiring by the expansion of mass unemployment and even greater poverty.

[edit on 2-3-2009 by cognoscente]

Originally posted by audas

I understand your system better than you.

IF such was the case, then you would understand this has been going on long before Bush or Clinton.

There has and always be bubbles in an inherently inflationary system such as fractional reserve lending that the Central Banks practice that is back by nothing other than future debt as a form of currency that has no over sight or regulation.

These fraudulent inflationary bubbles will always have to pop.. 99 percent of these bubbles are created and destroyed in a controlled manner by the 'banksters' at the top to bring about even more control of the monetary system.

The latest bubble(s) that just popped are no exception. Then Ken Lays and Enrons of the world have always been around and they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. No matter who is president.

The point is, what Bush achieved was merely a symptom of a larger problem.

Folks, it takes at least two parties to screw things up this badly.

Originally posted by FlyersFan

Originally posted by Anonymous Avatar
How incredibly trivial to keep track of how far the dow falls during which puppet is serving as potus.

Sure. Absolutely. However, the previous poster tried to make it seem like Bushs administration was worse than Obamas when it comes to the DOW. His/her figures were off. It needed to be addressed and corrected.

All I was doing was making a point... the same point Anon Avatar Made, but I guess not as intelligently... Sorry if the message didn't get across because I said it in a manner to counter the person I was responding to.

Thanks though Flyer! I can always count on you to correct my Wiley Democratic ways...

Let's analyse what's happening ..


Bailout bought the bankers and the brokers some time...


But trowing oil against a raging fire won't help much now would it?

That's exactly what they did.


Now watch them crumble. In the next few weeks the system will fail, because of what they did. I don't know what exactly will be the outcome of all this.

But what i see is this.. People losing jobs, foreclosures, many people IGNORING the crisis until the SHTF scenario pops up, and many things more.

What is the purpose of fixing the economy with more spending? Yes ofcourse on the short term we could make a kick start effect.


But it's stil the same system.

Tear down the system, and make a clean start. No more worries. No more greed.

Fair and Square business. That's what I want to see.

Ever heard of Islamic Banks? They forbid rent. Simple.


It's easy, really. The people just don't want it.... yet........

reply to post by cognoscente


Cognoscente, I agree with you, but in my own skewed way. I don't believe Bush or Obama have much to do with this. I really don't. Congress certainly has their hands all over this because they wrote all this up and presented it to a President that didn't care to read anything (in both cases).

Housing is just one aspect of this whole nightmare. We're getting hit from all fronts. We should never have bailed out AIG, which is an insurance company, not a housing company, that dealt big-time in that dirty little three-letter acronym, CDS. We should have never bailed out the auto industry. They make vehicles that people didn't have the money to buy but made sure to drop the rates anyway. GM does have a housing branch, GMAC (and their deceptively named Di-Tech.com).

A real government would have told all of these people, "No", and let it be that. I think the thing that does truly depress me about this whole thing is that there are good people mixed up in all of this. People who won't be foreclosed on, or have their car repossessed, but will still have to endure the collapse of the United States, I've taken to calling it the "Untied States". They have to deal with companies, that did do all the wrong in this, laying off people who had nothing to do with this. Those people are the ones I feel sorry for. They own their own home, and it's a small one that they could actually afford and have never refinanced it. They own their own vehicle, and it's a decade old and has been taken care of, and paid off. They don't have the "toys" the people around them have, but they are solvent. They have money in the bank. Money that is becoming more and more worthless with every bailout by the Government. These people don't deserve this. The rest do, but these people don't.

Regardless of the blame game, one thing remains certain. With the exception of the truly rich (because they'll never be affected by anything like this), we're all collectively in this together. We're all going to be affected. We're all going to have to face the music. It's literally going to suck for us all, because as bad as things are right now, they aren't even close to being at the bottom. We're all in this together. How we treat each other in the coming darkest days in our history, and how we come together will be our defining moment.

I just don't want socialism to be a part of what comes next.

reply to post by bpg131313


Your pretty much right. When you look into either one's economic background, you find it uh .. void of anything. So where do their economic policies come from? .. From economic "advisers" which happen to come from the very banks that failed.

So we have the failures trying to patch their own mess.. only with the vast resources of the Tax Payer at their disposal.

Georgy boy and Obama Mama are not to blame.. the "System" is to blame, which they represent. Fall guys. Everything they do seemingly has no effect, but if it all comes tumbling down, they can say "hey, we tried, right?"

See, I think that all the governments since Eisenhower, particularly Carter(for being completely inept), and Reagan (for being completely corrupt) are to blame for this mess.

It seems to me that since WWII, every time the economy stumbled, the politicians used some "new math" to prop it up so that it wouldn't fail on their watch.

Best example is this housing bubble. The economy was damaged far more than we would like to believe by 9/11, and to artificially reverse the collapse, Greenspan lowered interest rates, and Bush pushed home ownership.

But now, there is nothing to do that can undo the damage, and no manipulation to turn this thing around. I think Obama is a socialist, and he is using this collapse to push us way to the left.

While I like the idea of social medicine as I personally can't afford health insurance, all these bail outs and porkulus packages are only going to prolonged the problem and create massive inflation in the coming years.

This was all written on the wall when the repubs took control of congress in 95, and enacted their contract on America, which included banking regulation. Clinton went along with it, signing the legislation in the biggest mistake of his presidency. Repubs took over congress in 95, by 96 their changes began to take affect, and by 97 the stock market bubble developed. The stock market bubble literally dismantled the entrepreneurial developments of Silicon Valley, corrupting the new internet frontier, and threw out the people who developed the technology for cheap immigrant engineers. Since then technological advancement has not only crawled to a halt, but is reversing. They threw the baby out with the bathwater. The BS artists got the money, and the Engineers and scientists (the developers of technology which drives our economy) got the shaft.

The housing bubble was a vain attempt to keep the house of cards standing. Success at continuously lowering wages and salaries in the long run only succeeds in destroying demand. Without demand, the market system collapses. We need someone to start practicing demand style economics.

You're right, regulation is to blame. This was problem regulated into existence by the government, forcing banks to give loans to unqualified people.

There is alot of dancing around the "real" issue here. IMHO the real issue is where did the Bush and Obama families come from.

Let the reader reasure himself by google Bush family... from wikipedia.

President George W. Bush is related to other presidents as well as Pierce, to whom he is also related on his father's side via Daniel Brewer. He is also a cousin of Washington (via Hutchinsons), Fillmore (via Millards), Lincoln (via Gilmans), Grant (via Lathrops). Hayes (via Smiths, Footes, Parmelees, and Huckinses), Garfield (via Wheelers, Carpenters, Cookes, Warrens, Holbrooks, and Arnolds), Cleveland (via Smiths and Stanleys), Theodore Roosevelt (via Schuylers), Taft (via Holbrooks, Thayers, Haywards, Cookes, Footes, Ravenses, Waterses, and Shermans), Coolidge (via Phillipses, Hortons, Garnseys, Pulsiphers, Ravenses, Richardsons, Moores, Bulkeleys, and Morses), Hoover (via Brookses, Reades, Wheelers, Richardsons, and Shermans), Franklin Roosevelt (via Beekmans, Hutchinsons, Popes, Jenneys, Richardses, Palgraves, Lathrops, and Howlands), Nixon (via Lippincotts, Footes, Traverses, Morses, and Howlands), and Ford (via Vanderburghs, Wheelers, Marvins, Gilmans, and Howlands).[13]

Now google Obama's family . wikipedia quote

According to genealogists, Barack Obama's distant cousins include the multitude of descendants of his maternal ancestors from all along the early-American Atlantic seaboard as well as paternal, Kenyan relations belonging to the Luo tribe, many descending from a 17th century ancestor named Owiny.[86][87] For example, George W. Bush, the 43rd U.S. president, is the eleventh cousin of Barack Obama.[88] The New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade argues that with eleven generations leading back to their common progenitor, Samuel Hinckley, the relationship between the 43rd President and the 44th President is "genetically meaningless".[89]

dig a bit deaper and find that the above are related through englands monarchs to none other than mohammad,,,
see esoteric agenda youtube 4/8

Is it coincindence that the lineage of so many national / global leaders are interconnected by coincidence? I'm a gambler and I'd bet against it 100 to 1.

They have been "ruling" the peasants for thousands of years. Right under our noses. Even after the magna carta!
Centuries of national / regional leaders. Call them illuminati or just family. They are "them". All of the atrocities on a continental / global scale can be laid at their doorstep and they would care less.
We...lets face it ...peasants in the USA ..the last great hope, have been check-mated in a matter of 70 years. I cant see a move to a draw at this point.

I am personally conflicted on the choices that have to soon be made.

Protest with others the ptb's determination for our future. Yea its grim. Like the Eeorpean advance into North America with Columbus..Kill everyone..12 million dead in 10 years.
Or blend out. Dont be seen or heard. After 8 years in the marine corps and a family tradition starting with grandpa doing his 30 year stint in the USMC and dad's Korea stuff.. Its hard to just sit, but I can see checkmate and think the king is to be toppled until a new game is opened.

God bless our country
Semper Fidelis

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


Not regulation, DE-regulation created this process. The government didn't force the banks to make these loans, these financial institutions were all too willing to make these loans. The ability to bundle these loans and sale them in a system without checks or balances where the people getting their commissions had no liability for what they had done was far too great of a temptation. The people making the money knew they would not be made responsible for their criminal actions, thanks to de-regulation, or refusal to enforce the law, by the GW admin..