Monday, September 22

you'll have plenty of time to blame people when you're living in a van down by the river!!!

So anyone who has been paying any attention to the news recently will be aware of the current financial struggles. Now what's amazing to me (not really) is how quick people are to lay the blame, and how slowly people are to make any suggestions. Last week Nancy pelosi was asked if the democrats had to share in any of the blame for the troubles the economy was facing, and she boldly said no. This is not at all our fault. this is 100% the republicans fault. I'm paraphrasing, but that's the point. The next day Harry Reid announced that the democratic congress planned on going on vacation without addressing the issue because they had no idea what to do. So i guess if it gets any worse it won't be their fault either, because they weren't even around, they were on vacation. Naturally if the economy starts to do well, it will be there discretion that saved the day.

Obama boldly declared that it was McCain style economic theory that got us into this mess. Luckily he has the solution. What is you ask? well that's a secret. He'll let us know later on what his plan was. After bush has time to tell us his plan. This entire mess was bush's fault, so it's only natural that we should use his plan to fix it, instead of Obama's plan. Presumably we'll find out Obama's plan after we find out about the success of bush's plan. (He probably doesn't want to be on the outs of a losing planning again, after the surge in Iraq, which he railed against, was such a success.)

That isn't to let the republicans off the hook. Granted the democrats (at least from what i've seen) have been more aggressive in playing the blame game, but McCain said he would fire the SEC chairman for being asleep at the switch. Nothing more specific. Nothing he can point to that the chairman did wrong, except now things suck and so he wants to fire someone.

The simple fact is 1, it's everyone's fault. 2 it's nobodies fault. Nobody can even agree on what went wrong, so how are they going to decide whose at fault. I read a couple articles laying the blame squarely at the feet of allen greenspan, possibly the most respected economist in the world. They claim that he left interests rates too low for too long, encouraging to many people to borrow money when they shouldn't have, leading to booming economy for a while, and that now we are reaping the rewards of that. Nobody saw this coming, nobody had any plans for averting this crisis, nobody should be taking credit or handing out blame. The entire government is culpable. Instead of playing the blame game, they should play the much more useful solutions game. Or at least they should, if they weren't too busy running for president, and going on vacation.

5 Comments:

Blogger Aras said...

Now we play the waiting game...Oh waiting game sucks, let's play hungry hungry hippos!

9:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, i agree with it being everyone's fault. But looking at this situation, one can find that it has roots in both the Carter and more recently, the Clinton administrations. Carter pushed for the mortgage lenders to give out more high-risk mortgages to minorities. Clinton and his administration pushed this further by saying that anyone not giving out a certain percentage of high-risk mortgages would pay the price. That being said, our culture of "keeping up with the joneses" is also clearly at fault. people buy things they can't afford and they do this left and right and then when trouble befalls them and they can't pay their lenders back they want government help.

5:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, and just to be clear i'm not laying the blame at a particular party's feet. They both contributed to this problem, i was just pointing out where it all started. and here's an article:
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=75717

5:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think also the credit card culture and people's inability to live within their means has contributed in no small part either

5:05 AM  
Blogger Trashcan said...

Well living within your means isn't as cut and dried as it could be. Nobody really lives withing their means in the sense that everyone borrows money. At least virtually everyone has to borrow money to buy a house. It's not bad to borrow money, or to be in debt. Because generally you make more money when you are older, it is natural to spend beyond your means when you are young, and pay it off when you have a higher income. But people people misjudged what was within their means.

Also having credit card debt is retarted. The interest you pay on credit cards is just silly.

1:28 AM  

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