Monday, September 15, 2008

The Fundamentals on Bushonomics…

Well… America’s chickens on Wall Street have come home to roost. Banks are failing, financial institutions are failing, and the real estate industry is in the toilet. How the heck did we get here? What caused this to happen? Who is responsible? Who do we blame?

The President, a few weeks ago, told reporters in what was supposed to be a private – no cameras - discussion that Wall Street is the cause of the problem. To quote him “Ya see Wall Street got drunk…” Really? If we are to believe a person that I think is a habitual liar, then we must blame the regulatory entity that was suppose to oversee Wall Street for the dilemma that we must endure for the next two or three years. That is the case, if you believe the lie. I don’t think that Wall Street is totally to blame for the current financial situation we are experiencing.

Does anyone remember the speech that President Bush made in March of 2001 on the economy? In that speech, the President made a statement that was heard around the world, but especially on Wall Street and the other financial institutions. Big business heard it too! The President said… “We are in a recession…” From that moment on we were in deep you-know-what as consumers. That was the signal for big business to start laying off blue collar workers. United Airlines ‘pink-slipped’ thousands of its people. United Airlines went into bankruptcy and stole the pension fund of its retirees – pension checks went from 2000.00 on average per month to 250.00 - take it, or leave it. Enron went under after the Bush administration refused to prop up their failed policies. Enron failed as a result of the policies that McCain and the Bush administration pushed through Congress.

From the Baltimore Chronicle dated May 28, 2008: "A McCain aide told me that the Arizona senator opposes the farm bill because it “rewards lobbyists” by granting rich farmers lucrative subsidies, although he would support “a reasonable level of assistance and risk management to farmers when they need America's help.”

But the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee also opposes the farm bill because Gramm advised McCain that he should resist its regulatory language on the energy futures market.

Democrats have dubbed that gap in energy futures regulation the “Enron loophole,” but it played a part, too, in the more recent attempt by the Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to corner the national gas market by shifting trades to the unregulated “dark markets” of the Intercontinental Exchange.

The “Enron loophole” also has become part of the debate over the soaring price of oil. Last week, a study sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, concluded that speculative futures markets were partly to blame for the surge in oil prices that have pushed gas at the pump toward $4 a gallon."


McCain has stated that he will keep in place the majority of the initiatives that Bush put in place over the last eight years. To ensure that things remain status quo, he has chosen Phil Gramm to be his ‘economical advisor’. The same Phil Gramm that was Bush’s advisor and helpmate in Congress when the Republicans were pushing through these deregulatory initiatives that started the ball rolling for big business. Even when Phil Gramm called America’s working class ‘a bunch of whiners’, McCain pretended to fire Gramm, but a few weeks later Gramm was back on the job.

Who do I blame? I blame Bush for signing off on faulty legislation, with the advice of Phil Gramm; that created the loopholes that allowed Enron and others like Enron to take advantage of the consumer with disastrous results. I blame a Republican dominated Congress that supported the derailment of our economy. We got here through the greed of a few people who were trusted with the well-being of our economy. This is what can happen every time the everyday guy walking on the street does not pay attention to the inner workings of our economy and how it is regulated. I blame the President and his cronies for allowing this to happen.

The bottom-line, you cannot deregulate anything unless there are built-in checks and balances!

2 comments:

  1. After reading your line that Bush is a liar I couldn't read further. The man is the President of the United States and even if you don't like him, he at least deserves respect.

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  2. I just read your article of September 15th on the economy and I agree with you that Bush and his cronies have lied their way through the last eight years. In response to Sandra's comment that you should not call Bush a liar and that you should give him respect because he is the president - I couldn't disagree with her more. A liar is a liar is a liar. A pig, by any other name, is still a pig. You get respect by earning it. I, and probably you also, respect the Office of the Presidency. But this man, Bush, is a liar and he has put our country and this economy in a terrible state. Our only hope is that the Democrats can repair the damage.

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