Posted on 10/08/2008 5:34:39 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHICAGO (AFP) – Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday bemoaned the "irrational despair" afflicting tumbling stock markets, and said President George W. Bush was too weak to fix the crisis.
Obama played off a famous remark that 1990s asset values were subject to "irrational exuberance" by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, to sum up the depths to which today's markets have stooped.
"In the same way that I think Greenspan, the former Fed chairman, talked about irrational exuberance, we now have irrational despair," Obama said, when asked why a 700 billion dollar US Wall Street bailout signed last week had failed to stem huge stock market losses.
"Trust is broken down in our financial institutions," Obama told ABC World News Tonight. "Banks are afraid to lend to each other. They're afraid to lend to companies that have great balance sheets and have done everything right."
Obama compared Bush's leadership through the current crisis unfavorably to that of revered Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s banking shock.
"I do think that the administration is hampered by the fact that people don't have a lot of confidence in the president," he said.
"I mean, if you think about previous crises -- you know, FDR. There were a whole bunch of programs that he tried that didn't work.
"But what he was able to provide to people was a sense that somebody's in charge and we're going to get through this."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The markets are despairing because they think Barry’s going to be elected. That’s not irrational at all.
Its a winning combination. Promote irrational despair, and then promote yourself as the solution to irrational despair.
Go Obama.
The stock market tumble and the credit crunch are entirely rational. Everyone knows that the housing assets are overvalued and many mortgages are without value. For the market to recover, bad investments MUST be liquidated.
Furthermore, banks are crying for money because they don’t have enough to cover bad loans. If we give them more money, they go toward covering the bad loans, which will pump more money into bad investments, which will only cause more frustration in the future. Credit crunches are perfectly rational. Money is (or should be) a scarce resource with alternative uses. We do not need to encourage credit to be used to prop up what have proven to be bad investments. That would be a waste of money.
I do wish that Bush was more out in front on this, but when he has, he has had far left lean and that we don’t need.
That and their chickens have come home to roost...they thought they could screw with the markets and control a run away train...
It’s the community organizer’s approach to dealing with the results of the community organizer’s approach to real estate finance.
“I mean, if you think about previous crises — you know, FDR. There were a whole bunch of programs that he tried that didn’t work.
“But what he was able to provide to people was a sense that somebody’s in charge and we’re going to get through this.”
Ugh! FDR assumed office more than three years after the economy started to flatline. The guy who was in office, Hoover, did everything he could to keep the market going. It didn’t help.
As for FDR’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” BS, after a brief upswing (which fell short of pre-stock market crash heights), the economy worsened once his policies took effect (see: the Second Great Depression). Plus, we didn’t recover until 1942, and that was only because of the war, which was not a permanent solution.
So FDR did nothing to help the economy, but libs and historians still want to credit him with something, so they credit him as using the bully pulpit to be the nation’s therapist. I say, how do you prove that FDR soothed anybody? That he was elected again and again (and again)?
I don’t argue that style always wins over substance in politics. Maybe that’s Obama’s point: so long as he repeats the word change over and over, it doesn’t matter that nothing changes. The people will associate him with change, just like they associated FDR with soothing fears.
That's because for years lib-Dem politicans (Frank, Dodd, B. Clinton, the congressional black caucus, etc.) and Obama's fellow "community organizers" at ACORN blackmailed lenders/banks into making loans to borrowers with weak credit histories...and this is the correction.
But don't expect either Obama or McCain to call a spade a spade here.
I agree. B.O. would be a disaster for economic growth not only here but around the world. The market is simply “baking” that probability in. Therefore, equities decline.
FUD...Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Classic salesmanship.
FDR oversaw the largest expansion of government and the most egregious violation of the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate money in history. US v Butler in 1936 paved the way for The New Deal and was the opening salvo in the complete nationalization of our economy under Obama. There have only been 2 times in our history where a President enjoyed a veto proof majority in both houses, FDR and Johnson; New Deal and Great Society. Followed by WWII and Vietnam. You decide...
It is no accident that Obama is evoking FDR in his imagery
Just ask Joe Biden, he saw him say it on TV in 1929.
I forget what writer or historian referred to that ‘nothing to fear’ line as being patently absurd. Makes no sense. It was the first time I think I heard some authority actually take on the aura of FDR. Ever go to the FDR memorial in DC? Impressive looking monument. But when you read his quotes he sounds just like Clinton or 0bama! They eloquently bemoan America’s problems, but offer NO specific solutions.
“It was the first time I think I heard some authority actually take on the aura of FDR.”
You have to read “The Roosevelt Myth” by John T. Flynn. He eviscerated the administration back in 1948, and he wasn’t even a conservative! Sometimes contemporary observers have a better perspective than later generations. Amidst the Roosevelt years, a substantial block of the intelligentsia saw Roosevelt for what he was, especially the so-called Old Right, including Albert J. Nock and H.L. Mencken. Over time, intellectuals in general and historians in particular grew every more mystified, mostly because of the success of WWII, the survival of the Welfare State (it can’t be all bad if everyone’s doing it!), and irredeemable liberalism of academia.
The truth is, Roosevelt barely even deserves credit for WWII, given what a ridiculous mistake he made at the end in trusting Stalin, which basically whiped out the gains we had made by confronting Hitler.
Is it possible this financial crisis is becoming so international, that voters are starting to think, “Hey wait, I really can’t blame Bush and the Republicans for ALL of this.” I also wonder if Obama’s internal polls show that everything so scary right now that his support is tailing off. His lack of executive experience becomes a glaring liability in times of international tumult.
Okay Obamalamadingdong, if that’s your reasoning, tell us, oh great one, where was Clinton’s so-called leadership when the tech stocks busted in the 90’s - after all, all we ever hear about is how he was responsible for the great tech boom previously.
Okay Obamalamadingdong, if that’s your reasoning, tell us, oh great one, where was Clinton’s so-called leadership when the tech stocks busted in the 90’s - after all, all we ever hear about is how he was responsible for the great tech boom previously.
Hayek points out that many Germans accepted Hitler because he seemed to be the only leader able to "get things done."
If Obama didnt kickstart and legitimize forcing banks to make bad loans by funding and training his “community organizing” pals in ACORN, there wouldnt be a Worldwide Economic Crisis now.
And lets have Nancy Pelosi get off her LAZY A** and fix the crisis. This Congress is A JOKE. This is sickening and he is a charleton.
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