Obama Doesn’t Get It

I don’t know what happened to the man I elected to be president in 2008. That man is nowhere to be found…you know the one who was talking about “change” and how business as usual wasn’t going to cut in his White House.

 

Well, apparently, he is ok with JP Morgan/Chase’s CEO, Janie Dimon, and Goldman Sucks, excuse me, Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s  outrageous salaries and bonuses even though both of them basically ran their companies into the ground, and if they hadn’t been bailed out by the taxpayer last year, wouldn’t have made anything.  Obama does not begrudge them their success because “that’s what the free market is about.”

 

Free market, excuse me? I thought the free market was about allowing the weaker companies whose leadership made poor decisions fail while allowing smaller companies with smarter leaders take their place. I thought it was about competition.

 

I guess I was wrong. I guess competition and things like moral hazard only apply when you’re the middle class family who has fallen into poverty and is faced with foreclosure…because I hear all sorts of talk of moral hazard when it comes to the government helping a family like this save their home.

 

My disappointment in Obama can’t be described in words. We needed an FDR and we got a Herbert Hoover.

The Motley Fool is more Foolish Than Ever

Ok, these arch conservative investor types need to go to hell, seriously. Even in my cold addled state, I still bristle when I think about this article.

The article states that it is a mistake to hold the bankers accountable for not doing enough modifications. Leave the banks alone, the author rails! Let them do what they do best and get tear off the scabs that are delinquent mortgage holders by foreclosing on them quickly! Read the article, I've accurately summed up this idiot's words.

First of all, let's start with "leave the banks alone" for a minute. Isn't "leaving the banks alone" what got us into this mess in the first place? Isn't the deregulation that allowed mortgages to be "securitized" and traded on the stock market the main factor in the financial pickle that we're all in? So, yeah...let's continue to leave the banks alone...that's worked out so WELL!

Secondly, let's look at what would happen if foreclosures were allowed to proceed unchecked. Housing values would continue to dive as more and more foreclosures flood the market, and with unemployment continuing to soar, there are very few buyers out there. So, homes would stand vacant and untended. Neighborhoods would deteriorate and the number of homeless would rise sharply. All of this would drive the economy into a deeper depression, which, newsflash! is good for no one, not even fat cat investor types like the author.

The author is big on letting the markets correct themselves, only this problem was not caused by free market forces. This problem was caused by governmental policies that institutionalized greed and facilitated the biggest re-distribution of wealth from the bottom to the top in United States history.

In closing, there needs to be a major economic re-balancing, and those firms that took risks that they never should have taken need to be allowed to fail. Their victims, the homeowners of America, need to have their mortgages reworked to make them sane and affordable, regardless of how they came to be, and regardless of income.