Jul 08 2011

Obama-Reid-Pelosi Created Historic Economic Failure

So, unemployment is still ravaging the country:

U.S. employment growth ground to a halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest number of workers in nine months, dampening hopes the economy was on the cusp of regaining momentum after stumbling in recent months.

Nonfarm payrolls rose only 18,000, the weakest reading since September, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below economists’ expectations for a 90,000 rise.

he unemployment rate climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest since December, from 9.1 percent in May.

The government revised April and May payrolls to show 44,000 fewer jobs created than previously reported.

Why are we here?

Because of the brilliant left-wing solution that was meant to deal with a left-wing created economic disaster. Instead of giving the private sector breathing room to adjust to the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac real estate implosion (caused by radical loosening of loan requirements on the taxpayer’s dime), Obama, Reid and Pelosi concocted the brilliant scheme wherein the sluggish federal bureaucracy would spend like drunken sailors to stimulate economic growth.

The only problem is the federal bureaucracy is so burdened by process and procedure, the spending could not begin for at least a year as the bureaucrats figured out how to spend the money. In many cases the spending only kicked in after 2 years. All this bringing a new understanding to the phrase “a day late and a dollar short“. As the bureaucrats spent the stimulus money over years making sure they knew how to spend the stimulus money (creating lots of work for the public employees and nothing for everyone in the private economy), our economy suffered from the loss of savings destroyed by the real estate fiasco.

A fiasco created by liberal, social experimentation that destroyed the life’s work of millions of innocent Americans.

Subprime Scandal: Democrats thought they’d dammed up the truth about government’s role in the financial crisis. But the levies are breaking, thanks to a spate of rogue new books on the subject.

The latest, “Reckless Endangerment,” shreds the narrative carefully constructed by Democrats and the liberal media that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were only bit players in the crisis and followed Wall Street into subprime lending.

It details how the federally chartered mortgage giants in fact led the way in relaxing underwriting standards for the entire industry — thanks to relentless pressure from Democrats, who used them as off-budget piggy banks to fund their social crusade to boost minority homeownership (and shore up their voting base).

For starters, it glosses over the affirmative-action quotas HUD used to drive Fannie and Freddie deep into the subprime market. And it fails to cite any of HUD’s statements about its efforts to reduce underwriting rules at Fannie and Freddie.

What’s more, the hundreds of “fair lending agreements” HUD strong-armed private mortgage bankers like Countrywide Financial into signing, aren’t even mentioned in his artifice. The pledges, which committed bankers to targeting credit-poor minorities for loans, ensured a continuing flow of funds into riskier and riskier mortgages.

Also missing from the report: quantifiable evidence that the government was responsible for more than two-thirds of the 27 million subprime and other bad mortgages that were outstanding when the market crashed in 2007.

$14 trillion dollars worth of assets wiped out by left wing policies. Followed by over $5 trillion in new public debt in more failed liberal policies under President Obama’s term. And people wonder why the economy is still faltering?

These debacles have led this nation into one of the harshest economic times we have ever experienced:

Two years ago, officials said, the worst recession since the Great Depression ended. The stumbling recovery has also proven to be the worst since the economic disaster of the 1930s.

Across a wide range of measures—employment growth, unemployment levels, bank lending, economic output, income growth, home prices and household expectations for financial well-being—the economy’s improvement since the recession’s end in June 2009 has been the worst, or one of the worst, since the government started tracking these trends after World War II.

So what does the White House have to say? We’ll know more later today, but yesterday they had the gall to claim all this economic pain hurting the nation is simply a minor inconvenience of no consequence:

President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.

From delusional economic policies to delusional denial. The incompetence of the left seems to know no bounds.

Update: More on the tone deaf White House at Hot Air

11 responses so far

11 Responses to “Obama-Reid-Pelosi Created Historic Economic Failure”

  1. theghost says:

    at one level he has a point … people will hear the national unemployment rate and then consider their local situation … and the local situation for most Americans is WORSE than the national rate and getting worse …

    if the nation mood was up it could overcome the rate (as it did with Reagan) … but with the mood down it actually amplifies the national rate …

  2. MerlinOS2 says:

    Now we see that Obama wants to extend to 12 months the grace period for mortgage non payment for long term unemployed for FHA loans. It is currently set at 3 months.

    That wasn’t hard to see coming down the line.

  3. WWS says:

    You have been right about the “stimulus” (PORKulus!) from the start, AJ. I noticed one big factor that made it even worse than you had predicted: as you say, it wasted a year, or two, before any of the money could be spent. But you know what happened along the way? By the time that year or two was over and the project was ready – most of the money was gone! And no one knew where it went!!! (or so they say)

    I’ve been trying to track down some of what happened. They’ve intentionally made it so no one can really track where the money actually went.

    Cue John Belushi in Animal House, palms up, looking furtively from side to side: “We got up, looked outside, and… It was GONE!!!”

    Yep, that’s what happened to most of our stimulus money. Nobody knows. More accurately, nobody’s talking.

    p.s. – yeah, great idea – giving unemployed people a chance to get even more hopelessly behind on their mortgages, guaranteeing that they can never get caught up. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

    I think Obama should give his new, national mortgage policy an official name, and expand to encompass everyone. It will be called the “Pay whatever you want, if you want, if you feel like it. Or not.”

    Sure, that’ll save the economy, won’t it?

  4. lurker9876 says:

    I see that Dayton is on day 8 or something…refuses to work with the Republicans. They still trying to deflect the blame on the Republicans????

    How are the people of his state thinking about Dayton and the Republicans? Poll numbers?

  5. ivehadit says:

    Shame on Americans who believe the democrats smears! And shame on them for not KNOWING what is TRULY going on with our country’s finances! And what needs to be done!

    THIS IS THE PROBLEM!

  6. Wilbur Post says:

    Liberal ideas, failing left and right. Liberal politicians, blaming everyone else, right and center-right. Business as usual in Washington, DC.

  7. lurker9876 says:

    I just read that many construction workers that have been out of work for quite some time are doing things with cash only…they pay things with cash, don’t pay taxes, and so on. Who knows how much they will report to the government.

    I do find myself paying more with cash….

  8. WWS says:

    “Who knows how much they will report to the government?”

    (raises hand) – Oh, I can make a fairly good guess. Heh.

  9. momdear1 says:

    Check out your history and you will see that what we are now in a period of Second Reconstruction. During the first Reconstruction after the Civil War, whites were disenfranchised and unqualified and illiterate ex slaves were put in charge of the Southern State’s governments. hoards of “advisors” labeled Carperbaggers (today’s equivalent is lobbyists and NGA community activists and organizers) descended on the South to advise the unqualifed illiterates who were in charge. When the first Reconstruction was lifted the Southern states found they were so deep in debt it took over 100 years to pay it off. SC alone had over $50 billion in bonded debt for project that were never built and nobody knows where the money went. To put that in perspective, census records list the value of farms at $200 to $800. Anyone with $2000 worth of land was filthy rich. Slavery was the issue used to generate hostility against the South to force the south to pay a 50% tarriff on all imported goods so the South would be forced to the inflated prices for nothern manufactured goods. The South resisted paying the tarriff and the Civil War was the result. Today’s Reconstruction began shortly after WWII when industry began to desert the rust belt north and move south. Once again the plight of the black man was used to stir up animosity against the South. The difference between the first Reconstruction and the present one is that powerful Southern Congressmen managed to make the Civil Rights Laws directed against the South apply nationally. Once again, white men are discriminated against as the less than most qualified are forcably elevated to leadership positions in government and industry. The end results of over 50 years of this idiocy is the decline of our country to near 3rd world status, our national debt is so high it takes all the government’s income to just pay the interest, and nobody knows where the money went because we have nothing to show for it. I appears that we have an incompetent , self esteem enhanced product of our public education system who has been affirmative actioned into the Presidency. Fifty years of self inflicted guilt and reparations has just about destroyed our once great country. History does indeed repeat itself.