Ahhhh the mafia consists of Wagoner and his clowns.

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Barney Frank (pictured) and the head of the Senate Finance Committee doesn't distinguish between your money and the government's money. In fact, he recently went on record as saying that taxes are "far too low and that we should be able to raise them quite a bit."

Of course, Barney boy also said, several months ago, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in fine shape. They were then priming the current economic crisis by making sub-prime loans - which got us into this pickle - and, of course, donating hundreds of thousands to the election campaign of Obama and the reelection campaigns of Barney-boy and Chris Dodd among others.

See these guys - Barney-boy heads them up - really don't distinguish between you money and their money.

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I wonder if Barney Frank reported or paid taxes on the proceeds from the homosexual prostitution ring that his live in male escort was operating out of his own home.

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Richard, let's not get things wrong... this situation is f'd thanks to both sides of the aisle, not just the dems.

I'm sitting here in the middle, like a good portion of America, rather frustrated by the whole situation.

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Let's get one thing straight. It wasn't the subprime loans themselves that caused this mess. It was the collateralized debt options built around those loans that were sold as highly rated securities that are the problem. Without that part of the equation we'd just have a bunch of people who can't afford to pay their mortgages.

Cut Frank some slack. He's made some really good decisions too. Although the $700 billion bailout was not Congress' finest hour.

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To those who low-ranked Mat, and disagreed with his claim that both the Republicans and the Democrats were responsible for this economic situation, consider what FactCheck.org had to say about the issue. If anything, Mat was being too kind, and not criticizing enough people who were at fault.

FactCheck.org:
There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:
• The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
• Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
• Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
• Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
• The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
• Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
• Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
• Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
• The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
• An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
• Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.
The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation.

The quoted article, in its entirety, can be found at:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

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That Barney is a MORON, not as big as Wagoner, but close. If i were Obama i'd put that Car Czar in charge over Barney.

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"If Republicans continue to resist, said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Democrats are likely to rejoin the issue in January, when they expect party standard bearer Barack Obama to take the oath of office as president.

“There’s no question the House will pass … a much bigger (stimulus plan) than we passed before,” Frank said of a postelection lame duck session. “If enough Republicans in the Senate decide to filibuster it … then we’ll just wait until January.”



We have the representation we elected, and deserve the cronyism we are getting. We need to make a hundred billion dollar bailout, quick, get the unions on the phone!

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Forgot to add: How does Frank plan on paying for this? Why, cutting defense spending 25 percent... while we're at war.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Democrats will push for a stimulus package after the November election, and called for a package reducing defense spending by 25 percent while saying Congress will "eventually" raise taxes.

Frank also said the post-election stimulus package will focus on spending for building projects, extending unemployment benefits, and further supporting states' healthcare costs. "We'll have to raise taxes ultimately," Frank said. "Not now, but eventually." Frank told the Standard-Times that if Democrats cannot secure the votes they need in November, they will try again in January, when they will likely have stronger majorities in the House and Senate.

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Even before the bailout we needed to trim military spending or raise taxes significantly, it was just that nobody wanted to hear it so nobody talked about it.

Of course if we (the US) were serious about living within our means we'd actually cut military spending by 50% and change S.S. eligibility and age requirements so that it's solvent, but again, nobody wants to hear that, they just want to go on spending and spending and spending like we've been doing since the time of Reagan. The baiout is simply icing on the cake.

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@ HanoiJane
"That Barney is a MORON, not as big as Wagoner, but close. If i were Obama i'd put that Car Czar in charge over Barney."


Unfortunately, according the US Constitution, the president does not and shall not have the power to appoint senators and representatives of the people.

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We could cut military spending in an instant by simply ending the war in Iraq.

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Negative. We can't end the Iraq war instantly. We have so much equipment and personnel there, we couldn't pull out in less than a year, even if we wanted to. Unless you want to leave all of our land vehicles lying around for the Iraqis to play with...

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I'm aware that it wouldn't literally happen instantly. I was being facetious. However, after over $500 billion spent on a completely useless war, a commitment to exit starting now would mean billions in savings. We do not have money for this any longer. We never did. We need the money here at home.

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We broke Iraq, we have a responsibility to fix it. You can say we shouldn't have gone in, or that the war was mismanaged, or that Bush is a war criminal, but that doesn't change the concrete fact that we are in.

Cutting and running and leaving 30 million Iraqis high and dry in a sectarian civil war we started would be the most dishonorable thing America has ever done. Pointing fingers at the mistakes of 2003, or the domestic pork and welfare we'd rather have in 2008 isn't going to change that.

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