OK. Here it is. Everybody wanted to get rich (er) quick(er). So, the Street invented leverage and structured products to the n th power. They needed some help, so they corrupted regulators and politician......let me rephrase. THey bribed crooked regulators and politicians, And then, as they made more money, they paid off more people and got their upper echelon super rich in positions of power and they kept pushing and pushing and they could never be wrong and they could never get caught and they could do whatever they wanted to do and charge 40 and 2 and guys like 99 % of this board idolized these cretins because of the money and lifestyle never stopping to think that these returns weren't attainable in the real world and people of power backed away from trying to stop this because living was too good and I mean who wants to be first to rain on the parade so it spiraled and spiraled and never stopped. But it was all predicated on house prices rising forever. THE END
Are you kidding me, NAFTA is more of a brain drain from Canada to the US. From a general standpoint, the US has more financial opportunities and they paid their employees well with a stronger currency. The best and the brightest left Canada and went to the States. That's hardly "shipping" jobs overseas. If anything he consolidated talent and bought the best the world had to offer to the US front-lines. With the given problems the US facing now, this could actually backfire. Thank Bushy Jr.
Word. Anyone who thinks NAFTA is screwing over the US has it backwards. Just like the US privatizes gains and socializes losses, it uses NAFTA to screw over Mexico and Canada and Protect itself. Spout the benefits of free trade as long as you are the beneficiary, break the rules you preach when it doesn't Socialist Capitalism FTW!
Lol wasn't that like 8 years ago? Congress was held by REPUBLICANTS AND BUSH FROM 2000-2006 EVEN MOST CONSERVATIVES WERE APPALED WITH THE SPENDING AND TAX CUTTING THAT TOOK PLACE. JUST LIKE A COMPANY YOU CAN'T SPEND MONEY WITHOUT MAKING IT! (TAXES) YOU END UP WITH MASSIVE DEBT, AND CRASHING STOCK MARKET. WITH DEMOCRATS LIKE CLINTON WE HAVE SURPLUS', WITH REPUBLICANTS, YOU HAVE DEFICTS USUALLY CAUSED BY WAR, A WAR WE USUALLY DIDN'T NEED. FACTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT, CHECK HISTORY.
NAFTA is indeed one key peg in the globalism lie that has drained millions of living-wage jobs from America, never to return. Thanks to Bush 41 for helping to write it, and to slick willy for signing into law in 1993. Fuckers. If anyone has doubts about the damage from NAFTA, read it. I did, 15 years ago. It's 6,319 pages with side agreements. Otherwise, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about when you claim NAFTA is not so bad for America.
What was life like for the rich when the top tax rate was 92%? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States
It is pretty much impossible for an economy to thrive when its financial sector is wrecked. When banks are wary about lending to each other - as they have been recently - you can say that the sector is pretty "wrecked." In 2006 - you could say that the banks and the investment banks had an "undiagnosed" illness. They may have looked okay in 2006 - but they really were not. By extension, the 2006 economy may have looked "okay" - but it really wasn't. In July/Aug of 2007 - the subprime illness symptoms first started to show and they have gotten progressively worse, straight through to right now. A combination of excessive leverage, inaccurate "safety" ratings by the rating agencies, misplaced economic assumptions (re: the likelihood of real estate prices dropping significantly), the economics of "bundling" risk vs. actually "assessing" risk (low due diligence loans and such) all led to the magnitude of the problem. Political partisans will dither about which past presidential administration caused this. If I were you, I would just step back and let them dither. I don't think Mr. Richard Fuld of Lehamn Bros., for example, was thinking very much about George W. Bush or Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush or Reagan or Carter or Ford or Nixon or LBJ or JFK or Dwight Fucking Eisenhower when he took on all of that risk. He simply thought he was a lot smarter than the people on the other side of the deal and he was fully expecting to make a lot of money based upon that premise. So the only U.S. president on the mind of Dick Fuld and his colleagues may have been Woodrow Wilson, who is on the $100,000 bill. The Woodrow Wilson $100,000 bill is no longer in circulation. Just like Fuld and many of his colleagues. Anyway - this is what led to the banks taking on huge losses (like Wachovia's $24 bln loss) and credit getting "locked up" as a result. Not NAFTA.