Why does Bush get blame for Financial Crisis in 2008?

[Slystallion]

You guys realize the financial crisis would have happened to president Kerry too right?

I find it really intellectually dishonest to call it the Bush mess. The banking crisis was decades in the making that involved fanny mae and Freddie Mac, credit derivatives, and fed policy that spanned before Bush's term.

Had it not been for that Bush's economy was pretty decent with a 5% unemployment rate pretty decent gdp post internet boom...heck much better than now.

If you had a legit gripe about Bush and i wont' argue it too much it would be the iraq war...in hindsight the battle against terrorism could have been more efficient strategically but even that ended up quite well as Obama followed the Bush plan and we got Bin Laden. Oh and of course Katrina was bad leadership. But if Bush never began the Iraq war and strategized it in a more efficient way and didn't have that blunder in Katrina...his popularity wouldn't have taken the nosedive it did.

So i'm just asking for some unbiased sanity here the same way i would tell an uninformed Republican that Obama hasn't implemented socialism and his policies haven't even been put into place to judge him negatively.

Can we step out of political bias for just a second and acknowledge when real is real?

 

[Rekkapryde]

My problems with Bush were

1) stole the election (obviously he brother wasn't gonna let him lose Florida)
2) Iraq War - total fukking bullshyt
3) Katrina

The greed of the banks put us in this financial crisis, so I don't necessarily put it all on Bush.

 

[Double J]

That's the name of the game. When things are going great the person in office gets the credit and when shyt goes sour he gets the blame.

Either way most of the time the President usually has little or nothing to do with it but people are too stupid and shortsighted to recognize this.

That's the American way

 

[mastermind]

of course you can blame Bush. He continued the pro rich policies that just propped up the country on a sand.


Whats intellectually dishonest is Clinton running around pretending like it was all on Bush.


The financial crisis was something that started back during the Reagan years. Because of how stupid our media is, people think it started under Dubya, when it started with en mass under Reagan.

 

[kingofnyc]

are u stupid


















but real talk
- 2 wars that was unpaid for
- deregulation to Wall Street
- bush tax cuts to da rich

 

[Slystallion]

of course you can blame Bush. He continued the pro rich policies that just propped up the country on a sand.


Whats intellectually dishonest is Clinton running around pretending like it was all on Bush.


The financial crisis was something that started back during the Reagan years. Because of how stupid our media is, people think it started under Dubya, when it started with en mass under Reagan.

I would say the carter years since that's when housing regulations were loosened

But it was such a mish mosh of many factors and hardly any of the smart forecasters could predict it. Bush did try to limit Fannie and Freddie but was denied by congress. He then ignored it after that.

 

[Orbital-Fetus]

subs...i will hit this thread up later.

 

[mastermind]

I would say the carter years since that's when housing regulations were loosened

But it was such a mish mosh of many factors and hardly any of the smart forecasters could predict it. Bush did try to limit Fannie and Freddie but was denied by congress. He then ignored it after that.

I dont deny there were many factors, and I do think Bush takes too much credit for the financial meltdown.

But he is at fault as all of our presidents were for the prior 30 years.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

It was an institutional problem dating back decades. Bush deserves blame because he co-signed the whole thing, didn't act until it was too late, and didn't see the writing on the wall.

Clinton has somehow dodged a historical bullet over this in the eyes of the public though because he, Rubin, and Summers gave the greenlight for unregulated derivatives trading against the stern warning from Brooksley Born, the CFTC chairwoman, and repealed Glass-Stegall. Greenspan of course is largely to blame as well for making it rain.

Side note: something that stands out to me is that the women serving in government seemed to know this was a timebomb waking to happen, but got overrode. Brooksley Born, Sheila Bair (the FDIC chair), and a couple more high-level cabinet and Treasury women--I'd have to go back and reread the Ron Suskind book--were the ones who were right all along. We need more women in top level economic advisory and regulatory positions in government apparently.

 

[mastermind]

Side note: something that stands out to me is that the women serving in government seemed to know this was a timebomb waking to happen, but got overrode. Brooksley Born, Sheila Bair (the FDIC chair), and a couple more high-level cabinet and Treasury women--I'd have to go back and reread the Ron Suskind book--were the ones who were right all along. We need more women in top level economic advisory and regulatory positions in government apparently.

idk what it is about women, but they seem to always spot this shyt.

 

[Dusty Bake Activate]

idk what it is about women, but they seem to always spot this shyt.

I think it's because generally speaking, women in public service are less arrogant and egotistical and drunk on power.

Pompous douchebags like Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan and Bob Rubin think they know everything and were just like "Yeah let's just let people come up with these complex mathematical formulas that give nebulous definitions of the value of an asset and trade them in secret markets, the free market will sort it out and everything will be fine."

The women were like that's crazy.

 

[porque]

you should watch Frontline's reporting on it

Money, Power and Wall Street | FRONTLINE | PBS

Watch The Full Program | Ten Trillion And Counting | FRONTLINE | PBS

Clinton's fault?
The Warning | FRONTLINE | PBS

not saying you'll find the answer to the question you asked just that its a good watch

 

[Lucky Millionaire]

He gets blamed because it came to a head at the very end of his term but Victor's right it was a time bomb ticking for decades. This is the main reason why I don't get people who expected Obama to sweep an (at least,12 year old) enormous problem in a fraction of the time. The ramifications of our economy and the actions of Obama/government now will be felt long after this term IMO.

 

[Rain]

Yeah there's a reason Obama kept saying this was something that was building over decades.

 

[rantanamo]

IMO, the true financial crisis started in Reagan's second term and went through the Bush Senior years and into Clinton's first term. What was interesting back then was, Clinton actually stood up to some of the Reagan era trickle down, super defense spending and interest rate legislation, which showed some improvement. This was the birth of the NeoCon movement. For some reason they felt America was getting too liberal after two years of a democrat in office For those that weren't around, this was around OJ time and it was just weird to see a lot of white people emboldened the way they became with Obama in office. Very divisive, and they continued to play strange politics and were constantly all about dirt and getting a republican elected. I used to love listening to them and their anger at the tech bubble, which was out of their control. The difference between the housing and tech bubble was that the tech bubble was employing people. The housing bubble was about personal wealth. This was the setting before Bush took office. So what would Bush do to slow the economy back down:

some measures that Bush set forth were directly responsible for it, that's why. Let's review:

Bush Tax Cuts: No one is anti-tax cuts, but they came at a time that valuable funding was needed, especially when both wars were being extended.

Bush's created budget deficit: Its interesting that Obama takes blame for this. Bush significantly increased the yearly budget, despite also cutting taxes. A lot of people forget Clinton really took the military budget down from the Reagan era buildup. It allowed breathing room for the yearly budgets and allowed investment in innovation. Some great programs from the Clinton era were cut in favor of restored defense spending.

Bush's lax attitude about tariffs: Way overlooked. For certain products like canadian lumber that were crucial to the price of homes and certain steel grades this really broke the easy flow of goods and really hurt some of the large homebuilders. Not to mention the US economy had gotten to the point that certain goods were not being produced here anymore. Obama immediately came in and cut these. Huge step in relations, huge step in getting construction costs down again. The thing is, these things would have returned to the US anyway as foreign economies improved. The NeoCons like Rove wanted it now. Huge affect on car companies. Yes our car companies were putting out poor product, but production prices were also putting prices up where they shouldn't have been.

Bush's credit legislation: Probably his biggest legacy that Repubs don't own up to. Say what you want about the sub prime mortgage industry at the time(I worked in this industry at the time), it was very lucrative. Most people were paying their mortgage and interest rates were pretty much where they needed to be. Did you have a lot of delinquincy? Yes. I'd say personally, people were out of control, but companies were still making a killing. This could have been gradually dealt with. I remember the debates when I was working for a lender. The industry wanted to work with people. They were making money, and were feeling good. But you had certain big lenders that were concerned about themselves long-term because they were squandering huge amounts of cash(just as they did with some of their schemes they went down for in the 80s). Instead of this being dealt with their was lobbying got them the Bush credit acts. Even then, they had screwed the pooch and needed bailing out.

I should have put these in order. But basically Bush came into office with some looming problems. Instead of solving a problem like people do, he solved them like an angry politician would *cough* Karl Rove *cough*. You can't cut everything propping up the economy and then add huge spending strain to it. You're damn right Obama had to spend us out of that. Seriously, Republicans know nothing about economics, yet they(I'm talking real politicians) talk down to others and continue to try and cut everything to baseline and wonder why they can't afford anything. My friend, who is an economist thinks they are comical and unrealistic about the economy. There has to be revenue created, and save the neo con movement, the wealthy has funded this. When they haven't, the country has suffered immensely. Banks have lent money through modern times save neo con movements. Both times we suffered. MAterials trade has been pretty free from the US side without ridiculous protectionisms................a couple of Neo Con movements. Are you seeing a pattern? The Dems aren't perfect, and there are some good Repubs out there. Its these hardcore economic conservatives that are killing the common man.