It is easy to be cynical and pessimistic about what has transpired in America over the last 8 years.
The Republican Party has destroyed the economy they inherited 8 years ago. Their propaganda of tax cuts for Americans, is, was and always will be a scam for working class Americans. We all know that after Reagan and Bush what the meaning and effects of trickle down economics has been.
Afghanistan and Iraq are a mess
The Gulf coast is a mess
Foreign Policy is a mess
Healthcare, Education, Transportation, the Environment and Energy.
All of it one big friking mess.
And we'll have to clean it all up again and not get any of the credit and all the blame via the traditional media and the Right wing noise machine.
They do not take responsibility for anything of this mess they've created...in fact they deny it and lie about it.
Torture, FISA, Telecom Immunity, FEMA...the congressional investigations will be endless, contentious and wasteful.
Roll up your sleeves folks, it's our turn to bail out the do-nothing pompous and priveledged Republican management elitists again.
This is probably as big a mess as I've seen in 40 years of political awareness.
The mortgage home crisis is nothing new to Democrats cleaning up a Republican mess. In the run-up to the Depression, most home mortgages were interest-only loans for five years with balloon payments. This required homeowners to refinance frequently and left them at the mercy of lenders. Sound familiar? The situation is not unlike that of homeowners with subprime teaser-rate ARMs, who borrowed on the premise that they could refinance before the payment increase.
At the urging of President Franklin Roosevelt, the US Congress created the Home Owners' Loan Corporation in June of 1933 . "Implicit in the legislation which I am suggesting to you is a declaration of national policy," Roosevelt stated in his message to Congress. "This policy is that the broad interests of the Nation require that special safeguards should be thrown around home ownership as a guaranty of social and economic stability, and that to protect home owners from inequitable enforced liquidation, in a time of general distress, is a proper concern of the Government" [Bridewell].
This is an important reform straight from the handbook of FDR New Deal politics. It is past the time waiting for the Fed to lower interest rates to their banking buddies to bail THEM out.
FDR's policies were geared to the homeowners not the banks.
And what about banking ? The predatory Banking "Reform" Act that allows banks to borrow money at 1% interest and charge 29% interest to consumers who miss a payment or are late on their payments?
The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was exclusively endorsed by banks, creditors and credit card companies...oh and Republicans.
The bill's opponents were especially critical of provisions that prioritize the repayment of credit card debt over unpaid child support, forcing spouses owed alimony to fight with credit card companies and other lenders for their unpaid support. More broadly the bill's critics argued that the legislation did nothing to curtail the predatory practices of credit card companies, such as exorbitant interest rates, rising and often hidden fees, and targeting minors and the recently bankrupt for new cards. The bill's critics pointed out that these practices are themselves significant contributors to the growth of consumer bankruptcies. [15]
FDR knew how to take on the establishment elitists and monied interests of his day. The resurgent right wing monopolists of yesterday seem incarnated as real to life today as they were in 1936.
FDR:
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.
Of course we will continue our efforts for young men and women so that they may obtain an education and an opportunity to put it to use. Of course we will continue our help for the crippled (sic), for the blind, for the mothers, our insurance for the unemployed, our security for the aged. Of course we will continue to protect the consumer against unnecessary price spreads, against the costs that are added by monopoly and speculation. We will continue our successful efforts to increase his purchasing power and to keep it constant.
For these things, too, and for a multitude of others like them, we have only just begun to fight.
And fight we must.
I call on this Congress to provide immediate relief to distressed mortgage holders and to repeal the Banking Reform Act that was passed like shit through a goose by the Republican 109th Congress. (And to stop pootie-footin' around) Presidential candidates would be well advised to tear a page out of history and adopt the true progressive reforms instituted by FDR to elevate the working classes against predatory big business and monopolies that created the Great Depression.
With these rumblings of financial panic gripping the global markets of late, why are so many timid Democrats confused by the lessons of another era that repaired and cleaned up the giant messes that Republicans created not so very long ago?
Workers get your shovels!