“....the hard-sell of President Bush and the US Treasury Secretary felt too much like the pressure patter of a door-to-door hawker. Their message was crude: “Trust us. You are in a terrible place. Only we can get you out of this mess. No need to check the details. Hurry now, or it will be too late. Here’s a pen. There’s the dotted line. Just sign.”
But with the President’s ratings so low, few would let him leave the House with anything more than small change. Congress asked, not unreasonably: “If you guys know so much about banking, how come we are in such trouble?”
Having spent most of the year telling America, contrary to mounting evidence, that the US economy was just dandy, Mr Bush’s credibility is threadbare. When making statements, he’s beginning to look as if he doesn’t even believe himself. As for Mr Paulson, his long association with the jackpot culture of Goldman Sachs is, in the eyes of many outsiders, a gilded millstone.
*BUMP*!
It is certainly true that the list included in the article fix much of the blame (and should be the subject of prosecution in some cases, and the removal of some people from office, neither of which is going to happen), there is a deeper problem that few seem to be addressing. I recently read Memoirs of a Former American by Patrick Samuels and he not only predicted that the government would use this crisis to take over the banking and morgage industries, because we all know that once the government gets into something, its influence in and power over that area only grows, but he pointed out that is our addiction to credit that is the real problem. The same addiction was one of the contributing factors in the Great Depression. As new consumer goods became available and people were impatient to get them, they bought them on credit and when things went downhill, people couldn’t pay for what they already bought, much less what they needed now. Consumer spending dropped and the ball just kept rolling. With 70% of our economy dependent on consumer spending and so much of that spending based on the availablility of credit, it could be even worse. But ultimately, it was our choice to use credit to support our lifestley and economy, buying things we couldn’t afford. Yes, the democrats thought everyone should have a home even if they couldn’t afford it but no one forces us to take a loan. Perhaps is all goes back to education (certainly a gov’t failure) and values.