Housing Market

Rescuing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

If you're at all into educating yourself over the issues involved in the government's bailout out of the two mortgage company behemoths , Progress Report has done a great job. The failure of these two "banks" is not accidental - it was prompted by the failure of our government, mostly under Republican control for the past decade, to approve regulation. And you're paying for it.

Here are a few comments - contact information for the entire article is provided below the clips.

Dispensing with regulatory oversight, only to embrace dramatic and expensive subsequent bailouts, has become the hallmark of years of failed right-wing stewardship over the economy.

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Although McCain and Palin are correct in naming lobbyists as "primary contributors" to the current crisis, their feigned outrage rings hollow because "at least 20 McCain fundraisers have lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" in recent years.
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McCain's endorsement of the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the second major federal intervention that he has supported in recent months. In March, he backed the Federal Reserve's decision to extend a $30 billion credit line to finance the takeover of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan. The strange dissonance between McCain's free-market, pro-deregulation rhetoric and his repeated support for sweeping government interventions suggests that a McCain administration would depart little from the Bush administration's status quo.

From The Progress Report, Sept. 10, 2008

Collapsing Economy

Just a couple of posts ago, while discussing what a vote for McCain actually means, I added my own item to John Amato's list - and it involves the fact that the U.S. may be on the verge of financial collapse. We are in dire straits and McCain's proposal to continue to cut taxes could well destroy this nation. The Republicans recent policies (the past 8 years - ever since Clinton had given us a balanced budget) including deregulation of lending institutions, have lead us to this - and now 48% of the population in this nation are ready to vote for McCain to continue this retarded, moronic state of affairs. It's clear that they do not love America.

The following video is frightening.

Republican Economics - Link

I suppose that there are a lot of folks out and about in the U.S. who don't pay much attention to politics. Some of them vote Republican because their parents voted Republican, or they support Republicans because of some sort of perception of the Republican party as representing the interests of small business or smaller government.

All of this, of course, in spite of the fact that by voting Republican they are voting against their own best interests. From Reuters...

U.S. wholesale prices took another unexpectedly steep jump in July and shot up at the fastest year-on-year rate in 27 years, according to a government report on Tuesday that was certain to fan fears about a potential surge in inflation.

U.S. home building projects started in July fell 11 percent to the lowest annual rate in more than 17 years, while building permits tumbled 17.7 percent, the Commerce Department reported on Tuesday.

The Housing Crisis - McCain Style - Video

Bush - Screwing You, Screwing Me

The Republicans and Conservatives believe that the source of our nation's wealth is the corporation. They support policies that treat the manufacturers and their wealthy owners better than the workers and common folk are treated because they believe that the big companies have the resources and the power to create wealth. And, as anyone who follows American politics knows, the Republican philosophy is that this wealth will "trickle down" to those who are not part of this wealthy establishment.

Well, many of us liberals suspect that the wealth doesn't trickle down so much as it trickles UP. The CEO's, stock holders, owners and administrators of these huge corporations have seen their compensation increase a hundred-fold - or even more - as they trickled their jobs down to workers in China, Thailand, Brazil and hundreds of other countries, while American wage earners' salaries have stagnated or declined.

The zeal with which the Bush administration has sought to make the wealthy even wealthier is obvious to anyone watching the political scene. Unfortunately the big news organizations in the US are also, for the most part, big business and they don't focus much on the policies that help them grow and prosper. But the news is out there.

In an article on Slate, Nicholas Bagley points out that the Bush administration actively worked to stop regulations from being passed in a dozen states or more which would have stopped the incredibly sloppy lending practices being engaged in by huge banks and mortgage lenders that has led to the collapse of the housing market in recent months.

Not that it's any surprise that the Bush administration would screw over hundreds of thousands of Americans to help their rich buddies get richer, but it's good to keep track of the abuses.