Posted on 01/31/2009 9:56:45 PM PST by WheresMyBailout
I'll list some names but it is by no means exclusive. It would be interesting if you could post a brief rationale by your post. The option of nobody also exists and the option of a class of people exists:
Fed Chiefs:
Alan Greenspan
Ben Bernanke
Paul Volcker
Speakers of the House:
Newt Gingrich
Denny Hastert
Nancy Pelosi
Senate Banking Committee Chairmen:
Al D'Amato
Phil Gramm
Paul Sarbanes
Richard Shelby
Chris Dodd
House Financial Services Committee Chairmen:
Jim Leach
Mike Oxley
Barney Frank
Presidents:
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama
Treasury Secretaries:
Robert Rubin
Lawrence Summers
Paul O'Neill
John Snow
Henry Paulson
Tim Geithner
Defense Secretaries:
William Perry
William Cohen
Donald Rumsfeld
Robert Gates
Failed Presidential Candidates:
Bob Dole
Al Gore
John Kerry
John McCain
Others:
Tom Bliley
Judd Gregg
Ken Lay (Enron)
Jeffrey Skilling (Enron)
Bernard Madoff
Dick Fuld (Lehman)
Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide)
Jon Corzine (former CEO of Goldman, along with Rubin and Paulson)
Franklin Raines (Fannie Mae)
Daniel Mudd (Fannie Mae)
Martin Sullivan (AIG)
Robert Willumstad (AIG)
Maurice Greenberg (AIG)
Classes of People:
Nobody
OPEC
A particular country
A particular religious group
A particular ethnic group
A particular profession
The problem (of assigning blame) is that there were so many miscreants and pigs at the trough. In the sordid history of this crisis, at every step, there were liars and thieves but there were also the willfully blind who are/were equally culpable, IMO. This phenom, that at every level, willing believers essentially coached the liars into lying and closed their eyes to the enveloping fraud, made this crisis truly society-wide.
But, if I turn my thinking into separating the CLEAR instigators and enablers and the “abettors” and “furtherers” then I derive the folowing list:
A: Alan Greenspan, for lowering interest rates far below the natural rate of inflation and keeping them there post 9/11 for too long. It flat out could NOT have happened without this artifice. This move created two separate dynamics that were instrumental in driving activities that led to where we are:
1: That monetary policy could and would cure any conceivable ill.
2: That destroying the ROI on merely saving money would mobilize all that money into some more profitable somewhere or something and thus have a beneficical effect for those who could harness the liquidity.
B: The ratings agencies; but these guys were simply at the very top of the enabling pyramid. They really weren’t doing anything different than the crooked appraiser who would overvalue a home to “make the numbers” and so he (the appraiser) would get the phone call for the next appraisal. Few people realize that before this thing got going, you could count on two hands (with fingers left over) the number of non-Treasury “AAA” rated securities in the entire world. After the raters got their initial whiffs of crack....there were tens of thousands of “AAA” rated tranches of hinky debt.
I agree.
FDR - the master of Socialism in the USA
LBJ - Took FDR’s Dream to a whole new level.
Frank, Raines, Gorelick, Rangel, Dodd, Cuomo - all HIP DEEP in FANNIE MAE.
CARTER - Community Redevelopment Act - beginning of the “Affordable Housing” phenomenon
Clinton - for being CLINTON .. actually for taking Carter’s CRA .. and giving it TEETH.
Barak “MULLAH HUSSEIN” Obama - Attorney for ACORN filing Suit against CITIBANK... Racial Discrimination for “REDLINING” no mortgages in certain areas. Citi forced by LAW to give Questionable Mortgages.
that’s enough to keep AG busy for a WHILE!!!
I blame the people who cooked up the Federal Reserve, Fractional Reserve Banking, and the Income Tax/IRS.
Head of the list for blame: Attendees of the meeting on Jekyll Island in 1913 and the nitwits who ratified (or didn’t) the 16th Amendment.
Please see: http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212
“Franklin Raines (Fannie Mae). He is a genuine thief.”
#####
Actually a genuine racist thief.
The racism was boldly and explicitly stated in Fannie Mae’s annual reports for years.
Frank Raines, congressional Democrats (Barney Frank, Chris Dodd) and Acorn attorneys like B. Hussein Obama.
Nobody. Maybe television. Everyone that can afford an SUV has one, whether they need it or not. Everyone that can afford a custom shower has one, whether they need it or not. Everyone that can afford three fully furnished kitchens in their home has them, needed or not. Everyone that needs a poodle psychologist has one whether their dog needs it or not. Sooner or later you simply decide you own it all and stop shopping.
Do you blame those who did not believe in a Market economy or those who did, but sold out? Nixon closed the Gold Window, instituted wage and price controls. He knew better.
Bush knew better. Most of Wall Street knew better. Yet they succumbed. Why?
Democrats aka Socialists never believed, they see all wealth creation as theft. Are they at fault or those of us who knew better but looked the other way? Remember when Blue Chip and bond clippers were real words? People and stockholders stayed with a company out of loyalty and were rewarded for it. Slowly things changed, borrowing and lending became a science (derivatives), risk became an illusion. Loyalty to company, to employee, to stock, to return, ended. “Growth” became king. Savings and Loans, dotcoms, Bobby Baker, Bearn Sterns Aig, Enron, No particular order, same result. People saw risk as something that could be assumed away. No risk, no real market, a socialists dream. Well we have backed onto a cliff with no way safely down. A market solution is viewed by all as too extreme. We need to help the market by lowering risk again. By risk we hope to return to what was before. Wait what was before? Ah yes we eliminated risk. WE will the go forward. To what? The insane now run the sanitarium.
Union Thugs, Illegal Immigrants, Mickey Mouse, The Tooth Fairy, and frank the guy sitting on his couch eatging a ham sandwhich.
The economy tanked when democrats took over congress. A coincidence? I think not. So, I guess I blame the American voter, especially the great ignorant independent centrist voter.
Absolutely FDR! I don’t understand how otherwise “conservative” people hold him in such high esteem. Even my 85 year old mother cringes when I say anything against him.
I hear ya, the public educational system has been sliced and diced into mediocrity from what it once was... and add a media hell-bent leftward, well... it ain’t pretty.
We’ve seen a nation devolve before our very eyes and those very actions to make it happen have been at the hands of leftists and commie sympathizers, it seems... and a lot of folks could care less.
The levels of greed and treachery that have been perpetrated by those very politicos that swore oaths of office are the worst ever, imo.
I blame William J. Clinton, Christorpher Dodds, and Barny Fwannks, with their fair housing bill, we were struggling along until that piece of legislation went into effect.
I blame whoever cooked up the October Surprise. Probably Soros. It wasn’t a coincidence that all hell broke loose right before the election.
His signature is all over it. He owns it and he is zer0s puppet master.
I blame an ideology and not a person. The ideology that seeks to intertwine political power and interest with every apect of the business of the People.
The democrats hav been continuely poisoning the market with their poitical agendas. This is what caused the housing and banking collapses. This is what is destroying our schools. This is what is bankrupting the auto industries. This is what the democrats plan for the healthcare industry and the energy industry. This is what the demcorat ideology of fascism is bringing to every single aspect of American life.
Socialism is government ownership of all the People’s business. Facsism is the complete blending of government power and all the people’s business. The democrat party is trying to destroy the free market (capitalism)and replace it with a fascist one. The democrats hate freedom.
Progressive = Fascism
But that was not enough to cause the sheer depth of this credit crisis. It was a gigantic phenomenon of debt crushing debt. Common sense says that banks have to be smart about giving loans that will be paid back. But at the same time, available money to be made is a force of nature in the economic ecosystem. There was money to be made in all the investing the world wanted to do in American property. It was irresistable and then everything shattered to pieces.
Both of them. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our most overrated president. And Franklin Delano Raines, who enriched himself looting Fannie Mae, which in turn was backstopping the creation and proliferation of garbage housing credit, leading to the mess we are currently in.
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