Democrat, Republican, Other?

Aardvark wrote:And I chart I studied in school showed that thing fly up as soon as you hit 1999.

THey make you study this in school....i pity you my friend.....

Also, seems to me that, Aard is right about this.

Yes I got the lucky draw, U.S. Civics and Global Economics.

I hope this answers any questions u have






as you can see it was fairly steady during clinton's office years

Like I said he gave a short-term solution to a long-term problem. If he had given a long-term solution to help then we wouldn't have any problems would we? Or for that matter do you really think even Bush could screw something up so fast and with very little economic involvement?

here are two takes on that
regulation about that

It would be nice to write off the current crisis on Wall Street and global financial markets as something that only matters to the investor class.
Unfortunately, the effects are already being felt in lower-income communities around the United States. Worst-case scenarios for what spins out from the U.S. mortgage meltdown are truly frightening -- a severe world recession is a distinct possibility.
Whether such worst-case scenarios can be averted, or softened -- and preventing the recurrence of similar crises in the future -- depends on abandoning the laissez-faire financial regulatory regime entrenched over the last decade.
The current crisis is the predictable (and predicted) result of a massive U.S. housing bubble, which itself can be traced in part to global economic imbalances that could have been prevented.
At least five distinct regulatory failures led to the current crisis.
Regulatory Failure Number One: Failure to Manage the U.S. Trade Deficit. The housing bubble (as well as the surge in leveraged buyouts of publicly traded companies ("private equity")) was fueled by cheap credit -- low interest rates. One reason for the cheap credit was an influx of capital into the United States from China. China's capital surplus was the mirror image of the U.S. trade deficit -- U.S. corporations were sending lots of dollars to China in exchange for the cheap stuff sold to U.S. consumers.
Regulatory Failure Number Two: Failure to Intervene to Pop the Housing Bubble. Along with an influx of capital, Federal Reserve policy kept interest rates very low. There were good reasons for the Fed Policy, but that did not mean the Fed was helpless to prevent the housing bubble. As economists Dean Baker and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research insisted at the time, Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan simply by identifying the bubble -- and adjusting public perception of the future of the housing market -- could have prevented or at least contained the bubble. He declined, and even denied the existence of a bubble.
Regulatory Failure Number Three: Financial Deregulation and Unchecked Financial "Innovation." A key reason that mortgages were made available so widely and with such little review of recipients' qualifications was a shift in which institutions hold the mortgages. Traditionally, banks made mortgages and held them. In the new era, banks and non-bank mortgage lenders made loans, but then sold the loans to others. Investment banks packaged lots of mortgage loans into "Collateralized Debt Obligations" (CDOs) and then sold them on Wall Street, with a promise of a steady stream of revenue from interest payments. These operations were pretty much unregulated. Despite the supposed sophistication of the investors involved, no one took account of how shoddy the loans were or -- more fundamentally -- the certainty that huge numbers would go bad if and when the housing bubble popped.
Regulatory Failure Number Four: Private Regulatory Failure. It was the job of ratings agencies (like Standard and Poor's, and Moody's) to assess the CDOs and give investors guidance on how risky they were. They failed totally, likely in part because they wanted to maintain good relations with the investment banks issuing the CDOs.
Regulatory Failure Number Five: No Controls Over Predatory Lenders. The toxic stew of financial deregulation and the housing bubble created the circumstances in which aggressive lenders were nearly certain to abuse vulnerable borrowers. The terms of your loan don't matter, they effectively purred to borrowers, so long as the value of your house is going up. Lenders duped borrowers into conditions they could not possibly satisfy, making the current rash of foreclosures on subprime loans inevitable. Effective regulation of lending practices could have prevented the abusive loans, but none was to be found.
Unfortunately, the consequences of the mortgage meltdown go far beyond the foreclosure epidemic, as horrible a toll as that is taking. The entanglement of the financial sector with mortgage instruments, and the ripple effects of the housing bubble, has made lenders uncertain of who even among large corporations and financial institutions is credit worthy. The resulting credit crunch endangers the functioning of the global economy. Financial markets are guessing wildly about the prospects of banks, insurers and other financial corporations, and the plunging value of stocks poses immediate dangers to the real global economy.
Less acute, but probably more profoundly, the popping of the housing bubble is driving down home prices. U.S. consumer demand over the last five years has been driven by consumers borrowing against the increased value of their homes; with housing values falling, that process is working in reverse. The depressed housing market is also ravaging the construction sector, a nontrivial portion of the U.S. economy. A serious recession looms as a real possibility.
Mitigating these harms and preventing the worst now depends on active and interventionist government -- a government stimulus plan, and aggressive efforts to force lenders to adjust mortgage terms and let people stay in their homes. Preventing financial panics of the kind now underway require new standards of transparency and regulation for high finance. The coming days and months will tell whether any lessons have been learned.


“This bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years. It provides a long-term solution for troubled thrift institutions. ... All in all, I think we hit the jackpot.” So declared Ronald Reagan in 1982, as he signed the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act.

Heres Nobel Prize winning ecnomoist Paul Krugman's take


Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
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He was, as it happened, wrong about solving the problems of the thrifts. On the contrary, the bill turned the modest-sized troubles of savings-and-loan institutions into an utter catastrophe. But he was right about the legislation’s significance. And as for that jackpot — well, it finally came more than 25 years later, in the form of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

For the more one looks into the origins of the current disaster, the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

On the latter point: traditionally, the U.S. government ran significant budget deficits only in times of war or economic emergency. Federal debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell steadily from the end of World War II until 1980. But indebtedness began rising under Reagan; it fell again in the Clinton years, but resumed its rise under the Bush administration, leaving us ill prepared for the emergency now upon us.

The increase in public debt was, however, dwarfed by the rise in private debt, made possible by financial deregulation. The change in America’s financial rules was Reagan’s biggest legacy. And it’s the gift that keeps on taking.

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

These restrictions were put in place in the 1930s by political leaders who had just experienced a terrible financial crisis, and were trying to prevent another. But by 1980 the memory of the Depression had faded. Government, declared Reagan, is the problem, not the solution; the magic of the marketplace must be set free. And so the precautionary rules were scrapped.

Together with looser lending standards for other kinds of consumer credit, this led to a radical change in American behavior.

We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life, culminating in the near-zero savings rate that prevailed on the eve of the great crisis. Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.

All this, we were assured, was a good thing: sure, Americans were piling up debt, and they weren’t putting aside any of their income, but their finances looked fine once you took into account the rising values of their houses and their stock portfolios. Oops.

Now, the proximate causes of today’s economic crisis lie in events that took place long after Reagan left office — in the global savings glut created by surpluses in China and elsewhere, and in the giant housing bubble that savings glut helped inflate.

But it was the explosion of debt over the previous quarter-century that made the U.S. economy so vulnerable. Overstretched borrowers were bound to start defaulting in large numbers once the housing bubble burst and unemployment began to rise.

These defaults in turn wreaked havoc with a financial system that — also mainly thanks to Reagan-era deregulation — took on too much risk with too little capital.

There’s plenty of blame to go around these days. But the prime villains behind the mess we’re in were Reagan and his circle of advisers — men who forgot the lessons of America’s last great financial crisis, and condemned the rest of us to repeat it.

Yeah he gets blamed for actually trying to fix a problem with a long-term solution while Clinton gets celebrated because he gave us a short term solution in office that backfired on the next person to take office.

reaganomics dont work, and if you look at the graphs and articles they show that clinton did do some good things, economically, also those previous statistics i gave are there to back up.

There's also a theory out there that backs up a something that would seem self-evident. That any economics measure take between 2 and 4 years to show in the market.

theories aren't statistics

Theories are how you read statistics. Think about it, you put a bill into effect, it goes through, starts out, it's not going to have any immediate effect, it will take years to see the full evidence on just one bill. By that theory, the beginning of Clinton's administration is due to the previous administration of Bush Senior and part of Bush junior's administration is due to Clinton's administration.

however, reaganomics put us into the position that we are in now, in the above articles, as you can c, clinton put forth bills that increased growth rate in the economy

You believe what you wish, I believe what I do. In my opinion Regan tried, and yes he failed, but at least he tried. Clinton made himself look good, and focused on instant gratuity rather then a long-term plan. I always favor people for trying for the long run over people who only look at the short run.

and clinton did help, just look, according to economist Paul Krugman, who i should mention won the nobel prize in economics.

Economists are the single largest failure in history. Since their inception the global debt has done nothing but increase. They criticize everyone who tries except themselves even though their advice is what leads Presidential decisions regarding the economy.

hmmm....

Alexander Hamilton i believe used economics to rid us of our debt after the revolutionary war

besides, why take economics if you criticize their position O.o?

Economics is the study of how money moves. Economists are the theater critics of the economic world, criticize everyone but themselves and then deny involvement when their guidance goes to hell. You can't predict the economy, you have to let it flow.

Great, ever heard of John Maynard Keynes? I recommend you look him up and some of the work that those economists do, i think you will find some interesting things.

i think older civilizations never had this kinda trouble when it came to economics....

because they spent and taxed, not

CUT TAXES!!

Nihil wrote:because they spent and taxed, not

CUT TAXES!!

no, cuz it was simple.


i sell you this, you give me that, i pay a bit to the government, they use all that bit to improve evth for us AND a small part for their own income, since they are citizens too. end of economics. A+

And Dray sums my point up nicely. Yes Nihil I know of John Keyes, I also know that when Economists came about our national debt went up, and up, and never came back down.

the despot rulers were more interested in taxing to build things, which gives jobs, injects money into economy, better economy

deficit spending to save, then taxation to save our hineys out of debt

simple

Nihil wrote:deficit spending to save, then taxation to save our hineys out of debt

simple

still complicated. deficit is a fucking whore of economy.my way is much better. and it helps for a united world.

And it still hasn't come down. Sorry 30+ years of increasing debt means that whatever you're doing isn't working.