Blame Barack Obama And Failed Democrat Policies For North Korea

Let’s see.  Under the Obama presidency and under his regime, North Korea has had two nuclear tests, repeatedly tested ballistic missiles, threatened America more times than in ANY previous administration, and just moved missiles to threaten South Korea.  Right after re-starting a nuclear plant that they had shut down under Bush.

Generals and foreign policy experts are saying that North Korea – under the Obama regime’s handling, mind you – is a greater threat than it has EVER been.

Meanwhile, under Obama’s failed presidency, we had the meltdown that the mainstream media liberals so idiotically called “the Arab Spring.”  We had violent revolutions across the Arab world as the governments of vital U.S. allies were toppled by terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  With Egypt now instituting sharia law to complete the insult.  We have incredible bloodbaths under Obama with Syria’s death toll now numbering over 70,000.   We have Iran on the verge of getting their nukes and their ballistic missiles and their Armageddon.  And where are the hypocrite Democrats now who teed off so viciously on George W. Bush???  Where are they in decrying Obama for a far, far worse and more unstable world?

Let’s get in our memory trains and take a little ride, when Obama’s future Secretary of State was demagoguing Bush in the most savage way imaginable:

Democrats blew it on North Korea
Now they should join Republicans to force changes in the country’s behavior
October 15, 2006 12:00 am
By Jack Kelly / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

If Democrats went after America’s enemies with the ruthlessness with which  they attack Republicans, the Axis of Evil would be toast.

No sooner had North Korea completed its (botched or faked) nuclear bomb test  last weekend than Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Hillary Clinton,  D-N.Y., were blaming it on “the failed policies of the Bush administration.”

That annoyed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.:

“I would remind Sen. Clinton . . . that the framework agreement her husband’s  administration negotiated was a failure,” he said. “Every single time the  Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something — not to kick out  the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor — they did  it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with  further talks.”

Media commentators spun Mr. McCain’s remarks as jockeying with Ms. Clinton  for the presidency in 2008, but in fact Mr. McCain had been speaking out against  her husband’s Agreed Framework deal with North Korea since May of 1994.

Here is the history Democrats would like you to forget: The CIA began  worrying in the late 1980s that North Korea was trying to build an atomic bomb.  President Clinton attempted to head them off by offering a massive bribe. If the  North Koreans would forgo their nuke plans, the United States would provide them  with 500,000 tons of free fuel oil each year, massive food aid and build for  them two $2 billion nuclear power plants. The deal made North Korea the largest  recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Asia.

Mr. McCain was against the deal from the get-go, because it was all carrots  and no sticks, and there were no safeguards against North Korean cheating.

North Korea took the bribes President Clinton offered, and kept working on  its bomb.

Two experts told a House committee in April of 2000 that North Korea was  producing enough highly radioactive material then to build a dozen bombs a year,  but it is unclear when the North actually built a bomb (if yet) because our  intelligence on the reclusive regime there is so poor.

Most experts think North Korea restarted its nuclear weapons program between  1997 and 1999, said Paul Kerr of the Arms Control Association. But the  Congressional Research Service thinks the North began cheating in 1995.

Signs of cheating were abundant by 2000. Secretary of State Madeleine  Albright flew to Pyongyang that October to put lipstick on the pig. She offered  dictator Kim Jong Il a relaxation of economic sanctions if he’d limit North  Korea’s missile development. Kim took those carrots too, but kept building  missiles.

The Bush administration called North Korea on its cheating and suspended fuel  aid pending an improvement in its behavior. North Korea declared (in 2002) it  had the bomb, and the United States organized the six-party talks to try to  persuade it to give up its nuclear ambitions.

Like Mr. McCain, I thought the Agreed Framework was a bad idea from the  get-go. But I don’t blame the Clinton administration (very much) for trying.  Massive bribery hadn’t been tried before, and if it had worked, it certainly  would have been preferable to war. And, since as far as we know, serious  cheating didn’t begin until 1997 or 1998, it can be argued the deal did buy us a  little time.

But even though the ultimate failure of the Clinton policy of appeasement is  excusable, the refusal of Democrats to acknowledge that failure is not.

Democrats tend to view foreign policy crises through the narrow prism of  their impact on domestic politics. But the villain here isn’t Bill Clinton or  George Bush. It’s Kim Jong Il. And what’s important here is not which party  controls the House of Representatives. It’s whether we can prevent a second  Korean War.

Democrats ordinarily make a fetish of “multilateralism,” which is what  President Bush has been pursuing through the six-party talks, the only format  that offers hope of reining in North Korea short of war, because only China is  in a position to force North Korea to behave.

Kim wants direct negotiations with the United States, both to undermine the  six-party talks, and because he wants to return to the good old days when the  Clinton administration was providing him with aid in exchange for, in effect,  nothing. Democrats, astoundingly, want to give him exactly what he wants,  without first insisting upon a change in his behavior. They would rather restore  a failed policy than admit a mistake.

If tragedy is to be avoided, Democrats must stop putting their partisan  ambitions ahead of the security of the United States.

And, of course, to this day, if Obama were to attack North Korea with as much vile as he has repeatedly attacked Republicans, the Axis of Evil “toast” would be a pile of burnt ash.

I contemplate Kim Jong-Un’s fearmongering rhetoric and have a hard time telling the difference from Obama’s rhetoric on issues such as the sequester.  Both men seem to very much have in common a complete lack of grasp on reality when they are dealing with their political foes.  Just as both men’s national press corps’ seem to have the same determination to present whatever the hell their “dear leaders” are saying with as much deceit.

Democrats, who were of course nearly completely responsible for North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, attacked, backbit, undermined, slandered and demonized George Bush at every turn in his attempt to hold talks that would include China as the ONLY country that could reign in North Korea.

Let’s go back and remind ourselves of that, as well:

The radioactive glow had barely worn off Kim Jong Il’s face when liberals began to lay the blame for North Korea’s detonation of a small nuclear device (maybe) at George W. Bush’s feet. But their criticisms have left many of us downright confused.

On North Korea, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid complained, “the Bush administration … [has] made America less secure.” His remedy? “Speak directly with the North Koreans so they understand we will not continue to stand on the sidelines.” Sen. Joe Biden (D.-Del.), the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, concurred that “the strategy must include direct engagement with the North [Koreans].”

Potential Democratic presidential aspirants also want the U.S. to assume the lead role in this unfolding drama. Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wisc.) demanded that the Bush administration jettison its “hands-off approach to North Korea,” because “the stakes are too high to rely on others.” And Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.) noted that “for five years, I have been calling for the United States to engage in direct talks with North Korea” and “for five years this administration has ignored them.”

But, rather than ignore the metastasizing cancer in North Korea, the United States has expended considerable diplomatic capital on the so-called six-party talks — the long-running effort by the U.S., China, Russia, South Korea and Japan to convince Kim Jong Il to abandon his nuclear program. This multilateral process, moreover, grew out of the failed Clinton-era effort to engage the North Koreans directly. Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) recently described that process in scathing terms: “Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something –not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from the reactor — they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks.”

President Bush abandoned the one-on-one approach when he learned that the North Koreans violated their agreement not to enrich uranium (in exchange for a cool $350 million in fuel), opting instead to invite China and the other regional powers into the process. Thus began three years and five frustrating rounds of six-party talks. At first North Korea participated. Then in February 2005 it withdrew in a huff, only to re-engage a few months later for two more grueling rounds. Finally, Kim Jong Il sent a clear message about these talks when he launched two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan in March of this year, then seven more over the 4th of July weekend.
Kerry and his allies dismiss this aggressive form of multilateral diplomacy as nothing more than “cover for the administration to avoid direct discussions.”

Hence the confusion. We thought that one of the major foreign policy fault lines separating liberals from conservatives has been whether the United States should reserve the right to act unilaterally to protect its national interests (the conservative position favored by Bush) or whether we should act only after securing the support of our allies (the liberal position embraced by Kerry and virtually all Democrats).

As a presidential candidate, John Kerry summed up the multilateral approach: “Alliances matter. We can’t simply go it alone.” We must exhaust all avenues of diplomacy, persuade rather than bully, and “assemble a team.” The Bush administration’s “blustering unilateralism,” he concluded, is “wrong, and even dangerous, for our country.” And nowhere, Kerry said, is the need for multilateral action more “clear or urgent” than when it comes to preventing the proliferation of nuclear materials and weapons of mass destruction.

And that leads us to North Korea. It appears Kerry favored the multilateral approach before he opposed it. In a major foreign policy address at Georgetown University in 2003, he actually praised Bush’s engagement in the six-party talks: “Finally, the administration is rightly working with allies in the region — acting multilaterally — to put pressure on Pyongyang.” And, he added, “the question is why you’d ever want to be so committed to unilateralist dogma that you’d get on [that merry go round] in the first place.”

So what gives? Isn’t it time for lawmakers to transcend the finger-pointing and focus on the real issue?

Let’s give Sen, Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) the last word: “The president’s political opponents attack him for a ‘unilateral’ approach to Iraq. Now they attack him over a multilateral approach to North Korea. Listening to some Democrats, you’d think the enemy was George Bush, not Kim Jong Il.”

Mike Franc, who has held a number of positions on Capitol Hill, is vice president of Government Relations at The Heritage Foundation.

North Korea is now a more psychotic threat than ever before.  But where’s all the denunciations of Obama from the ideologues who used to reign blame down on George Bush???

Remember how the president of the United States was responsible for absolutely everything that went wrong when Bush was that president?  Now we have a president who absolves himself as being responsible for ANYTHING while we’ve got a media that has actively covered up for his failures.  And where are we now?

Our greatest statesman today seems to be Dennis Rodman.

We are watching rogue nation after rogue nation rearing its ugly head and rising to threaten the world because they know that a weakling and a coward is the pathetic failed leader of once-great America.

We are also watching the United States of America degenerate into a banana republic under this failed presidency.  Our welfare roles are rising even faster than the nuclear-armed dictators who shake their fists at us.

Here’s one for you: if Republicans were even a FRACTION as treasonous and willing to undermine America’s national security for cynical political advantage as Democrats have been, they would be demanding that Obama hold one-to-one talks with Kim Jong-Un the way Democrats did when Bush was president.

You probably wouldn’t want me as president: what I would have done – whether in 2006 or today – would be to arm Taiwan with nuclear weapons (to the frothing and rabid outrage of China, which claims that Taiwan is part of China).  And I would simply tell China: “North Korea’s nuclear weapons are every bit as unacceptable to the United States as Taiwan’s having nuclear weapons is to you.  Disarm North Korea’s nukes and we’ll disarm Taiwan’s nukes.”

From Bad To Worse: Japan Was On Path To Debt Default BEFORE Earthquake, Tsunami And Meltdown. America Next.

Meltdown.  That’s a good word for Japan these days.

And I’m not talking about the nuclear reactors, either.  I’m talking about what had been one of the most powerful economic engines on the planet.

Look at the facts in late 2010 BEFORE the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor.  They didn’t look pretty then; they’ve become nightmarish since:

Japan Will Default as Economy Unravels, Bass Says
October 13, 2010, 4:19 PM EDT
By Nikolaj Gammeltoft and Susanne Walker
 
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — Japan will be forced to default on its debt, Greece’s economy is “done” and Iceland is worse off than Greece, said J. Kyle Bass, the head of Dallas-based Hayman Advisors LP who made $500 million in 2007 on the U.S. subprime collapse.

Nations around the world will be unable to repay their debt and financial austerity in a country such as Ireland is “too late,” Bass said today at the Value Investing Congress in New York.

Japan’s economy may unravel in the next two to three years, and its interest payments will exceed revenue, he said. “Japan can’t fund itself internally,” Bass said.

The country’s year-over-year gross domestic product was 2.4 percent as of June 30. It has the world’s largest public debt, approaching 200 percent of its GDP amid a 5.1 percent jobless rate. Consumer price fell by one percent in September and has been negative each month since May 2009, as deflation has taken hold.

Pricing on Japanese interest-rate swaps is the best he’s ever seen, Bass said. Investors could make 50 to 100 times their capital betting on them, he said, calling them a lottery ticket on Japan’s economy.

Japanese bonds have returned 3.3 percent this year, according to Merrill Lynch Indexes, compared with a return of 0.872 percent in 2009.

Crisis

Bank Of Japan’s Governor Masaaki Shirakawa refused to expand monthly purchases of government bonds this year even as deflation persisted. The bank on Oct. 5 instead created a 5 trillion yen ($60 billion) fund to buy bonds and other assets, and pledged to keep its benchmark interest rate at “virtually zero” until the end of deflation is in sight. Deflation has been entrenched in the economy since 1998. The GDP deflator, a gauge of prices across the economy, has fallen 14 percent since 1997, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

A financial crisis in 1997-98 precipitated by bad loans on Japanese lenders’ balance sheets stemming from burst land and stock-price bubbles of the early 1990s set off Japan’s deflation. Property prices have slumped for 17 of the past 19 years, and stocks remain 76 percent off of their 1989 peak, according to the Nikkei 225 Stock Average.

Japan’s currency traded at 81.79 per dollar, compared with 81.72. It touched 81.39 on Oct. 11, the strongest level since April 1995.

Bass began buying securities with shorter durations last year as he predicted central bank and government actions globally to rescue the financial system will result in “outright currency debasement.”

He began buying shorter-term debt and precious metals then, anticipating hyperinflation will lead to higher interest rates. Bass also said in May that Europe’s debt crisis will not be solved by the $1 trillion loan package the International Monetary Fund and the European Union agreed on earlier that month.

–Editors: Nick Baker, Dave Liedtka

And that was all BEFORE Japan went from the frying pan into the nuclear fire.

What’s being said now?

Quake shattered Japan poses global debt worry
GARETH COSTA, The West Australian
March 15, 2011, 6:11 am

Concerns have emerged in global credit markets over how heavily-indebted Japan will be able to pay for its biggest economic reconstruction effort since World War II.

The Bank of Japan’s promise yesterday of a ¥15 trillion ($182 billion) cash injection into its banking system managed to soothe global equities, but not debt markets as Japanese government credit default swap rates used to insure against debt default soared 13 points to 92.

Although not yet at critical levels, analysts said yesterday’s sharp spike in the CDS rates highlighted debt market concerns about Japan’s funding pressures within a cash-strapped global economy.

“When you have a market the size of Japan down this much, it’s going to affect everybody,” Stephen Halmarick, head of investment markets research at Colonial First State Global Asset Management, said.

“A tragedy of this proportion is going to take up a lot of economic resources.

“It’s going to have quite a negative impact on growth.”

Credit markets were already concerned that Japanese government debt had ballooned to $US12.2 trillion, or 200 per cent of GDP.

Insurance experts estimate the repair bill carried by foreign reinsurers will be capped at $US34 billion, with the rest borne by Japanese insurers, the Government and uninsured homeowners.

Japan has so far managed to function under its debt because it has predominantly been funded by domestic investors and because it runs a steady trade surplus.

However, analysts caution that short-term liquidity constraints could prompt strong yen repatriation flows out of foreign markets as occurred after the Kobe earthquake.

Early estimates suggest the cost of the Sendai earthquake will easily exceed the $US100 billion Kobe earthquake in 1995.

Japan’s increased funding pressures are also occurring in a global economy far more cash-constrained than in 1995, and unless export earnings begin flowing soon, escalating funding costs could push the country’s financing costs over the tipping point.

Japan has been one of the biggest buyers of US Treasury debt and in January pledged to also buy up to one-fifth of bonds from the European Financial Stability Fund that was created to bail out Greece and Ireland, all of which will become secondary to Japanese funding needs for the next few months.

The country is also one of the world’s biggest holders of gold bullion.

Any decision to cash in on bullion’s record price and offload much of its sovereign holding would likely depress the gold price.

Japan’s Nikkei equities index slumped 6.2 per cent, its worse daily performance in two years.

[…]

What impact will it have on the global markets if the 3rd largest economy in the world defaults?  What effect will it have on the ability of the world’s largest debtor – that’s YOU, America – to continue to get credit as WE begin to look more and more like a default-likely credit risk???

Japan was the second largest purchaser of American debt, and was so far ahead of #3 (Japan buys 3 1/4 times more of our debt than Britain), that it’s not even funny.  The U.S. needs a sucker, I mean an investor, to continue to artificially prop-up our insane lifestyle.  Who’s going to do that now?

What you’re going to see is either the Fed dramatically hasten the rate at which it devalues the dollar, which in turn will hasten the inevitable result of America becoming a banana republic, or a giant spike in interest rates as other U.S. debt buyers demand more reward for their risks.

A third alternative is that Japan could begin to sell off its US debt to raise money to rebuild.  While that seems like the obvious course, it turns out in this crazy world it isn’t; were Japan to sell it’s U.S. debt, the result would surely kill the U.S. dollar, but it would also dramatically strengthen the yen and hurt Japan’s export market just when they need it most.

My point is it’s a lose-lose.  And the U.S. loses right along with Japan.

Yet “no drama” Obama didn’t care.  He didn’t even bother to mention Japan or it’s earthquake or its tsunami or its nuclear meltdown in his address the day after the disaster.  And just to demonstrate that he truly truly, truly didn’t give a damn, he played 18 holes of golf.

See the photos of Obama’s golf outing from Sadhill.

Then there’s the unfortunate fact that this disaster has coincided with the far more important NCAA basketball tournament.  A president has to choose his priorities, and clearly the basketball won out.

Note #1: this is hardly new behavior from the man who promised “hope and change.”

Note #2: the mainstream media excoriated Bush for golfing a tiny fraction as often as Obama.  One example is the liberal Washington Post headline from August 5, 2002, “Before Golf, Bush Decries Latest Deaths in Mideast.”  I wonder what the Post’s headline would be about Obama if they had even a shred of fairness in their coverage?

We’re in trouble.  And our leader is a fool.  And we have a media that is hell-bent (literally) on ignoring or explaining away this fool’s actions and responses.

One of the things I came to believe as I realized that Obama would actually quite possibly get elected president was that our economy was dead meat.  I entirely got out of the U.S. stock market entirely and won’t return until Obama and the Democrats are out of power.  The reason is that I believed – and STILL believe – that when our economy collapses, it will happen very suddenly, like a house of cards falling down.  And it might not start in America; rather, an event in another country will set off a spiral that will envelope us and expose us for what we truly are.

And just where truly are we?

News from globeandmail.com
The scary real U.S. government debt
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

NEIL REYNOLDS

Ottawa — reynolds.globe@gmail.com

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”

Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”

This sum is equal to all current U.S. federal taxes combined. The consequences of the IMF’s fiscal fix, a doubling of federal taxes in perpetuity, would be appalling – and possibly worse than appalling.

Our actual debt is not the fourteen trillion dollars that would be scary enough; it is $200 TRILLION.

That isn’t some rightwing thinktank saying that; it’s the IMF.

Japan had a literal meltdown.  It is about to have a financial meltdown.

And America will not be far behind.

As you look at the current fiscal situation, with Democrats not just fighting to keep the status quo of reckless and morally and mentally insane spending that will necessarily bankrupt America – and with Democrats literally sitting back waiting to demonize Republicans as “mean-spirited” the moment they try to do what is absolutely necessary to get our skyrocketing spending under control – realize that the United States is necessarily going to explode and collapse just like those reactors in Japan.

Democrats murdered America.  It was Democrats who were responsible for nearly ALL of those $200 trillion in debt that will destroy us (it is a simple fact that the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that constitute virtually all of our actual debt were all Democrat programs).  And it is Democrats who will literally fight to America’s death to prevent the nation from doing what is necessary to fix our situation before it is too late.

Social Security is now paying out more than it takes in.  Workers under forty are rightly quite confident that the system will collapse before they get a chance to collect.  Republicans want to fix the system before it collapses in order to save it.  But Democrats lie about the Republicans efforts (which would kick in slowly and not affect current retirees at all).  And Democrats race us faster, ever faster toward the collapse and nightmare that surely awaits America.

We’re a dead nation walking.  We just don’t realize it yet.

That’s the hope and change you voted for, America.  I hope you enjoy your starving in the soon-coming banana republic your false-messiah president created for you.

California Bucked Trend, Voted For Democrats – And Now Will Get A Facefull Of Hell

California is in a total meltdown.  But don’t worry.  The state elected a governor formerly known as “Moonbeam” to face reality so the residents wouldn’t have to.  It re-elected the most ideological witch (I’m sorry, SENATOR Witch – she worked so darned hard for that title) in the entire US Senate.  And it actually ADDED to the number of Democrats who already had total control of the state.  Oh, and it passed a proposition that will give Democrats even more total control by making the Republican minority totally irrelevant in the budget process.

Which is another way of staying, it’s time for all the rats to jump overboard and start paddling furiously.  Because the Good Ship Lollipop is about to take a trip to Davy Jones’ Locker.  And she aint no submarine:

Panic in the California Municipal Bonds
November 17th, 2010 1:30 pm MT

There is a fund called the PIMCO California Municipal Income Fund II symbol PCK on the New York stock exchange.

In the last few days the fund has been going vertical down.  Investors can’t get rid of this turkey fast enough. (SEE PICTURE TOP LEFT-DOUBLE CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE).

“It might be argued that muni markets are merely reflecting similar declines in Treasuries (TLT). Fair enough. Bond holders, though, are probably are more interested in the fact that their bonds have declined rather than why.

Warren Buffett warned back in June on the muni bond market as local and state municipalities struggle to meet their obligations amid declining tax revenues.

There was a time — before the 2008 crash — when triple AAA rated, insured munis were seen as the safest of safe investments. Times have changed though. Only Assured Guarantee (AGO) still insures municipals, but the company has been recently downgraded from AAA to AA. Ambac (ABK) is in bankruptcy. MBIA (MBI) is entangled in litigation and no longer writes new policies. The financial guarantee business today is but a shadow of its past.

Even though defaults, so far, are rare, the Fed’s zero interest rate policy has thrown a cloud of uncertainty over all bond markets. One can’t help but wonder what happens when ZIRP is withdrawn. Declining tax revenues, rating downgrades, loss of insurance and rumors of bailouts all contribute to the uncertainity and suspicion.

It may be wise to lighten up on all medium to long term bonds at this juncture. Greece, Ireland and Portugal may not be as far removed from New York, Illinois, and California as we might wish.” More…

You have got to love the above quote especially when it says that this precipitous drop is no cause for alarm but at the same time it might be a good idea to lighten up. We prefer to say that there is panic in the California bond markets.

Basically what investors are saying is that they want more interest from these bonds because they are not paying enough. When bonds go down interest on the bond goes up. The problem is that California has no money. The more it raises taxes, the worse the economy does and the less revenue there is. Where is the money going to come from to pay more interest?

The answer is that it will not come from anywhere. The bond market knows this and is getting rid of this investment in search of better performance. It could also be argued that the bond market is also giving the newly elected government Jerry Brown and his union supporters a vote of no confidence. The bond markets know that Brown and Company  will not be able to find the money to pay higher bond yields and therefore the value of the bond is greatly diminished.

At least 80% of states are in this mess and Arizona is no exception. Just yesterday a Hispanic man on Access, Arizona’s welfare healthcare system. was denied a liver transplant because the Obamacare health care reform has heaped an extra $1.2 billion shortfall on the state. There was outrage that this man was not able to get his liver. What does this have to do a a collapsing bond market? People still just expect government to pay and pay and pay and that money is unlimited. This collapse of the bond market signals very clearly that the party is over and the money has dried up even though many people expect differently.

Arizona just does not have the means to pay its existing overhead or to raise money through the bond market. The more states raise taxes the less tax revenue comes in because our economy is shrinking. Arizona’s plight is no different than California’s and the illustration of the PCK bond fund collapse reflects clearly that the markets are signaling they have no faith in the states’ abilities to pay their bills.

Someone is probably going to say, “But Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Republican!”

Because everyone knows that a guy who is pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, pro-embryonic stem cell research, pro-global warming alarmist, pro-radical environmental agenda, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-bailout, and pro-Obama-stimulus, is clearly a “Republican.”

And California decided to teach RINO pseudo-Republicans a lesson by deciding to pass on the successful billionaire chief executive officer of the incredibly successful company and elect Moonbeam instead!!!  Because I don’t want to look at the hand I just pooped in; I want to look at all the wishes in my other hand instead.

California is facing a MASSIVE $25.4 BILLION deficit.  And unlike Barry Hussein, Governor Moonbeam can’t just print more increasingly worthless dollars.

If that isn’t insane enough, California is facing its black hole of debt by digging faster than ever.  As we speak, California is borrowing $40 million PER DAY 24/7 from the federal government (which can print money and devalue the dollar further and further) to pay for jobless benefits.

Because California’s unemployment rate is 12.4%, and, after two years of bennies, liberals have decided that unemployed workers should get a lifetime of unemployment benefits so they never need to worry about finding a job.

Why Did Our Economy Melt Down In 2008? (Email This To Your Friends)

Note: I did not write the following; I am only passing it along.  I hope you read it and then pass it along as well.

Remember the LONG-TERM Causes of the Financial Sector Meltdown (an email pre-formatted for sending)
FreedomKeys.com ^ | 20101010 | various
Posted on 10/23/2010 12:49:32 PM PDT by FreeKeys

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
by novelist Orson Scott Card, a Democrat
_________
.. This [financial crisis] was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it.  One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules.  The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.
..
Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans.  (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me.  It’s as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.) …
..
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.
..
If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis. …
..
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all?  Do you even know what honesty means?
..
[Was] getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for? …
..
… tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis.  You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.
..
This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.
..
If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.
– Novelist Orson Scott Card, a Democrat, on October 5, 2008,HERE
..
.. The Financial Sector Meltdown ..
1.  Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending.  That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn’t qualify for a loan.
..
2.  The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the “Community Reinvestment Act” [first foisted upon the country under Jimmy Carter].  This law was then used by “activists” and “community organizers” …  to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans … millions of them.
..
3.  Now we see what happens when political “wisdom” supplants good loan underwriting.  When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history … this is what you get.  Enjoy it. — Neal Boortz, here ..

---

.
Enough cards on this table have been turned over that the story is now clear. The economic history books will describe this episode in simple and understandable terms: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded, and many bystanders were injured in the blast, some fatally.
..
Fannie and Freddie did this by becoming a key enabler of the mortgage crisis. They fueled Wall Street’s efforts to securitize subprime loans by becoming the primary customer of all AAA-rated subprime-mortgage pools. In addition, they held an enormous portfolio of mortgages themselves.
..
In the times that Fannie and Freddie couldn’t make the market, they became the market.
.. — Kevin Hassett, Bloomberg News, here ..

 

---

.. Obama choice helped Fannie block oversight
National security adviser tied to discrediting of probe ..
By Jim McElhatton, The Washington Times,October 13, 2010 here
..
UNDER SCRUTINY: Thomas E. Donilon worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005.
..
Years before Fannie Mae foundered amid a massive accounting scandal, President Obama’s choice for national security adviser oversaw an office inside the mortgage giant that orchestrated a negative publicity blitz to fight attempts by Congress to increase government oversight, records show.
..
Thomas E. Donilon, who won the job as national security adviser this month, worked as a registered lobbyist for Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005 at a time the company’s officials insisted finances were sound. He also earned more than $1.8 million in bonuses [from Frannie Mae] before the government took over the troubled company in the wake of an accounting scandal.
..
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Obama, who railed against lobbyists on the campaign trail, hailed Mr. Donilon’s appointment last week, but made no mention of his time as a registered lobbyist.st wee
..

 

---

..
Democrats and some [big-government] Republicans opposed reform in part because Fannie and Freddie were very good at greasing palms. Fannie has spent $170 million on lobbying since 1998 and $19.3 million on political contributions since 1990.
..
The principal recipient of Fannie Mae’s largesse was a Democrat, Sen. Chris Dodd (D, CT), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. No. 2 was another Democrat, Sen. Barack Obama (D, IL).
..
Mr. Dodd was also the second largest recipient in the Senate of contributions from Countrywide’s political action committee and its employees, and the recipient of a home loan from Countrywide at well below market rates.  The No. 1 senator on Countrywide’s list? Barack Obama. Check it out here:  http://tinyurl.com/4h9955
..

 

---

..
“Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default.
..
“The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.” — Dr. Thomas Sowell, Professor Emeritus, Economics, Stanford University, HERE
..

 

---

..
When the Bush administration tried to rein in Freddie and Fannie from continuing to engage in risky practices, guess who stepped in to block their efforts? Democratic senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and — are you ready? — Barack Obama.
..
Meanwhile, guess who were the top four recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie between 1988 and 2008?
..
Senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and — still ready? — Barack Obama.
..
A coincidence, I tell you — just a coincidence.
..
More mere coincidences: Franklin Raines — a former Carter- and Clinton-administration official and former head of Fannie Mae, now under investigation for cooking its books — had a lot of powerful people in Congress beholden to his agency. Here is a list of his campaign-contribution recipients. Meanwhile, Democratic honcho Jim Johnson, another former Fannie Mae CEO, has been an economic adviser to and major fundraiser for Barack Obama, and even ran his vice-presidential search committee until growing scandals over his Fannie management forced him to step down in July. – Robert Bidinotto, here ..

 

---

..
On May 25, 2006, Sen. John McCain spoke forcefully on behalf of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005.  He said on the floor of the Senate:
..
“Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae’s regulator reported that the company’s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were “illusions deliberately and systematically created” by the company’s senior management, which resulted in a $10.6 billion accounting scandal.
..
“The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s report goes on to say that Fannie Mae employees deliberately and intentionally manipulated financial reports to hit earnings targets in order to trigger bonuses for senior executives. In the case of Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae’s former chief executive officer, OFHEO’s report shows that over half of Mr. Raines’ compensation for the 6 years through 2003 was directly tied to meeting earnings targets. The report of financial misconduct at Fannie Mae echoes the deeply troubling $5 billion profit restatement at Freddie Mac.
..
” The OFHEO report also states that Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator’s examination of the company’s accounting problems. This report comes some weeks after Freddie Mac paid a record $3.8 million fine in a settlement with the Federal Election Commission and restated lobbying disclosure reports from 2004 to 2005. These are entities that have demonstrated over and over again that they are deeply in need of reform.
..
“For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–known as Government-sponsored entities or GSEs–and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market. OFHEO’s report this week does nothing to ease these concerns. In fact, the report does quite the contrary. OFHEO’s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay.
..
“I join as a cosponsor of the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190, to underscore my support for quick passage of GSE regulatory reform legislation. If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.
..
“I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation.”
..
It died at the hands of the DEMOCRATS —
HERE’s a video clip showing their anger.
..

 

---

..
“Many politicians and pundits claim that the credit crunch and high mortgage foreclosure rate is an example of market failure and want government to step in to bail out creditors and borrowers at the expense of taxpayers who prudently managed their affairs. These financial problems are not market failures but government failure. … The credit crunch and foreclosure problems are failures of government policy.” — Dr. Walter E. Williams, the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, HERE
..

 

---

..
“Barack Obama wasn’t just the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac political contributions. He was also the senator from ACORN, the activist leader for risky ‘affirmative action’ loans. … [The CRA] gave groups such as ACORN a license and a means to intimidate banks … ACORN employed its tactics in 1991 by taking over the House Banking Committee room for two days to protest efforts to scale back the CRA. … Obama represented ACORN in a 1994 suit against redlining.  ACORN was also a driving force behind a 1995 regulatory revision pushed through by the Clinton administration that greatly expanded the CRA and helped spawn the current financial crisis. Obama was the attorney representing ACORN in this effort.” — IBD Editorials
..
“The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN’s Madeline Talbott in her pioneering [“community organizer”] efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding [via CAC and Woods Fund] for her efforts.” — Stanley Kurtz, “BARACK’S ‘ORGAANIZER’ BUDS PUSHED FOR BAD MORTGAGES”HERE
.

 

---

.
Bloomberg News has an excellent recap of
the history of the financial meltdown:.HERE.
.

 

---

 

Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama
not shown: Bill Clinton

---

..

 

---

“Scratch the surface of an endemic problem — famine, illness, poverty —  and you invariably find a politician at the source.” —  Simon Carr

 

---

“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary.” — Ayn Rand

 

---

“I think that we all need to consider the possibility … just the possibility … that Obama is engaged in a conscious effort to destroy our free market economy so that he can build a government-controlled socialist party on the rubble.” — Neal Boortz, here
[Conscious effort or not, we have an emergency on our hands.]

 

It Was DEMOCRATS Who Blew Up Our Economy In 2008

I’ve been saying this for months: It was DEMOCRATS who destroyed our economy in 2008.

First of all, given all the times that you’ve heard the line, “The Republicans created this mess,” ask yourself a question: when was the last time you heard an explanation as to just precisely what the Republicans did to cause the disaster?

Don’t be a lemming and a tool; read up on how Democrats loaded up GSEs Fannie and Freddie with liberals, massively increased the government ownership of the mortgage industry, engaged in incredibly risky policies even as our housing market was beginning a cyclical downturn, and then refused to allow any regulations or reform whatsoever:

With Eyes Finally Wide-Open, Reconsider Why The Economy Collapsed In The First Place

Who REALLY Exploded Your Economy, Liberals Or Conservatives?

Biden: We Misread The Economy – And It’s All The Republicans’ Fault

Want To Know Why Your Economy Blew Up?

Barney Frank And Democrat Party Most Responsible For 2008 Economic Collapse

This Blame Bush Crap Has Just GOT To End

And here’s the latest fact and the latest explanation as to just how Democrats blew up our economy:

The quotes that explain the entire financial meltdown
posted at 12:10 pm on October 12, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

For those who want a smoking gun to show the genesis of the financial collapse, this short sequence from a longer video I posted this week will do it. Clinton HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo announced a settlement of a lending discrimination complaint with Accubanc, a Texas lender whose prerequisites for mortgages came under attack from “community organizers” at the Fort Worth Human Relations Commission and the city of Dallas. I clipped out this sequence to underscore its importance:

Watch the video.

CUOMO: To take a greater risk on these mortgages, yes. To give families mortgages that they would not have given otherwise, yes.

Q: [unintellible] … that they would not have given the loans at all?

CUOMO: They would not have qualified but for this affirmative action on the part of the bank, yes.

Q: Are minorities represented in that low and moderate income group?

CUOMO: It is by income, and is it also by minorities? Yes.

CUOMO: With the 2.1 billion, lending that amount in mortgages — which will be a higher risk, and I’m sure there will be a higher default rate on those mortgages than on the rest of the portfolio …

Here, in fact, is the genesis of the problem, the ideology that created the monster.  Cuomo, the Clinton administration, and Congress believed they had the right and the power to determine acceptable risk for the lenders, rather than lenders determining it for themselves in a free market.  Even while imposing risk standards on lenders, Cuomo admits that he expects a higher default rate on the new loans — which is why the lenders didn’t want to write them in the first place.

In other words, the CRA didn’t get used to fight discrimination, but to force lenders to give money to high-risk borrowers for political purposes.  And Cuomo knew it.

That was the political arrogance at the heart of the collapse.  However, the CRA was more a sideshow than the actual problem.  When Congress decided that enforcement alone wouldn’t generate enough mortgages to boost their political fortunes, they had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac eliminate the risk entirely for lenders through the purchase of the subprime loans.  Without that risk and with almost-guaranteed short-term profits of subprime loans, lenders went wild while Fannie and Freddie repackaged them as quasi-government bonds for investors.

While Democrats like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi keep blaming “greed” for the collapse, it was Democrats like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd building that “greed” into the system in order to drive the subprime lending market.  And it was Democrats like Frank, Dodd, Maxine Waters, and Lacy Clay who suggested that regulators like Armando Falcon were racists for blowing the whistle on the Ponzi scheme they created.

The Democrats decided, as Michelle says, that mortgages were a civil right, and wouldn’t cost the American taxpayers a dime.  How well is that working out, America?  And now, the question you have to ask yourselves is this: Do you want the nation’s economic policies run by Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, and Frank for the next two years?

John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The problem is that we aren’t a moral or religious people anymore.

We’ve become a bad people.  And bad people allow a climate in which lies dominate, and then they believe the lies they are told.

And that is why we allowed a mainstream media to fabricate an entire culture of lies, and then we believed their narrative that Republicans (who hadn’t been in power for two years in the Congress) were the party to blame.  We blamed Bush – who tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform and regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the economic meltdown just in 2008 alone.  And Bush had called for reform and regulation of the GSEs 34 times since 2001.  And we put the very Democrats who blew up our economy by refusing to allow those reforms or regulations until after it was too late in charge of the economy that they ruined.

It was Democrats and the Government Sponsored Enterprise system Democrats created (i.e., GSEs Fannie and Freddie) that created the financial disaster; just as it is Democrats who are in total control of our government who are CONTINUING to undermine our economy now.

We gave Democrats total power.  And in just two years they have so destroyed our economy and our health care system that we may never be able to recover.

Scared Democrats Admit Bush Was Right On Tax Cutting Policy

More and more Democrats are admitting that increasing taxes on the rich people who actually create jobs would be a foolhardy thing to do.

That pours a big giant can of water on the fire Democrats started in the whole blame-Bush-for-the-economic-meltdown thing.  Bush’s tax cuts were the biggest straw man for Democrats.  And now some of the most prominent Democrats are saying we need to keep those same tax cuts that Democrats were universally demonizing only months ago.

More Dems buck plan to let taxes increase for rich
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER (AP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — Congress seems increasingly reluctant to let taxes go up, even on wealthier Americans.

Worried about the fragile economy and their own upcoming elections, a growing number of Democrats are joining the rock-solid Republican opposition to President Barack Obama’s plans to let some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts expire.

Democratic leaders in Congress still back Obama, but the willingness to raise taxes is waning among the rank and file as the stagnant economy threatens the party’s majority in the House and Senate.

“In my view this is no time to do anything that could be jarring to a fragile recovery,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia, a first-term Democrat. […]

“It’s going to be hard to resist a one-year extension for everybody, given the state of the economy,” said Clint Stretch, a tax expert at the consulting firm Deloitte Tax LLP. “That’s where I think the ball is moving.”

The tax cuts were enacted in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush. They provided help for both rich and poor, reducing the lowest marginal rates as well as the top ones and several in between. They also provided a wide range of income tax breaks for education, families with children and married couples.

Taxes on capital gains and dividends were reduced, while the federal estate tax was gradually repealed, though only through this year. […]

Another freshman Democrat, Rep. Bobby Bright of Alabama, said he would like to see all the tax cuts extended for two or three years, if lawmakers cannot agree on a more permanent plan.

“Party leaders are not my directors or my boss,” Bright said. “My boss is my constituents, and I’ve heard from a vast majority of my constituents that they don’t believe in tax increases on anybody at this point in time.”

Bright is high on the re-election endangered list, one of roughly four dozen Democrats in districts won by Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008.

In the Senate, where Democrats need unity and at least one Republican vote to overcome filibusters, at least three Democrats and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut have said they want to extend all the tax cuts temporarily.

Several Democratic candidates for Senate have also come out in favor of extending them all, including Robin Carnahan in Missouri and Jack Conway in Kentucky.

“Jack Conway was in favor of the Bush tax cuts when they first passed (in 2001 and 2003), and he’s in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts now,” said spokeswoman Allison Haley.

An article in McClatchey Newspapers points out that if Democrats try to hike taxes on the rich, it will be Democrats who stood in the way:

Democrats unlikely to repeal tax cuts for the rich
By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress are poised to play a leading role this month in thwarting their party’s effort to raise income tax rates on the wealthy.

Tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 expire at the end of this year. President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have been eager to extend the breaks for individuals who earn less than $200,000 annually and joint filers who make less than $250,000. Those who earn more would pay higher, pre-2001 rates starting next year.

However, a small but growing number of moderate Democrats are balking at boosting taxes on the rich. Many face electorates that recoil at the mention of any tax increase. Some represent areas that are loaded with wealthier taxpayers. Further, some incumbent senators who don’t face voters this fall are reluctant to increase taxes on anyone while the economy remains sluggish.

Without their support, the push to raise rates on the rich probably will fail. […]

Many Democrats and Republicans are eager for a tax cut battle, seeing it as emblematic of each party’s economic principles.

“Now the administration is calling for a massive tax hike on small businesses in the middle of a recession,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who maintains that higher rates on the wealthy would hit small business hard, a point the Obama administration disputes.

“So it’s no surprise,” McConnell added, “that most Americans think the country is on the wrong track and that Democrat policies have failed to do anything to fix their top concern, the economy.”

Democratic leaders are convinced that voters won’t buy that argument. Not only will the public back higher taxes for the rich, but “we have an opportunity to generate $700 billion that could go to deficit reduction and badly needed programs,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus.

The middle class-only extension is thought to have strong support in the House, where Democrats have a huge majority, but some Democrats are reluctant.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., represents the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, one of the nation’s wealthiest districts. Median family income there in 2008 was $117,892, well above the national average of $63,211. He said that repealing the top rates would have political consequences.

“Sometimes we forget how we became the majority. We did it by winning some affluent districts,” he said.

The bigger problem for Democrats looms in the Senate, where Majority Leader Reid’s immediate problem is getting the 60 votes needed to cut off debate on the measure. Democrats control 59 seats, and at least three of them — Bayh, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota — have signaled that they won’t back a permanent repeal of the tax cuts for the wealthy.

They suggest a way out of a stalemate — temporarily extending all the expiring tax rates — but so far the leadership isn’t going along.

Sean Neary, a spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, said the senator backed such an extension “for now.”

“The general rule of thumb is that you do not raise taxes or cut spending during an economic downturn. That would be counterproductive,” Conrad said.

Nelson also offered what’s become the centrist Democratic mantra. He, too, said he’d back extending the tax breaks for the wealthy “for at least a period of time because raising taxes in a weak economy could impair recovery.”

That stand could be even more popular with Democratic candidates for the Senate who aren’t incumbents. The hottest races are in conservative states, such as Kentucky, where Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway are battling for the seat now held by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning.

Of the expiring tax cuts for the wealthy, Conway spokeswoman Allison Haley said that he “believes we should extend them now, especially when so many Kentucky families and small businesses are struggling under this recession.”

In Missouri, Republican U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt and Democrat Robin Carnahan are in a tight race. Despite a welcoming embrace with Obama at a Kansas City fundraiser in July, Carnahan said last week that she wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone.

“Now is not the time to raise taxes,” she said.

In Indiana, U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth, D-Ind., who’s seeking to replace Bayh, told the Evansville Courier & Press this summer that all the Bush-era tax cuts should become permanent.

That position makes sense, said Brian Vargus, a professor of political science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, because Indiana is “an overwhelmingly Republican state … and there is never support for taxes or public goods.”

So from this article we see the term “moderate.”  And the moderates are those Democrats who see a compromise to the looming war over tax cuts: keep them all for now.  Don’t hike taxes on the only economic class of Americans who have the wherewithal to actually create jobs.  Keep the the tax cuts for at least a year, if not 2-3 years.  But the hard-liner Democrats are willing to see the tax cuts end for EVERYONE in order to maintain their Marxist class warfare principle of punishing the rich for being successful.

Democrats offered two reasons in their unrelenting demagoguery of George Bush: 1) they said the tax cuts caused the economic disaster; and 2) they said Bush’s refusal to regulate caused the economic disaster.

But 1) is now blown apart, given DEMOCRATS’ current acknowledgment that the Bush tax cuts – yes, even for the rich – weren’t the bogey man Democrats have been saying.

And 2) suffers from the flaw that Bush DID try to regulate the entity most responsible for the meltdown that befell the economy in 2008, and the ONLY reason that entity was not reformed and regulated was because DEMOCRATS blocked Bush at every turn.

That entity was the Government Sponsored Enterprise, or GSE, commonly known by the brand names of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was Fannie and Freddie that expanded and ultimately exploded using dangerous subprime loans (see also here).  It was also Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who bundled thousands of bad and good mortgages together into instruments called “mortgage backed securities” and sold them to the private sector.  And when no one could separate the good from the bad, uncertainty paralyzed the banking system and led to the crash.

A brief history of the mortgage meltdown reveals how it was the GSEs acting under Democrat policies that created the housing bubble – (and even Obama economic shill Christina Romer admits “the popping of the housing bubble had serious consequences” which “destroyed $13 trillion of wealth in 2008”) – and the corresponding mortgage crisis which imploded our economy:

In 1999, under pressure from the Clinton administration, Fannie Mae, the nation’s largest home mortgage underwriter, relaxed credit requirements on the loans it would purchase from other banks and lenders, hoping that easing these restrictions would result in increased loan availability for minority and low-income buyers. Putting pressure on the GSE’s (Government Sponsored Enterprise) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Clinton administration looked to increase their sub-prime portfolios, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development expressing its interest in the GSE’s maintaining a 50% portion of their portfolios in loans to low and moderate-income borrowers.^[10]

As noted, subprime mortgages sky-rocketed during the initial era of loosening of terms throughout the 1990’s. From a low of 5% of mortgages in 1994, to 14% in 1997, to 23% in 2005, subprime mortgages continued to boom in the early 2000’s. Following the 2004 initiative policy change spearheaded by a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital, subprimes became an even greater investment vehicle for investment banks and institutions in the U.S. and around the world. Since 1994, the securitization rate of subprime loans has increased from approximately 32 percent to nearly 78 percent of total subprime originations.^[11] This further exposed the financial community to the effects of the coming housing bubble.

Democrat policies created the housing bubble that Christina Romer acknowledges was the cause of the destruction of the US economy.

And the refusal of Democrats to reform and regulate Fannie and Freddie exploded that bubble.

Bush warned SEVENTEEN TIMES that we needed to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae or have an economic disaster on our hands.  John McCain urged action to avert an economic disaster.  And Democrats refused to budge to deal with the monster they created.

Again, Bush was right.  Democrats were profoundly wrong.

The mainstream media propagandists refused to report the truth.  They kept broadcasting a lie, and naive and frankly stupid Americans rewarded the Democrats who created the economic disaster with total power.

And we’ve been paying for that stupidity for the last two years.

As of today, Obama is at a dismal 42% approval, and in danger of plunging into the 30s.  45% of Americans now strongly disapprove of Obama, versus only 24% who still strongly approve of the job he’s doing “fundamentally transforming” our economy into a pre-industrial barter system.

Obama is in full meltdown mode as all of his campaign rhetoric is being revealed for the lies it always was:

And Democrats are deservedly going to meltdown right along with him.

Barney Frank Video Proves Democrats At CORE Of 2008 Economic Collapse

Scott Factor has the most relevant quotes, plus the video of Barney Frank’s “wisdom” prior to the housing mortgage collapse that led to the 2008 economic meltdown:

Stupid, lying, forever full of bull Rep. Barney Fwank (D-Mass.) (No relation to Elmer Fudd) was speaking at a forum on national housing policy back in December, 2006. Shortly after this speech, Fwank became Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Some of the comments he made at this forum go to prove that he and the Democrats are liars, thieves, incompetents, and will make up stories as they go to fit any situation. This is not leadership, it’s incompetence.

Here are some quotes from this video:

“You will see far less difference with Democrats taking over in the Financial Services regulatory area…..One of the things we did was try to reduce the reporting requirements from the banks to the financial detectives. Far too much has to be reported now in my judgment.”

Well, I guess if they reported more, it would be easier to prosecute all of the fraud that took place, or better yet, the fraud would never have occurred. Still willing to blame the economic mess on Bush?

Then he babbles about the now troubled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: “You could have cut back on their ability to borrow as cheaply or you could leave that benefit in place and distribute it more fairly. That’s what we chose to do with the affordable housing fund.”

So, welfare loans for those who could not afford them, and what did we get? A banking crisis related to all the foreclosures because we loaned money to people who couldn’t’ afford to borrow it. Still willing to blame the economic mess on Bush?

Fwank babbles about the housing bubble, before it went bust: “I do want to address this thing about the bubble. I think the bubble is an entirely inappropriate metaphor. Let me just be very clear, houses ain’t tulips. Houses today even with the drop in housing prices are more valuable than tulips were however many years ago when we had the tulip business.”

Fwank on the busted bubble: “I think it’s a good thing that housing prices are dropping…..A 10% drop in housing prices is a good thing. Housing was over-valued.”

Still willing to blame the economic mess on Bush?

Fwank on the busted bubble again: “…I don’t think that there’s a crisis, and I do think that the end result in a 10% drop in many parts of the country will be a more rational and healthier housing market.”

I’ve tried to tackle this issue in previous articles:

Who REALLY Exploded Your Economy, Liberals Or Conservatives?

With Eyes Finally Wide-Open, Reconsider Why The Economy Collapsed In The First Place

Biden: ‘We Misread the Economy’ – And it’s all the Republicans’ Fault

But Barney Frank might do a better job demonstrating that Democrats were all creating the housing mortgage meltdown that imploded our economy than anyone.

Frank acknowledges that the policies that led to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s implosion were DEMOCRAT policies.

And it was Fannie and Freddie that led to this massive economic disaster.  From Bloomberg:

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) — Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“The situation is they are losing gobs of money, up to $400 billion in mortgages,” Wallison said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The Treasury Department recognized last week that losses will be more than $400 billion when it raised its limit on federal support for the two government-sponsored enterprises, he said.

The U.S. seized the two mortgage financiers in 2008 as the government struggled to prevent a meltdown of the financial system. The debt of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks grew an average of $184 billion annually from 1998 to 2008, helping fuel a bubble that drove home prices up by 107 percent between 2000 and mid-2006, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller home-price index.

The Treasury said on Dec. 24 it would provide an unlimited amount of assistance to the companies as needed for the next three years to alleviate market concern that the government lifeline for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest source of money for U.S. home loans, could lapse or be exhausted.

Lax regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led to the mortgage companies taking on too many risky loans, Wallison said.

“It turns out it was impossible to regulate them,” he said. “They were too powerful.” He said no one knows how much will be needed to keep the companies solvent.

You can go to another couple of my articles to see that it was Democrats’ policies and refusal to regulate Fannie and Freddie that led to the 2008 economic collapse:

Democrats Refused To Regulate GSEs, Created Financial Tsunami

How ‘Failed Policies’ Of Democrats Were Responsible For Financial Crisis

In the article immediately above, I cite a New York Times article from 1999 in which Peter Wallison saw the massive danger of an out-of-control Fannie and Freddie:

”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

But Barney Frank – who led Democrat opposition to fight off any effort to regulate or reform Fannie and Freddie –  thought that everything was just going swimmingly with what we now know was a future supermassive black hole implosion:

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

“These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of a financial crisis.”  Unless you consider the biggest bailout in the history of the world a “financial crisis,” that is.  The AIG bailout was $85 billion.  The GM bailout was for $49.5 billion.  Compare those to the $400 billion bailout Obama has been handing out to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“Not facing any kind of financial crisis.”

“I think it’s a good thing that housing prices are dropping. . .  A 10% drop in housing prices is a good thing. Housing was over-valued.”

“I think the bubble is an entirely inappropriate metaphor.”

“One of the things we did was try to reduce the reporting requirements.”

“You could have cut back on their ability to borrow as cheaply or you could leave that benefit in place and distribute it more fairly. That’s what we chose to do with the affordable housing fund.”

DEMOCRATS CAUSED THIS HELL.  THEY WERE ALL OVER IT.

And the Democrat Party that caused this mess to begin with is out doing the same crap that imploded us in the first place all over again.