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Economists: Another Financial Crisis on the Way
Nonpartisan Group Led by Nobel Winner Calls for Stronger Financial Reforms
Even as many Americans still struggle to recover from the country's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, another crisis -- one that will be even worse than the current one -- is looming, according to a new report from a group of leading economists, financiers, and former federal regulators.
Elizabeth Warren, who was chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, reiterates her calls for an independent agency to protect consumers from abusive Wall Street practices. In the report, the panel, that includes Rob Johnson of the United Nations Commission of Experts on Finance and bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren,
warns that financial regulatory reform measures proposed by the Obama
administration and Congress must be beefed up to prevent banks from
continuing to engage in high risk investing that precipitated the near
collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008.
The report warns that the country is now immersed in a "doomsday cycle" wherein banks use borrowed money to take massive risks in an attempt to pay big dividends to shareholders and big bonuses to management -- and when the risks go wrong, the banks receive taxpayer bailouts from the government.
"Risk-taking at banks," the report cautions, "will soon be larger than ever."
Without more stringent reforms, "another crisis -- a bigger crisis that weakens both our financial sector and our larger economy -- is more than predictable, it is inevitable," Johnson says in the report, commissioned by the nonpartisan Roosevelt Institute.
The institute's chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, calls the report "an important point of departure for a debate on where we are on the road to regulatory reform."
The report blasts some of Washington's key players. Johnson writes, "Our government leaders have shown little capacity to fix the flaws in our market system." Two other panelists, Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT, and Peter Boone of the Centre for Economic Performance, voiced similar criticisms.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner "oversaw policy as the bubble was inflating," write Johnson and Boone, and "these same men are now designing our 'rescue.'"
The study says that "In 2008-09, we came remarkably close to another Great Depression. Next time we may not be so 'lucky.' The threat of the doomsday cycle remains strong and growing," they say. "What will happen when the next shock hits? We may be nearing the stage where the answer will be -- just as it was in the Great Depression -- a calamitous global collapse."
The panelists call for major banks to maintain liquid capital of at least 15 to 25 percent of their assets, the enactment of stiffer consequences for executives of bailout recipients and for government officials to start breaking up firms that grow too big.
In the report, Elizabeth Warren, who was chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, reiterates her calls for an independent agency to protect consumers from abusive Wall Street practices.
"While manufacturers have developed iPods and flat-screen televisions, the financial industry has perfected the art of offering mortgages, credit cards and check overdrafts laden with hidden terms that obscure price and risk," Warren writes. "Good products are mixed with dangerous products, and consumers are left on their own to try to sort out which is which. The consequences can be disastrous."
Frank Partnoy, a panelist from the University of San Diego, claims that "the balance sheets of most Wall Street banks are fiction." Another panelist, Raj Date of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, argues that government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become "needlessly complex and irretrievably flawed" and should be eliminated. The report also calls for greater competition among credit rating agencies and increased regulation of the derivatives market, including requiring that credit-default swaps be traded on regulated exchanges.
With the Senate Banking Committee, led by Chris Dodd, D-Conn., poised to unveil its financial regulatory reform proposal sometime in the next week, the report calls on Congress to enact reforms strong enough to prevent another meltdown.
"Sen. Dick Durbin once said the banks 'owned' the Senate," says Johnson. "The next few weeks will determine whether or not that statement is true."
- Posted in
125 Comments so far
Show AllWe have a parasitic infection that has gone untreated and is in the process of killing the host. It's just a matter of time.
Thinking that regulating the banks in a capitalistic system will solve the country's problems is like trying to control the Mississippi River with sandbags.
FDR's New Deal regulations controlled the banks from 1933 until Ronny Raygun started the deregulation process in 1981.
That 50 year New Deal era was the only period in US history that no banking crisis occurred and the only period when investment bankers income wasn't much higher than their counterparts in other industries.
Today investment bankers ANNUAL incomes far exceed the LIFETIME incomes of their counterparts in other industries.
Restoring New Deal regulations and adding regulations that address more recent financial "products" is the only way to prevent serial meltdowns, each of which will make the banksters exponentially wealthier while making you and I poorer.
As I said above, the sad reality is that the American people have become too stupid and complacent to force their leaders to enact meaningful reform. In ten years' time the bottom 50% of us will be homeless and scrounging for our meals like chickens pecking a dirt field. The luckier among us will be living out of a battered 70's RV, but at least when we park it on Pacific Coast Highway at night we'll finally have achieved the American Dream of owning "oceanfront property".
that's not a good permanent way to live, but imo, for a summer or so, it's a hecka nice vacation ;)
There was a groundswell of socialistic thought in the early 20th century. All FDR did was save capitalism. This started long before Reagan or FDR.
FDR reacted too 10 million card arrying USA communists,with the Red Russians feeding hungry USAans with White Russian confiscated gold ( thus the possession of gold bullion became illegal).
And after two decades of bombings and bloodshed in a conflict between Anarchists, Socialists, Unionists, Pacifists, and the forces of repression.
Most people saw the trouble coming our way. In 2006, they tried to do something about that by giving control of the House and Senate to the Democrats.
Nothing constructive happened.
In 2008, the people elected the first black color president to give the Democrat controlled Congress a "progressive" (Supposedly) executive.
Nothing constructive happened. Indeed, the government has become more right wing and pro Wall Street.
So now what? Any third party seems the answer.
If one of your US Senators is up for re-election this year and recently voted in favor of keeping Ben Bernanke running the Fed or voted in favor of TARP, you need to contact them and tell them you will not vote for them.
The problem with voting for the lesser of two evils is that the lesser evil keeps getting more evil each time you vote for them.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG....
When you go to vote... DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY INCUMBANT OR CAREER POLITICIAN!
It doesn't matter how they voted on any one issue... they are all whores and Capitol Hill is a MIC/BANK whorehouse.
No one gets to Capitol Hill without selling his soul and burying a body or two.
VOTE OUT ALL INCUMBANTS! IT'S THE ONLY SALVATION FOR AMERICA.
The election process itself is corrupted, and thanks to the Supreme Court now a legitimized capitalist venture. Third parties may seem like a good idea, but it can't happen given the context of corporate controlled media and corporate controlled electioneering. And even if third party candidates could win on the federal level, they would immediately find themselves thoroughly embedded within an unduly influenced corporate controlled system, playing politics and being played. How is it that you think the Democrats and Republicans got to be this way? And why the few good folks that do manage to get in are so ineffective?
Bankrupting nations and the working classes is part of the plan, necessary to effect the new world order of global government and global currency as the solution - a government which is to be largely controlled of course by the central banks and corporate multinationals, with the working classes serving largely the same subordinate consumer slave role they now serve; albeit we will still enjoy our consumer goods and leisurely indifference, just not on the grand scale to which we in the U.S. have been accustomed - that's not sustainable no matter who is in control.
Our salvation does not exist in the election of particular officials but in the denying and bankrupting of the multinational corporations that control our money, media, military, elections, resources and processes of government.
Here I go again, knowingly sounding like the dummy on the block, but I do love reading all the high minded back and forth and hey, maybe even learn a thing or two. But, as I read comments from people, who obviously know 10 times more than I do, and most of it makes real good sense, the article describes impending financial peril. If there are so many smart people who seem to have all the answers posting comments in CD comment sections, who is running the country ? Obviously we care about each other more than they do and all these ideas and comments just won't save us. Please one of you run for office and act upon all the great remedies and ideas that are posted daily. OK, there, my sense of futility is here for all to read and I will keep reading and keep hoping someone will grab the reigns before the runaway horse with blinders on, runs us all off the cliff !
Good point, and I feel your frustration...but why are you still hanging on to the runaway horse?
And why on God's green earth are you even considering that a politician, even one of us, can do anything about it?
Who is running the country? Don, where have you been the last 50 years?
What's that definition of insanity? Oh yes, repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result.
I grok. But what is different behavior? Voting for a different candidate or a third or fourth or fifth party? Buying brand A vs. brand B? This seems to be what most people think of when that question is broached.
We need to be modifying our behavior in ways we never dreamed we would have to. I think we will be modifying our behavior in such ways, but it would be easier if we started now of our own volition.
Anyone bought gold lately? Where's a good place to buy it?
You should have bought gold when it was $365 an ounce, it's now around $1200 an ounce. If you already have gold or silver you better hold on to it, things are only going to get worse.
$1200 an ounce is steep, but when compared to $2400 an ounce? One gold coin may save my life at some point. I don't want Fort Knox, just a couple of coins.
Who says gold will keep going up? That may well be a pre-bubble bursting assumption.
Joe
Gold could keep going up if Peak Gold occurs and I believe that there are signs of global Peak Gold production.
I'm not implying one should invest in gold purely as a long-term investment. And I'm certainly not implying one should invest a lot in it. But, a couple or three half ounce gold coins may be wise, if one can afford them.
As Rob Johnson, Elizabeth Warren, et al continue warning our nation's elected officials about the coming economic collapse, these so-called representatives of the people and their corporate benefactors are making enormous personal financial gains.
As the politicians and corporate parasites stuff their ill-gotten gains into off-shore bank accounts, the economy continues on its tragic journey toward oblivion. The politicians and the corporations simply don't give a rat's ass.
In Concepcion, Chile, all of the stores were looted after the earthquake. They were looted not merely out of necessity, but also out of anger and frustration. I heard somewhere that it takes 48 to 72 hours for people to resort to looting and violence after social chaos has occurred.
What will happen when the USA is plunged into economic and social chaos that we haven't seen before, or at least since the last depression? Who will the people vent their anger out on?
Do you remember what the people of the Phillipines did to the presidential palace after Ferdinand and (shoe queen) Imelda Marcos were thrown out of the country? Do you remember what the Romanian people did to the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife after the fall of the Iron Curtain?
The American elite have their army, but most of the military is made up of middle and lower income folks. Whose side will they be on when the financial and social curtain falls in this country? Palaces and gates won't be able to keep the mobs out. I pity the souls trapped inside.
What scares me, watching your country disintegrate from afar, is that the elites are being very clever, and making sure that the anger will be aimed at the dispossessed, the downtrodden, and the victims of the greatest heist in history, rather than the perpetrators.
All the mass protests have been about things which help the poorest in your country - health care, bank regulation. there was hardly a peep about the parasites who have hollowed out your country, and are still looking fat and sleek. They are still the people who are sought out to find solutions to the massive theft they have committed, and they are still the people in control of your banks, your treasury and your financial regulators. None apart from one scapegoat are anywhere close to a gaol.
They are very clever.
You may be right but there are some of us out there who are starting to have second thoughts about trying to steer the war ship away. It can pain us deeply when we are forced to realize that we are engaging in futile attempts to steer this war ship away. But one thing you must understand is that as much as I love my country, it is a lost soul and I don't know how we're gonna fix that.
Agreed to a certain degree, max.
While I do feel quite a bit of uncertainty as to where we're headed, my gut tells me it isn't to a good place.
I also realize, however, that in times of great uncertainty, demagogues come out of the woodwork to fan the flames of fear and confusion, and then to reap the rewards of panic. With that in mind, I have to keep asking myself what the sensible course of action is for myself, my family, and my community. Honestly, my course is a bit winding as I make my way through dire predictions and then some semblance of hope or possibility. It is most unsettling, but I know I'm not alone.
I guess where I ultimately land is in a middle ground where I take reasonable precautions (subject to interpretation) while keeping my eyes open to oncoming storms. I know things can change very quickly, so I'm trying to take prudent precautions.
Finally, like you, I'm rather doubtful that this soul is fixable at this point. However, I refuse to be paralyzed by fear. I'll do what little I can and brace for impact.
Ted, I don't know where to start in my reply since what you said brings a lot in my mind but here goes. Being a lost soul nation, most people won't know what hit them when it hits them. I do try to be careful about the fear mongering although some of it appears to be obviously true. I'm with you on taking precautions but I must say that you are gifted at this. My wife could do it but I'm not sure I'm that good at it as I have had a tendency to get moved by whims in the past and say dumb things like "God is punishing America" which I have finally gotten over saying thanks to taking some time out of this country to visit the Far East and witness different cultures and then reflect on this nation. When I say lost soul, I refer to all the immigrants that came here over the 2+ centuries and still are coming. I'll have more to say on this down the road so keep a look out for my posts. Good luck to you as well and all the best.
An insightful comment. The security state has in mind to send the National Guard from Ohio to California to shoot citizens there while the National Guard from California goes to Ohio to shoot civilians in that state. That way the poor dummies who think they are "Keeping the peace" or whatever, won't end up having to shoot their neighbors and friends. They'll just shoot other people's neighbors and friends. Check back on the video of the riot cops at the summit in Pittsburgh for a practical example of this policy in action. The media called them Pittsburgh riot police. Not true. Most of them were brought in from other cities so they would not recognize that they are fighting on the wrong side in the war. Yes riots will happen--It's a lot closer than any of us realize.
What these capitalist economists refuse to admit is that the root cause of these financial crises is the increasing capitalization of the financial sector at the expense of the so-called "real economy", the productive sector.
Capital is unable to invest in production because of the declining rate of profit in that sector. The productive sector is suffering from the situation we Marxists call over-production. The efficiency of production due to technological innovations has meant that more commodities can be produced than there are buyers to consume them. This combined with the persistent attack on the incomes of working people over the last 30 years has left consumers without the means to purchase all the shit the capitalist class wants to sell it. For a time, the system "worked" when the capitalist class decided to offer loans (but no real wage increases) to the working class so that the latter could continue to consume. As with all debt, it eventually must stop if it becomes impossible to pay back. This is where the economy is at now.
The capitalist class must always be moving its capital, using it to make more capital. If its only place to invest is the financial sector, that is where it will go. But the fundamental nature of capitalism calls for real profits to be made in the real economy. Profits realized in the financial sector amounts to a phoney economy based on what capitalist economists are now calling the "casino economy". Even they are smart enough to know it is not sustainable.
Is another financial crisis on the way? Of course it is. Each new capitalist crisis will become deeper and more serious than the one that proceeded it. This will continue until the working class sees through what is really going on and takes action to end it. When the capitalist shades are removed from the working people's eyes, we will be approaching a real solution to the inherent crises of the capitalist economic system - eliminating it.
banking profits used to be around 7% of GDP..... I believe banking profits ar now around 40%.... in other words our GDP of 15 tillion is really only 9-10 trillion in real gdp..... probably even less
So you Marxist, do you work for free? I am just curious, do you not shop and buy? If you do, you are a capitalist.
Anyway, the problem with our country, as quaint as you make it sound, is NOT over production. In fact our country produces next to nothing.
The problem with our country is what your dear Mr. Marx lists as something like number 5 in his little red book, a central bank, aka the federal reserve. This my marxist friend IS the problem.
The federal reserve and its counterfeiting press is the problem. Every time it pumps more funny money into the system, the dollar is devalued, the purchasing power is devalued and inflation is the hidden tax which is created which is killing the middle, working and poor classes of this nation. You see when they print the money and they get it first at the top of the food chain, it is worth almost a dollar, by the time it gets down to us, its barely worth the paper its printed on.
The problem is not the government not creating some phony minimum wage standard. The problem is the government, and them killing our money.
It's like if you have a pitcher of perfect iced tea, and every time you pour a glass you replace that glass with more water, eventually all you have is some cloudy looking water, it might resemble iced tea to some degree, but it has no flavor any more.
This is the problem. This is the federal reserve system. This is the federal government, and their printing and borrowing money from china, to pay for WAR and to BAILOUT (or as I like to call it Embezzlement) their Too BIG to Fail friends of the government.
This is the problem. Understand this, or you will never find a solution and we will all slowly bleed to death - but I guess that doesn't matter, as long as we can bash each other and blame each other, left right paradigm politics is the name of the game
END The FED!
RE: So you Marxist, do you work for free? I am just curious, do you not shop and buy? If you do, you are a capitalist.
That's a moronic statement! Do slaves support slavery? Just because one is forced to live within a vicious economic system does mean that you support it.
It's obvious that you don't know a damn thing about Marx's critic of capitalism.
You seem to be another FED conspiracy theorist. You're barking up the wrong tree.
And, your confused comments are a disservice to anarchism.
No, I am not a conspiracy theorist.
And, No what I am saying is NOT a disservice to Anarchy.
Anarchism is self governance, nothing more nothing less.
I want to be in control of my life. I do NOT want a central power system controlling my life.
I do NOT want a central bank controlling my economic status or power.
There is something called market anarchism. It is a TRUE free-market, where the people control what is going on in the economy, not the Banks, nor the corporations, nor government.
I can choose and decide how to live my life, better than a one size fits all corrupt government system.
I live my life as Do It Yourself, self sustainable as possible. This is what Anarchy is.
I do Not support WAR nor Occupation.
Central Governments & Central Banks support WAR & Occupation.
They also Oppress & Suppress the population.
Central Banks & Governments are the enemy of the people.
Not me. Not my ideas.
And yes, you can find alternative ways if you do not like a system. Grow your own food. Oh wait, central governments don't want you to do that because they want to micro manage every part of you life.
The federal reserve is destroying the value of our money every time they print more of their funny money federal reserve notes.
I believe that individuals and communities can create for themselves a more sustainable way of living.
And they can do this without WAR and without Occupation and without an Empire.
Have more faith in the individual and local communities and local economies, rather than central power.
I support peace. love. & anarchy
"Market anarchism"? You got to be kidding. You don't know anything about anarchism either.
From Wikipedia: Free-market anarchism (sometimes called simply market anarchism, or private property anarchism) refers to an individualist anarchist philosophy in which monopoly of force held by government would be replaced by a competitive market of private institutions offering security, justice, and other defense services – "the private allocation of force, without central control".
Market anarchism is a Right wing distortion of a long and rich history of a LEFT political philosophy (see Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon for starters) and has much in common with socialism. Market anarchism is what we have now with Blackwater and KBR.
Thanks for pointing that out, Tom.
To briefly clarify: the original individualist anarchists, like Benjamin Tucker, were socialist and were considered part of the anarchist school of thought by many anarchists (even if these anarchists disagreed with their particular theories). The individualist anarchists were opposed to capitalist property rights, authoritarianism, exploitative labor, profits, rents, and interest... but believed in a market where individuals sold the products of their labor (as opposed to selling their labor)... "a society of workers, not one of capitalists and workers."
It was mainly Murray Rothbard who took pieces of the individualist anarchist theory (the anti-state part) and used it to push his own agenda -- which he decided to label, anarcho-capitalism (one of the biggest oxymoron's in the English language). Rothbard should have named his crap for what it is... "anti-state liberalism." The only thing they have in common with the anarchist theory is the anti-state agenda.
I agree with you, Tom, market anarchism is definitely a "Right wing distortion of a long and rich history" of the true anarchist theories... and a complete joke.
Agree, but I would add, the problem was/is the extreme leveraging of debt. The complex bets on top of bets that essentially create huge ponzi schemes, paying off for the capitalist class and leaving the taxpayers to foot the bill when it crashes. It's not the debt taken on per se, but the leveraging that allows that debt to exist in the first place, and then be leveraged many times over. The previous big scams (Enron, the S+L crisis), are tiny compared to the derivatives 'time bomb'.
Big-time regulation is needed badly. I'm be in favor of going much, much farther than we have ever gone before. Little will come from washington, imo. Obama is a straightforward, egomaniac, clueless (or complicit - doesn't matter) disaster. Movements are the only hope.
The American people, stupid as they are, probably are not aware that our history has always told us, but obviously never taught us, that it ALWAYS takes a figurative "earthquake" of a magnitude 11 level to finally shake the populace out of their stupor and hold politician's feet to the fire to get meaningful reform. In the twenties it was the Stock Market crash that brought about Glass Steagall; in the forties it was Pearl Harbor that got us out of the GD; in the 60's it was the death tolls that brought an end to Vietnam. The next financial magnitude 11 that this op-ed refers to MIGHT wake the American people up if it succeeds where 2008 failed and throws 75% of us out of our jobs and onto the streets to rummage through trash cans for dinner. But even then, I have my doubts.
it'll all be OK just as long as we can still get our cable tv and watch dancing with the vampires
Agree, but: "Pearl Harbor that got us out of the GD" - disagree. That's pretty much a reich-wing talking point to disavow what FDR did. It was FDR (before he went conservative) that took us out of the GD. It was the GD that spurred financial reform! Much of the reform has been laid to waste past 25 yrs...
Professional and celebrity economists are just gatekeepers for the oligarchy.
Not one of them questions the private control of the nation's monetary system - the privatization of the banking and credit "industries" - secured, most notably, by the creation of the Federal Reserve system. See, for instance, Ellen Brown's book, Web of Debt, for the gory details.
As for economic forecasts, Thomas Jefferson saw clearly what private control of the nation's monetary system would lead to:
"If the American people ever allow banks to issue their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations which will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Thanks Jim Eldon. In fact, Brown has a good article on today’s Counterpunch. Certainly these academics are not serious. It couldn’t be more obvious that the banksters are nearing completion of their conquest of the global economy. These parasites have infiltrated, gutted, and are now bringing down or seizing complete control of western governments. When I read articles about this hideous process on Counterpunch or Global Research or znet, the image that constantly comes to mind is of rape.
Surely all these experts know that the American people are about to be sacrificed—in much greater numbers than they are now, i.e., on the level that third world populations have been for years. Do they feel they’re doing their moral duty with these weak and veiled suggestions and admonishments?
The current propaganda drone is the shocking and shameful level of the deficit. Didn’t Obummer make an analogy between (I’m paraphrasing) “families tightening their belts” and “our nation reducing its deficit?” A better analogy for the structural adjustment program which is going to be imposed (heard of Peter Peterson, former chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and the NY Fed, now sr. chair of Blackstone Group, which is managing the AIG bailout?) in the form of slashing cuts in the famous entitlement programs of SS, Medicare and Medicaid, in addition to discretionary spending like on food stamps or education, would be the head of a family forcing a starvation diet on his or her children while he or she spent the food budget on cosmetic surgery, a new sportscar and nights of philandering in casinos (oh, and a cache of automatic weapons). (Sorry if I’m beginning to sound like a preacher-man; it’s my southern cracker half acting up.)
I’m also a red diaper baby who was dragged to anti-Vietnam peace marches in DC. But the world is different now. The laws, internment camps, domestic soldiers and cutting edge weapons for crowd control are in place, ready for use in the event of mass public demonstrations. Though people are hopelessly divided now, it’s quite possible that broad mobilizations could be organized when the shit hits the fan. Are we ready to sacrifice our lives to the good fight?
Meanwhile, back in the moment, I keep wondering why none of those think tanks or NGOs filled with lawyers—whose articles are always being posted on CD—don’t try to bring suits against Bernanke and Geithner for fraud in their failure to enforce Fed regualations or for the AIG bailout, or Bush/Cheney and Yoo/Bybee for war crimes, or ObamaRahma/Holder for NOT prosecuting the latter or for dismissing the Gitmo murders investigation. Maybe I can answer that question myself. What about lawyers who read CD? Hello?
Here’s a quote from the end of Ellen Brown’s article:
“What is really going on behind the scenes may have been revealed by Prof. Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University. An insider groomed by the international bankers, Dr. Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope in 1966:
“[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”
If that is indeed the plan, it is virtually complete.”
Actually, even better than Ellen Browns Web Of Debt would be;
G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jeckyll Island
Welcome to another facet of the neo-Robber Baron era (courtesy of The Great Lurch Backwards begun by Grandpa Caligula [Reagan], continued by Daddy Bush & Clinton, spectacularly finalized by Dubya, Cheney, & Co., and left uncorrected by Obama), periodic bank panics and collapses brought about my insider greed, that consistently plagued the first version. The only thing that is different is that the US taxpayer is now on the hook when these financial institutions fail.
Actually Reagan was a puppet. Thats why they had to shoot him. G.H.W. Bush was the real president then, and probably still is. Go back to all the old footage of when reagan was president, H.W.Bush was always the guy visiting places and talking to people because he was the President. Reagan was the nice smiling face, like Obomber is today (thats why Obomber references him so much) except he was there to attract the Right, Obomber is here to attract the Left.
I'm sure you know, but if any don't, H.W. was also in Dallas in '63, the day Kennedy was shot and killed...Skull & Bones?
And it was GHWB's good friend's son who shot Reagan; after that friend had donated huge amounts of money to Bush's campaign. If Hinckley had been successful, his father's friend would have become president. One has to wonder, in the midst of all the BS about 'trying to impress Jodi Foster' how Hinckley knew where Reagan was going to be that day???? Are the public comings and goings of presidents so easy for mentally ill people to find out ahead of time, and can YOU just stand outside a building where a president is due to exit, holding a gun? Oh, and when GHWB was asked where he was on 11/22/1963 he answered, "I don't know"... everyone who was alive that day and not an infant remembers where they were. He was in Dallas and there were pictures to prove it, and he doesn't remember.....????????
I've long since felt that half the damage that's being done to this planet is the Bush family's fault and 8 years of the idiot pretty much proves it.
From Wikipedia:
Bush-Hinckley family connections
According to the March 31, 1981, edition of the Houston Post, and reported by AP, UPI, NBC News and Newsweek, Hinckley is the son of one of George H.W. Bush's political and financial supporters in his 1980 presidential primary campaign against Ronald Reagan; John Hinckley, Jr.,'s elder brother, Scott Hinckley, and Bush's son Neil Bush had a dinner appointment scheduled for the next day.[9][10]
Associated Press published the following on March 31, 1981:
“ The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice-President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign ... Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley, Jr., was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the Vice-President's sons ... The Houston Post said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice-president of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Company of Indiana. In 1978, Neil Bush served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the Vice-President's eldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock, Texas, throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980.[11]
Let me be perfectly clear about this: I think GHWB (head of the CIA) had Hinckley hypnotized, brainwashed or mind-controlled, was given a gun and the whereabouts of Reagan that day and let loose. The 'cover' was that 'he's always been mentally ill.'
It was an attempted coup by Bush of the Reagan presidency. Just like Florida in 2000, when we ended up with the moron puppet and really got Cheney.
What's going on in this country is something that only bullets will fix; no amount of 'voting' will change things. Is that not obvious? The sociopaths are in charge and there's way more than in Hitler's day.
anyone who thinks Chris Dodd is going to rein in the banks and actually try to pass TRUE REFORM is braindead or not paying any attentionat all!
plus - even if they pass true reform but leave the derivitive market out of it - that'll just make the derivitive market that much bigger as the banks leave the regulated sector for the unregulated sector....
I mean why make an honest buck when you can steal it?
VAMPIRES and JACKALS all of them.....
Chris Dodd is a Dudd.
Whomever is in Connecticut really should support Peter Schiff. He actually knows what he is talking about when it comes to this economy stuff. He, along side with Ron Paul has been trying to warn people about bigger and worse economic problems on the horizon. He is also calling for sound monetary policies and an END the the FED.
I don't think there's anything wrong with ending the article this way. We don't know whether the Senate is owned by the banks, or by AIPAC, or perhaps it's a joint venture between the two groups.
And,....an imminent tsunami will strike Hawaii last Saturday.