"Everything is going to hell since Obama was elected..."

[kentuck]

That seems to be what a lot of Republicans are saying. His radical agenda is not giving confidence to the stock market. It scares the hell out of the market, Lindsey Graham said this morning on MTP. This lie has to be confronted now.

The shit hit the fan back in September when George W Bush and Henry Paulson stepped before the microphones to tell the American people that the entire banking system would collapse immediately if the Congress did not give them $700 billion dollars with no questions asked. A flurry of banks declared themselves insolvent and had to be bailed out or taken over by other banks. Everything has been going down since that day. Some folks, including our President, have been trying to save the banking system and our economy since that time. Nobody has resorted to radical politics. Sticking your head in your ass and playing politics is not going to resolve this problem which did not just begin when Barack Obama took over the Presidency. So get that crap out of here...

[Divine Discontent]

1. yep. as many of us have noted, too, and heard, they're acting as if they've never heard of.....

George W. Bush.

GEORGE??? Who was he? Never heard of him! LOL

[lapfog_1]

2. The panic started long before last September...

It started with the collapse of sub-prime mortgage lenders and the first Fannie and Freddy bailouts.

We simply didn't pay that much attention to it because of a Presidential Election cycle.

[Zynx]

3. July 2007 was the start of it.

By mid-August 2007, we were in serious trouble. I myself did not recognize it at the time, but that's clearly where it started. By late 2007, most of the financial companies were in serious disrepair.

[sandnsea]

9. Apparently, the beginning of 2007

was when it was first seen by some. Still, $1.2 trillion of sub-prime mortgages, the amount issued at the height in 2005 & 2006, don't account for the mega-trillion derivative blow-up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/opinion/25rosner.html?ex=1343102400&en=30ea3145f044f8e4&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

[Zynx]

11. Those were the first signs when a couple of subprime lenders went bust.

However, we have had serious strain on the system every day since late July 2007.

[sandnsea]

19. I wasn't arguing the date

I was just saying these problems were out there for a long time and some people saw them very clearly, which is what that article was about. However, I still don't think the actual mortgage market is the problem. If we were doing loans traditionally, without all the exploded derivative investment, then we'd be able to contain this fairly easily. It's what the big investment houses did, that some say nobody can unravel, that are really at the root of the problem. To even talk about mortgages is to miss the point. There are probably more people who are in foreclosure as a result of this mess as there were at the front end.

[kentuck]

4. and although we had been in a recession for about a year...

they would never admit it ...

[Zynx]

25. Declaring recessions is a non-partisan exercise.

It's an academic one. That's why it takes forever.

[kentuck]

27. We were still in a recession.

Whether the politicians admitted it or not. The Republicans said that the economy was in a bad recession when Bush and Cheney took over. I do recall a slight decline, but not severe, until 9/11.

[Zynx]

28. That recession in 2001 was not deep, but the bulk of it occurred prior to 9/11.

The recession really ended two months after 9/11. As far as the stock market, that had a severe decline both prior and after 9/11. Economic activity, however, clearly had stalled out prior to the beginning of 2001. I will concede that point to the Republicans. However, Bush's recovery from recession was the weakest ever and the next recession is shaping up to be one of the worst.

[tangent90]

5. Unfortunately all politics is still local and runs on perception.

Keep in mind about half of Americans think the earth is around 6000 years old...it isn't comforting but it explains a lot.

[Davis_X_Machina]

6. In Graham's world...

...obstetricians make babies.

[sufrommich]

7. "Everything is going to hell since Obama was elected"

is right wing nutball code for " There's a black guy in the White House!" .

[omega minimo]

8. the death throes of Reaganism -- Just Keep Lying!!

:thumbsdown:

[Baikonour]

10. This Daily Show clip pretty much sums it up, OP.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220253&title=the-dow-knows-all

"Isn't the Dow Jones Industrial average just a short twitch numerical representation of a bunch of guesses about a bunch of other people's assumptions about the financial well being of an arbitrarily chosen group of 30 out of tens of thousands companies?"

[onethatcares]

14. wow, great synopsis.

I haven't watched the Daily Show in years. :hi:

Peace

[kentuck]

15. Right on!

Thanks!

[blogslut]

12. I really think the American people are smarter than that

Republicans can play "Who farted?" all they want but the populace knows damned good and well the economy was messed up before the election. This GOP blame-thrower claptrap ain't playing in the sticks and the polls show it.

Keep it up, losers.

[EFerrari]

13. Lately, just about every question on WJ is some version of

"Is everything going to hell now that Obama is in office".

[AzDar]

16. Fuck Republicans.

[Igel]

17. And yet, they were not given $700 billion with no questions asked.

They were given $350 billion and had to come back with a request for more, answering any questions that were asked.

They did a few days before the end of *'s term, explicitly saying that Obama had requested that Congress approve the funds so that on day 1 Obama would have access to it. Presumably Pelosi and Reid asked to make sure.

[kentuck]

20. Right, but they asked for it all with no questions asked...

And how much have we given to CitiGroup thus far?? And what have we gotten in return?

[CountAllVotes]

18. March 17, 2008

I'll never forget this date. I was going to buy some Vanguard stock and called up my bank and told them to put a stop payment on this pending transaction.

They wanted to know why.

My answer was simple: Two words I said to them: BEAR STEARNS

The collapse of Bear Stearns was the tip falling off of the iceberg and down she has melted since.

It is easy to blame someone else for this; convenient :dunce: . However, fact is fact. It all began when * was still President. :puke:

The trickle down stopped tricklin' in March of 2008!!

Sadly, Pres. Obama is left trying to piece this pile of garbage back together and it is no simple task. He needs all of the help, support, etc. that can be found.

Anyone that dare say they hope that the President fails is an unpatriotic American! :wtf: is wrong with people? Can they not stop biting off their noses to spite their faces for one second? Seems not!

:dem:

[roseBudd]

21. You can use what I wrote on an MSM site today.....

Your point regarding the stock market is particularly interesting since in this particular economic crisis the cause was the "consequent surge in global demand for U.S. subprime securities by banks, hedge, and pension funds supported by unrealistically positive rating designations by credit agencies. Demand became so aggressive that too many securitizers and lenders believed they were able to create and sell mortgage backed securities so quickly that they never put their shareholders’ capital at risk and hence did not have the incentive to evaluate the credit quality of what they were selling. Pressures on lenders to supply more “paper” collapsed subprime underwriting standards from 2005 forward. Uncritical acceptance of credit ratings by purchasers of these toxic assets has led to huge losses."

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/10/23/greenspan-testimony-on-sources-of-financial-crisis/

What really gets my goat is this quote from the SEC meeting in 2004 when the big 5 investment banks succeeded in getting a change in the Net Capital rule.

"One commissioner, Harvey J. Goldschmid, questioned the staff about the consequences of the proposed exemption. It would only be available for the largest firms, he was reassuringly told — those with assets greater than $5 billion.

“We’ve said these are the big guys,” Mr. Goldschmid said, provoking nervous laughter, “but that means if anything goes wrong, it’s going to be an awfully big mess.” "

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/business/03sec.html

Yes indeed, an awfully big mess. Yet Rick Santelli a former derivitives trader (Credit Default Obligations) wants you to believe it was loser home owners, not the so called "smartest people in the room".

[kestrel91316]

22. Yeah....everything's just gone all to shit since Obama got in office in 2001.....

:silly:

It's DEFINITELY all his fault.

[deaniac21]

23. I am afraid that the administration is trying to take on too much

all at the same time. wish they would focus on one or two things and then go on to the next stuff.

[kentuck]

24. Because they cannot ignore everything else....

It is all interconnected. We cannot fix one problem without fixing the other. We cannot fix the banks unless we can get the economy going. We cannot get the economy going unless we get some type of healthcare reform. We cannot fix the jobs problem unless the people have more confidence. We cannot fix the stock market if we can't fix the jobs, etc. It's a real mess.

[deaniac21]

32. Working on everything at once is a time honored recipe for failure.

[TBF]

30. I have many complaints about Obama, but mostly because he's

much more conservative than I am (but then so are most people). At any rate he's a smart guy and competent. If he wasn't taking on a lot people would be complaining that he wasn't doing enough.

[zbdent]

26. The case could be made that the selection of Sarah Palin was the key ...

when the world found out what McCain's "one heartbeat away" was going to be ...

Or, that this is the end result of McCain stopping the fix of stock market meltdown, because THIS "fix" met his approval ... not the one which had been brokered before ...

[TBF]

29. Good. If the republicans are mad he must be doing something right!

Fuck the market.

[SoCalDem]

31. So a guy's driving 100 mph..drunk.. carreening all over the road

and a passenger wrests the steering-wheel away from him, and puts the car into a ditch, instead of head-on with a train.. well did HE cause the wreck? or did he save everyone from catastrophe, but bruise them up a bit from the tumble into the ditch?