Stockton California Enters Bankruptcy

[Sheep_Mafia]

With numerous other California cities, along with the state itself, in various degrees of financial distress, this will be interesting to follow to see how it turns out. One thing about the voting public--most are not government employees (at least not yet), so I don't understand why they don't demand the same pension reform at the government level that they themselves have been dealt--the move to 401k type plans over these traditional pensions.

Good to read up on as Stockton is a good case study on reckless spending and bad decisions.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/morning-e ... le/2526042

http://www.cacs.org/ca/article/35

[DEATH ROW JOE]

This report largely attributes Stockton’s financial problems to three distinct but related factors:

1. The housing and financial collapses. The post-2001 economy grew quickly, fueled largely by the growth of the real estate market. The city's higher revenue fueled an unbounded optimism about Stockton’s potential growth. In the aftermath of the market collapses, the city experienced general fund budget deficits every year. These annual deficits quickly depleted the city’s scant reserves and pushed it towards insolvency.

Bush taking full credit for the housing bubble at the 2004 GOP convention:

"Thanks to our policies, home ownership in America is at an all- time high.

Tonight we set a new goal: 7 million more affordable homes in the next 10 years, so more American families will be able to open the door and say, "Welcome to my home."

Hear for yourself in this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1ag29b_-lg

Banking regulators taking a chainsaw and hedge cutters to banking regulations in 2003:

[Sheep_Mafia]

Yeah, but that was just Bush taking credit for what Clinton did and had already took credit for. Bush doubled down on Clinton's reckless policies just as Obama has on many of the Bush policies. Not to mention all the wild and incredibly irresponsible spending that went on in Stockton that you are glossing over per usual.

"For Immediate Release October 23, 1997

MAKING THE DREAM OF HOMEOWNERSHIP A REALITY:
AMERICA HITS ALL-TIME HIGH HOMEOWNERSHIP RATE

Making It Easier to Qualify for Mortgage Loans. The FHA has eliminated unnecessary and overly strict requirements under its loan program that made it difficult for many families to qualify for mortgage loans. It has also GIVEN LENDERS GREATER FLEXIBILITY to make homeownership possible for more nontraditional borrowers... streamlined its underwriting criteria.."

Why do you find it so difficult to assign any responsibility to liberal politicians?

Hell, Bill Clinton himself says that the Democrats resisted GOP efforts to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

http://www.examiner.com/video/bill-clin ... ing-bubble

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2009/ ... ng-bubble/

[Danzig in the Dark]

Yeah, but that was just Bush taking credit for what Clinton did and had already took credit for. Bush doubled down on Clinton's reckless policies just as Obama has on many of the Bush policies. Not to mention all the wild and incredibly irresponsible spending that went on in Stockton that you are glossing over per usual.

"For Immediate Release October 23, 1997

MAKING THE DREAM OF HOMEOWNERSHIP A REALITY:
AMERICA HITS ALL-TIME HIGH HOMEOWNERSHIP RATE

Making It Easier to Qualify for Mortgage Loans. The FHA has eliminated unnecessary and overly strict requirements under its loan program that made it difficult for many families to qualify for mortgage loans. It has also GIVEN LENDERS GREATER FLEXIBILITY to make homeownership possible for more nontraditional borrowers... streamlined its underwriting criteria.."

Why do you find it so difficult to assign any responsibility to liberal politicians?

Hell, Bill Clinton himself says that the Democrats resisted GOP efforts to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

http://www.examiner.com/video/bill-clin ... ing-bubble

http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2009/ ... ng-bubble/

Why? Because it was private mortgage lenders like Countrywide, National City and now infamous Ameriquest were the problem. None had liberal politicians on their executive staff, as I recall.

Fannie and Freddie don’t deserve blame for bubble
By Mark Zandi,January 24, 2012

There is plenty of blame to go around for the U.S. housing bubble, but not much of it belongs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two giant housing-finance institutions made many mistakes over the decades, some of them real whoppers, but causing house prices to soar and then crater during the past decade weren’t among them.

The biggest culprits in the housing fiasco came from the private sector, and more specifically from a mortgage industry that was out of control. These included lenders who originated home loans, investment bankers who packaged them into securities, rating agencies that misjudged these securities, and global investors who bought them without much, if any, study.

In other words, America’s mortgage securitization machine was fundamentally broken. It created millions of mortgage loans that, even under reasonable economic assumptions, stood little chance of being repaid — and were not. As a result, hundreds of billions of dollars were lost as defaults and write-downs brought the financial system, and the wider economy, to the brink, requiring a massive government bailout.

Also to blame, of course, were regulators, who gave the private mortgage market little, if any, oversight. The market’s watchdogs were lulled to sleep by a misplaced view that self-interested private financial institutions would regulate themselves. This flawed thinking was most pervasive at the nation’s most important financial regulatory agency, the Federal Reserve.

Getting history right for this dark economic period is critical if we are to design a better mortgage finance system for the future. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are responsible for the debacle, then perhaps government’s role in a future mortgage finance system should be minimal. But if private lenders deserve most of the blame, the case grows for giving government an important role in backstopping and overseeing the system.

“If it grows like a weed, it probably is a weed.” This age-old banking adage aptly applies to the private mortgage lending business during the housing bubble. Between 2004 and 2007, private lenders originated three quarters of all subprime and alt-A mortgage loans. These were loans to financially fragile homeowners with credit scores under 660, well below the U.S. average, which is closer to 700. But only a fourth of such loans were originated by government agencies, including Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration.

The dollar amount of subprime and alt-A loans made during this period by the private sector was jaw-dropping, reaching nearly $600 billion at the height of the lending frenzy in 2006. For context, this is about equal to the total amount Americans currently owe on bank credit cards. By contrast, government lenders made just over $100 billion in subprime and alt-A loans in 2006. Even in 2007, when the housing market was beginning its free fall, private lenders still handed out more than $300 billion via these very shaky mortgage loans.

All this can be seen in the share of total residential mortgage debt insured or owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. At the start of 2002, before the housing boom got going, the two agencies’ market share accounted for almost 54 percent of all mortgage debt. By summer 2006, the bubble’s apex, their share had fallen to only 40 percent. It is difficult to see how the agencies could have been responsible for inflating the housing bubble at a time when they were losing a full 14 percentage points of market share. Indeed, the opposite was true, as their position in the housing market rapidly diminished.

It wasn’t that Fannie and Freddie made a prescient strategic decision to stay clear of the housing frenzy. They couldn’t have participated even if they had wanted to. The two agencies had committed various accounting irregularities earlier in the decade, and their regulator forced them to rein in their growth.

Moreover, Fannie and Freddie couldn’t compete with rapaciously expanding private lenders. Securitization was in full swing, enabling private lenders to offer low rates and increasingly aggressive terms to borrowers. In 2006, almost half the loans made by private lenders required no down payment and no documentation. Fannie and Freddie simply couldn’t play in that league, even though Congress had given them aggressive lending targets to help boost homeownership among lower-income and minority households.

Fannie and Freddie did play a significant part in the financial panic. As financial conditions began to weaken in 2007 and the private mortgage industry pulled back, the agencies partially filled the void. This was their chance to get back in the game. The memory of their accounting scandals had faded, and policymakers hoped the agencies could keep the housing market from unraveling. Fannie’s and Freddie’s originations of sketchy loans actually peaked near $160 billion in 2008, the year regulators placed them into conservatorship. The two agencies had jumped back into the housing market at precisely the wrong time.

The government’s takeover of Fannie and Freddie arguably ignited the global financial panic. The Treasury Department’s decision to wipe out shareholders of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, two of the largest financial institutions on the planet, sent a shock wave through markets as it became apparent that no institution was safe any longer. Investors ran for the door, sending Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy one week later; a string of failures at other venerable institutions followed.

Despite Fannie and Freddie’s role in the panic, it is wrong to blame them for creating it; that distinction belongs rightly to the private mortgage market. Understanding this is critical to creating a stable, efficient mortgage finance system for the future. While Fannie and Freddie themselves deserve to pass from the scene, given their numerous past missteps, it is equally clear that the government needs to remain an important player in housing finance, providing consistent regulatory oversight and a backstop in case the private market collapses again.

Mark Zandi is chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, a subsidiary of Moody’s Corp. He is the author of “Financial Shock,” an book about the financial crisis. His column will appear regularly.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012 ... -and-alt-a

The Housing Bubble and the Big Lie

—By Kevin Drum | Sat Dec. 24, 2011 11:37 AM PST

As longtime readers with good memories will remember, Peter Wallison of AEI has spent several years pushing the preposterous idea that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were responsible for the subprime bubble. (See here and here for background.) After Wallison's latest jeremiad, Joe Nocera has finally decided he can't take it anymore:

So this is how the Big Lie works.

You begin with a hypothesis that has a certain surface plausibility. You find an ally whose background suggests that he’s an “expert”; out of thin air, he devises “data.” You write articles in sympathetic publications, repeating the data endlessly; in time, some of these publications make your cause their own. Like-minded congressmen pick up your mantra and invite you to testify at hearings.

....Thus has Peter Wallison, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, almost single-handedly created the myth that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the financial crisis....Allies? Start with Congressional Republicans, who have vowed to eliminate Fannie and Freddie — because, after all, they caused the crisis! Throw in The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, which, on Wednesday, published one of Wallison’s many articles repeating the Big Lie. It was followed on Thursday by an editorial in The Journal making essentially the same point. Repetition is all-important to spreading a Big Lie.

What's most remarkable about this is how brazen it is. As Nocera notes, Wallison's latest piece is about the charges the SEC brought last week against six former Fannie and Freddie executives. That's a plausible hook for Wallison's hobbyhorse, but even a casual reading of the case shows that the SEC isn't claiming that government mandates for affordable housing drove Fannie and Freddie headlong into the subprime market. Just the opposite: Starting around 2002, Wall Street banks started their subprime binge and Fannie and Freddie began to lose market share. A few years later, when Fannie and Freddie joined the subprime orgy, they were doing it to compete with their private sector rivals, not because Congress or anyone else was forcing them to.

How brazen is this? Just look at the chart on the right. In 2002, Wall Street banks start the subprime bubble. That same year, Fannie and Freddie see their market share start to plummet. It's not until 2005, at the tail end of the bubble, that Fannie and Freddie get back into the game.

This is butt simple stuff. All you have to do is look at one simple chart to see exactly what happened. And yet, conservatives don't care. As Paul Krugman says, this "isn’t just a case where different people look at the same facts but reach different conclusions. Instead, we’re looking at a situation in which one side of the debate just isn’t interested in the truth, in which alleged scholarship is actually just propaganda."

Fannie and Freddie were bad actors in a lot of ways, and that makes them an easy target for conservatives who are desperate to absolve the private sector of any blame for the financial crisis. But when it comes to assigning blame for the housing bubble, the evidence against them is laughably thin. Like it or not, this was Wall Street's fault.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2 ... nd-big-lie

[Sheep_Mafia]

Question--when did the drive to get everyone a home go into place? Clinton wanted to drive up home ownership basically 70%. Cuomo--his housing director got the subprime ball rolling.

Fannie and Freddie Mac didn't help cause this? That's liberal crap and the reality has long been established on that. Again, even Clinton says they were out of control and the Democrats wouldn't listen.

As for Countrywide etc., they utilized policy that was put in place in the Clinton years. Again, Bush should have stopped it but lets not lose fact of where this originated.

All this started in 1997 and that's fact. Yes, it steamrolled in the 2000's but it's interesting that liberals want to blame Bush for the trillions in debt that have come to roost in Obama's term yet won't blame Clinton for the housing troubles that 100% (that's 100%) originated during Clinton's term.

"Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why."

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-05/ ... eddie-mac/

[Danzig in the Dark]

Question--when did the drive to get everyone a home go into place? Clinton wanted to drive up home ownership basically 70%. Cuomo--his housing director got the subprime ball rolling.

Fannie and Freddie Mac didn't help cause this? That's liberal crap and the reality has long been established on that. Again, even Clinton says they were out of control and the Democrats wouldn't listen.

As for Countrywide etc., they utilized policy that was put in place in the Clinton years. Again, Bush should have stopped it but lets not lose fact of where this originated.

All this started in 1997 and that's fact. Yes, it steamrolled in the 2000's but it's interesting that liberals want to blame Bush for the trillions in debt that have come to roost in Obama's term yet won't blame Clinton for the housing troubles that 100% (that's 100%) originated during Clinton's term.

"Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country's current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing Administration mortgage program into a sweetheart lender with sky-high loan ceilings and no money down, and he legalized what a federal judge has branded "kickbacks" to brokers that have fueled the sale of overpriced and unsupportable loans. Three to four million families are now facing foreclosure, and Cuomo is one of the reasons why."

http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-08-05/ ... eddie-mac/

So, it's bad for people to blame Bush for things that happened while he was President, but it's perfectly acceptable to blame Clinton for things that happened after he was President.

No, Freddie Mac and Fannie May didn't cause this. They jumped in on the end of the bubble to make up business they lost to predatory subprime lenders like Countrywide and Ameriquest.

You are Moggio without the Zappa fetish.

[Drunk Kennedy]

as for the original topic of this thread...does anyone know if they are being allowed to file under state or federal bankruptcy laws?

[Sheep_Mafia]

So, it's bad for people to blame Bush for things that happened while he was President, but it's perfectly acceptable to blame Clinton for things that happened after he was President.

No, Freddie Mac and Fannie May didn't cause this. They jumped in on the end of the bubble to make up business they lost to predatory subprime lenders like Countrywide and Ameriquest.

You are Moggio without the Zappa fetish.

No, what I plainly said was just as Obama has responsibility for things that have happened 4 plus years on his watch, so did Bush. I also said, Bush doubled down on the Clinton policies. Again, Clinton himself blames Freddie and Fannie and the Democrats to an extent, just not himself.

As for Fannie Mae's role, here's a smoking gun for you since you need one. This is from 1999, during the Clinton administration and clearly lays it out. From the liberal rag, the NY Times. 1999--news as it happened, not someone's distortion years later.

"In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans."

Read the whole thing and see the origins. 1999, as it happened.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/busin ... nding.html

[Sheep_Mafia]

as for the original topic of this thread...does anyone know if they are being allowed to file under state or federal bankruptcy laws?

Federal, DK. That's one of the issues to follow here because there are state laws that impact and restrict how things like the pension plans will be dealt with. The question comes in that will be decided as does federal bankruptcy law trump the state laws on this.

[Danzig in the Dark]

So, it's bad for people to blame Bush for things that happened while he was President, but it's perfectly acceptable to blame Clinton for things that happened after he was President.

No, Freddie Mac and Fannie May didn't cause this. They jumped in on the end of the bubble to make up business they lost to predatory subprime lenders like Countrywide and Ameriquest.

You are Moggio without the Zappa fetish.

No, what I plainly said was just as Obama has responsibility for things that have happened 4 plus years on his watch, so did Bush. I also said, Bush doubled down on the Clinton policies. Again, Clinton himself blames Freddie and Fannie and the Democrats to an extent, just not himself.

As for Fannie Mae's role, here's a smoking gun for you since you need one. This is from 1999, during the Clinton administration and clearly lays it out. From the liberal rag, the NY Times. 1999--news as it happened, not someone's distortion years later.

"In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans."

Read the whole thing and see the origins. 1999, as it happened.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/busin ... nding.html

I missed the housing collapse in 1999. Was it as big as the one in 2007? You know, the one brought about when mortgage companies like Ameriquest and Countrywide Financial were making fraudulent loans and their backers on Wall Street were packaging them as valuable investments. It was caused by greedy crooks on Wall Street committing criminal acts. You can continue to parrot the Big Lie, but it doesn't alter the truth.

[Sheep_Mafia]

I missed the housing collapse in 1999. Was it as big as the one in 2007? You know, the one brought about when mortgage companies like Ameriquest and Countrywide Financial were making fraudulent loans and their backers on Wall Street were packaging them as valuable investments. It was caused by greedy crooks on Wall Street committing criminal acts. You can continue to parrot the Big Lie, but it doesn't alter the truth.

So because the housing market didn't immediately collapse after the Clinton administration set things into motion as they clearly did and all the evidence that has been posted across multiple threads here, you can't see the origins of what happened? That's some ridiculous thinking there and I refuse to believe you are that simpleminded. That article I posted talks directly about the Clinton administration putting pressure on Fannie Mae etc. to take more sub prime mortgages. Yes obviously, when the government creates the environment obviously the corporate players are going to get involved and take advantage.

Again, from 1999 while it was going on (includes prediction of failure and talks about the extreme risk they were getting into):
"In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's."

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
So how do you explain away Clinton himself said that the Dem Congress ignored his pleas to rein in Fannie and Freddie while he was President? While I doubt that even happened given that all the evidence points to his administration pushing the very foundation of things for political gain, but he still says it. He also said the GOP tried to warn them too and they didn't listen. Now who is believing the big lie? I suggest you look at your source as Krugman is a straight up liberal hack.

Absolutely undeniable evidence exists and has been posted. What about it do you not understand?

[KneelandBobDylan]

Absolutely undeniable evidence exists and has been posted. What about it do you not understand?

Yes, yes it has. Thanks for posting that info DRJ.

[Sheep_Mafia]

Absolutely undeniable evidence exists and has been posted. What about it do you not understand?

Yes, yes it has. Thanks for posting that info DRJ.

How about you take a stab at explaining away what I posted from 1999. You know, reality. It's almost comical how much you liberals deflect responsiblity. Go team, right? Very childlike really.

[KneelandBobDylan]

Absolutely undeniable evidence exists and has been posted. What about it do you not understand?

Yes, yes it has. Thanks for posting that info DRJ.

How about you take a stab at explaining away what I posted from 1999. You know, reality. It's almost comical how much you liberals deflect responsiblity. Go team, right? Very childlike really.

Oh, you mean like blaming Clinton and Obama for things that happened on Bush's watch.

Talk about childlike.

[Sheep_Mafia]

Oh, you mean like blaming Clinton and Obama for things that happened on Bush's watch.

Talk about childlike.

Nah, I mean like giving Clinton the appropriate responsibility he earned as was stated in the article from when he was still President. To summarize for you--"what they are doing here is going to blow up in a major way". Guess what, it did. Be a man and own it. Again, Clinton kind of did though he said it was Dem Congress and not him.

"'From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.'' 1999, NY Times (guess what, it did fail and we did have to bail them out)

[Danzig in the Dark]

Sheep_Mafia believes that Obama should take the blame for Bush's economic policies after four years of his presidency but Clinton should be blamed for the housing crash which happened seven years after his presidency. Nice double standard. I also love how conservatives preach government deregulation like it was God's Word and when it blows up in everyone's faces, they disown it like St. Peter denying Jesus. Republicans.

[Sheep_Mafia]

Watch these damn liberals in Congress try to continue to prop up Freddie and Fannie even while all this is going on in 2004. Hilarious but shameful.

Maxine Waters is off the chain crazy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPoksfSf2nA

[Sheep_Mafia]

Sheep_Mafia believes that Obama should take the blame for Bush's economic policies after four years of his presidency but Clinton should be blamed for the housing crash which happened seven years after his presidency. Nice double standard. I also love how conservatives preach government deregulation like it was God's Word and when it blows up in everyone's faces, they disown it like St. Peter denying Jesus. Republicans.

I've said multiple times in this thread that Bush doubled down on the Clinton housing agenda and certainly has blame. It's all right here in the thread. Yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, none of you liberals have once owned Clinton's role. Why is that so hard? Despite your whining to the contrary, I have never had any issue giving Bush or the GOP their rightful criticism but I never see that from the liberals here. At least none of you.

[Sheep_Mafia]

Here's Barney Frank etc. arguing with the Bush administration in 2003 about regulation and oversight. Damn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPSDnGMzIdo

[Danzig in the Dark]

Sheep_Mafia believes that Obama should take the blame for Bush's economic policies after four years of his presidency but Clinton should be blamed for the housing crash which happened seven years after his presidency. Nice double standard. I also love how conservatives preach government deregulation like it was God's Word and when it blows up in everyone's faces, they disown it like St. Peter denying Jesus. Republicans.

I've said multiple times in this thread that Bush doubled down on the Clinton housing agenda and certainly has blame. It's all right here in the thread. Yet, despite all the evidence to the contrary, none of you liberals have once owned Clinton's role. Why is that so hard? Despite your whining to the contrary, I have never had any issue giving Bush or the GOP their rightful criticism but I never see that from the liberals here. At least none of you.

Clinton was a fool for embracing the Republican principle of deregulation instead of sticking with the regulations the great liberal president FDR implemented. Had he been more liberal, this would have never happened. Bush 'doubled down' on the core Republican principle of deregulation and look what it got us. Like I said, conservatives demand deregulation and bitch when things inevitably go to Hell.

I couldn't help but notice you still sidestepped the double standard you hold concerning Obama, though I'm not surprised.

[Sheep_Mafia]

Clinton was a fool for embracing the Republican principle of deregulation instead of sticking with the regulations the great liberal president FDR implemented. Had he been more liberal, this would have never happened. Bush 'doubled down' on the core Republican principle of deregulation and look what it got us. Like I said, conservatives demand deregulation and bitch when things inevitably go to Hell.

I couldn't help but notice you still sidestepped the double standard you hold concerning Obama, though I'm not surprised.

I didn't address Obama because we're talking about Clinton's responsibility and I don't want you folk to get off track. That happens a lot here. Now that you responded to the Clinton question I will answer. Again, what double standard do I actually have? I've said time and again that Bush was to blame for many things as are the GOP group in the Congress. The other side to that though is to the core liberals here, Obama has no accountability at all for his job and basically never will. It's very obvious just like in this thread with Clinton, you finally half owned, while still blaming the GOP for it... that he had a role in this.

Because I don't give Bush 100% blame for the last few years as your crowd does means to you that I hold Obama solely responsible. That's hardly true. Congress, then and now, holds much of the responsibility yet get nearly no blame. Bush gets way too much blame with Congress and now Obama skating by.

[Danzig in the Dark]

I'm not sure what you're responding to, but it couldn't be anything I wrote, Sheep_Moggio.

[tylamonroe]

Oh, you mean like blaming Clinton and Obama for things that happened on Bush's watch.

Talk about childlike.

Right, because Obama has taken total ownership of the economy from day one. We have NEVER had to listen to him bitch about what he inherited ever.