Posted on 09/17/2008 2:46:43 PM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Senate Majority Leader on Economic Woes: 'No One Knows What to Do'
September 17, 2008 2:03 PM
ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports from Capitol Hill: Don't look for any legislation in the near future to address the financial crisis.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, asked today what new regulatory actions Congress can take, said, bluntly, "No one knows what to do."
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...
This needs to go into the next McCain AD-
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, asked today what new regulatory actions Congress can take, said, bluntly, “No one knows what to do.”
I seriously doubt that. However, it IS true that NO DEMOCRAT knows what to do!
As an add on to my Reagan post:
Reagan took over a disaster in 1980. When he ran for reelection in 1984, he won 49 states.
The Republican party has been running from Reagan for too long. Why? They beleive the MSM/Democrats constant refrain that the American public hated Reagan.
You don’t win 49 states because the American people hated the job you were doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yet Bush-1 and Dole ran as “moderate” Republicans because they thought it would attract swing voters. Bush-2 gives lip service to Reagan, but doesn’t put his ideas into practice.
You don’t win 49 states without winning “moderate”/swing voters!!!! Wake up Republicans. The solutions to this is to go back to what worked to fix our last economic crisis. Reaganomics isn’t a dirty word, it is the what won 49 states in 1984!!!!
..basically it's a MSM keyword used to cloudy the issue and deflect responsibility
Here’s a site on derivatives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_(finance)
A similar concept is “securitization”. Mortgages are issued by lenders, then “bundled” and sold to others as derivative securities, traded. All the risk is transferred from the “man on the spot,” the expert in real estate, say a local bank, to a financial trading market.
The lack of responsibility serves as an incentive to issue more and riskier loans, bundle them, then take the payday. I’ve seen it for years, freelance mortgage agents going to poor peoples homes, tricking them with overvaluations of properties making them feel they can play the game too, but they lose.
Then, perhaps the biggest problem, the government encourages foreign national banks and sovereign funds to buy derivatives, along with government debt. Reading between the lines, some months ago Bernanke made his big change at time Bush hinted at this foreign issue. I think they threatened not to buy any more funny-money American products, and important to Bush, not to buy our debt which finance his tax cuts without spending cuts.
The culture of derivatives and such was pushed hard by Greenspan.
The Democratic Party House Band: Chickens Without Heads.
Isn’t that where they keeping making movies with the same old plot over and over and over and over... like Jennifer Anniston films ?
They only know how to screw up the economy, not how to fix it.
Yep, Ron Paul predicted all of this would come to pass.
Sounds like we need a new senate majority weiner,,,,,,,,uh,,,,,leader.
Schmidt hasn't run sh*t lately. Soft ads. No specifics. Back to "new tone" on the opposition. VERY disappointing.
Its time to organize a “Million Man Taxpayer” march on D.C. and grab these bastards in Congress and hang em high. Literally.
How about no taxpayer dollars to bail out private companies.
How about revoking the charter of the Federal Reserve.
Time to march on CONgress so they get the message.
www.fedupusa.com
www.fedupusa.com
Some people are trying to organize just that. Join us.
5 Things The US Federal Government Can Do Right Now That Will Strongly Improve The Situation:
1. Congress can pass a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits off-budget spending as well.
2. Congress can pass a line item veto for the POTUS that he may exercise “In Consultation With Congress”.
3. Authorize the US Mint to print secure, controlled, high denomination currency, backed by the US government, that will be used for institutional monetary transfer between authorized agents, such as the government, banks, and corporations, but not individuals.
Printed in quantities to match all outstanding virtual currency. That is, literally, a “paper-backed” currency instead of an almost entirely virtual one. This means paper money denominations of $100k through $10M to match the existing virtual US currency.
This is an “anti-leverage safety device”, preventing the creation of money through leverage that is not backed by paper currency. Once US currency is backed 100% by paper, the credit system may collapse without massive and destructive deflation.
In essence, this means complete control over leveraged financial transactions. The old rule that “you cannot get a loan, unless you don’t need it”, will again apply. If you do not have cash, you can’t buy it. This insulates the economy to some extent from a credit collapse.
4. Congress can authorize the printing of an enormous number of high security debit cards, to be issued to all credit card holders in the event of a credit collapse. Banks and other financial institutions will credit these debit cards with amounts based on individual holdings, and the credit card companies will process them as if they were credit cards. This will be to protect the public from the credit collapse, by giving them an alternative means to spend money.
Many people are reliant on credit, spending more than their income on a regular basis. While they can be ruined by a credit collapse, their card should be dual purpose, so that if authorized, it can be used for food or housing aid, so they do not become destitute.
5. The federal government can remember that protecting its citizenry from financial chaos is job #1. Insure that safety nets for food, housing and health care will be stable if there is a major economic crisis.
Reid and Pelosi sure DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO, but you bet they surely know who they are going to BLAME for the mess! These two “leaders” are truly the worst, the most corrupt, the most inept and blantant political hacks I have seen in my lifetime.
Great idea—expose them!
No national politician has been more out front than John McCain in warning of the enormous danger posed by government backing of home mortgages.
For a decade reformers have tried to persuade Congress that they were allowing a serious risk to the government’s credit to develop in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but few lawmakers would take action.
One of the reasons for this was the extraordinary power of Fannie and Freddie. They not only spent close to $150 million in lobbying over the last decade, but they also got their constituents—the securities industry, the homebuilders and the realtors—all powerful industries that depend on Fannie and Freddie’s largesse—to support their sole legislative objective: the defeat of any attempt to control their growth. Congress, as usual knuckled under to the special interest.
However, a very small number of lawmakers saw this problem for what it was, and were willing to stand up to the power of Fannie and Freddie—and I am proud to say that John McCain was one of them. In 2005, he joined a small group of Republican Senators to cosponsor the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act, the strongest legislation introduced up to that time to control Fannie and Freddie. In a statement, he noted that “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market…If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie and Freddie pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”
These were prophetic words, given what we know now, but they did not spring from a sudden conversion in that year. Three years earlier, McCain had introduced legislation—co-sponsored with the House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt—to create a Corporate Subsidy Reform Commission. The purpose of this group was to eliminate what McCain called “corporate welfare.” In a statement at the time, he noted that “There are more than 100 corporate subsidy programs in the federal budget today, requiring the federal government to spend approximately $65 billion a year...These programs provide special benefits or advantages to specific companies or industries at the expense of hard-working taxpayers. In years past, Congress has insisted that it would eliminate the existence of this corporate welfare, but virtually no such program has been eliminated…This bill aims to remove the special treatment given to politically powerful industries…”
In other words, as far back as 2002, John McCain realized that underlying what would ultimately become the Fannie and Freddie crisis was the willingness of Congress to provide financial support to private corporations. And he was willing to take on powerful interests to stop this process. If his bill had resulted in action at that time, the unprecedented steps that the Secretary of the Treasury and Congress had to take in the last two weeks would not have been necessary.
By contrast, Barack Obama was accepting Fannie's political contributions - and inviting its former CEO to head his vice presidential selection contrast.
I might add...
* Neither Obama nor the congressional Dems know what to do about energy security, but Repubs had the answer for decades and the Dems blocked it.
* Neither Obama nor the congressional Dems ever knew how to rein in out of control spending, but McCain does.
* Neither Obama nor the congressional Dems ever knew what to do about Iraq, Iran & the war on terror, but McCain has known all along.
* Neither Obama nor the congressional Dems knew what to do with Russia, but McCain knew.
Hasn’t Reid talked to Obama?
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