subprime crisis

you now have another reason to dislike the republicans and their new man of the hour, joh mccain...that is the subprime crisis and the recession we are in but no one wants to admit is going on. the problem is deregulation folks! once upon a time there was this little thing called the great depression. there were many people who blamed the depression and crash on the greed of unregulated bankers. hmm. imagine that! commercial banks were investing in the stock market, taking on riskier ventures and becoming more and more speculative. this should sound familiar. thus the glass-steagall act was passed which separated investment and commercial banking activities. in other words, the federal government would step in with regulations to dampen the out of control greed of bankers. seems good to me and it was until 1999. that is when phil gramm, a former u.s sen. and campaign manager for john mccain(who has admitted that he knows little about the economy) helped pass the gramm-leach=bliley act which repealed the glass-steagall act. what? yep, no regulation. banks could merge. " predatory tactics by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages" crept in. why? because the federal govt. was no longer watching. speculation rose. housing cost sky-rocketed and we entered yet anothe republican driven boom to bust cycle. hey kids, do us all a favor and don't vote for mccain.

dear george bush

i want to thank you for wrecking the economy in part by invading two countries in a war that we will never win. i know adversity builds character. thank you for going after the oil fields so that the price of gas could creep up towards 4$ a gallon and we could all eat that with the rising price of produce. tough times test what we are made of and boy are we being tested. i want to thank you for making us the laughing stock of the world. laughter is the best medicine and so we are doing our part to heal the planet. i am grateful for your pronunciation errors, your cowboy rhetoric, and the way you slouch over the lectern...it keeps us in the headlines and as mayor nagin likes to say, even bad news is good publicity. i think it is wonderful that as we sink deeper into a recession and continue to lose the war on both fronts that you seem ever gleeful, going so far as to entertain us with the occasional shuffle. your fearlessness fortifies us because at least we know that as we are all drowning, you will be safe aboard the only life raft. and living in the kingdom neath the sea, i will drink to that.