Our leaders have not exactly covered themselves in glory the past few weeks, actually years would be more accurate. Who is the biggest loser? 1. John McCain. Obvious choice, the so-called Maverick, the enemy of all things wasteful, pork or earmark-related, tried to make a high profile play but ended up meekly doing the bidding of Wall Street. If he had joined the House Republicans and stood up, he'd be riding a wave of public admiration into the White House. 2. Ben Bernanke. The original Dr. asleep at the switch, he fiddled while the housing market imploded. Back to Princeton for you. 3. Hank Paulson. He dicked around for a year or so, then rushed in demanding $700 billion, failing which the sky was to fall tomorrow. He ended up with both. Please, no act II for this duffus. 4. Barrack Obama. The most brilliant, insightful, charismatic, inspiring and audacious leader in the history of the world was conspicuous by his absence. His performance, or lack thereof, made Jimmy Carter look like Winston Churchill. 5. Barney Frank. Diehard defender of FNM/FRE implausibly tried to blame meltdown on republicans until bitch slapped into mewling submission by Bill O'Reilly. 6. Dick Fuld. Arrogant CEO of once proud Lehman got cold cocked in his own firm's gym. 7. Bob Steel. CEO of Wachovia, object of man love from Jim Cramer, once respected banker and Wall Street BSD revealed to be lying POS. Not content to mislead shareholders, he made deal to save bank with Citi, then dropped them for WFC bid that would fill his pockets with enormous severance package. Desperately requires the same treatment Fuld got, only with baseball bat. 8. Chris Cox. Being SEC Chairman is normally a fairly sleepy job that leads to big Wall Street slot after retirement. Cox managed to liven up his tenure by giving green light for massive naked short debacle that destroyed most of his potential employers. Could have made republican party obvious choice for investors, but left most thinking former marxzist Obama would be a better choice. 9. President Bush. Made valiant effort to secure "Worst President in History of Country" title with 11th hour financial crisis. He appointed Paulson, Cox and Bernanke, seemed oblivous to entire crisis until trotted out to give dumb speech. 10. Angelo Mozilo. More commonly known as "Suntan Man", Mozilo rode the mortgage wave to a huge fortune and cashed out just as it crashed, leaving shareholders, employees and homeowners to clean up the mess.
Its interesting that you have people who did nothing to prevent the crisis higher on the list than Bush who, whether you are for or against the war, spent more than all the other administrations before him combined, increasing our national debt 4 trillion dollars to 10 trillion in just 8 years.
I was looking for losers specifically from the bailout. No question, Bush severely damaged the conservative "brand", although I would argue he was never a true conservative. I'm not sure what I would call him, a big government neo con I guess.