What caused our economic crisis?

He/ she made a FOURTH video:

Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4

I really enjoy this site. One thing bothers me about the government in general. It seems this country has forgotten the United States is a republic form of government not a democracy. If you look at history the founding fathers of this country were terrified of a democracy. Look it up there is a vast difference between the 2 forms of government. I wish the bias media would report on this. Here is a good website that explains the difference there are many more http://www.c4cg.org/republic.htm So to the politicians please quit calling this county a democracy.

Everyone needs to watch this it is a bit long but good.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5959251658237547562

McCain needs to reiterate this and bring up the issue behind what Obama’s tax plans would do more to our economy.

LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY! A letter from Main Street USA

Socialization of Mortgages pushed by progressive liberals created subprime mortgages with the sole purpose of allowing under-qualified individuals to get home loans. Financial service companies, banks, and brokers were pressured by “social organizers” in congress and their cronies to abandon good business practices and sound financial principles in order to extend unearned privileges to their political base. This great experiment in social engineering came to an end as the housing market peaked, fuel prices soared, and under-qualified homeowners began defaulting in droves on loans they should never have been given in the first place. Tocqueville presciently warned us that democracies are doomed to failure when the governed discover that they can vote themselves largess from the state treasury, and, I might caveat, if they act on that inclination.

The financial crisis is a direct consequence of progressive socialism. Barney Franks, Chris Dodd, and Barack Obama were all tightly in bed and confederate with those who have seriously damaged our national economy. These notables, among many others in their socialist progressive ranks who engineered this crisis are culpable of a great sin of commission against civilization, against truth, against liberty, against us. Hindsight is always better than foresight. Nevertheless, in time, a few sighted individuals in congress realized the threat posed by these subprime instruments. When Senator John McCain, with great foresight, co-sponsored legislation to create a new regulatory agency to rein in the lending abuses at Freddie and Fannie, he warned that the path we were on could lead to a severe financial crisis. The Senate’s Bank and Finance Chairman, Barney Frank marshaled the opposition and claimed everything was fine, that the financial markets were strong, that the subprimes were no threat; and implied the biggest threat to the finance system came from people (like McCain) who challenged confidence in the finance system. Frank also hinted that McCain’s regulatory act was designed to hurt minorities who were the largest beneficiaries of subprime loans: effectively using the race card to chill open discussion and to shut down further efforts at regulation. Along party lines, the democrats killed every effort to reform subprime lending practices. Awhile back, while the rest of the intimidated and/or oblivious republicans sat silently by, Senator Obama’s law firm filed lawsuits, with his active participation, against lenders in successful strong-arming attempts to make them lower their lending standards and issue greater numbers of subprime loans to unqualified minorities (I guess this is what is now known as “Community Organizer”). Senators Obama and Dodd are huge recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac donations, and were close associates with the Fannie Mae CEO, Franklin Raines, who ran Fannie Mae into the ground using subprime schemes. It is the progressive left that torpedoed regulatory attempts as the risks of socialized mortgages started to be apparent.

The conservative corps hasn’t helped much and shares the guilt. They passively betrayed conservative principals and allowed the progressives to do their dastardly deed. They stood by, weak kneed and intimidated by the left’s implied threat of painting them as anti-minority should they stand in the way of creative home ownership for low income families. Not only did they betray the foundational principals of individual liberty and individual accountability, they betrayed the American people by falling asleep while on watch. I’m angry with our president for abandoning principle, and I’m angry with my elected officials for taking their hands off the wheel and letting progressive subversives take hold of the helm with impunity. The conservatives are less guilty than those who engineered, implemented and forced subprime loans into our financial markets, but are nevertheless still guilty of sins of omission because they let it happen through inaction.

We expect wolves to be wolves…it’s in their nature. But we also expect our shepherds to stand against the wolves and say “not here, not now, not under my watch!” Now, both the predatory progressives and the anemic guardians of liberty want us to believe that the cure for socialized mortgage problems is to rush headlong into socialism via the largest redistribution of wealth in US History. Are they daft? They want to sell our children into indentured servitude with an FDR-style bailout that only prolongs the pain, delays and amplifies the inevitable price, and simultaneously does more to destroy individual liberty and accountability than any other act in our history. And to this day, many of our watchmen continue to remain silent, or in some cases even cooperate with the progressive socialists’ bailout attempts to force the taxpayers to protect (by bearing the cost) these unqualified mortgagees from foreclosure on their ill-gotten homes. Fortunately, there are many on both sides of the aisle who sense the fatal flaw in progressive socialism and are turning against it.

A word about FDR’s pyramid solution to economic problems is in order. FDR’s policies shifted the cost of his generation’s excesses onto future generations. This schema worked as long as the population was rapidly growing since that allowed the cost to be spread thinner and thinner; but such is not the case today. The size of our workforce is not growing. There is no future human sea over which we can scatter the consequence of our damnable greed, political pandering, and economic naiveté. We are at a juncture where the confluence of costs for entitlements which have their foundation in FDR’s policies coupled with the liberal extension of credit to obviously unqualified buyers is demanding that the piper get paid; and get paid he will, one way or the other.

Let the chips fall where they may. After the bailout failed its first vote in the House, Representative Jim Marshall said he voted for the bailout and is prepared to “let the chips fall where they may”. It was his abuse of this term to justify voting for the bailout that motivated me to write this short article. Representative Jim Marshall got it partially correct: it is time to let the chips fall where they may; but putting our children and our children’s children into bondage is not where the chips naturally fall unless we rearrange them through congressional fiat. Let the chips fall into the laps of those who created and benefited from benighted socialistic economic policies. Let the markets correct, let institutions and individuals that have benefited from bad policy bear the natural costs (they certainly benefited while the bubble lasted), let individuals who have overextended themselves through unwise credit bear the costs. Indeed Representative Marshall, we SHOULD let the chips fall where they may; and that is why a bailout should not be enacted.

Socialism as a cure for Socialism? Why would anybody in their right mind think that the cure for failed socialized policies is more socialism? Do they even think about what they are saying? If we want to restore confidence in the US economy, we need to back away from socialism’s chasm and return to the principles of individual accountability and individual liberty. Let the chips fall where they may! That is the ONLY sound way to restore substantive confidence in our economy. That is the only hope for true correction. Anything else is a deception – a magician’s sleight of hand designed to do little more than to seduce us into false hope, or belief that his smoke and mirrors has really disappeared the beast that moments ago stood menacingly before our eyes. Thus the beast is merely concealed from immediate view, and its hunger pangs grow in intensity. It won’t retire permanently until its hunger is satiated. Personally, I’d rather feed it on those that bred it than on the liberty and prosperity of my children and grandchildren.

It is the guilty who are desperately crying out for a bailout to cover the depth and breadth of their perfidy. Those who actively and passively created this monster are desperate to pacify the beast in hopes that its hunger will be satiated long enough for them to gracefully exit the stage. There is no doubt that there is a price to pay for violating natural economic principles. As we face the bar, we must not sell our liberty; we must not enslave futurity because we tremble in fear of present pain. Cowardice guarantees weakness and defeat. Those who have actively done this to the nation should be summarily dismissed and subjected to the full demands of justice and the wrath of the electorate. Those who have passively contributed would be wise to step up as patriots now or risk bearing the shame of weak cowards in the annals of history. Your constituents expect, nay, DEMAND that you hold up the light of liberty and fight her battles with honor even if it looks like the cause may be lost and even if it means provoking the beast to your own personal peril.

Looking courageously into the abyss. Largely enabled by American ingenuity and American example, several nations of the world are in ascension. China is adopting western-style educational institutions. They are creating a large workforce of scientists and engineers in a well-devised plan to become the center of creative thought and innovation in tomorrow’s world. India is exploiting the web to cost-effectively perform jobs that previously were geographically constrained. America’s economic engine has been the envy of the world and we see others trying to emulate us. This reality will create increased competitive pressure on American institutions and workers to work harder, and to work more efficiently. Protectionism as a strategy for individuals, market segments, or the nation’s economy will only continue to decimate the value of the dollar in an increasingly integrated world economy. We must stop deceiving ourselves and return to liberty, which is America’s strength. I believe in liberty. No other nation can keep up with a nation of free men and women who have accepted the awful but courageous mantle of individual responsibility and risen in faith to receive the new day. No other nation can engender comparable patriotic zeal and love in men and women who are protected in liberty (and individual accountability) by their government. No other nation or people can keep up with an America who remembers who she is and returns to her strength. We are in for some rough times, but we’ve been through rough times before. We stand to lose imaginary value in our assets. Many jobs that were built on sand will fall, the insubstantial dreams of many might be disrupted; but our eyes will be open, we’ll face the future with courage and that which remains will be vibrant, substantial, and real. We’ll break our sick additions to credit and materialism and return to virtue, faith, hope, honest work and charity. Do we have the courage to believe in truth, in liberty, in individual accountability? Or, are we so weak and decadent that we prefer the imaginary security of socialism to the vibrant and powerful prospects of real liberty?

A free and giving people. There are no other people on earth that have demonstrated the magnanimity and generosity of Americans. The outpouring of hard goods, money and strong hands from American, whether at home or abroad, following natural disasters is reason for great hope that we still have a strong virtuous core. As Gordon B. Hinckley once pointed out: the world is an immeasurably better place because of the generosity of America on behalf of its former enemies following WWII. But the government has destructively interfered with the healthy relationship between the giver and the receiver of ennobling charity. The giver, by virtue of hard work, discipline, and sacrifice is in possession of the means to help others transcend their station and be lifted out of failed philosophies, corrupt cultures, and self-limiting lifestyles. In the proper charitable framework, both the giver and the receiver are ennobled: The giver by virtue of lifting another to a higher frame of reference, and the receiver through grateful acknowledgment that the gift is enabled by a higher way. The true purpose of charity should always include the ennobling internalization of virtue in both the giver and receiver. When the government inserts itself in the middle of this transaction, it inevitably perpetuates error, reinforces weakness, and demeans both the giver and the receiver: the giver because the gift is extorted, and the receiver because he receives an entitlement that sustains him in error and destroys his moral fiber. Thereby, the government also acts contrary to the principles of individual liberty and accountability. Entitlements, or i.e., charity by extortion destroy the gift and the gratitude that empower it to changes lives, its efficacy to ennoble is eliminated. In my opinion a gift should be held close enough to the receiver to instill positive desire, but far enough away that they have to take a step out of their beloved chains to reach it.

Looking to past patriots and posterity. We are all in for some hard times. Yes, we are going to have to face the awful reality that our entitlements are fiction, that our hubris is a threat to our prosperity, and that there is a price and pain to be borne for foolishness. Pain is inevitable for these foolish policies and excesses; but future generations will hold us cowards if we allow our elected servants to betray our (and their) liberty at this crucial hour. We owe this debt to prior patriots, to the present and to our posterity. To do less is to dismiss the sacrifices in blood, toil and tears made by prior generations on behalf of the liberty bequeathed to us. To do less is to betray our children and every successive generation of Americans AND the world. To do less is to succumb to fear and foolishness: becoming the very generation that put the knife in the heart of liberty as we vainly pursue false security and numb ease.

Now is the Time. If we cling to our notion of entitlements, if we continue worshiping the works of our hands, if we persist in the fiction that we can independently choose our actions and the attendant consequences, then we are destined to rush headlong into weakness, fear, decline and self-destruction. Now is the time to stand tall among nations. Now is the time to hold firm the faith of our forbearers in individual liberty and individual accountability. Now is the time to believe in the strength of America’s founding principles and principals. Now is the time to show socialism our backs and return to strength, to honor, to truth. Now is the time to let the chips fall where they may and stop trying to move them around. Now is the time to stop reinforcing weakness and corruption, failed philosophies, and unproductive lifestyles. Now is the time to stop protecting individuals and institutions from the natural consequences of their choices. Now is the time to refresh charity by allowing givers to lift recipients away from their broken worlds instead of being forced by government authority to sustain people IN their broken frameworks.

Let the chips fall where they may!

Let’s see, if this were me and I had to deal with the IRS, would they let me keep my toys, car(s), home or even paycheck? I can answer that…NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

We need to freeze all the payouts to those CEO’s and all the politicians who also got paid off and also jail them, but if we did this, then who would run our government?

Excellent summary and timelime.

Now ONLY if our Country’s media had the honesty to report it.

No oversight on the fox in the hen house. Also the fact that banks pick and choose who gets what rate based on a credit score. If you are buying a home that is valued fairly in the market, and it is your primary residence there should only be one fixed rate for everyone. If the person{s} Credit/debit ratio is unbalanced don’t loan the money period. The banks are greedy and set up many borrowers to fail as they could not afford the high rates or ARMS. Ever think that ARM really stands for strong arm robbery.

Your article started off on the right track…the cause of the economic crisis. But, what if, instead of looking at “What?”, our questioning turns to “Why?” Self profit, greed, what’s in it for me! When you start to peel away the layers of the onion, you will find that the root cause of our economic crisis stems from people’s desire to fulfill their own personal interests. So, the next question is, how do we correct this problem? Do we try to solve the root cause or just put a bandaid on it and hope it “heals itself”? Michael Laitman provides an interesting view on how we can accomplish thison his site.

THIS IS A GREAT WEBSITE!!! IT’S VERY INFORMATIVE AND MAKES YOU REALIZE ALL THE REAL TRUTHS ABOUT OBAMA…THE US WILL BE IN GREAT DANGER IF HE IS ELECTED!!

Let the truth be known.

Wonderfully and succinctly written. I literally sent this to everyone I know.

I keep seeing where McCain is falling further behind in the polls. When McCain and Obama first started running for the presidency, the financial crisis hadn’t occurred just then, or wasn’t in full swing as it is now. I can trace the governments failure to protect it’s citizens clear back to the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. President Bush did not cause 9/11 nor is he responsible for the current financial meltdown, our congress and senate are more responsible since they do not want to work together for the good of all the people. Could it be that running for the presidency today is not as appealing as it was two years ago and that McCain sees this as a no win presidency for either him or Obama? Whoever gets elected will not be able to undo what has been done, no matter how much blame they try to push to the other party and the major reason is that it will take both parties to agree (HA!) to do the right thing for the people and our fast dying democracy, and we know that will not happen.

Politics aside- American needs only the truth- un-abridged, unadultered-

Let the rest of the world watch this video

Buzz it up

Corrections need to be made to this unchecked article
1. The CRA passed by PREZ Carter only gave affordable loans to low income housing and it did so with tight standards for 30 years. If the republican house and senate hadn’t deregulated and pushed for more home ownership, banks would have continued to lend responsibly.
2. Clinton in 1995 operated under a republican house and senate. Remember republicans gained control in 1994-2006. The deregulation and pushing banks to lower standards came in this republican era.
3. Senator Phil Gram’s 2 deregulation bills allowed for mergers of banks, investment and insurance companies that borrowed and gave out more money than their balance sheets had with no oversight. These bills were passed in a republican house and senate by an overwhelming two thirds of a vote. So Clinton had no veto power whatsoever to stop the republicans.
4. The CRA asks lenders to meet credit needs of low income borrowers, not give them loans 10 times their income, which occurred after the deregulation of the 3 industries in 1999.
5. The first to default from the housing bubble were not these low income neighborhoods, rather real estate investors who bought too high thinking prices would continue to rise and those who bought in subprime to keep payments down in order to flip for profit. It was easy for them to let these properties foreclose since they did not live in the properties and they do not see them as home, rather as investments.
6. You never mentioned Reagan fed chair appointee Greenspan, who by keeping the interest rate low for so long created a rise in housing price. Low interest rates also allowed banks to borrow massive amounts of non existent monies to lend to investors and homebuyers causing inflation.
7. The Housing Enterprise Regulatory Act of 2005 was not the only regulation bill introduced. 9 others were and none made it. You cannot say democrats killed the bill since Urban Affairs was controlled by the GOP. Richard Shelby was the chairman and Paul S. Sarbanes was the ranking member. The GOP had a two person majority over the Democrats. Killing it in committee was a bi-partisan choice because the bill asked for asset control, not only regulation.
8. Why didn’t Senator McCain co-sponsor the bill when it was reintroduced in 2007? It was passed by a democratic house and senate with out the assets provisions.
9. Obama sued citigroup for redlining and not complying with the CRA. Never in his whole case does he argue for subprime loans to be given out to the low income families, nor does the CRA read as a subprime lending bill.
10. You forgot to mention McCains campaign managers and advisors who owned the companies that lobbyied for Fannie and Freddie; Rick Davis Wayne Berman and Charlie Black, Mark Buse, 19 overall with 8 other lobbyists from AIG all who have racked almost 2 million dollars for deregulation. Not to mention the $250,000 given to Mccain by top fortune 500 corpotate CEO’s.
11. You need to know that the CRA did not cause this
12. Obama did not cause this
13. What caused this was overspending, growth of government, deregulation and low fed rates that occurred from 1994-2006 under a republican controlled house and senate