Not true McCain is only good for the Big oil corporations. He got $2 million from them. Big wall street firms gave money to Obama way more than McCain because they know that McCain will not care about the economy and they know that McCain is more of the same who voted 90% on the Bush-Cheney polices....
Where have you been in the last year and a half? BTW it is not "they", its us. There is no "they" that control and conspire against us.
Big oil is not the enemy, people who think that only do so because they need a villain. Politicians use them as a scape goat because they know people wont actually do the research to find out whats behind high oil prices (hint: NOT oil companies)
exactly. not only do oil companies NOT set oil prices, but they pay massive taxes. Exxon alone paid an amount equal to the lower 50% of all Americans!!! its just politically popular to go after these guys cause oil prices are high.
Last time I looked, I wasn't on the Ways and Means Committee, so I use the term they. If you think the economy is bad, you must be pretty young. It can get worse, a lot worse. Believe me. Actually, I am amused by all these young Obama enthusiasists. They have only known an economy that churned out ever increasing numbers of high paying jobs to support their increasingly expensive lifestyles. I predict a lot of shock and outrage when their dreams are shattered by the reality of dealing with a socialist economy.
Of course the economy can get worse, that doesnt mean its not bad now. I suppose you would like to wait until then before we do something about it? About the young Obama enthusiasts, I do understand where that generalization comes from, just like I understand where the old pro-mccain "bomb everybody thats not white" generalization comes from, however I think we can all agree here that generalizations are useless and just plain stupid. I'm young (21) and I'm for obama. Why? I will tell you just to prove to you that (whether you think im right or not) your generalizations make more apparent the biases that you have that keeps you from making a logical decision. One thing more, this was written a couple days ago for my peers , hence the explanatory tone. What I really hate about "picking a side" is that no matter which side you pick, you automatically become associated with the corresponding extremists. If you vote Mccain, you're automatically lumped in with pro-every-single conflict rednecks, and ridiculously wealthy people that can't stand the idea of paying 12% of their 10 million a year in taxes, instead of the 2% they're accustomed to. If you vote Obama you of course become associated with protesters who really are only protesting the fact that its not the 60's anymore, and green young people who think some cricket in Alaska is more important than the economic future of our entire country. I hate it. Oh well though. What I think is important is that people realize that our country is not a static place. The world, and America especially, is more dynamic than ever. Information is exchanged at the speed of light. If a bomb explodes in Bagdad, minutes later that news is beamed into our living rooms in New Jersey and then sent to a Blackberry in LA, then streamed wirelessly on a mac in Hong Kong. Decisions are made, deals are struck, and lives are decided all in the blink of an eye. The world around us is changing at a blistering pace as well, and we have to react equally as fast. I think we can all agree that the world, and our country, are constantly changing. How then, can we adopt a "conservative" or "liberal" view and expect to remain that way indefinitely? Do you really think our country needs the SAME solutions all the time? Of course not, because it doesn't have the same problems all the time. The problems of our past our not the problems of today and vice versa. We have to look at the country in the context of now. Not 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. Now. A very famous economist once said "when the facts change, my mind changes". Yet politicians in this country (and a lot of regular people as well) seem to think that the facts never change, our situation never changes, and or country never changes, so they don't have to reform their opinions and ideas. Is this day and age, thats ludicrous. That being said here's my take on our current situation, and what I think will help. The Economy This is in the forefront of everybody's mind, as well it should be. The problems with or economy are as follows (in no particular order). Credit crisis, energy costs, housing depreciation, inflation, and unemployment. So what gives? Why is our economy in the crapper? I'll give a brief overview, and this is more fact than opinion. It all started with the secondary market. People usually invest in stocks and bonds. We know what stocks are (you better), but bonds are less understood I think. Basically, a bond is a loan. You lend your money out, are paid interest, and then get your principal back . Who does the money get lent to? All kinds of people. You, me, the federal government, cities, counties, companies. Anybody that may need a loan at some point. Here's how it works. You want to buy a house, so you go to get a loan. You get approved at the money is given to you. Who gave you the money? Well the mortgage company of course, but it doesn't end there. The vast majority of mortgage companies don't hold on to their loans. They sell them. The mortgage company calls up some bond guy on Wall street and says: "Hey, I have a loan here for $250,000 at 7% interest for 30 years with 10 down, do you know anybody that wants to invest in this?" The Wall Street banker than calls his customers who want to invest their money. The customer then sends the $250,000 to the Wall Street banker who then sends to the mortgage company (pays them some kind of fee) who then transfers the debt over to the Wall Street banker and his customer who now get to make the interest off of their money. Everybody's happy. It's the mortgage companies job to find people who need loans, then sell the loans to Wall Street, who then find people to invest in the loans in the form of bonds (mortgage backed securities). Of course this is not exactly how it works, the mortgages are pooled into billions of dollars and bond holders have no way of knowing who has their money, but i hope you get the idea. (continued)
Now that we have that out of the way, what went wrong? Well, to protect the everyday people who invest in bonds, the bonds themselves are rated by some combination of letters, AAA being the best. Customers who invest in the AAA loans have a very low chance of any kind of default, but also get paid less interest. The greater the risk (rating), the greater the reward (interest rate) and the lesser the risk the lesser the reward. The most venerated bond rating company is Standard and Poor's (yea thats where the S&P 500 comes from). In a nutshell, these guys dropped the ball. The financial companies that were selling the mortgage backed securities were incurring debt to by more debt. Some of these companies were leveraged 50:1. That means that they had 50 times as much debt as cash. Can you imagine that? Go into your bank now with only $10,000 and nothing else, give it to the loan officer and tell him you want a loan of $500,000 and you will let him hold the $10,000 as collateral. Think that would fly? Thats exactly what these financial companies (the Wall Street guy in our example) were doing. Except, they didn't have $10,000, they had hundreds of millions. Multiply that by 50 and see how much debt these guys were carrying. So what did they use all that debt money for? To buy mortgage backed securities (and other debts). Basically they were buying debt with debt. Kind of like you getting a loan from the bank, then using that money as a down payment for a bigger loan etc etc again and again. Not the most responsible thing. These companies were raking in the cash though. Because all this debt was being bought up, the mortgage companies could pretty much sell any loan to the secondary market. Result? Every degenerate with a pulse was getting 100%-110% financing. They bond guys figured worst case, the guy defaults, housing prices are going up anyway, they could probably make some money back. Then it all came crashing down like a house of cards. Once people started defaulting on their loans, even though its only a small number of them, it caused a domino effect. These companies had so much debt with so little assets they couldn't cover their losses. Over night (literally) billion dollar companies went down the drain. Hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs. The whole stock market tanks thousands of points because investors don't know which company will go under next. It was also discovered the some of the analysts working at S&P were rating companies just before they went and worked for the making far more money. Can you say conflict of interest? How did this effect our economy? Inflation. Because the stock market was tanking so badly the federal reserve had to drop interest rates substantially to pump the stock market back up. This creates more money. Does it help? Yes. However do you know what happens when you simply print money? It become worth less, thats inflation. Thats why the dollar is weak compared to other world currencies. Credit crisis. Because people got burnt so bad buying what they thought to be good debt, a lot of investors are scared to reinvest their money. Debt is not a bad thing and it is necessary for growth. As we have seen too much can be very bad, but without it, it makes it very hard for companies and people to grow, which leads us to our next problem. What about housing? Housing prices have fell through the floor. Why? Because people who are foreclosing have to move out, and even good borrowers can't get lans because everyone is so scared of lending money. More empty houses equals large supply, the fact that a lot of people can't get financed for them equals no demand. Do we know what happens when large supply meets no demand? The average families largest asset just got devalued by a whole lot. Unemployment. This one is a no-brainer. If these huge companies are forced to lay off hundreds of thousands of people because of the problems I just mentioned, obviously that leaves a lot o people out of work. High energy costs. Oil is by far the most important commodity on Earth. The price of oil has doubled in the last year. Doubled. It's my opinion thats this is largely due to factors outside our control, but one factor I've mentioned does have an impact on the price of oil. Inflation. Oil i s priced in dollars, so obviously if dollars are worthless the price of oil has to go up. Oil is in everything. It's how we get electricity, food, travel. There is no aspect of your life, large or small, that isn't affected by oil. To sum up: We have less jobs, because the companies aren't making as much money. The price of oil has caused the price of nearly everything to rise, which we have to pay for with our dollar which is worth less, and the worth of our largest asset is going lower. Nice. We have to buy things that are more expensive, with less money, and even that is worth less than it was. Sucks. Why did this happen? Because republicans (who have been in control 7 out the last 10 elections) believe in small government. They believe in letting the free markets work without interference. Do this and the country will prosper. You know what? I agree 100%. I believe that 90% of the time the government should stay out of our lives and, as our as the economy goes, let the markets work. However I also believe that when extended amounts of time go by, inevitably loopholes stat to be exploited. Companies start to act irresponsibly because they can. I believe the governments job is to step in and rein in these companies before they can do this much damage to the entire economy. These financial companies got away with this because they were not regulated at all. There was no one looking over their shoulder going "Hey, this isn't going to work". These companies had free reign to do as they pleased and, while I believe that is important, I also believe there is a point where the government NEEDS to step in. That point has come and gone. Because of conservative's lack of regulation, the whole country has to pay the price. This is the single biggest reason why I' voting for Obama. We need to enforce regulations on these companies so that , at least for a while, this won't happen again. We need the regulators to stick their nose in the business of these companies and set up some new rules. I'm afraid any pro-regulatory bill that comes across Mccains desk is going to get vetoed fairly quickly. Not to be cliche, but when it comes to regulating the financial sector, we need a change. haha. One other quick reason I'm voting for Obama is because I believe more major conflict in the middle east is inevitable. Sorry pacifists, we can't yet live without oil. I know it, you know it, Mccain knows its, and yes Obama knows it. If/when it happens I believe our country will be much more unified in its efforts with peace loving Obama leading the way rather than POW Mccain, but that's another blog. Honestly I'm a conservative guy. I hate the "fairness" policies of liberals. I believe if you don't succeed then you fail, and its not our responsibility to bail you out. I also believe that its our countries responsibility to defend those unable to defend themselves. However, in this moment in time, the facts have changed and so my mind has changed with it. By the way everything I described was a very rough overview. I'm sure if you wanted to you could bust me on some technicalities.
No, this is not what I said. I said giving too much to welfare people who are mentally and physically able to work. This destroys initiative and motivation to do better. Just like someone who has a very successful company through hard work, but then find out they will be taxed greater on their earnings, so they realize their hard work is only to be taken from them in the form of bigger taxes for the hard work that went into creating bigger profit. So why would most people continue to work hard for no gain? I am not saying there are no people who are so inspired by their work that money is not their goal, so maybe they keep working hard no matter the taxes. But we have to be honest and admit that money, and making money is the incentive for most people. So they can live a comfortable life. I am not anti welfare. But for some it becomes a way of life passed down from generation to generation.
I agree. But you have to recognize the dilemma. Should we let lazy, able people collect welfare? No. Should we leave a mom with 8 kids and dead husband out in the cold? No. It's a tough debate and their arent any EASY answers on either side.