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1. What exactly did bush do that "ruined" the ecomony? The same types of things every administration since Cleveland have been doing.
2. What exactly is obama doing differently that is helping the economy? The same types of things every administration since Cleveland have been doing.
3. What exactly has or is obama doing that has or could ruin the economy?
The same types of things every administration since Cleveland have been doing.
4. How long can obama blame bush? As long as the mindless drones are willing to listen.
Though, to be fair, sometimes finding the fault is part of fixing a problem. Of course, there is a big difference between finding the fault, and playing the finger pointing blame game. Politicians far prefer the latter to the former, because the former all to often leads to unpopular answers.
The fact is both parties share fully and equally in the economic crises of today. Both parties have been complicit in building an economy based on deficit spending - and I am not speaking of the government, but of society as a whole. It has been an ongoing process for almost a full century, whose roots lie in the acceptance of the idea that people should not have to wait and save to attain the "better things in life" as the saying goes.
It started with the idea that people should be able to buy a home using long term credit rather than saving most of their lives in the hopes (sometimes unrealized hopes) they can eventually buy a home with cash. It's not a bad idea on the surface, and had the idea stayed with home ownership, and also stayed with modest means, there would be no problem today. But the idea spread from home ownership to the auto industry, then to revolving credit which is used to purchase everything from TVs to groceries to a night on the town.
How long can an economy sustain itself when it is based on people purchasing things before they can afford them? Without help, not very long. That is why we can go back over the years and see the government repeatedly making adjustments to the banking/credit industry - because eventually credit runs out, the debt burden becomes greater than the people can make up for, and either the house comes tumbling down, or the government, via the federal reserve, pushes credit spending into larger and larger arenas, to include (and THIS is why the system failed) people who had no real hope from the very start of paying off the debt they were encouraged to build.
Now, let's couple that with what the people themselves were doing - and still are. As a society, we are a bunch of wasteful, greedy, pathetically neurotic, keep-up-with-the-joneses materialists. Why does a family of 4 need a 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 4,500 square foot house? They do not, but that is what people were buying and defaulting on. Why do they need 3 cars, including that nice big SUV used primarily by a single adult for commuting? They don't, but that is what they were buying with bank loans made under the blessing (and sometimes mandate) of government to keep the economy expanding. TVs for every room, computers for every family member, $600 cell phones, $100 steak dinners, $80 blue jeans, etc. etc. etc.; all purchased on credit cards, piling up debt - but as long as people were buying those things, we called it a good economy.
We've had several warning signs that we have not been in a stable, sustainable economy. We have recession after recession as the debt burden reached saturation, then the government has to step in with either new regulations mandating "more fair" lending practices (ie: forcing credit companies to lend to lower and lower income strata), coupled with ridiculous measures and relaxed banking regulations to allow banks and credit companies to make the required loans without going immediately bankrupt. We had the S&L crisis, but learned nothing from it because the causes were swept under a rug of blame and finger pointing. We had the stock market crash of 1987, and learned nothing. Now we have the 2008 crash, and the 2008 banking crisis, the auto industry crisis, all rolled into one major clusterfuck, yet by all signs and portents, we STILL are refusing to learn anything.
2. What exactly is obama doing differently that is helping the economy? The same types of things every administration since Cleveland have been doing.
3. What exactly has or is obama doing that has or could ruin the economy?
The same types of things every administration since Cleveland have been doing.
4. How long can obama blame bush? As long as the mindless drones are willing to listen.
Truer words have seldom been spoken.
Though, to be fair, sometimes finding the fault is part of fixing a problem. Of course, there is a big difference between finding the fault, and playing the finger pointing blame game. Politicians far prefer the latter to the former, because the former all to often leads to unpopular answers.
The fact is both parties share fully and equally in the economic crises of today. Both parties have been complicit in building an economy based on deficit spending - and I am not speaking of the government, but of society as a whole. It has been an ongoing process for almost a full century, whose roots lie in the acceptance of the idea that people should not have to wait and save to attain the "better things in life" as the saying goes.
It started with the idea that people should be able to buy a home using long term credit rather than saving most of their lives in the hopes (sometimes unrealized hopes) they can eventually buy a home with cash. It's not a bad idea on the surface, and had the idea stayed with home ownership, and also stayed with modest means, there would be no problem today. But the idea spread from home ownership to the auto industry, then to revolving credit which is used to purchase everything from TVs to groceries to a night on the town.
How long can an economy sustain itself when it is based on people purchasing things before they can afford them? Without help, not very long. That is why we can go back over the years and see the government repeatedly making adjustments to the banking/credit industry - because eventually credit runs out, the debt burden becomes greater than the people can make up for, and either the house comes tumbling down, or the government, via the federal reserve, pushes credit spending into larger and larger arenas, to include (and THIS is why the system failed) people who had no real hope from the very start of paying off the debt they were encouraged to build.
Now, let's couple that with what the people themselves were doing - and still are. As a society, we are a bunch of wasteful, greedy, pathetically neurotic, keep-up-with-the-joneses materialists. Why does a family of 4 need a 5 bedroom, 4 bath, 4,500 square foot house? They do not, but that is what people were buying and defaulting on. Why do they need 3 cars, including that nice big SUV used primarily by a single adult for commuting? They don't, but that is what they were buying with bank loans made under the blessing (and sometimes mandate) of government to keep the economy expanding. TVs for every room, computers for every family member, $600 cell phones, $100 steak dinners, $80 blue jeans, etc. etc. etc.; all purchased on credit cards, piling up debt - but as long as people were buying those things, we called it a good economy.
We've had several warning signs that we have not been in a stable, sustainable economy. We have recession after recession as the debt burden reached saturation, then the government has to step in with either new regulations mandating "more fair" lending practices (ie: forcing credit companies to lend to lower and lower income strata), coupled with ridiculous measures and relaxed banking regulations to allow banks and credit companies to make the required loans without going immediately bankrupt. We had the S&L crisis, but learned nothing from it because the causes were swept under a rug of blame and finger pointing. We had the stock market crash of 1987, and learned nothing. Now we have the 2008 crash, and the 2008 banking crisis, the auto industry crisis, all rolled into one major clusterfuck, yet by all signs and portents, we STILL are refusing to learn anything.
