George W. Bush: Bailout call 'wasn't that hard'

Source: www.politico.com...

Of course it wasn't a hard call: Take money from the little people who have no control and give it to your friends. What tyrant in this world's history, has ever had a problem doing that? As I have said earlier in another thread, the bank bailouts that the liberal GWB instituted, doesn't even come close to some of the other sinister things that I both suspect and know he has done. If the bank bailouts were the worst thing that GWB did, I think we would be sitting pretty, however they don't even come close.

Anyway, this article is pretty interesting, though frusterating at the same time and beware: it may anger you. Bush did some horrible things and before you claim that this is some partisan dribble, I think that Obama is bad too (there, have I balanced it enough towards the false left-right paradigm?).

What really gets me, is that many people are still under the illusion that GWB is a conservative. He is not, as he spent more than almost every other president in history and he also grew government bigger than almost any other president (if not all others) in US history. Bush was the very anti-thesis of conservatism, yet as long as the pundits say he is conservative, most people are buying it... hook, line and sinker.

Again, of course Bush didn't have an issue with pushing the bank bailouts. He simply robbed the little guy to pay his elite firends and sadly, the bank bailouts are only a small portion of that robbery.

It was a robbery plain and simple, though so were almost all of his policies. Sadly, Obama is just continuing those policies and this country is going down the tubes faster because of it. I'll admit that Bush or his policies aren't the reasons our economy that our economy is in the shape that it is in, though Bush and his policies sure did make our situation much worse, in a much shorter period of time. It's also not just the economy that Bush (and Obama) have hurt, rather it is just about everything.

Bush set a new precendent in how much screwing the American public will take. Before Bush, if a president was caught lying, it was a huge scandal but since Bush, it's no big deal at all and seen as just part of the job. Now, our government officials don't even have to really lie to us about screwing us, as they can simply do what they want and slick us off in the process.


--airspoon

I think we all need to know that the last few presidents have been bringing us to where we are today. Obama makes Bush look like a school child by comparison in terms of spending and not telling the truth.

reply to post by Steve8511


I agree, sort of. I think they are just about on par, as far as deception goes, though most people knew off-hand that Bush was lying. With Obama, most people or at least a good percentage, still trust him and that makes him much more dangerous.

As far as the spending goes, I think Bush actually spent more. There was a chart going around a little while ago that compared Bush's spending to Obama's, though that chart was misleading because much of what was attributed to Obama, was actually Bush's. You see, Bush approved the budget for the following fiscal year and that just happened to be the year that Obama took office. So, spending did jump sharply as soon as Obama entered office, but it was Bush's spending.

--airspoon

reply to post by airspoon


The "bailouts" were pretty much part of the deal since... well - before many of us were born: banking.about.com...

Granted - the bailouts expanded to include non-FHA insured loans, but the precedent was established with the Federal Housing Administration to begin with.

To quote on what an FHA is:

An FHA loan is a loan insured against default by the FHA. In other words, the FHA guarantees that a lender won’t have to write off a loan if the borrower defaults – the FHA will pay. Because of this guarantee, lenders are willing to make large mortgage loans.

So, it was sort of done deal long before Bush - or even Clinton (much as I'd like to stick him with the blame).

Some relevant reading:

www.heartland.org...

hotair.com...

news.mortgagecalculator.org... ome/

www.nytimes.com...

You can't offer to back a lending institution with the printing press. Sure - you can artificially stimulate the economy - but it's all an illusion. The moment the bluff is called, it's over. It is part of what caused the sub-prime market burst, and a problem that persists to this day in other regions of the market.

Again, of course Bush didn't have an issue with pushing the bank bailouts. He simply robbed the little guy to pay his elite firends and sadly, the bank bailouts are only a small portion of that robbery.

I don't think you quite understand. The bailouts were all initiated by Congress. Plain and simple.

Further - it's not about "friends." It's about the economy. Do you have -any- clue what would have happened if all of those lending institutions were to have completely collapsed? No. Nobody really does.

I don't necessarily like or agree with it - bad business practices should a failed business make - reap what you sow. However - I'm not certain that allowing all of these banks and corporations to collapse would be a wise idea, either. Remember - it's not about the corporation - they are a means to an end. You have a loan through a bank, most likely. I have a loan through a bank for my car. Now, I wouldn't mind the idea of the bank going tits-up and not having to pay them anything (though I'm not sure that's how it would work - they would sell out to some other company before that, I imagine) - but how will all of that impact the rest of the economy? Directly - plenty of people work at that bank. The apartment I'm staying in may have been subsidized through a loan taken from that bank. A local trucking company might have loans going through that bank, as well. Indirectly - what about the retirement programs, mutual funds, etc that had stock in that bank?

Like it or not - our entire economy is built upon loans. This is not all that different from the 1920s - though rather than the stock market being driven off of loans, we have most of the general economy being driven off of loans - mortgages, credit cards, second-mortgages, vehicle loans, timeshare loans, etc. It has allowed us rapid economic acceleration at the cost of stability - if we want market stability we need to venture away from a loan-driven economy and society.

As much as we can blame the government for enabling abuse of lending programs - we also have to blame ourselves (as a society) for allowing ourselves to become addicted to loans. No one knows what would have happened if we let the banks (and other large segments of our economy) completely collapse. There's simply not a precedent for it anywhere in our history, or that of other countries. I can't say I agree with the decision to bail out the banks (and, really, it was bailing out the stock-holders of the banks, offering to purchase stock at a 'fair' price from stock holders who found themselves with nothing in a matter of hours) - but I can't really say I blame them for making the decision.

I can say that we're jumping from the frying pan and into the fire. It's just one bad idea to another. We are going to have to go have a talk with our grandparents (or remember the stories they used to tell and how they used to live) and get some words of advice from people who lived before the loan-frenzy, disposable economy we seem to live in these days. I'm not saying we have to go back to the 1930s - but many of them learned to save rather than borrow, and even more knew how to be frugal.