Who do you think will get MOST of the blame for the US S&P downgrade? Republicans or Dems?
 

Put another way, who stands to gain the most from the downgrades and increased market instability caused by the S&P downgrades?

Obama better bust out a recovery soon or he might go the way of this dude:
http://i56.tinypic.com/okaahd.jpg

Republicans will blame Democrats & Democrats will blame Republicans. If this wasn't enough to change their useless shit in Washington then they won't change until they have completely ruined the country.

Tea baggers will just make crappy signs with misspelled words and try to pretend to not be Republicans.

50 years of crazy bloated fraudulent non-sensical self-defeating bankrupt government social programs is the cause, including the Community Reinvestment Act which was launched under Carter and expanded under Bill Clinton and served as the primary trigger for the real estate collapse. You can also send a note of thanks to Rep. Barney Frank who insisted that the flimsy government entities which propped up this scam were rock solid.

The current cause? Obama and the 200 big spending Obamas in Congress, who have only stepped on the accelerator towards the cliff of financial doom.

Who will get the blame? Depends who you ask. The left blamed GWB for everything that ever went wrong anywhere in the solar system, but they have played that card so many times that it is worn out.

If Obama gets half the blame he deserves --he will be bounced out on his ass in the next election.

The Looney Left's current whipping boy is the Tea Party.

TeaBaggers will suck it next Nov because their constituents will all be living in cars...lol

oh fuck off ..

Like big business Oil?

Big Business isn't perfect, but at least it produces SOMETHING of economic value.

35,000,000 Baby Mamas on welfare are only takers.

Reps always do better in a shitty economy because people expect them to be business minding and fix it. What they don't know is that they fucked up the economy in the first place... win-win for them I guess.

That's part of it. Don't forget to include corporate subsidies, defense industry bloated deficits, bullshit biofuel subsidies, and of course, social entitlements....

A double-dip recession, runaway inflation, and mass destruction of jobs?

If that doesn't work, maybe get the remaining sane people to vote out the socialists?

??

Good points. It will definitely take a COMBINATION of historical and social factors to get off the ENTITLEMENT mentality.

The state makes for a worthless nanny.

While I won't argue that entitlements are partially to blame, you are a little bit off. The Community Reinvestment Act started in 1977 and it operated without any problem for about 25 years. If it were to blame we would have seen these problems 25 years ago. There is a reason we didn't. It was working fine because while they still gave loans to low income people there was still a decent amount of pre-qualification that those borrowers had to go through. Then in 1999 the Republican controlled house an senate passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and Clinton signed it into law. This allowed regular banks to provide the same type of services that investment banks did and vice versa. This also allowed for the wholesale buying and selling of these subprime mortgages to begin. Now small banks could make a lot of profit simply by giving a home loan to someone and then selling it off to some other bank. The reason that Washington Mutual bank is no longer around is because they were one of the worst at this. They started using the CRA as way to give loans to anyone who could sign their name then they packaged them up and sold them off. When the shit hit the fan they had no other real assets to fall back on.

There was also abuse of the CRA by people who should not have had access to it. There was a study done by a non-profit called The Woodstock Institute that showed roughly 45% of the CRA loans were going to people who fell in the middle or upper income tax brackets. This is banks clearly using the system for quick, easy profit.

Another tweak was made to the law in 2005 (guess who controlled the house and senate then). This tweak allowed all banks that offered CRA loans that had more than 1 billion in assets to basically ignore the 50-25-25 rule. The rule basically said that the bank could only offer up to 50% of its services as CRA mortgages. They also had to then have 25% of their business as services and 25% as other investments. The banks with enough assets could ignore this rule (again see Washington Mutual). This freed banks up to basically do nothing but make subprime mortgages and then package and resell them without offering any other services to the community.

You put all of this together and it makes an ugly picture. It isn't the original CRA that caused the problems it is the changes made by the republicans (and Clinton has to shoulder some of the blame for signing the law). also to blame are people who bought houses that they likely knew better than to buy. I have read that somewhere around 30% of all the subprime houses that are in default were second/investment homes. People saw real estate values skyrocketing and decided they could make a quick buck and took advantage of the system to do so.

Here is one other little side note. You say that the democrats have worn out the blaming GWB card and I agree to a point. At some point they need to just shut up and move on. But let me ask you this about wearing something out. Every single election where the republicans are not in power and are trying to regain that power (or even in some cases when they are in power) they promise to lower the debt, cut spending, shrink government and cut taxes. Can you show me one of them that has done this? Bush did cut taxes, but it a moot point because he grew the government by a huge proportion. Reagan and the first Bush both raised taxes, grew the government and increased the debt. They are clearly lying, yet they keep promising the same things so when exactly were they planning on delivering?

I'm not a liberal, more of a libertarian, but I love when the republicans try to play victim.They are all scumbags dems and repubs and everyone should vote against any incumbent in this next election, but that is likely to never happen.


Sorry long post.

Going to be now :)

Obama will get the blame just like Martin Van Buren did.

As for the original question for this thread. I think the blame will ultimately be handed to whichever party puts together the best narrative in the next election. Both sides are gearing up to show that it is the other side's fault. The election will tell us who rakes the shit better. In reality they all should own it and they should all be thrown out.

I'm so tired of political rants that I hope everybody goes broke and
starves to fucking death so I can live in peace.

everyone blaming each other

so was S&P correct on their assessment?

The truth is something very different. The Government spending put money into your pocket indirectly. Or do you think the beneficiaries of that money went to the Bahamas and banked it there?

50 years of arrogant thinking by the US. 50 years of moving jobs overseas and putting people in need of social benefits is part of the problem. If the Government hadn't been employing people, who would of?

And the real problem was Governments lending money to make up the difference between what it had coming in and what it had going out.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...otal-taxes.JPG

Your low taxes were only because the Government borrowed to make up the difference. So stop the Government spending that money. Great solution, let's just take 13 trillion out of the US economy. :1orglaugh

And who do you think pays for all the services you take for granted. Private Enterprise?

Here's the solution. Get them into jobs that provide the country with a profit. Maybe this.

Do away with all the services people take for granted. Just a few instances. Roads, paramedics, fire men, police, life guards on beaches.

So that you have to take out private insurance to cover these items. Just like private heath care. So here's how it works.

When you drive a meter in your car automatically takes money from your bank account per mile you drive, this goes to pay for the roads and the people who work in the offices administering the whole system, the share holders, the highly paid executives and of course profit. If you call the police, paramedics, etc it works the same way. Or it's done on a swipe credit card when they arrive.

Here's how it will work.

You wife has been raped and injured by a Hispanic burglar. You phone the private police and paramedics. They inform you that you don't have the premium cover plan which covers rape by Hispanic burglars. So they can't help and advise you to take your wife to the hospital in your car.

But shit, when you go to drive out the car stops. Because theres no money in your bank account. Because you did have a shop in an area that was mostly people living on benefits and when they didn't get their checks, they rioted and looted then burned down your store. Putting you out of business. The insurance cover you had didn't cover riots by Hispanic looters.

Extreme but it's to illustrate that you take for granted a lot of the services you receive, services that are being paid out of the public purse.

And lastly. GWB's Dad never sent the Army into Kuwait to kick out Saddam Hussein, who decided to invade Saudi as well and now gas is sky high and Saddam is still living like a king. Just a lot richer. Why didn't he send the Army, it was cut to save putting up your taxes and not to borrow money to pay for the Army. :Oh crap :Oh crap :Oh crap

I don't know the precise figure, so someone can go look for it, yet I would bet 95% of all Government spending is spent in the US. And flows around the US. Until you buy a foreign car or other goods.

http://paulmarkham.com/temp/data1.jpg

That's why the borrowing is so high.

Yes how fucking dare them Mamas buying Mercedes with our money. How one track. They spend the money in shops, that employ people, they probably couldn't get a job because there are none. Go figure out how to make working for a living possible and better.

Polls will show that somewhere between 60 to 75 percent of the american people blame the republicans.

But the teapublicans will stomp and froth and scream like women that it was obama.

And the media will act as if the teapublicans have the dominant storyline, and constantly repeat the teapublican soundbytes.

Since the media decides what the american people are allowed to think, expect the teapublican story to seize viewer share.

But, the teapublicans are having trouble running credible candidates, so despite obamas capitulation to teaparty extortion, he will probably be reelected.

Which is too bad, a Perry-Bachmann presidency is just what america needs.

And Las Vegas becomes a ghost town. The people who would be hit the hardest are those with jobs, not those without. It's the people with jobs who would have to really tighten their belts the most. No more trips to Vegas.

So who should look after the people who can't find jobs because factories have closed and moved overseas?

I don't think they were. We haven't defaulted. We might have come close and we are up to our eyes in debt, but we have never defaulted. Until that happens I think our track record should afford us the benefit of the doubt.

If people actually read what S&P put out, its both the far left and the far right to blame and frankly I think it was spot on...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hVkPhgN5Xs...ure_if_srs.jpg

Pretending to be objective AND live in reality=priceless.

blame the tea baggers like 12 clicks. they would rather ruin the country than fix it. but they will do it armed to the teeth.

Both parties are busy working on trying to blame this on the other side instead of fixing the problem. Stop placing blame and get to work.

I've always enjoyed these talking points when people try to say what it would be like to live without all kinds of things that the Federal government "gives" to society, but you do realize that NONE of the services you are describing are paid for by the federal government right?



Just checking...






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Sure, the Democrats and the Republicans have been running up enormous debts over the last 40 years, and there has been no budget passed in almost 3 years....


......but lets blame 10 congressmen representing a loose group that has no actual structure and only showed up in the last 2 1/2 years....




.You guys are really buying the bullcrap.




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There is no far left in the US of A... it's center right and right wing nuts.

George Bush and his two wars get most of the blame in my book.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Only about half of US adults even know who the vice president is. Most have no idea who Boehner is. To a large percentage of the country, therefore, the government's name is Obama. He will be blamed because most people just don't know who Reid, Pelosi, etc. are, and if shown Boehner's name they'd guess he was a porn star.

In some ways that's appropriate because if there were a leader in the white house, either a John F Kennedy or a Ronald Reagan, we wouldn't have been within hours of default.

Spelling Nazi?




Obama has raised more money for reelection and than all the other president hopefuls combined, from all the money the government has blown on useless ventures converting into political contributions I'm sure. Obama is about getting re-elected, not running the country.


I can't believe people here blaming the people that are blaming the government for doing a bad job. How moronic can you be?

Your clocks are a little off. Thw debt really took off under reagan from 900 billion to 3 trillion. He cut the top tax bracket and started running up the credit card. Also as fun as it is to kick sen franks. If what he did was so bad why didnt the right fix it when they had all three branches of gov?

Just like why didn't the left put together a good healthcare plan and fix the economy when they had SUPER MAJORITY?

Answer to the thread question: Both corporatist parties are to blame.

If you read all of the statements issued by S&P, they all talked about a $4 trillion debt reduction that had to be put into place. the plan that was passed was only $1 trillion, with a committee to decide to reduce another $1.2 trillion. S&P does not believe the additional debt reduction will occur.


While both parties are running around calling it "The Tea Party Downgrade", the ironic thing is that the ONLY plan that reduced the deficit by $4 trillion was the "Cut, Cap, and Balance" plan.


Funny, ain't it?




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Wait, it's 2011 right? why are you blaming 1984?
What has the Barry in charge done to fix it? Nothing, he made it worse. But hey, lets dig up a dead president and make him pay for it.

The big reason the S&P downgraded was becuase they believe the US will continue to amass debt in the years to come.

I hope the US gets downgraded again in 6 months..

Little bitch Geithner is crying about how unfair the S&P is, but it's like a guy getting pissed off at Experian for lowering his credit score because he's late on his payments all the time..





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It's our fault ? we elected these assclowns ...

But that is just the problem. We aren't late on our payments. We haven't defaulted. This is S&P fucking with the markets and powers that be flexing the muscle and nothing more.

If you buy a house then have some financial difficulty so you have to scrape, dig and bust your ass to get the money for the payments together and you some months come in on the last day with the money, but you still make the payments on time they don't lower your credit rating because six months from now you might be late on a payment.

S&P should give the country the benefit of the doubt and leave the rating alone until we actually default. To me this is all nothing more than market manipulation. I would love to know who made millions today going short.