As I said, the Democrats, while actually in the minority over the past decade until recently, have used the “bully pulpit” of “racism” accusations to stop Republicans in their tracks when it came to reforming the main culprits in the subprime mortgage crash, Fannie and Freddie. Fannie and Freddie became virtual revolving doors for Democratic operatives who wished to get a little taste of what it’s like to make private sector money with government sector job security.

The economy definitely faces other issues outside of subprime, but that was the first shoe to drop, domino to fall, whatever metaphor you want to use, and the majority of the blame can be laid at the doorstep of the Democrats. And Obama got money from these people during his tenure, short though it was, in the Senate, so he is not immune from the blame.

In addition, some of Obama’s energy platform statements, such as cutting back electricity use to 1990’s levels while increasing the number of electric cars, break the laws of physics, as currently formulated. The man is a whackjob himself and I’m glad to see the investor class (of which I am but a small part) voting “no confidence” in his hare-brained schemes. I saw that the Obama team was “gratified” when their naming of Geinther(sp?) as Treasury Sec was greeted by a market rally. Good, may they do many more things that make the market rally.

If you’re a moderate Democrat and don’t have any truck with those who would ruin our economy, fine, but there are few ways in which the Obama who was on the campaign trail DIDN’T put free-marketeers on edge as he tried to satisfy one interest group after another.

I would WELCOME the chance to talk substantive issues and engage in true intellectual discourse. The trouble is, anytime I say anything, partisan wackjobs like Beth (and lets face it- most of the people who post here) launch these petty, personal attacks. All my time is wasted on things that don’t even matter.

In this case, I was merely correcting a drastically reductionist view that Beth seems to hold of anyone who voted for Obama. Who is the true partisan? It is not me, sir.

You know what’d be nice? Some actual content to these accusations. It’s all generic BS. People have been citing actual chapter and verse on the question of how Obama and the Democratic Congress have helped put us in the situation we are now, and how the market views the situation moving forward, and all the other side has is, as I said, generic stuff like “Bush was against regulations and that’s how we got here” (OK, which specific regulations) or “Bush’s disastrous policies got us here” (OK, which specific policies?).

It’s almost as if you have no actual information at all, just accusations based on partisan affiliation.

One last point: The funny thing is, Beth, it doesn’t look like Obama’s actually going to try to undo “Bush’s disastrous policy”, whatever that is in your mind, and I would speculate that the reason is that he knows that the general thrust of Bush’s policies are the only rational policies given current global economic configurations. The real economic record of the Bush years is actually quite similar to the Clinton years, if you look at the data, rather than just screaming like a chicken with your head cut off, although I know the latter is the easier course of action for someone who seems to be a cognitively challenged as you are.

I personally wish that the role of the Federal government in the economy were so small that there was never any question of how the government helped or hurt the economy. As long as we keep voting in economic illiterates, that’s probably not going to happen. We need a Hippocratic Oath for the economy at this point. “First do no harm”. That’d be Utopia.

I know very well who controls congress. Just as I know very well that the last eight years have been dominated by republicans. It will take more than two years of a democratic majority to undo Bush’s disastrous policy.

Nice try though.

First off, how would you know if truth hurts, since your post comes nowhere near the truth? But I digress.

If Fannie and Freddie hadn’t gone into “subprime” mortgages, the market would have been much smaller and more contained and we’d have a much more limited crisis on our hands, perhaps one that didn’t even register beyond the equityholders of the banks that invested in subprime mortgages.

Congress is to blame in the sense that they didn’t more clearly define Fannie and Freddie’s mission and let the market believe (correctly, I guess, as it turned out) that the government would bail out those entities, even though they were not truly government entities and had outside shareholders. Fannie and Freddie were the perfect place for people who like the security of public jobs with the pay of private industry (Hello, Franklin Raines, I’m looking at you), in other words, who wanted their cake and to eat it too.

Add to that Democrats throwing around the word “racism” like it was going out of style, whenever anyone tried to reform the F&F mission statement or limit the types of loans they would back, and you’ve got like 80% of the cause of the mortgage meltdown right there, all laid at the feet of Democrats.

The main thing you can blame the Republicans for is not having the courage to stand up to the cries of racism and put in place the safeguards they should have. That’s a lesser failing than the Democrats failings, although still a failing.