OT: A little ray of hope for the day...

Obama is the only US president ever to have not a single year of 3% growth.

Corporate profits and CEO compensation are up much more than that (12%/yr). Some day soon, the economic benefits will trickle down and everyone will have great jobs.

I'll wager he's managed a hell of a lot better than that in his personal net worth growth.

oh come on, tell me that isn't so!

Jamie

You'z me hero! ;)

Jamie

we may of know those facts if her "EMAILS" were recovered!

Jamie

So what was his *worst* year compared to G. W. Bush?

Compared to the 7% growth in 2006?

Or compared to the consequenses of this and related Clinton policies in

Or compared to when Bush and other Republicans tried to stop it but Democrats said, "These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis...The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of AFFORDABLE HOUSING" [emphasis added by me because for a decade before this, Democrats said "affordable housing" almost every day]

Which reached this level by 2005:

"To place this in some perspective, all Treasury debt held by the public totals $4.4 trillion, and all corporate

account for more default risk than all other U.S. corpora- tions combined. The risks for the taxpayers are obvious, but as many commentators have also pointed out, risk of this size, if concentrated in only two companies, poses a

known as systemic risk."

But it was still just conservatives talking about the problem. It was not any kind of impending problem according to Democrats. Then after it blew up it was Bush's fault...somehow. Was there a Democrat, anywhere, who said years before the crash that it was an impending problem? No.

Julian Barnes has the admirer he deserves.

Hoover single year of growth was followed by three years of 6% per per year shrinkage. You have chosen a somewhat misleading metric.

If Obama had been able to get a Republican Congress to go for Keynesian pum p-priming stimulus directed towards people who could be relied on to spend it, rather than towards Republican party supporters, the money that was spe nt on stimulating the economy might have had more effect.

The US economy could be better, but it's expanding - if slowly. Compared with the situation after the 1929 crash, you are in clover.

America lost it's way under Reagan - when income inequality started rising - and Trump hasn't got a clue about that (or anything much else except grabbing media attention).

and there is this

cut out the government middle men

because if you don't. they will do this

You paint this as a Democrat vs. Republican issue and seem to be blaming Democrats for the lack of action. But this was at a time when the Republicans rulled the house and at worst, for one election where they were tied, rulled the Senate. How can you blame the lack of action on the minority party? The Democrats could not stop the Republicans from passing any bill they wanted to during the Bush presidency right up to the mortgage crash.

I blame them for action, not the lack of it. They created the policy that led to the problem. Reversing it, like reversing anything you guys come up with, is called reactionary. We're "denying the poor." It's not our fault that you make it hard to reverse your mistakes.

That's the other common narrative. If it's not Bush's fault somehow then the Republican's are "equally at fault" because they didn't reverse this Clinton/Frank/Dodd policy of providing "affordable housing" by forcing banks to give mortgages to people with no money.

Most Republicans are not conservatives. They're the Republicans you like because they go along. It took Clinton over 6 years to get this policy and he only got it after Gingrich was forced out, but the Republicans are equally at fault, for a policy Democrats created, because most Republicans didn't want to face the usual "denying the poor" demagoguery. If they had shouted to the public that a crash would result, then they would have caused the crash to happen sooner, but you can't deny that they, and only they, are on record for opposing the Democrat's "affordable housing" policy.

There's a third narrative that says it's Wall Street's fault because they assumed the risk by buying the mortgages, which only meant that they needed a bailout instead of the banks needing it. Of course it was unanimous to allow them to buy the banks' risk. That removed a regulation that never existed in Europe and it didn't cause a problem there. What caused the problem was the "affordable housing" idea that Democrats created all by themselves, but now it's our fault too because we didn't stop you, even though some of the most conservative of us tried. They tried until 2006 anyway, when Democrat's took over the Senate and then there was no chance of stopping it.

The fact is that's it's the Democrat's fault entirely. When you invent a bad idea and create a bad policy you own it.

Obamacare, anyone? Of course the Demonrats will blame Bush for that, too.

How did the Democrats do anything when the Republicans controlled Congress under a Republican president? Republicans in Congress must have supported it or it would have never passed and obviously Bush was in support of the policy or he could have vetoed it.

If it was such a terrible idea, why didn't they deal with it? Why have someone in power for eight years if he isn't capable of running the country. I can only think he was uniquely incompetent or totally ignorant of the things you seem to be clear were wrong.

BTW, what were you doing back then?

Oh, so it *is* the Republican's fault as well?

I don't give a DAMN about being on record. Republicans were in control of the country for eight years when you seem to feel something should have been done but wasn't.

Who is "we" and who is "you"? I think you are going off a bit here.

Now you are contradicting yourself. See above.

You don't seem to realize it was 1999, and it wasn't something that "passed" as in Congress, because Clinton expanded Freddie and Fannie's role on his own. His DOJ threatened banks with Civil Rights action if they denied mortgages to the poor. Congress didn't have to pass anything to make that happen.

You're intractably confused. What was done, was done in 1999. It's not our fault because we didn't reverse your idiotic policies especially with the obvious political difficulties you people erect, as I pointed out. Those articles and others you could find make it clear who did what but you just want to lie about it.

and

This was James Arthur's line at the time, but subsequent investigation show ed that home loans made under the Affordable Housing legislation weren't ma de to "people with no money" and weren't any more likely to be abandoned th an any other kind of home loan.

The loans made to people with no money which were abandoned in droves, were made by fringe banks, who had taken the wrong lesson from the success of t he Affordable Housing program, which had demonstrated that there were viabl e borrowers in low income areas, not that every inhabitant of a low-income area was a viable borrower.

Reversing the Affordable Housing program might have prevent the GFC, but it would have been throwing the baby out with the bath-water. What Dubbya sho uld have done was to have tackled the house price bubble when it first star ted blowing up in 2002. Apparently Dubbya did try to use the fuss being mad e about it as an excuse to reverse the Affordable Housing program, but he w asn't sufficiently well-advised to realise that there were other initi98ate ves that might have worked.

No can you deny that they were wrong to do so. It wasn't the Affordable Hou sing loans that went sour.

Affordable Housing was never a bad idea, and it didn't create the GFC. The Republican opposition to it was always wrong-headed.

This might have been true if the Affordable Housing loans had had anything to do with the GFC - other than by inspiring the fringe banks to lend to th e wrong borrowers in low-income areas. What caused the GFC was irresponsibl e lending by fringe banks, none of which qualified for Affordable Housing s upport.

You are spouting pro-Republican nonsense, and should have been paying enoug h attention to be aware that it was nonsense.