It's the stupid economy

“The fundamentals of the economy are strong (my friends) because the American worker is strong,” said the economic numbnut who is running for the highest office in the world. McCain couldn’t find his economic fundament with both hands. His understanding of what’s happening on Wall Street is that there need be no panic because the Americans have strong backs; just not enough jobs. And of course if they do have a job and hurt their back, they probably don't have adequate healthcare.

What is fundamental to the downer that is our economy right now is the housing crisis which through “greed and stupidity” has allowed the subprime mortgage fiasco to fester into a world wide crisis because the holders of the loans and collateral have no way to collect what is owed to them and can’t figure out some way to keep the payments coming in. TSJ has said before that some of this problem could be resolved by not upping the rates on ARMs at the consumer level. Think: half a loaf is better than none. If the lender started out thinking they were going to make money when the initial low rate period expired, too bad. Now you have to eat it. Work with Mr. Risky. Why foreclose and then have to play realtor in one of the worst housing slumps in modern memory?

And who in the Senate Commerce committee allowed the sleaze bag mortgage companies like the one I worked for to give loans to the riskiest possible candidates? That doesn’t make sense to anyone. Only the mafia makes loans to risky borrowers, but then they have ways of convincing people to pay them back.

How is it that McCain can go on the morning shows and not have a more complete answer to the direct question of what to do? I think you have to identify the problem, analyze its provenance and then offer up ideas for resolution. Mc saying that the “alphabet soup of oversight agencies needs to be consolidated” is much like closing the barn door after the horse is already gone. Why, when he was a sitting Commerce Committee member and chair (I think) did he not see the potential for the greed-heads to bend the rules and the resulting long term effects?

On Bloomberg Television this weekend, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank noted that, as a leader in the Senate Republican caucus, McCain did nothing for years to deliver reform in the face an impending credit crisis:
So here’s the record – 12 years of Republicans, including John McCain being a committee chairman for much of that period. Zero – zero enactment of any reform.

Well, nobody expects Barney to be singing McCain’s praises and it is most unlikely that McCain would put him on his bi-partisan admin but if Sen. Mc had done anything in the last twelve years, this morning would have been a good time to point it out instead of the clunky ingenuous sounding, “Look, the American people are the soundness of this economy.” More pandering to the dopes (he thinks) are going to vote for his ticket because they will believe any bullshit he tries to shove up their fundament.

And yet, I can understand why, even if he did know anything, he would be very unwilling to address the economic evils of the land. The US has an anual budget of almost ten trillion dollars. It has a debt of nearly ten trillion dollars. This administration took over with a budget surplus of $200B and now it’s in the red $400B. Who cuts taxes when you have war to run? And who offers to extend tax cuts when the economy sucks? You need to go to this page—www.federalbudget.com—to see how your taxes get spent. And remember a billion dollars may not seem like that much anymore but you can still buy 1,000 million dollar homes with a single billion dollar bill.

It is very interesting to look at this page to see the undulations of the fed def. Truman had a war going on while he was doubtlessly still paying for the one he helped to finish, so his was pretty high. Then it went down even under the tax and spend dems. In fact during Carter’s admin it was the lowest it’s been in the last sixty years. Reagan pushed it back up and the Slickster, with Bob Rubin’s help, brought it back down. W has added more than $400 billion to it after blowing the Clinton gain, and it’s climbing. He just offered Texas to pay 100 percent of the clean up down on the Gulf coast. The little dude can’t spend it fast enough.

If the economy is the main issue in this presidential race, I’m gonna go with the guy who has Bob Rubin on his team.

BTW/WTF W/ AIG? Here’s what they need to do before getting a taxpayer bailout: Go chapter 11, which is a “reorganization” with a judges permission and finite rules. Fix it, get better, pay people back. AIG isn’t just gonna collapse and go away. They are all over the world. Someone will pick up their slack if they fail. And just when did the thieving slime ball insurance companies of the world stop making money?