NOTHING.
You people just cannot see the forest for the trees.
When markets become as unhinged as they are now, people DON’T CARE about particulars. Their rage is burning white-hot and they want to punish someone, anyone, any way they can.
They just want to lash out and punish the first thing they can. And right now, thanks to the epic incompetence, duplicity, feckless stupidity of George W. Bush, the GOP is going to get blamed for this crash. And, in some respects, Bush is responsible. After all, Bush replaced Secretaries of the Treasury who didn’t chirp a happy enough tune, and Bush put in the current SecTreas, Paulson, who is clearly using our tax money as a slush fund to prop up Wall Street banks in a very silly way.
McCain has no natural ability to talk about finance and markets. He’s a deer in the headlights of a Peterbilt truck, and everyone can see that. The Republicans have kept ignoring the signs building in the economic stats that the economy was sliding into the crapper. Heck, here on FR, I’ve taken abuse from people over the last year who were telling me that I was packing water for the liberals and the MSM. No, I was not. I was merely reading something other than the stupid headline numbers on economic reports. I was looking at the bond market(s) and seeing very unsettling portents therein. I was looking at how leveraged the entire economy has been, and how limited the job gains during the Bush administration have been - the vast majority of jobs created from 2004 onward were in the housing-related industries. And housing was clearly unsustainable and this was seen all the way back in 2006, with ABSOLUTE certainty. The first indications of how rapidly the debt situation was unraveling were seen by March of 2007.
And yet, Bush did nothing. Nothing to see here, everything is fine, let’s not pay any attention to those doom-n-gloomers out there.
Couple these two facts together (a market crash and McCain’s lack of ability in finance) and you will have people who might otherwise in rational times be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to McCain now seeking to punish anything with the brand label “Republican” on it.
Ya gotta look on the happy side. The industries hardest hit are the ones most populated by illegals. Maybe they’ll all go home now.
Good post.. I could not agree more.
Where do you see the economy ending up (ie unemployment rate, duration of downturn, etc)?
“incompetence, duplicity, feckless stupidity “
please stop adding to the panic by piling on like that.
Bear markets and cycles happen even when the leaders are on the ball. Was Reagan called names in 1987?
BTW, I wanted Romney too, knowing that the economy would be the real issue.