Quote Originally Posted by OCDshaver View Post
Clever, but you don’t get to get away with that one. The government is NOT me. Most of the time it doesn’t even represent me. Maybe in years past you could generalize like that but I find that one a little difficult get down. As our government continues to get bigger and more self serving, both sides of the aisle are becoming increasingly disenfranchised. The years of George Bush helped a lot of people on the right let go of their republican loyalties. But that did not make them loyal to the democrats. No, they realized that the gov’t was not representing them. After 8 years of Obama, perhaps some of the left will feel the same….or not. I never made any demand for a little pink house. Nor did anyone I know. But your community organizer president did. He helped the radicals right here in Chicago organize against banks such as Bell Financial as they demanded loans to low income families. I watched on the news when it happened. The only thing was, at the time I was too naïve to understand where the outrage was coming from. It wasn’t coming from individuals. It was coming from the organizers. Washington continued to pressure banks over the years to loosen up those lending standards (a march led by Barney Frank). Was that regulation or the elimination of it? In the wake of this there were many people who took advantage of the landscape in order to buy what they should have never bought. But the demand for it was made possible by gov’t NOT ME. The banks finally said, sure we’ll make the loans (and a lot of money) provided your stooge Fannie or Freddie buys this crap from us…..and they did. Gov’t was supposed to be you and me but did you really have a say in any of that? If any of us actually could have known what we SHOULD know now it wouldn’t have happened that way. And looking at the whole mess of artificially low interest rates via the FED, Fannie and Freddie, Congress and all of its influence, none of it the product of the free market or capitalism. Yet when this bubble burst, people like yourself tell us that capitalism failed us. What a laugh. What part of that was capitalism or the free market? What part of giving people what they wanted without being able to pay for it represents capitalism?
Hey hold on here!! You are making all kinds of claims and attributing things to what I said that aren't true!

NOTE:

I never said capitalism failed us! Never - I don't know how to say that! I think it's impossible really. What went on during the housing bubble is pure capitalism - it didn't fail us. Capitalism is rife with bubbles going back as far as the markets origins. Google the South Sea company. This is nothing new - it's just that this one was so big and encompassing...

Moreover, this (for me) is not about who was in power at the time. I couldn't care less if it was a Democrat or a Republican... nor will history.

Ok that said - here is a great quote, "Remember, the purpose of economics is to make simple things complicated so as to exclude most of the public from debates on the most important policy issues that affect their lives."

Hence, I don't know how to address your feeling of alienation with respect to your government - sorry. But I will say it is your job to educate yourself as well, and saying it's not individuals faults but rather organizers faults is a cop-out. You empower the organizer. That's what democracy is all about...

Remember too that a free market is exactly what causes bubbles!! And nobody was "giving" anybody anything!! Sure you can look back now and say that was the case with 20/20 vision, but to think that people thought they weren't going to gain is silly!! Not this soon after the tech-bubble! Seriously man!


As for regulation - the government can push for all it wants! The Fed effed up sure - but they aren't beholden to the government. They should have caught this one. But that's the thing about bubbles... greed seeps in everywhere. The SEC should have caught it too! Most importantly, government auditors should have caught it.