Great Depression 2.0???

Richzep, A large portion of Obama's $850,000,000,000 "stimulus" plan is in the form of tax cuts.

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Originally posted by richzep

Media are democrats, how in the hell do you think Obama got elected???? huh??

Oh, I was hoping not to say this... How did Obama get elected??? Let me tell you. People like myself, the poor people that you want to take money away from, voted for him! We were tired of the last 8 years of only big business and the wealthy getting the breaks! And don't worry about your small business. Obama has already said that he is pro-small business. Don't believe that whole "Joe the Plumber" deal. That was just a publicity stunt. Even Joe himself said he felt dirty about the whole deal.

And EL is right... The package that Pelosi and Obama have put before Congress, in the tune of about $850 billion, have a lot of tax cut provisions in it. And I believe that there is a bill before Congress to make sure that much of the remainder of the $350 Billion in TARP funds go towards preventing more home foreclosures.

BACK ON TOPIC... Glad to hear that I am not the only one that can't find a good definition of a depression... lol... I guess it will be up to history to determine.

Quote:

Originally posted by richzep

well... the whole thing just doesn't happen over night folks... don't forget dumbass Democrats like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton pushing sub-prime mortgages over the years. And like you guys said earlier, giving out loans to people who could not pay them in the first place. And YES, not spending money hurts our economy more each day, I know, I see out on the field in contracting and the music industry. I do give the media a lot of credit in brain washing the general public that the economy is always bad when a republician is in office, just wait when the next idiot gets sworn in next week, 6 months down the road I bet ya, the media will change tunes, and the economy starts to slowly pick back up. The entire government needs to be impeached and start fresh with people who know what the hell they are doing, less government !!! FAIRTAX ! ! !! ! !!

Wow, you're an idiot. You're actually bashing what Clinton did for our economy? He had us headed in the right direction before people like you thought it'd be a good idea to put Bush in office. Then you have the nerve to call the next president an "idiot" ... kind of backwards if you ask me... then again, a lot of idiots are backwards in general. I'd guess your idea of "FAIRTAX" = less tax for you and stops at that.

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Originally posted by Dakkon76

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Wow, you're an idiot. You're actually bashing what Clinton did for our economy? He had us headed in the right direction before people like you thought it'd be a good idea to put Bush in office. Then you have the nerve to call the next president an "idiot" ... kind of backwards if you ask me... then again, a lot of idiots are backwards in general. I'd guess your idea of "FAIRTAX" = less tax for you and stops at that.

Yeah. Clinton was a savior. Sub-Prime loans, which were pressured upon creditors during the Clinton administration, are working out really well.

Dude, GWB is a terrible, terrible president. But just because Clinton looked better standing at the podium doesn't mean that you can randomly declare one president to be better than the other.

My theory: You can only outsource so many jobs, in essence funnel money to China/India and the Top 1% of the U.S., without the shit hitting the fan. Some folks got wealthy using Third World slave labor, but other folks got hurt and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

People don't lose their homes because they bought too many toys. They lose their homes because their job disappeared and they ended up stocking shelves for Wal-Mart.

We will enter a real depression only if the government keeps on their current course of trying to fix things through throwing money around. That is what extended the original Great Depression and what may drive us into this one.

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Originally posted by Stimpy57

People don't lose their homes because they bought too many toys. They lose their homes because their job disappeared and they ended up stocking shelves for Wal-Mart.

Haven't been paying attention have we? Almost all of the increase in foreclosures was due to sub-prime and other variable rate and home equity mortgages. Almost all of the stories in the papers are of people who could not afford their new payments or couldn't afford the original payments anyway. You can't tell me that someone who makes $100,000 a year should qualify for $1,000,000 mortgages, but that is precisely what was happening. Add to that the housing bubble (prices were about 30-80% higher than they should have been according to where you live) and people taking out back-to-back home equity lines to cash out their homes and you get the perfect storm.

This is a redistribution of wealth brought to us by the Bilderbergers and other Elites. This the worst recession since the Great Depression--Checks are in place so 1929 will never happen again....even Paul Volker, Milton Friedman(RIP) and Galbrith couldn't improve the current US Economy any faster....

Mexico is on the brink of implosion and possibly bringing more unwanted ppl into the already overcrowded USA.

If there was anytime in America's History to live frugally, invest carefully and to make every purchase very wisely, this is that time. It's going to be a very bumpy ride......

An extremely helpful site:

http://www.howtobeinvisible.com
http://www.howtobeinvisible.com/index.cfm/fa/questions

I want to apologize to you guys about reacting so harshly in my last post. richzep just pushed the wrong button. I don't need someone to assume the only reason I voted the way I did was because I was brainwashed by the "liberal media". I like to think I have a mind of my own. And the last 8 years have been stressful for me. But I was hoping to stay away from attacks per the rules. Again, my apologies.



@ Bangles... I was thinking about your post... I don't know if Clinton holds all the blame here. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around, but I was thinking that maybe more blame could be placed in another area... For years, Alan Greenspan was cheered for overseeing the one of the longest periods of economic expansion in modern history. Heck, I even bought his autobiography and viewed him as an economic genius. But now, his policies are being looked at as one of the possible causes of today's problems. If they didn't cause the problems, they are being viewed as a contributing factor. I still believe he is a genius and had the vision to guide our economy after Black Monday (the stock market crash of 1987), but I think he lacked the vision to see how his policies would effect the economy in the long-term.

Don't you get the feeling that there is something much bigger going on? There are fundamental problems with our government that reach beyond a few presidents and political parties.

Obama, GWB, Clinton, Republicans, Democrats - they are all the same...

They are distractions, things for the little blind US citizens to fight over... little pointless victories much like a professional sports league. Things for us to cheer for, to vote for, to yell and scream about, to buy worthless shit, to consume, and essentially waste our energy, intelligence, and most importantly time on shallow pointless valueless things.

What kind of private company can turn on a printing machine and steal "money" (or value if you will) from every person and nation around the globe that is unlucky enough to be holding it's currency or specie?

Obama's stimulus package no matter the amount is all part and parcel of the same game... they will do anything... ANYTHING to keep you from waking up. They have been trying for years to avert this and to their credit they are getting better and better. It has taken many years to get back to 1929. They've started wars and blew things up and have even killed to keep this from happening, but it seems inevitable.

I guess the real question for Americans is do we take the red pill or the blue pill.

God Bless America.

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Originally posted by rocknthefreeworld

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Haven't been paying attention have we? Almost all of the increase in foreclosures was due to sub-prime and other variable rate and home equity mortgages. Almost all of the stories in the papers are of people who could not afford their new payments or couldn't afford the original payments anyway. You can't tell me that someone who makes $100,000 a year should qualify for $1,000,000 mortgages, but that is precisely what was happening. Add to that the housing bubble (prices were about 30-80% higher than they should have been according to where you live) and people taking out back-to-back home equity lines to cash out their homes and you get the perfect storm.

If they couldn't afford their loans from the get-go, how did they last the 8-10 years it's been since the Clinton Administration supposedly forced banks/credit unions/S&Ls to cough up the money? That's a lot of robbing Peter/paying Paul going on.

Oh, I agree there was probably some extravagant spending by folks who should have known better, but at the bottom of this mess is the snowballed effect of job losses. A company can close its door in 90 days, but retraining someone in a career that replaces that lost income could take years.

When you have a giant like Toyota taking hits you know there is serious shit hitting some fan.

Quote:

Originally posted by RogueLeader

@ Bangles... I was thinking about your post... I don't know if Clinton holds all the blame here. Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around, but I was thinking that maybe more blame could be placed in another area... For years, Alan Greenspan was cheered for overseeing the one of the longest periods of economic expansion in modern history. Heck, I even bought his autobiography and viewed him as an economic genius. But now, his policies are being looked at as one of the possible causes of today's problems. If they didn't cause the problems, they are being viewed as a contributing factor. I still believe he is a genius and had the vision to guide our economy after Black Monday (the stock market crash of 1987), but I think he lacked the vision to see how his policies would effect the economy in the long-term.

I know that no one figure can be blamed/praised entirely for any action.

But it's annoying, regardless of one's political affiliation, to just watch people blame one person and champion another for no real reason other than the fact that one guy is a Republican.

Taking your post for example, which I don't believe you intended this way (but in other threads, other people have), people argue that this whole thing is GWB's fault. But when it's mentioned that the policies that Bush is watching collapse came from the years before him, people come out to say that Clinton or whoever had advisers/the Fed that led him astray. Well, why is it Bush's fault, and not his advisers/the Fed when it comes down to blaming Bush?

I don't like Bush, but it's just impossible to blame everything that ever went wrong on the dude.

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Originally posted by Stimpy57

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If they couldn't afford their loans from the get-go, how did they last the 8-10 years it's been since the Clinton Administration supposedly forced banks/credit unions/S&Ls to cough up the money? That's a lot of robbing Peter/paying Paul going on.

Oh, I agree there was probably some extravagant spending by folks who should have known better, but at the bottom of this mess is the snowballed effect of job losses. A company can close its door in 90 days, but retraining someone in a career that replaces that lost income could take years.

When you have a giant like Toyota taking hits you know there is serious shit hitting some fan.

Can't see the forest for the trees. The Clinton era lead to an increase the number of people being given loans for homes, which lead to an increase in the price of houses due to increased demand. Many people used the increasing prices to refinance loans and keep their houses afloat. Others, who were new to the market, were able to get loans they could not afford through the thought that house values always go up and they could do the same thing later. Once the bubble started to burst, housing prices started dropping and banks were no longer willing to loan out higher value than the house was worth. People who were upside down in the home started just walking away. Without the huge bubble caused by Clinton and the Republican Congress of the time and perpetuated by Bush and the Republican and Democratic Congresses since, this would not exist now.

You want to know how bad it is? Everybody loves to point out the huge increases, but those numbers are deceiving. Realtytrac reports that 1.84% of US mortgages received some form of foreclosure notification in 2008. That means 98.16% of US mortgages did not. Seems like we really don't have near the problem the news makes it out to be.

Quote:

Originally posted by choochoo7777

this isn't even close to a depression... what caused all this is too many people making too little money borrowing too much money ... you cant make 25k/year and own a 500k home. The problem wasn't too much building ... if you have the money build what you want ...

the issue at hand is ..too many people have champagne taste with beer income.

america is becoming another europe ... everyone expects someone else to fix it ..and everyone expects things period ... no one will take responsibility for their own actions.

people need to get their heads out of their asses and stop bitching about the price of strawberries and gasoline (another major cause of the recession). in case you dont know what that means ....

you ever looked at the price of gas in england .. or hell ..the rest of the world ... how about all our fruits ...

its the Wal-Mart line of thinking that gets capitalism going in reverse...

to fix our problems ... we need to stop letting immigrants move freely across our borders ... and we need to stop employing illegals and paying them bullshit wages

we need to burn down every wal-mart in existence ...

we need the left and right wing radicals in this country to stop throwing temper tantrums and get along (left wingers would rather give osama bin laden a hug than to thank our president for keeping us safe and blame gwb for all our problems and forget that not everyone has a billion dollars to spend aimlessly) while extreme right wingers think everyone should go to church and live exactly by the bible and cram it down everyone elses throats...

most importantly ... people ..the consumers ... should stop bitching about spending 10 dollars extra while shopping for groceries and support their local mom and pop stores instead of feeding china .. oh i mean walmart.


and bullshit ... if someone didnt read the fine print ..fuck them too .. im not gonna pay for their ignorance ... thats like saying ... uh the guy fell off the mountain and died ..but he wouldnt have if there had been some rails ..or a sign that said uhh its steep stay away.

i pay my house note ... i dont ask for help ... there is NEVER an excuse for ignorance ... now if someone lost their job and is facing hard times ..i dont mind helping them out ... but some lame excuse to blame someone else cause they didnt know house notes are normally 5-8% instead of .025% .. yeah ok ..uh no ... thats being trash and people that blame someone else should be ashamed of theirselves.

Leftwingers want to hug bin Laden??? That's just plain nuts. Murder is murder, whether you're left or right leaning.

Quote:

Originally posted by rocknthefreeworld

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Can't see the forest for the trees. The Clinton era lead to an increase the number of people being given loans for homes, which lead to an increase in the price of houses due to increased demand. Many people used the increasing prices to refinance loans and keep their houses afloat. Others, who were new to the market, were able to get loans they could not afford through the thought that house values always go up and they could do the same thing later. Once the bubble started to burst, housing prices started dropping and banks were no longer willing to loan out higher value than the house was worth. People who were upside down in the home started just walking away. Without the huge bubble caused by Clinton and the Republican Congress of the time and perpetuated by Bush and the Republican and Democratic Congresses since, this would not exist now.

You want to know how bad it is? Everybody loves to point out the huge increases, but those numbers are deceiving. Realtytrac reports that 1.84% of US mortgages received some form of foreclosure notification in 2008. That means 98.16% of US mortgages did not. Seems like we really don't have near the problem the news makes it out to be.

Job losses still account for a large portion of foreclosures. That "perfect storm" combination is at the root of our current mess, not any single issue.

but the positive out of all the job losses is that those fat cats sat at the top of the tree will continue to accept huge bonuses for steering their ships through troubled waters, when in all fairness it was their navigation that sailed us into the storm in the first place!

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Originally posted by Stimpy57

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Job losses still account for a large portion of foreclosures. That "perfect storm" combination is at the root of our current mess, not any single issue.

No. Foreclosures were the reason for the job losses, which then cause more foreclosures. It's a positive-feedback loop, which was caused by an excess of credit and leverage. When the questionable credit started to default and deleveraging became necessary, the foreclosures and losses on the books of many of the largest financial institutions in the world made them stop lending, and driving up the price of lending worldwide, which caused a contraction in business activity which THEN caused the job losses.

You've got your chronology wrong.

Quote:

Originally posted by Bangledesh

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I know that no one figure can be blamed/praised entirely for any action.

But it's annoying, regardless of one's political affiliation, to just watch people blame one person and champion another for no real reason other than the fact that one guy is a Republican.

Taking your post for example, which I don't believe you intended this way (but in other threads, other people have), people argue that this whole thing is GWB's fault. But when it's mentioned that the policies that Bush is watching collapse came from the years before him, people come out to say that Clinton or whoever had advisers/the Fed that led him astray. Well, why is it Bush's fault, and not his advisers/the Fed when it comes down to blaming Bush?

I don't like Bush, but it's just impossible to blame everything that ever went wrong on the dude.

It's a lot like a head coach in sports... It's almost always the head coach that takes the blame for the failure of the team, even if they aren't always to blame. I think you're right. A lot of the blame goes to Dubya's advisors, not Dubya himself. But since he appointed those advisors in the first place... I dunno... I am just glad for a change. I am optomistic about the future... Though it remains to be seen if Obama and his advisors will be able to get us out of this mess... No, on second thought, I think the WILL be able get us out of this mess, but it remains to be seen just how long the recovery process will take. And within that time, will I lose my job? Will the banking and financial services industry see another shoe drop? One of my companies major competitors, Bank of America just accepted another handout by the federal government, just as their acquisition of Merrill Lynch (another major competitor) is closed. I won't disclose who I work for (though, those in the STL area might be able to guess), and we have been assured that operations will remain here, but how many duplications will be identified and eliminated? Right now, the duplications are being found in the management area. But how far will it actually go? And, if my job IS eliminated, I don't know for sure if I will be able to get a new one, even if STL DOES have the highest concentration of financial firms outside of NYC. I hope everyone here is right and this is just a slowdown, not an economic meltdown.

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Originally posted by EricLindros

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No. Foreclosures were the reason for the job losses, which then cause more foreclosures. It's a positive-feedback loop, which was caused by an excess of credit and leverage. When the questionable credit started to default and deleveraging became necessary, the foreclosures and losses on the books of many of the largest financial institutions in the world made them stop lending, and driving up the price of lending worldwide, which caused a contraction in business activity which THEN caused the job losses.

You've got your chronology wrong.

Job/income losses through outsourcing have been going on for a decade or so. The current runup in unemployment is being
amplified by the recession. The snowball started rolling some time ago. The states hardest hit, e.g., are the Rust Belters(Michigan,Ohio,etc) and the Overdevelopers(Florida,California,Arizona and Nevada). Where the money was and where the money went.

Quote:

Originally posted by Stimpy57

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Leftwingers want to hug bin Laden??? That's just plain nuts. Murder is murder, whether you're left or right leaning.

tell that to the ACLU and San Francisco... that is a fact ..those people wanna give war criminals free legal council and bring them into our own court system... thats pretty much a hug....

gasoline is NOT the same price everywhere ... the US has the cheapest energy prices in the world by far... people bitch when it goes up a dime ..and for a hundred years it was cheaper than a gallon of milk or OJ ..or even water ... if you count shit like evian or dansani or whatever...

so when people took for granted 1-1.50/gallon gas ... and all of a sudden it goes up to 4 bucks.... and they were already spending 50-60 a week in gasoline on their giganto suv's ... multiply that 4x ... now instead of 50/week they are spending 200 (granted that is a high comparison ... but its to make a point) ... so that 200/weekly turns into 800/monthly. ..800 instead of 200 ... so thats 600 dollars that would have either been put in the stock market ..saved somehow ..spent on toys ... vacations ... or lets just say put in the economy somehow by the consumer.

you can then add the fuel cost on anything at all in the economy ... any consumer item ..any public service ...ect

and burning down every wal-mart would be a good thing... one way to force a company or even a countries hand is to either a: embargo them all together b:force equalizing tarifs on all imports until wage equality is met. ``` sam walton would roll over in his grave if he knew what his family has done to walmart.

the guy quoting my statements ... i agree with most of what you say ... but capitalism does not work when the playing field is uneven ... the way it stands now... its like 5 people on defense and 14 on offense playing a football game... and china continues to manipulate its currency and has a trillion peasant farmers that will work for a dime a week because they will get shot if they dont...capitalism does not theoretically believe in SLAVE LABOR ..at some point you need to get past the "cheaper is always better" and just do the right thing.

believe me ..if the worlds governments really wanted to press the issue... shit would straighten up... how long do you think china would last if the rest of the free world stopped buying from them... guess what ..those things they produced are still needed ...but all of a sudden a factory re-opens right here in america...and it creates jobs ... and more wealth for OUR country. Sure ..it may cost a bit more ... but one would know they are supporting their own country.

lastly ...i personally dont like the idea of relying on another country for anything...including oil. all this debt we have incurred by huge trade deficits is horrifying. the chickens have indeed come home to roost