Holding Conservatives Accountable - Part II

UPDATE: Conservatives dumped "socialist" now for "fascist" now. Someone finally convinced them Social Security and Medicare is "a good thing" for the economy and THEM (thanks Martha). They still don't bet it! The large majority in Congress is indicative of "fascism" if they don't adopt the conservative platform lock, stock and barrel. Folks, this is why the United States is a REPUBLIC, not a fascist union.  The rumor Conservatives hijacked the GOP is true!  But where are the OLD Republicans?  Could we please have our Grand Old Party back?

Conservatives are on the stump claiming the "house is burning down" while Pres. Obama ignores The Banking Crisis - by focusing on putting ARRA funds in the hands of state & city leaders to jump-start their infrastructure projects. Such short memories!

Are Conservatives still drinking the Kool-Aid? Did they forget a year ago in March the GOP's Gang of Three, led by Treasurer Henry Paulsen, started bailing out the BIG investment banks beginning with $29 BILLION to Bear Stearns? Okay, so they didn't bail out Lehman with $84 BILLION, but they rushed to save an even bigger fire - AIG.

Apparently Conservatives drank too much Kool-Aid to recall last summer at all!! When bailing out the largest and most incompetent bankers didn't break the log-jam of credit, GOP's Gang of Three worked furiously to get Congress to adopt TARP. Finally in October they forced 10 largest banks to take $250 BILLION & used another $200 BILLION to shore up other weak banks that also let greed run away with their common sense. Mere weeks after the election, the Gang of Three had the Federal Reserve create TALF using $200 BILLION to prop up asset-backed securities collateralized by student, auto, credit card, and SBA loans. Should've fixed those banks, right? Wrong!

Conservatives let the country down. Where were Conservatives when Nouriel Roubini, NYU Prof. of Economics, warned the IMF back in 2006 that our country was heading into a huge crisis? Prof. Roubini, a highly regarded economist, laid out projections of a housing bust, an oil shock, abrupt halt in credit, imploding investment banks, crashing markets & sharply declining consumer confidence - all leading to a very deep recession. ["Dr. Doom" by Prof. Steven Mihm - NYTimes 8-17-08]

Speaking of incompetence! The oh-so-smart members of the Conservative Media didn't sound the alarm when they could have used Prof. Roubini's warnings to pressure Bush|Cheney to to stop predatory lending in its tracks, putting out the first small credit fires and stop the bankers' Ponzi game early - before it burned down the house?

The Guardian on the Prescient Prof. Roubini: 25 People at the Heart of the Meltdown (1-26-09): "He remains a pessimist. He predicted last week that losses in the US financial system could hit $3.6tn before the credit crunch ends - which, he said, means the entire US banking system is in effect bankrupt. After last year's bail-outs and nationalisations, he famously described George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke as "a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the United Socialist State Republic of America."

Conservative Talking Heads still don't 'get' it, which frankly gives Conservative Media a bad name! They espouse free market solutions (just cut taxes) UNTIL free markets burn down the barn with out-of-control greed. Then they DEMAND that a new LIBERAL President use the government to fix the problem. Well, this old gal is no fool!

President Obama is no fool either - he gets it. Those bankers played a stealth game trading CDO/CDS like baseball cards and are still buried in that humongous stinking pile of debt of their own making. The President is correctly focused on bringing business to the 8300 leaner banks that kept their balance sheets healthy!