I could come up with more exhibits than the alphabet but I figure two will be good enough for the weekend. So Exhibit A will revolve around the housing market bubble bursting causing the economy to hint towards a collapse...
In fact you can easily provide proof enough to blame him for ignoring prominent investment firm heads and with a few links, as we will provide here, their credibility in the whole, "Nobody ever saw it coming" defense that they used after 9/11, their claims of WMDs in Iraq and the levees collapsing during Katrina all exploded in their face.
Truth was they were warned on each if those impending disasters and just like in every one of those other cases they chose to ignore critics of their economic policies because after all they knew better didn't they?
So way back in 2004 when the head of Morgan Stanley and Fidelity Stephen Roach came out and said we have a "one-in-10 chance of avoiding economic Armageddon", that should have sounded an alarm. He later wrote what would need to happen to avoid such an economic collapse in the NY Times but it was clear that we were on the verge of a major economy crash if no changes were made. Of course with this 'stay the course' administration, none were.
The above information was discussed in an interesting take by Patrick Doherty on TomPaine.com from April 19, 2004:
In the 1980s, Reagan’s chief budget adviser, David Stockman, admitted that it was White House policy to expand the federal deficits in order to squeeze out social entitlement spending. The Bush administration has taken that tactic one step further, explained by the pre-eminent Republican operative Grover Norquist’s famous goal, “to get government down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
And they have already declared their intentions to do just that. The Bush administration has identified its top three legislative priorities in the next term, and none of them involves reducing American consumption and increasing American savings. Instead, their priorities represent the final operations of the battle started in 1964: tort reform, Social Security reform and tax reform. Tort reform to curtail consumer protections. Social Security reform to force every working American to buy risk-filled investment accounts. Tax reform to make taxation fully regressive, placing the highest burden on the lowest earners through either a flat tax or a value-added tax.
Given our severe account imbalances, this second-term agenda of the Bush administration will signal to our global creditors that we are not serious about our debts. That will make dollar-denominated securities worthless and the dollar will cease to be the global currency, as America will no longer be the mass market of last resort. At some point, OPEC will have to switch to a new currency—probably Euros—and the price of oil for Americans will rise significantly as the dollar continues to fall. As Roach’s collapsing stock market ushers in a recession, the inevitable job losses will pop the housing bubble across the country. Americans, with trillions of dollars of consumer debt leveraged on the value of their homes, will find that their futures will have disappeared. Hard-earned home equity will be gutted and stock values will have crashed. Unemployment will be widespread.
Sound familiar? The warning signs were out there at least that far back but there was no correction made by the White House, no change once soever. They plowed forward with their agenda.
Many felt that the 2004 election was won, in part, due to the false sense of security many Americans felt with the economy. An economy built around the housing market. While people were losing their manufacturing jobs but getting back lesser paying substitute jobs through temp agencies/staffing companies, the Bush Administration was trying to tout how their economy actually created jobs. The lesser paying jobs meant a shrinking middle class.
Americans now were relying on credit more than ever before and doing so they were buying homes based on creative mortgage arrangements, mostly gimmicked loans with adjustable mortgage rates. Those mortgage rates were tied to the federal interest rates which were very low during the early part of the decade. People overspent their means, hoping that the rates would remain low as this economy stayed strong, or so the Bush Administration kept telling them.
I did discuss this before but I want to point it out again because our economy is on the verge of tanking and when Democrats were decrying the policies of this Administration before the 2004 election, they were ignored and dismissed. The economy seemed to upturn before the election, or at least unemployment rates did. This made the election hedge on the Iraq War, which already a quagmire, was still early enough for many to want to give Bush another chance at correction.
Certainly there is a ton of blame to go around. Blame the lenders who irresponsibly pushed loans that had "default" written all over them. Blame the Media for not covering the issue truthfully or the Chairmen at the Fed for not acknowledging the certain collapse responsibly.
I blame Bush. The saying goes, the buck stops here. Even with every warning in the world, he has never foreseen anything correctly. I don't expect the President to be a psychic but they need to at least have some idea of what is coming on something. This guy was wrong by ignoring 9/11 intelligence, wrong on the consequences of invading Iraq, wrong on how to deal with Katrina and now he was warned and is very wrong on the economy.
The Democrats, finally in some sort of position to do something about this mess, are trying to present correction options. Bush will have none of that.
From the US News & World Report:
The Washington Post notes that "despite mounting concern over the downturn in the housing market," Bush "dismissed proposals advanced by prominent Democrats to grant government-chartered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more freedom to buy mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. And he ruled out any taxpayer bailout of lenders threatened by the subprime home-loan crisis." The Wall Street Journal says the President "shrugged off concerns about stock-market turmoil, saying Wall Street is adjusting to a flood of liquidity and is beginning to 'readjust its assessment of risk.'" He also "dismissed recent polls showing that US citizens are feeling sour about the economy. ... He said he understands 'there's disquiet out there' but attributed much of the economic anxiety to concerns about the war in Iraq. '"I happen to believe the war has clouded a lot of peoples' sense of optimism.'"
Yeah your fuckup in Iraq is why people are scared out of their minds about losing their homes and a market collapse. It's all pessimism, see?
Oh wait, the fucking Federal Reserve admitted there is market turmoil. Better give them the memo asshole...
From the Washington Post:
The Federal Reserve cut a key interest rate yesterday, trying to ease a worldwide credit crunch, and said for the first time that it viewed turmoil in financial markets as a major risk to the U.S. economy.
Once again, Bush's policies have screwed things up and he has found yet another way to possibly ruin America. Although that's what they wanted didn't they?
They're not just drowning government in a bathtub, they're drowning the American people with them.
-Rp
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