Saturday, February 21, 2009

Talk about the foxes guarding the hen house.

by jwright
.
I just read an interesting piece on the Wall Street Journal.com web site written by Liz Peek where she stated that President Obama's first month in office had been graded an "F" by the folks on Wall Street. Certainly, the Dow Jones Industrial averages have plunged drastically and the economy hasn't improved even with the billion upon billions being stoked into it via "Stimulus" but can it all be Obama's fault? Anymore than what he inherited and blames on former President Bush is Bush's fault?

If presidents had the power to turn our national economy around, why didn't Jimmy Carter do it in the 1970s instead of allowing the quagmire that Ronald Reagan inherited to transpire? If presidents can do so much and be so powerful, why didn't President Bill Clinton alter the direction of the economy at the end of his second term of office?

In 2000, George W. Bush inherited what was rightly Clinton's recession, but the biased mainstream media and the Democrat politicians quickly blamed the weakening economy on Bush. Today, with the Democrats having been in control since 2006 as far as spending, none of what has taken place since Obama's nomination and election has stuck to him; it's still being blamed on Bush. I find it dazzling that the stream can flow in both directions simultaneously.

Much of this gigantic problem actually began in 1977 when Jimmy Carter who with the aid of the Democratic legislature enacted the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which forced financial institutions to lend mortgage money to questionable applicants who lived in questionable neighborhoods, all in the name of "Affordable Housing." FannieMae and FreddieMac guaranteed a lot of that money and you can see where that got us. Now today, it's more precious tax dollars going to bail out some of those mortgage loans.

Ignoring early warnings from the Bush Administration and even Senator John McCain, Democrat politicians Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, with the support of the Congressional Black Caucus claimed that these two financial institutions were lily-white in their dealings. Today those two gentlemen chair important legislative committees overseeing our economy and contribute greatly to Obama's economic policy. Talk about the foxes gaurding the hen house.

Essentially, many of the same people that helped to create this tremendous financial mess are the ones in charge of fixing it. I think it stinks to high heaven. "Change" definitely is necessary.

jaq~

1 comment:

Lynn said...

It is a bizarre turn of events, isn't it? The same people that helped create this mess are the same people now in charge. They have a heck of a PR machine covering for them.