Why can't we just let the people who made/took the bad loans responsible, and stop bailing everyone out? I'm so upset about all these bailouts.
I agree. The reason why that won't happen is because if we made the folks to lent the money just EAT their losses, some of the most powerful and wealthy people in this country would suffer tremendous losses. And, our government won't let their paymasters down!
Like I've said MANY times... feudalism never ended. It's just taken a different form.
I ALSO agree that the New Deal did not help end the Great Depression. But, some aspects of the New Deal were good investments. In a depression, commodities are cheap and labor is cheap, so its a great time for the government to build infrastructure that will reap returns in later years. Plus, these projects help keep a lot of unemployed people busy, which helps prevent a total breakdown of the social fabric. Sooo... although I agree that the New Deal did not help end the Great Depression, and in fact it probably extended it a bit, I consider it not a "stimulus", but rather an "investment", that was made at a time to help take some of the edge off of a very traumatic economic event. And, this "investment" continues to pay dividends in, as an example, electricity generation from the Hoover Dam, or from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which also helped with flood control along our nation's largest rivers. These were very sophisticated infrastructure investments that were made during a period of time when the government got a discount price on them.
CCS, first off, there's really no partisan issue here with the current crisis. This crisis transcends political parties, both have dirty hands and both parties are dutifully serving the interests of their paymasters. Correct me if I am wrong, but you voted for McCain... he's a BIG follower of the Phil Gramm school of economics, one of the ringmasters of the junta who created this crisis in the first place. Do a google on the Gramm Leach Bliley Act... the "Gramm" in the title of this now INFAMOUS piece of legislation being taken from Phil Gramm, its primary author.
I hate to burst your bubble, but you really should look deeper than Fox News soundbytes to get an understanding of this crisis because your posts are off target. The whole "Congress forced the banks to make bad mortgage loans" isn't the cause of this. That was just the first flashpoint, but the underlying cause is reckless bank deregulation that began under Reagan, and continued willingly under Bush sr, the Clinton/Rubin cabal, and Bush jr. ALL of them have dirty hands... Republicans AND Democrats... all allowed our financial system to be turned into a massive cesspool of a casino.
The S&L crisis, the Long Term Capital Management crisis, the Asian currency crisis, the Tech Bubble... bigger and bigger speculative bubbles.... all of these should have been HUGE warning signs that something was rotten in Denmark. That bad policy had been put in place. But the signs were ignored, because people in priviledged places were making BIG money.
