lmao @ american politics & the threads on VGC on the topic.

No. This is why we crashed.

fact Congrees had to vote on it and ok it before it could happen.

edit: ignore this. i refuse to get into a debate about politics

A lot of ill conceived reasoning flooding this thread. Plenty of you should take a look at that Logical Fallacy thread made a while back and play bingo.

So much black and white. If A is true, then B must be false is hardly discussion. It's accusation and assumption.

People are so adamant on blaming opposite party, or current party, that they overlook how things work. Even the congress vs president spending difference. Spending is not the only economic influence and both branches can have wide sweeping effects. Effects that can last for a long time as well. Mixed congress and the deals they need to reach in order to conduct business, full party controlled government and the massive unchecked long term alterations they tend to make. There are so many hands involved it is ridiculous to see bickering like this.

From a republican vs democratic standpoint, one needs to take into account the strength the republicans have had in government for the good part of the last few decades. The decisions that effect our economy today, when they were made, and by whom. Along with modern party political philosophy changes.

this

Very well said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0

I'm guessing you haven't looked at the voting percentages for Glass Steagal.

It was a giagantic bipartisan bill that got more democratic votes for it, then the bail out of the banks got Republican votes.

The fact that you can't even stick to your own premise... in the thread you created is really sort of sad.

I'd suggest looking at how they come to those numbers in that graph.  You might be surprised.

in general, they assume that the Bush tax cuts and wars will have no positive benefits, even the projected ones, while the rest?  They get the full benefit of projected positive benefits.  (note how the light blue mysteriously shrinks.)  This is of course despite the fact that this debt will be generating more debt.

Also, they assume the bush tax cuts will continue for infinity.  Which... you know, at some point they become the OBAMA tax cuts, afterall they have to be renewed right?  So if your taking a presidential view... (funny considering the thread) you'd have to blame it on Obama after like... 2009?  So anything 2010 plus you'd blame on Obama if your taking a "blame the president" approach.  (which is funny based on the premise of your own thread.)

That is definitely a huge part of why we crashed, it helped set off the decades long domino effect in the banking industry & housing markets that put us where we are. People who think that Bush removing some regulations 'caused' the crash are simply ignoring the facts, this problem was much longer in the making than that and spanned multiple presidents and congresses. There's plenty of blame to go around, between Government essentially requiring banks to make bad loans (so people who can't afford a house can still get one), the banks then passing their 'bad' risk on to others with mortgage backed securities, the ensuing housing Bubble, then members of congress ignoring the danger caused by the issues with Freddie/Fannie for many, many years. Blaming one president for such a complex problem that was decades in the making is nothing more than politically motivated crap (or a fundamental lack of understanding of the economy).

The fact is that the Bush administration had been warning about the dangers of Freddie and Fannie, and was calling for reforms for years, but many members of congress in key positions (like Barney Frank for example) were not too keen on doing this as they were in Freddie and Fannie's pockets. When reform was finally passed, it was too little, too late. The blame goes to many members of our broken government, but mainly to corrupt senators and house members (in BOTH parties) who propped up these failing institutions for many years. The results of decades of bad policy and ignoring the warning signs put us in a very fragile position, so it didn't take much to push us over the edge.