PeteCzech.com - My Take on Technology, the World and Everything Else

I find it very amusing that people are calling Governor Palin unqualified to be the Vice President.  Lets look at the constitutional powers of the VP: (S)He presides over the Senate, casts a tie vote when necessary.  Remember, it was John Adams that said: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”  The only other benefit is that at the State of the Union, (S)He sits next to the Speaker of the House.  Ahhh, now here is an interesting point: If Governor Palin isn’t qualified to be Vice President, what qualifications did Nancy Pelosi have to be Speaker?

Many people aren’t aware that the Speaker really has more power to affect lives than the Vice President.  Constitutionally, the House is the source for all spending bills.  Its where the budget gets set.  And today, its where Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, the leader of her party, failed to assemble enough of her own party to pass a bill that was sorely needed. Knowing the vote would be close, knowing she didn’t have more than 2/3 of her own party behind the bill, what did the leader of the House do?  She levied a 5 minute partisan monologue blaming the entire problem on the President!

Now, I’m not saying that she lost 12 Republican votes there.  But she absolutely lost a few.  And, I’m not saying that its wrong to blame the President.  He deserves some of the blame for all of this.  But. what happened after the lost vote?  Rather than try to talk to the 94 Democrats who failed to support her, she attacked Republicans!  Seriously, what was she thinking?  When Gingritch and Hastert were Speaker, they were able to hold their party and the house together.  Frankly, today, when America needed their legislature to act, they failed us.  I haven’t seen anything crash around DC like this since that DC-9 flew into the Potamic.  Republicans and Democrats couldn’t work together and now we’re in a bind.

This bill was flawed from the start - its been packaged as a “Bailout” when it’s really a loan, an investment.  I’ve been known to make risky moves with investments and this to me seems like a good idea.  Democrats were to scared to support this bill on their own and Republicans were too scared to work with Democrats.  As John McCain would say…  This, my friends, is about as bad as it can get.

When I see an absolute disaster occur like today - when both parties fail us so miserably, it makes me thankful that someone like Sarah Palin can come in, give an outside perspective and tell people they are ridiculous.  That is exactly what we need.  Nancy Pelosi is an absolute car wreck - the kind that clogs up the Cross Bronx for an entire rush hour.  But you won’t hear that in the main stream media.

A vote for Obama is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and the weak, politically driven Democratic party to have unchecked control over two branches of Government.  After watching today’s government activity, is that something we can afford to do?

I’m not an economist, so rest assured all of my comments are not qualified by a financial background or education.  But, I think there are a variety of people and factors to blame for this disaster:

1) GREED!  The banks and lending institutions continued to loan money to anyone and everyone with bad credit and no docs, with interest only loans and no money down.  Duh!  How could the government not oversee this?

2) Fannie & Freddie: This is why the government didn’t fix anything.  Fannie and Freddie used their govt relationship as a way to gain competitive ground.  They knew they’d get bailed out anyway.  If I was running for president I’d want to be as far from these two groups as possible.  But not Barack Obama.  From 1989 to 2008, he received the second highest amount of money from Fannie and Freddie for his campaigns.. only that was from 2004 to 2008 alone!  See the list here!  At least it took Chris Dodd 19 years to make #1!  And, The O-Man’s top financial advisor made over $100 MILLION in just SIX (6) years working as the head of Fannie.  Read about Franklin Raines!  Yeah, change I can believe in…

3) Co Conspirators.  And I’m gonna say what no one seems to want to say…  Alan Greenspan is also to blame!  If you lower the rates for years and years and allow a bubble to form, it doesn’t take a financial wizard to predict what will happen!  Then he retires and gives speeches about how its the worst economy he’s ever seen.  Thanks for the observation.  I hope that people will stop kissing his ass all around the country and observe that he IS neck-deep in this crisis as well.

4) HUBRIS: I don’t disagree with the failure to bail out Lehman.  Its a bummer and yes, my buddy works there and that really sucks, but Lehman’s CEO failed to act on this issue and pretended that all was well.  He had months to find a suitor and failed to do so.  The management @ Lehman is to blame for their downfall.  Merrill saw the writing on the wall and made a deal - good for them.  I can only assume that Lehman’s investments were in such dire shape that even the government couldn’t help them.

5) A do-nothing Congress: Seriously!  Even today, Harry Ried the Democratic Leader in the Senate, stated: “no one knows what to do”.  Oh…. my… god.  So instead, they are going to adjurn congress and let the Administration take care of it.  Wonderful!  It seems to me that years ago, the Bush admin tried to take on Fannie and Freddie and they were blocked by congress…  BUT also…..

6) THE BUSH ADMIN: I’m going to say it!  The administration has sat idly by and done very little here.  While Paulson and Bernacke are definitely doing a great job at this point, it is a bit late for heroism.  They needed to reign this in as the bubble was forming.

So, blame goes all over.  What is the future?  I’m an optimist.  It seems to me that so far, this is a financial crisis.  So the REAL den of vipers, 8 miles to my east, is suffering greatly.  And they deserve it (see point #1).  Frankly, I think there is more suffering to come.  How this plays into the economy as a whole is yet to be seen.  I believe McCain was right before he corrected himself - the economy’s fundamentals ARE strong.  The financials suck.  So lets give Wall Street another couple of months to consolidate, lick their wounds, and I’m sure that by this time next year we’ll have a consistent growth pattern again.

After all, everything is cyclical!  Economics, politics… Environment…?  But that’s another argument!