Quote:
Originally Posted by spanky part 2
Like I said, you fucks won't take blame for anything. Who's fault is this latest recession? Must be the next presidents...right?
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Why would *I* take the blame for anything? Who is "you fucks" and what do i have to do with it. I have close to a zero influence on the economy. What group do you think I am a member of? Republicans? Politicians? Current administration? American? Consumer? Maybe you think I am part of a shadow organization that secretly controls the economy?
My take on the current economic difficulties? Well since you asked ...
The FED cut rates too low for too long which made a real estate bubble possible. Investors, speculators, mortgage brokers, banks and pretty much about 90% of the population came to believe that "housing prices only go up" which was followed by the assertion that "real estate bubbles only happen regionally". "This time is different". The mantra of all bubbles past and present. You know you are in a classic bubble when Barnes and Noble has three racks of books on "How to Get Rich In Real Estate". People flipping houses and all that jazz. All of this made easier with easy credit and financial products (various asset backed securities) removing most of the risk from the people making the lending decisions.
Well, predictably the bubble burst. Now hundreds of billions of dollars of equity are being lost and there is a financial crisis spreading to the broader economy. Hundreds of billions of financial write-downs, the failure of a few institutions and the threat of more and bigger failures.
You can throw in eight consecutive years of deficit spending on top of that. An expensive war and Bush' Medicare D being two primary culprits there. And a trade deficit. This has weakened the dollar and helped fuel a commodities boom causing energy and food prices especially to rise. This has been and is hurting the budget of the consumer. We have now probably reached the place where the future expectation of gas and food prices is higher.
Where will we go from here? Dunno the answer to that one.