SOWELL: Dems avoid blame for crisis

The Dems can dodge, can obfuscate, deflect, and lie, lie, lie, but their "chickens are coming home to roost".

Yesterday's congressional hearing, chaired by Mr. Waxman, illustrated how hard the Democrats are working to shift blame away from Fannie Mae and Mr. Obama. If "the chickens do get home to roost" it better not be with Obama in the White House. FDR had a hard time reviving the economy in 1932. It will be more difficult for the next president to spend us out of the recession due to the Federal Debt. We have to get business going again on Main Street without bringing on disastrous inflation.

Obama=Depression. That much is clear. America needs a FISCAL HAWK. That's John McCain, not Obama. These other folks, Frank,Dodd, Biden, Pelosi, Reid---all need to go to jail for what they did, or rather didn't do, to stop this thing from happening.

THe most important line in this article is that Republicans don't know how to counterattack. This has been a line we have been saying for years. The Republican leadership is weak beyond belief. They will lose this election because they lack the leadership to take on a very weak opponent. This is the same in the state and local party offices as well. They are all weak.

Republicans DO deserve to lose this election, because they are running a pathetically weak campaign. Were it not for Sarah Palin, there would be nobody out there shining light on Obama's poor judgement. What the GOP needs is a right wing version of James Carville.

Now, just how are liberals and Democrats to blame for the housing mess, given that the GOP has been the majority power in both houses of Congress from 1992 to 2004? A party without a majority, in either the Congress or Senate, somehow is able to hoodwink, outsmart and outflank all the GOP subcommittee and committee chairmen, all the GOP various-caucus chairman -- even the hammer himself, tom delay -- and have such significant housing policies/legislation/regulations enacted? Hmmmmm...either the Democrats are crafty than we all believed (NOT!), that the GOP was asleep at-the-wheel for over a decade or the GOP supported the housing measures as well as it benefited their Wall Street, mortgage banking and house building special interests? Arguably, then, it was the GOP -- and not the liberals and democrats -- are really responsible for the housing mess. You all conveniently, and not unexpectedly, overlooked who was really running the hen houses...

Let's see...the repeal of the Glass-Steagal act of 1933 was done by the Democrats? No, it was done by inserting something like 65 pages of dense languange into a 1500 page omnibus spending bill on the eve of its passage by a GOP-controlled committee in 1999 or thereabouts. Reagan preached small government and most of the country went along with it. Of course, all of us had to go along for the ride -- we had no choice other than emigrate somewhere else, but with the world-wide meltdown even that escapism would clearly not have worked. The GOP whole-hearted embraced deregulating everything. It was the spirit of the times, and when the times were good, profits were very, very good. But now the times aren't so good, and the free market is not being allowed to kill all those over-leveraged firms that were allowed to adopt such ludicrous financial positions by a GOP-led charge towards full deregulation. The seeds of the sub-prime mortgage crisis were sown when income verification became a joke, when ARMs became stylish, and when those charged with making projections supposed -- quite incorrectly -- that real estate would continue to appreciate in value as it had done for the past 30 or so years, so that even if the borrower couldn't obtain affordable refinancing, the foreclosure would still net a property with sufficient equity. The GOP needs to take a long, sober look in the mirror and realize that they bear principal responsibility for the sorry state of the financial and real estate markets. Only deregulation allowed this highly non-linear system to oscillate out of control -- basically like driving a vehicle with no shocks on a rutted muddy road at about 25 mph -- it is a crazy ride. I suggest reading James Gleick's book "Chaos" to attain a reasonable grasp of the inherent non-linearity of so many of the aspects of our existence. Or you could just point out that it was all an evil plot hatched in the 70s by forces bent on subverting the American way of life. That works, too.

dcrolg (amazing how so many brilliant, armchair Web commentators are afraid to give their names), like most lefties, loves to speak/write in generalities. The aricle above provides specifics, which is the main purpose of it. Trite cliches are the main weapon of the left/Dems, and it certainly seems to work, as the general public is led around by the nose with their rantings. Not "arguably," dcrolg, hyperbole.

Thomas Sowell is a great economic author, but unfortunately, he mixes economics with politics and finds himself avoiding facts. Most of this article is accurate, except that it completely avoids the fact that one failing institution, or 3 failing institutions, should not have threatened our entire economy. That is happening because of de-regulation and lack of regulation. Credit-default swaps were not regulated at all and the wall between banks and investment banks were broken down (in 1999 by Republicans). Those are what caused this problem, not greed on Wall Street or the failings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's terrifying for a Republican, like Sowell, to admit that some regulation is necessary and good. But it is true. Please, Mr. Sowell, please stick to economics and drop politics from your economic rhetoric. You're ruining your good reputation.

Pendamon, you are right on as usual and here is a roosting chicken for the Demorats. If you want to see the real facts behind the meltdown, please check out this youtube video. It is not your typical slant and goes back to the Carter years and tracks every fact and detail through the present time. All the facts check out and every voter should see it before they make up their minds. I believe many will be outraged. It's an eye opener. http://www.youtube.com/TheMouthPeace

Regarding Pendamon's comment that Dems' chickens are coming home to roost, no, they are not. If they were, Dems wouldn't be holding on to Congress and Obama wouldn't be nearly 8-10% ahead of McCain in the polls. After having worked in a normal job where accountability and personal responsibility are facts of life, the easiest job in the world would be that of a liberal pol: no risk of being held accountable by either pesky constituents or an accommodating mainstream news media, no risk of not being reelected by your district so long as you bring the pork home, no worries about the hypocrisy or moral shortcomings of your personal life or business dealings seeing the light of day --- unlike those ignorant, intolerant, racist, gun-loving Republicans who deserve unrelenting scrutiny. Mr. Sowell asks, "Or do facts not matter? How quaint --- of course they don't --- we're in the Age of Obama. Facts will matter in the future when that outrageously high taxes that our children and grandchildren are paying go to nothing more than barely keeping up with the exponentially rising interest payments on the astronomical national debts accrued by the federal government in our lifetimes. Facts will matter when America is so fiscally strained and drained that it can't respond to the challenges posed in the future such as our exploding entitlement programs, a growingly assertive China and Russia, and proliferation of nuclear weapons and other WMD technology, to name a few. But not now --- we're going to hope for change, and give a community activist a chance to finish the job that Jimmy Carter almost succeeded in doing to this country.

Deregulation did not cause this. This was clearly caused by Democrats (primarily) and Republicans -- but not true conservatives. Deregulation had nothing to do with oversight and accountability; it had to do with government controls over prices and supply (socialist ideas). Reagan's deregulation policies and tax cuts were the foundation for the prosperity we have experienced for the last 20+ years. It took a great deal of socialist engineering to finally bring it to a grinding halt. TAH questioned whether the failure of two or three financial institutions could threaten the economy. If those institutions are multi-trillion dollar entities which are allowed to grossly over-extend their reach by socailist Democrats like Dodd, Pelosi, Frank, and Obama, the answer is "YES". The question is not so much who bears some blame, but who bears the most blame. And the more important question is, "Whose policies, going forward, will make matters worse or better?" It should be clear to all Americans that European style socialism does not work, unless you like 25% unemployment and a langushing economy. After a Jimmy Carter, or a Bill Clinton, Americans realize that liberals are an embarrassment and detriment to our nation. But the message of "fairness" and class warfare resonates in our emotions. We FEEL like the pragmatic and self-serving (as in U.S. first) policies of the conservatives just seem mean. So, we vote back in a liberal, and the cycle starts again. It seems we are back at the nadir of this cycle.

dcrolg seems to forget that Republicans never had a 60 vote majority in the Senate. That has allowed Democrats to block all attempts to reform Fannie and Freddie. And tah, odd as it sounds there are two institutions in particular that failed and have done more than threaten our economy. How can this be? Perhaps tah should search out Alan Greenspans comments regarding just how that can happen. Or even John McCain's comments on the floor of the Senate. Or research the reams of articles and editorials in the Wall Street Journal that did a great job of outlining just how the current financial meltdown would (and now has) occurred. For these particular two institutions hold over half of all the mortgages in the US amounting to over $5 trillion (yep, with a "t"). They also spread the pain by packaging and selling securities based on the mortgages they held. Wall Street bought the securities because Wall Street believed they could not go wrong with a security that like a T-Bill, is backed by the Treasury. In cause you didn't guess, the two institutions are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Which in reality, as McCain and others said over the years, is really one institution, the US Treasury. Welcome to the wonderful world of Democrat economics.

Senator Dodd's father, also a senator, was a crook - like father, like son. Frank is a blowhard who, according to the leftist newspapers, ran a good brothel, but has always been a lousy Congressman. Then the list for probable major criminals gets longer..... Carter, Clinton, Reno, Rubin, Schumer, all the lefty lawyers that stunk up Washington during the Clinton Administration, such other luminaries as Hillariously Rotten herself.... and on and on ad infinitum, ad nauseam. It will take a large TEAM of special counsel types to sort through the real facts of this intentional attempt to destroy this country's economy, but it needs to GET UNDERWAY..... Already the democriminals are busily destroying the evidence, and soon the 700 billion they have stolen from us will be gone, and they will be back for many more billions if we don't get the facts together. Be aware. The leftist newspapers and other hate America first last and always media types are already planning to document the burning of the Constitution in the well of the Senate..... This is not a blame game.... It's a time to prove it game, and the longer the republicrooks continue to wimp out, the quicker the change to a socialist police state will come..... and these opportunities to speak out will be gone forever....... Every numbnut lefty who doesn't think this is where we are headed is just that.... a numbnut..........

When the stock market began falling, why was not the market(trading) suspended. By so doing, it would have preserved the investments of individuals, pension funds, senior citizen fixed incomes. It would have prevented the short selling and other schemes used by the super rich, and the deliberate urgency of traders to sell everything in sight in order to get commissions before they lost their jobs. In other words, it it would have moderated a whole lot of problems. After all, Wall street shuts down any time it wants to...does it not for MLK day???