I'm no expert on economics, just a dumb-ass who's been swindled and cheated and robbed of his own soul, while trying to be honest and live a decent life.

To me, they ALL did it.

But of course, I can't get a big salary like these others, Krugman and Scheer and god-knows-who-all-else, yapping about it.

Hope y'all drown in your fucking hot-tubs!

I think that Scheer has oversimplified Krugman's argument, claiming the the Nobel-prize winner put the blame simply on changes in the mortgage-processing rules under Reagan.

In fact, Krugman operated on a much broader scope, excoriating the Reagan administration not only for relaxing the rules governing the conduct of the financial institutions in general.

Krugman also does not ignore the deliberate mistakes enacted in the last years of the Clinton administraiton.

"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."

Krugman's point is that the policies enacted under Reagan allowed American consumers and businesses to greatly expand their debt burden, making them vulnerable to the eventual collapse which was precipitated by the elements that Scheer lists in detail.

q

Although I disagree with Reagan policy and believe that he was involved in a number of criminal activities, there has to be a starting point for the prosecution.
The best starting point, certainly the easiest, is the bush election of 2000.
Not that Clinton was innocent, but there has to be a place to begin prosecuting. bush is clearly a criminal and the only obstacle to his trial are the neoconservative traitors that would obstruct justice. To remove bush's "supporters", every American that voted for bush in 2004 should be given a "war bill" to pay for the cost of bush's Iraq war. The cost of the war in Iraq is approx. $674,779,795,914. With 62,040,610 people voting for bush, it works out to about $10,876 per person. They should all be billed and told to remit immediately.

The philosophy that enabled our mess began with Reagan. The freedom of the market. The horror of "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." This near religious view had great appeal to many Americans, and when ideologues and religion mix, then rational appraisal suffers. Quite natually heretical thinkers such as Born would have to be disempowered. I would hope (God I use that word alot) that some, such as Summers, have learned a bit over the years.

Thanks for the BIG honest, Robert. Now, when we get to the part 10-15 years before Reagan where White America REFUSED to make an equal place for everyone at the table, REFUSED to reject white male supremacy, REFUSED to reject WAR and the Rights of Conquest as the only force that gives our lives meaning, and REFUSED to let our (nearly moribund) Oligarchy die - AND INSTEAD demanded Exclusion, DEMANDED that Nixon put those angry black people, those uppity women, and those filthy long haired anti-war protesters in their place. Some said it with obscenity laced 3 molar hydrochloric acid. Some just said, "Law and Order". Same thing. They DEMANDED Exclusion. Nixon took the purple (49 States-White People 87% of pop), Hoover took the call. Hoover, graduate of the Palmer Raids and protege of Anslinger, dusted off programs for Ritual Defamation, False Imprisonment, and Extra Judicial Execution he'd been developing going back to his first appointment to the Bureau of Investigation under TReasury in '24 - and put them on sterroids. Over the following 10 years every leader and every mass movement for economic and social just was annihilated. You know this Robert, you were there, so was I, from Ramparts to Rolling Stone.

THAT decision sealed America's fate and its doom. Not Reagan. Not even Klinton. Nixon's Silent Majority chose first. They have chosen the same consistently for 40 years and they choose the same Exclusion to this day...they just don't want that brown skinned man who mows their lawn to have a Middle Class Life, they don't want him and his family to have health care, don't want his children to get a decent education...White America wants that brown skinned man (and his whole %^#$#^& family) to live in degradation...and now White America goes into the toilet as it diminishes into being just another minority in the Company Town...bubye...

Well, buddy, it started somewhere. And it sure as $#it didn't start with the fiasco we have today. There were baby steps at the beginning and Mr. Reagan and Mr. Schultz and Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rumsfeld, and all the other Misters, were right there.

Of course, there was Mr. Kristol (Irving) and Mr. Podhertz and several other Misters way-back-when, as well.

Who cares? Nothing is ever going to be done about it anyway. It's just a bunch of rich people yapping about "who-done-it."

Let's move beyond their irrelevancy and create a real world, where we're not over-populating the planet because Monsanto and Dow Chemical and Archer-Daniels-Midland and all their buddies want to get rich or die trying.

The more the number of years pass, the less relevant it is as to who started what. Raygun and Klinton did enough damage of the 80s and 90s but neither Dubya nor Obama cared to repair the damage but are in fact piling on more. When will we get leaders who will end the mess. I respect Krugman and Scheer but both of them are just paid writers and neither of them gave Nader or Mckinney their support so why should we believe in them if all they want to do is write another blame X article ? They're paid the big bucks just like the rest of our rotten media.

It matters because so many are willing to accept the Republicans as the bad guys and the Democrats as the good guys.
It is important to get past that mindset and in order to do so requires an accurate assessment.

Sheer and Krugman have done this country for years, those who would simply dismiss them as part of the well-paid flunky crowd are glaringly ignorant.

What does it matter whether it was one or the other Big Business parties that facilitated the financial crisis? The fact of the matter is that monopoly capitalism had (has) NO alternative but to shift its capital from the stagnation of the productive sector of the economy to the financial sector. The capitalist class found itself in a real quandary where its capital accumulation reached such a height that it could no longer profitably invest it back into production. It was forced to invest it in the financial sector and this required the establishment of new mechanisms for financial investments with the resulting bubbles. Of course the parties of Big Business would accommodate this stage in the development of global capitalism. They certainly wouldn't have established socialism. :-)

Our capacity for reason is what did it, and in this we all share equally. I think when the masses of little people do nothing more than point fingers at the few big leaders, (the bank that for security they deposited their power and responsibility in), for their failure to protect, that lack of reason screams into all of our faces in great numbers.

What has caused a lack of reason? Our very lives both biological and social, but especially social are breaking down through a natural process of decay. We need to change. Scientists know biological changes can take millions of years but social changes can happen in the blink of an eye. Usually such social changes are precipitated by catastrophic environmental occurrences to which we are forced to adapt by changing how we live.

I think that in this case our problems are largely social but the solutions seem to demand an evolutionary leap. I would hope we can change by using our evolved powers of reason that we have developed minus that out and out 'catastrophe'. Fortunately our capacity for reason has been changing and we may be at the precipice for just such a self determined leap. Weighing in on our side are social problems placing us in a near catastrophic social dynamic to which we must adapt. Many sense it, and what we don't need is finger pointing if we are going to survive and thrive.

Our problems need to be understood through creative visionary approaches. Approaches of love and understanding of our condition, not condemnation and blame for our condition. That condition is both curse and blessing, curse as we are powerless to it, blessing when we turn it into our power. That is our greatest achievement as humans, our capacity to change curse to blessing.

We must return to that, go back to our original sense of open exploration in common interest, not closed condemnation and infighting amongst ourselves.

It is difficult in extreme to understand this, when all around us our fellow travelers do not and we are creatures of habit, and habitually following each other.

All of this is in dire need of recognition for change, because as we face each other with our petty desire to find out who among us is pushing us toward our fall, we are blinded to the dangers of falling into such unreasonable behavior. The final doomsday scenario of this seems to be total nuclear destruction.

All of us forgetting our capacity for reason did it and any of us recalling our capacity to reason will undo it, stop blaming and start doing.

Reagan didn't do very much of it, but he did get the neoliberal capitalist ball rolling for all the presidents who would follow which it increasingly lookd like will include Obama.

Yesterday, Obama, once again, praised Reagan for all that "morning in america" crap. Obama mustn't have lived in western Pennsylvania, where my Fransiscan brother made regular trips to foreclosed homes to clean up the suicides of laid-off miners and steelworkers.

I don't believe in god or heavan, but it is people like Reagan who make me dearly wish there was a hell.

Can you be President of the USA without bending over backwards to give corporate America whatever it wants. This is what America is really all about. Reagan was just the first modern US President to make that explicit. Certainly Clinton followed in Reagan's footsteps and continued what he started-- and Barrack-- for all his talk about making life better for the middle class --follows the same line-- give corporate, particularly the financial part of corporate America whatever they want-- after all they do own the place, afterall it is still mostly their money that gets him elected. Barrack knows his place and from the smug look on Timothy Geitner's face-- this administration feels they are invulnerable as long as they deliver for Wall Street.

I think Krugman has been co-opted into the party line, which to me seems to be what-the-public-doesn't-know-won't-hurt-them. In the age of instantaneous communication this is probably a counter-productive strategy, but then again, it has probably always been a counter-productive strategy, because you have to be delusional to think you can delude others.

Good analysis on these posts. Well, here is something to add to the discussion:

Los Angeles Times 2 June 2009

"Bank of American Wins Appeal on Overdraft Fees"

"The California State Supreme Court unanimously overturned a billion-dollar class action award against the Bank of America, ruling that banks can collect overdraft fees from accounts in which government benefits intended for subsistence are directly deposited."

"The ruling threw out a 2004 verdict by a San Francisco jury that found the bank violated state law by taking fees for insufficient funds from accounts set up to receive Social Security benefits."

"The bank customers who stood to benefit from the award included 1.1 million California residents receiving government assistance."

"According to James C. Sturdevant, who represented the Social Security recipients, "The award, with interest, would have cost Bank of America $2 billion.... Some Social Security recipients in the suit lost 20% of their monthly income in a single day because of bank fees." Sturdevant further said "the Court's ruling will punish the poor.... These are the poorest of the poor.... The live on $800/month."

The bankster class robs again.

The Ray Gun was a continuation of the 1968 Nixon. What began as a brass knuckled, chest thumping reaction to the counter culture and its challenges to the Vietnam War and established political and cultural power in general, but was then unexpectedly derailed by Watergate, got back on the tracks in 1980. Nixon and The Ray Gun were the undeniable fathers of George Wanker Bush and Cheesedick Cheney. It was Dickie's and Ronnie's blood that was in Clinton's veins, not FDR, Adlai Stevenson or George McGovern. It was The Ray Gun who said the national motto of the United States is now "Fuck you!" The culture of piracy, swinging dickism and sneering selfishness that has brought down this country and destroyed the Democratic party got its start with The Nix Gun.

Yes, they are all to blame including Carter. The fact that Carter was on the tube defending Obama for NOT prosecuting Bush says it all really. Right now, we essentially have no government - the death of government as we know it. Also the fact that Obama is defending Reagan in a statue photo-op. Remember the Obama of 2008: "Let's honor the teachers, mathmeticians, phycisists, the real achievers." - to paraphrase. Now it's bullcrap photo-ops for the political right. Absolutely pathetic.

People so often ask what was "the cause" of something. In the sense that any event requires interaction and any interaction happens in context, nothing ever has only one cause.

The Reagan administration deserves more blame than Krugman has time to heap on it.

My most indelible memories of the Reagan administration are of the homeless people cut free to cold turkey on the streets of Santa Monica, California when he slashed social services. They would fall to a rhythm, screaming then gasping, screaming then gasping, through the night, and lay still on the sidewalk still wet with the sea mist when the day warmed enough for them to sleep.

Before Reagan took office, I had never seen a homeless woman in the United States.

However, the pristine purity of Reagan's guilt does nothing to exonerate anyone, not the Bushies nor Clintons nor the legislature nor the lobbyists.

Clinton was responsible for NAFTA and GATT, or at least promoting them. Additionally, he signed a bill that gutted welfare. The glass-Steagall Act was also repealed during his watch. Thus, the Clinton administration, in my view, sowed the seeds for our economic demise. Bush just pushed the throttle forward on the engine that was already in place.

Paul Krugman wants to stay in Hillary Clinton's good graces. He was almost openly vying for a slot on her Cabinet if she had won. He would have been one of her better picks if that had happened. But Scheer is right; Krugman's failure to mention the Clinton contribution to our present crisis is a big flaw in his argument. Scheer may not be right about the savings and loan scandal though and that was 100% Reagan.