This is part III of my explanation of the Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate award for the past week (yep, time to wrap it up, with award ceremony). The previous entries Sunday and today have explained why Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson were pointed out by the "Finger" this time. Part III explains why Obama shared in this past week's recognition by the pointing "Finger" (multiple reasons):
1. See my entries this past week on "Obama and Race", including this blog's arrogant adoption of Emile Zola's "I ACCUSE" language. What I did was correctly accuse the Obama campaign of "race baiting", "playing the race card", and orchestrating a compaign strategy to intimidate people into voting for Obama because of his race. I am perfectly aware that Obama has dismissed the contention advanced by his own campaign (surrogates not only in the mainstream media, but including Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas, who would not have made a point of saying this without the approval of the Obama campaign) that racist Democrats (it being assumed Republicans are racist) are making this election close because they are reluctant to vote for an African-American. See my analysis in those prior entries, which is correct. Obama is trying to use his race to intimidate people into voting for him (lest they consider themselves "racist hicks" like those people actually not voting for Obama--there still seeming to be no poll as to people who have reservations about a woman President or Vice President). Obama can cynically count on the mainstream media to pick up his campaign's cues on "race", while Obama cynically pretends to stay "above" such tactics. That alone is reason enough to vote against him (sanctimonious hypocrisy at its most cynical and race dividing).
2. Obama has continued to push the idea of higher taxes and a "stimulus" package, even in the face of a faltering economy and the Paulson package, which alone will be one of the biggest stimulus packages in the history of this country. Already, markets are afraid of the inflationary impact (whicih explains the rises in commodity prices). Nope. $1000.00 checks for every "non-rich" family in America no longer make any sense at all, if they ever did (they did not). It does not matter whether Obama says he will give a "tax cut" (often yet another check from the government to people who do not pay income taxes in the first place) to "95% of Americans". A net tax increase on business, the rich, and capital gains will destroy those financial markets that Paulson is trying to save. In addition, Obama and the Democrats are still saying they are going to spend all of this money on all of these new programs. This includes Obama's global proposals, such as the proposal to give the United Nations 50 billion dollars a year to "fight" global poverty. As I have said, we can't even solve Mexico's poverty problem, although Obama would continue to have us try to do that by continuing to encourage Mexican poor people to come here--much less can we "solve" the world's poverty program. There is also that "global warming" United Nations proposal (maybe part of this same thing--I am not sure), by which poor nations affected by "global warming" receive money from the richer nations who mainly "caused" (false) "global warming". This is all in addition to Obama claiming "credit" for the original "stimulus" package this summer, which he had nothing to do with except vote for it. Of course, it looks like we would have been better off coming up with non-taxpayer solutions to the financial crisis, but Obama seems to delight in taking "credit" for everything he voted for, and denying "blame" for anything he did not vote against, even if Obama has not been a constructive force for "change" in either case.
3. Obama has falsely continues to assert that measure he advocated would have prevented the present crisis, while McCain fought against such measures. This is all lies. In the first place, Obama was not out there pushing for much of anything. He was too busy running for President. He, and the Democrats, fought against McCain's 2005 proposal to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which was one of the things that might have done some good. Franklin Raines was a Clinton Administration budget official who took over as CEO of Fannie Mae in 1999, and proceeded to further expand the accounting and mortgage excesses that eventually brought us to this point. Jim Johnson, who was also involved in Countrywide Mortgage sweetheart loans, was so close to Obama that he was named as one of the persons to advise Obama on his VP choice (before the Countrywide loans came out). Raines told theWashington Post he was an Obama economic advisor, before denying it after this crisis with Fannie Mae surfaced. Obama had not previously denied the three Washington Post reports referring to Raines as one of his economic advisors. Jim Johnson, who was clearly one of Obama's main advisors, is another former CEO of Fannie Mae. Obama has an enormous number of Clinton Administration people advising him (old politics, and you will notice that Raines was a Clinton Administration person before leading Fannie Mae into a major cause of the present financial crisis). Even as to Democratic proposals (not Obama proposals, since he was running for President) that Obama supported, they would not have helped. Some got into law this summer in the "housing bill". They did not help. Those proposals were all about "predatory lending" (after the fact), or about bailing out individual homeowners. This was a housing "bubble" created by the central planning, Clinton Administration idea that every American should be able to own a home. "Predatory lending" had little to do with it. Democrats like Chris Dodd and Barney Frank were all for poorer people getting loans, as they blocked reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is, and should be even to leftist Democrats, obvious by now that "predatory lending" was not the problem. Foolish lending and borrowing, expecting house prices to keep going up forever, was the problem. There was more than enough Fed authority to regulate IndyMac Bank, for example (biggest mortgage lender around), and IndyMac was not even supposed to be making "subprime" loans. It still went under, even though it was an actual bank with billions in customer deposits to finance its activities.
4. The idea that deregulation caused this crisis is one of those stupidities Obama is pushing. It was the Clinton Administration, central planning policy that everyone deserved a house that created the problem. Yes, banks and financial institutions got greedy, once they saw the booming housing market. But regulation was not the fundamental problem. As I have stated in the previous entries since Sunday, Fed regulation failed. The Fed had the power and duty to regulate banks, and stop the "bubble" excess lending. They failed to do so, as regulation often fails (central planning always fails in the end). The regulators are human beings. It is an Obama, and leftist, fantasy that passing regulations prevents "failures". It does not. The main "deregulation was the elimination of distinctions between banks and brokerage houses. We are not only going to keep that principle (which I have questioned, but no one else seems to), as all of these brokerage functions are now going to be provided by banks. In fact, investment bankers Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are becoming banks. The problem was not fundamentally deregulation. It was the housing "bubble" created by the central planning idea that everyone should be able to own a home--which resulted in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as "government sponsored entities" which caused the mortgage market to explode. It did not help that the officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were compensated on the basis of the number of mortgages "acquired" (which increased paper earnings, but the risky mortgages would fail in the bursting of the housing "bubble". I have even heard one leftists blame the late 1980's Savings and Loan debacle on "deregulation" That was basically the same as this, all right, but it was not "deregulation" that was at fault there either. What happened then was that many people had gone into real estate as a "tax shelter" to avoid taxes. As part of tax "reform", these "tax shelters" were eliminated. Problem: That meant all kinds of real estate deals no longer made sense. That resulted in the collapse of those deals, and of real estate prices. That sudden collapse caught the savings and loans by surprise, and they went under. The sudden change in the tax laws was the fundamental cause of the collapse. As usual, that collapse revealed corruption, but corruption was not the cause of the collapse. The same thing has happened here. The government encouraged, with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and in many other ways (including encouragement of loans in poor areas to poorer, often mnority, people, a housing "bubble". Then the government failed to react to the "bubble", because everyone was getting rich and even poor people were getting houses that kept going up in value--meaning that it did not matter if they could ultimately pay for them as they could sell them. When this "bubble" burst", it was the same as those tax shelters all going bust. There was nowhere to hide. A financial problem was inevitable, and made much more serious by the deliberate government policy of helping finance mortgages--especially with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and it did happen. It is FALSE to say Obama saw it coming in advance, and he knows it.
5. The fundamental problem with Obama is that he is all "words". there is no "record" there. He has not fought for any of these things he says he did. McCain at least tried to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama did nothing, which is basically his entire record. Even after this "crisis" began to explode, up to the present moment, Obama has been slow to take any position other than vague lies about his record and vague words about who and what are to blame for the present circumstances. As stated, at least McCain is on record in 2005 warning of this very crisis if we did not do something about Fannie Mae. There is no record of Obaama warning about anything, in advance, or fighting for anything that would have stopped this problem.
Thus, Obama deserves the "Finger" this week, along with Bernanke and Paulson.
Award ceremony:
As you should know by now, the Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate is my weekly award represented by a statuette of an INDEX finger pointing, which is an unauthorized reincarnation of the old "Laugh In" award. I suggest you visualize Dick Martin presenting the award, solely as a visual aid (assuming you remember Dick Marthin--otherwise you can visualize Stephen Colbert, Don Rickles, Joh Stewart, or someone similar). There are not graphics or video connected with this ceremony. It is all in the imagination.
Therefore, visualize Dick Martin thrusting the "Finger" at the camera and saying: "Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Barack "World" Obama, this award is for you. You deserve it. Obama is a politician, if a leftist one with no redeeming virtues except the ability to read a teleprompter really well. Maybe we should expect no better. But Bernanke and Paulson were supposed experts, who performed their jobs son incompetently as to potentially put the taxpayers on the hook for a trillion dollars or more. They deserve this as few others have, although Obama will surely outdo them if he actually becomes President--with a Democratic Congress."
Return next Saturday or Sunday for to see where the Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate points next. I will try to be more succinct and timely next week. I would remind you, however, that I am not being paid for this (although I have mentioned often that I can be bought, and could certainly do better if I were paid.
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