The Official Presidential Debate Thread (Round 2)

[dmek25]

Originally Posted by firstdown

Fred & Fan had to pick up this bad papper because congress got involved with how banks gave out loans which is the biggest part of this entire mess. If congress kept their nose out of lending and banks kept up their conservative approach knowing they where stuck with any bad papper then they would have done so. This just goes back to goverment screws up everything they touch but heck lets give them more power. Why not let them screw up health care even worse or keep screwing up the school system, SS, etc.. because they do such a fine job. Funny thing is the two guys running for office both had a hand in these poor decisions. Yes both McCain & Obama are as guilty as anyone in this mess. Now we get to vote for them to fix the mess that they helped create to start with and you know what we will get. More goverment and goverment programs that over spend and are poorly run.

they had it right. until someone decided it was time to DE regulate. thats what started the free fall. if you let the rats run wild, soon there will be no more cheese

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by dmek25

they had it right. until someone decided it was time to DE regulate. thats what started the free fall. if you let the rats run wild, soon there will be no more cheese

Please tell me what was De regulated? Not just saying banks but give what was actually de regulated.

[saden1]

Originally Posted by firstdown

Please tell me what was De regulated? Not just saying banks but give what was actually de regulated.

Telecommunications, Media, and Banks.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by saden1

Telecommunications, Media, and Banks.

Saden that was really a stupid question I asked and I pretty much know the answer. We tore away at all the consumer protections that where put in place back in the 1930's. This was done a little at a time starting in the 1980's and then into the 1990's. I'm not sure if all the dergulation was bad but the oversite might have been the peoblem.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by dmek25

they had it right. until someone decided it was time to DE regulate. thats what started the free fall. if you let the rats run wild, soon there will be no more cheese

President Clinton didn't think de-regulation was a bad idea. This bill was signed on his watch.

from wiki: "Others have defended the Act and for actually making the crisis less severe than it would have been otherwise. President Clinton himself stated:

"I don't see that signing that bill had anything to do with the current crisis. Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn't signed that bill. On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence."

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by dmek25

they had it right. until someone decided it was time to DE regulate. thats what started the free fall. if you let the rats run wild, soon there will be no more cheese

I totally agree that regulation was missing. I am not sure that anything that was DEregulated was a problem though. I haven't seen any concrete evidence that specific derugulations led to this. I have seen financial assessments showing that housing prices trended parallel to inflation for decades until the government decided to create an "affordable" housing market. When they started playing with the housing markets prices magically trended exponentially up. When some wanted more regulations in the late 90's and early 2000's there was significant backlash from all sides of the aisles and nothing happened. I tend to think it was the lack of regulation in the first place more than any dergulation but I'd happily peruse anything that said otherwise. I'd really like to understand fundamentally what went wrong and the argument that regulation or lack of it CAUSED the problem rings pretty hallow when there are gads of evidence that gov't regulation quite regularly justs screws things up even more. My philosophy is more in line with "If it supposedly needs regulation so much then maybe something is fundamentally wrong with it in the first place".