United States of Anxiety

It is understood that as the US economy becomes more and more global, some of the high-paying blue collar jobs are gone forever. But at least, John McCain has the guts to tell the truth. Obama, on the hand, makes promises about a rosy future without acknowledging the reality of job losses.

This is what John McCain said to workers in Michigan: “I’ve got to give you some straight talk. Some of the jobs that left the state of Michigan are not coming back. But I believe that we can develop a plan to take care of these workers who have lost their jobs my friends. We cannot abandon them. We cannot leave these great Americans behind.”

Clearly Wall Street is suffering because of the deregulation from the Republican agenda McCain adheres to, and from the lax, underfunded enforcement of the existing regulatory agencies that Bush has perpetrated.

Considering this I wouldn't trust another Republican Administration to fix anything and certainly not the economy.

Ryan, John McCain flip floped on this with a recent trip to Michigan. He now is proposing a bailout of the US automakers to the tune of 50 billion. The strait talk express has gone off the tracks.

I believe that most of the financial problems lie in two places - the housing industry and the Boards of Directors of the failing banks. First, all the mortgage brokers who gave loans to people who never should have had them, constantly invented new ways of insuring that people could get loans (interest only, stated income are just a few of the sub-prime ones), and then re-packaged and sold off those loans to investors started all this. The people who thought the housing market would never tank and had to have a bigger, better home than their friends to impress them are also now part of the problem. And, I don't want to be the taxpayer part of the solution that bails them out. Then, the Boards of Directors of these institutions should never have allowed them to invest in risky, sub-prime mortgages. When the housing prices started to go down, everything just snowballed. Also, John McCain has tried to put the brakes on Fannie and Freddie twice, with no success. He saw what was coming, but the do-nothings in Congress and the former Dems from the government who ran Fannie and Freddie would have none of it. Then we have the de-reg problem. Jimmy Carter started that, Reagan tried to stop it, Clinton deregulated even more and here we are today. Put this economy in the hands of Obama, whose economics advisors are from Fannie and Freddie? Put this economy in the hands of a naive, arrogant, inexperienced, unqualified candidate? Put this economy and the rest of the problems facing us in the hands of someone who will never admit to a mistake? Put our country in the hands of someone who cut his teeth in politics in the corrupt environment of Chicago! Absolutely not!! We need someone we can trust who will put Country First! Vote McCain/Palin!

Thanks, Ann, for your very concise post. You hit the nail on the head in every respect.

McCain's campaign employs many lobbyists from firms related to the crisis, a fact that casts doubt on both McCain's hiring judgment and his ability to pursue tough reforms.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was head a lobbying association that included Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, real estate agents, homebuilders, and non-profits. The organization opposed congressional attempts at regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Davis went on record in 2003 and insisted that no further reform of the lenders was necessary

According to the Senate Lobbying Database, the lobbying firm of Charlie Black, one of McCain's top aides, made at least $820,000 working for Freddie Mac from 1999 to 2004. The McCain campaign's vice-chair Wayne Berman and its congressional liaison John Green made $1.14 million working on behalf of Fannie Mae for lobbying firm Ogilvy Government Relations. Green made an additional $180,000 from Freddie Mac. Arther B. Culvahouse Jr., the VP vetter who helped John McCain select Sarah Palin, earned $80,000 from Fannie Mae in 2003 and 2004, while working for lobbying and law firm O'Melveny & Myers LLP.

Aquiles Suarez, listed as an economic adviser to the McCain campaign in a July 2007 McCain press release, was formerly the director of government and industry relations for Fannie Mae. The Senate Lobbying Database says Suarez oversaw the lending giant's $47,510,000 lobbying campaign from 2003 to 2006.

At least 20 McCain fundraisers have lobbied for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pocketing at least $12.3 million over the last nine years.

Not so maverick.

There are very basic and indisputable elements to the current crisis:
a) Banks were allowed to ignore time-honored & common sense financial tests for making mortgages/home loans
b) Banks/Finance Cos. were able to do so because they created leveraged derivatives and Mortgage Backed Securities to sell off the sub-prime loans in bundles to unsuspecting buyers around the world - who trusted the US regulatory system was vetting these AAA rated securities.
c) such financial instruments would have been impossible under the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act which was repealed by a Rep.-led Congress driven by Sen. Phil Gramm in 1998. he is now a leader of the McCain Election Committee, trusted advisor and likely Sec of Treasury pick.
d) the US Executive branch (Bush w/ Treasury & Commerce, FTC, etc) and the SEC / FED are trusted to monitor and regulate these functions/securities - they did nothing despite calls by Buffet and others for years.
e) when the housing bubble deflated - which is not surprising given 8 yrs of deficit economy dependent on debt for growth - the securities based on those loans dropped too.
f) now the very Execs/Politicians who built this collapsing house of cards, who made over 40 BILLION in income from it and donated MILLIONS to the same Politicians to keep their hands off them: are now asking for a TRILLION to prop it up.
g) they are holding a gun to our heads like a mugger: give us the money, no questions asked - or we'll pull the trigger. they not only want more of your money to fix THEIR mistakes - you can have no say in what they do with it: even if that means they pay themselves more bonuses.

CALL YOUR SENATORS & REP - tell them you want control over what these muggers do with your money before they hand over you, your children's and grandchildrens wallets!

Blue collar jobs do NOT have to become extinct. They DO have to change though. We can change our dirty manufacturing into clean ones. We need to think in new ways. We are a productive and innovative people. Who says we have to stay status quo and just accept that companies send the jobs oversees? Why aren't we demanding that we become energy independent? Why aren't we educating our people to be able to discover our solutions? We went to the moon and created most of the technology that so many take for granted today. We need leaders who can inspire us to achieve the so-called unachievable goals once again.

The following is directly quoted from this:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/21/9322/74248/245/602838

:

The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act led to the Savings & Loan debacle.

Garn-St. Germain handed the S&Ls a greatly expanded range of capabilities, allowing them to go head to head with full service banks, but it didn't give them the bank's regulations.

In John McCain's biography, he called his meetings with Keating and regulators "the worst mistake of my life,"

By 1999 Phil Gramm -- who had entered the Senate two years after McCain and quickly become the economic guru of the Keating Five maverick -- put forward the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act which kept certain bank functions separate in response to the depression. Yes, Bill Clinton signed it into law. I defend no one here.

Gramm wasn't done. The next year he was back with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which was slipped into a "must pass" spending bill on the last day of the 106th Congress. This Act greatly expanded the scope of futures trading, created new vehicles for speculation, and sheltered several investments from regulation.

Then:
Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Among those instruments which the CFMA sheltered from regulatory scrutiny was something called the "credit default swap." The credit default swap was both complicated and inclusive, allowing an entity to package various obligations on the philosophy of "spreading the risk" of debt, and was used to generate "cash" rampantly along with Collateralized Debt Obligations and Collateralized Mortgage Obligations.

When questioned about his support of Gramm's legislation, John McCain called his friend (and by then, campaign co-chair) Gramm "one of the smartest people in the world on the economy" and pointed out that Greenspan also favored the acts Gramm and his coalition of lobbyists had authored.

Play with whatever fire you will, people,...once you think you know the story and the chronology of bills passed in congress dig deeper, and then deeper,....capiche?

Obama 09'

Source-
Three Times is Enemy Action
by Devilstower

Americans are afraid because
you the media and both parties
feed their fear. The Left uses
"Global Warming" to get you to
support overthrowing American capitalism and the
right uses "Terrorism" to get
you to support our emerging
Authoritarian Police State.
You the media, use fear to
boost ratings, sell papers,
magazines and commercial
radio and TV spots. It's so
pervasive and blatant, that it's
become a no brainer.