| Jackson50 said: If McCain truly believes repealing Glass-Steagall is what caused this crisis, he does need to educate himself about the economy. To be honest, repealing that bill has probably helped mitigate the financial crisis. The banks that have failed are Fannie/Freddie and pure investment banks. The banks that are diversified are on a more solid financial standing. Also, plenty of foreign banks that are not prohibited from combining commercial and investment banking do not suffer from this phenomena...why only in America? Greed and the odd structure of Fannie/Freddie may have been factors, but I have said it once and I will say it again: all of those contributors are secondary to the Fed’s handling of the money supply (interest rates). Had the Fed not created artificial demand through artificially low interest rates, there would have been no impetus for people to borrow beyond their means and for banks to provide the loans.
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Definitely. I mean there was a reason for them to drop rates, but they kept them too low for too long. When combined with the deficit spending of the Bush adminstration, it was a recipe for disaster. And then oil prices skyrocketed too because of invading Iraq and other instability in the Middle East. We didn't have a chance...
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
