No Responses to “Stock Slide: Dow Drops In AM Trading”

1. RacerX says:

   September 15, 2008 at 3:11 PM

   thank you Cheney and the NEO-CONS for deregulating everything, to the death of American business

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2. BitsyGirl says:

   September 15, 2008 at 3:33 PM

   Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah
   Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause
   of the federalization of most of the nation’s mortgage
   market. But what is Sen. John McCain’s excuse? Both act
   as if the financial meltdown of the U.S. economy has
   nothing to do with the policies of the political party
   they represent – but she at least may not know any
   better.

   Distracted momentarily from her campaign revelries of
   maverick opposition to the “bridge to nowhere,” which
   she had supported until it became a public relations
   debacle, and congressional earmarks for which she, as a
   small town mayor, had hustled piggishly at the federal
   trough, Palin made the mistake of dealing with an
   unscripted subject.

   Referring to the government’s bailout of Fannie Mae and
   Freddie Mac, Palin opined that the two had “gotten too
   big and too expensive to the taxpayers,” displaying
   abysmal ignorance of the fact that only now will those
   privately owned banks become a huge taxpayer obligation
   as the federal government takes them over. Nor can the
   meltdown of home values be traced to those two
   beleaguered institutions, because they did not make the
   original subprime mortgage commitments.

   The housing bubble was the result of the Ponzi-scheme
   antics of those other financial entities: commercial
   banks, stockbrokers and hedge funds, which were allowed
   in a GOP-deregulated market to get into the “swap”
   business. Through the rampant reselling of loans, the
   obligation to collect on a loan was divorced from the
   act of selling it in the first place, so who cared if
   the recipient of the loan was not at all qualified or
   the appraisal of the property value was inflated, as
   long as the paper was traded away, or insured, before
   the moment of foreclosure?

   As with any Ponzi scheme, the perps, who include the
   legislators as well as the bankers who exploited the
   loopholes they provided, expected to bail long before
   the bubble burst. The role of the legislators,
   Republican-led but with far too many Democratic running
   dogs, was critical to the success of the scam.

   The mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the
   loan from the ultimate collector were only made legal
   as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act
   that former Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm pushed
   through Congress just hours before the 2000 Christmas
   recess. Gramm, until recently co-chair of the McCain
   campaign, also had co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley
   Act that became law in 1999, with President Bill
   Clinton’s signature. That gem, which Gramm had pushed
   for years with massive financial industry lobbying,
   destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of
   stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies. Those two
   acts effectively ended significant regulation of the
   financial community, and no wonder we have witnessed an
   even more rapid and severe meltdown in housing values
   than during the Great Depression.

   Not surprisingly, Gramm was rewarded for his service
   upon retirement as head of the Senate banking committee
   with a top position at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which
   is close to drowning in the subprime mortgage nightmare
   he helped create. These folks have no shame, as was
   evidenced when the senator’s wife, Wendy, was named a
   director of Enron, whose roiling of the energy market
   had only been made possible through yet another
   provision of the senator’s Commodity Futures
   Modernization Act.

   While neophyte Palin can claim ignorance of such
   matters, that will be particularly difficult for
   McCain, who as a senator consistently lined up with
   Gramm in his deregulation crusade. Clearly McCain had
   not learned much from his previous involvement with the
   savings-and-loan debacle about the risks to consumers
   in unregulated banking.

   McCain served as chair of Gramm’s abortive 1996
   presidential campaign and Gramm returned the favor
   providing critical support for McCain with the hard-
   line Republican base, including the editorial board of
   the Wall Street Journal. It was assumed in the business
   press that Gramm was the front-runner to be Treasury
   secretary in a future McCain administration. Gramm only
   left his visible role as the top economic person near
   McCain after an embarrassing statement blaming the
   current downturn on “whiners,” an awkward reference to
   the victims of his disastrous legislation.

   Amazingly, the turmoil in the housing market, which has
   led to the socialization of the nation’s revered
   homeownership market in a massive expansion of the role
   of big government, has apparently not troubled McCain’s
   conservative supporters. Like I said, ignorance is
   bliss, and evidently not just for the newbie Palin.
   _______________

   Creators Syndicate, Inc.

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3. America Lover says:

   September 16, 2008 at 4:51 PM

   The easing of mortgage requirements to get a loan were the product of William Jefferson Clinton and Alan Greenspan. The easing was started in the mid-nineties, the two co-conspirators wanted to ease lending regulations so more people could live the “American Dream”. If you couldn’t get a standard mortgage you could get one through Fattie and Ferdie. The other thing, if you look at who runs these establishments, they are run by friends of Democratic senators and congressman. Again, if you look, the people who get most of the political contributions from these two establishments are Democrats.

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