I’m worried. We’ve just elected a talented young president with many good instincts about how to propel our country forward, extend health care to more people, make our tax code fairer and launch a green industrial revolution. But do you know what I fear? I fear that his whole first term could be eaten by Citigroup, A.I.G., Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and the whole housing/subprime credit bubble we inflated these past 20 years.
I hope my fears are exaggerated. But ask yourself this: Why couldn’t former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson solve this problem? And why does it seem as though his successor, Tim Geithner, won’t even look us in the eye and spell out his strategy? Is it because they don’t get it? No. It is because they know ”” like Roy Scheider in the movie “Jaws,” when he first saw the great white shark ”” that “we’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and they’re too afraid to tell us just how big.
This problem is more complicated than anything you can imagine. We are coming off a 20-year credit binge. As a country, too many of us stopped making money by making “stuff” and started making money from money ”” consumers making money out of rising home prices and using the profits to buy flat-screen TVs from China on their credit cards, and bankers making money by creating complex securities and leverage so more and more consumers could get in on the credit game.
Ah yes, the answer to our crater created by extending to much credit is to barrow our way out of debt! So the Democrats and Team Obama plan is 9,000 ear marks, pork lathered on so thick a fat deep woods Georgia boy raised on barbecue would choke. Team Obama’s problem is going to be Reid,Pelosi and blue dog Democrats. These folks want to stay in power and Obama is breaking promises at a record seting pace about ear marks and pork.
I agree that we are in trouble but disagree with the overall premise that the government has the ability to fix it.
#2, Boy have you got that straight!! I won’t mention my age but let’s say I remember the last day of the Great Depression (and what party was in control of our government ) and the only way we got gioing was by the economic gains of WWII. I hope we don’t get involved in any thing leading to WWIII. WE DON”T NEED THAT !!!
Pres. Obama’s first term was just eaten up by a $trillion budget creating a $3trillion deficit. Some instincts!
Ball and chain? It’s what he asked for! He chose to run for the Presidency, did he not? It’s not as if he was drafted…..
When one puts this description of the situation together with the expression on Rahm Emanuel’s face as he (alone of all those present) looks directly into the camera early in the 57-minute financial crisis video, posted a bit earlier on this blog, it’s not difficult to imagine that they were eager to get their hands on all this money belonging to other people, if they could just win the election.
Exactly what evidence is there of President Unicorn being “talented?”
The video (from Frontline) that I referred to is here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/
This is Friedman repeating the BHO plaint that “I inherited this problem from Bush,” but now extending back twenty years. Is nothing ever to be BHO’s responsibility? How long will this threadbare excuse still serve?