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Subscribe to RSSWASHINGTON, D.C. -- Taking Congress and, indirectly, Mitt Romney to task for what he called a lax attitude towards the housing market, President Obama today announced a new set of proposals intended to help homeowners refinance their mortgages.
"What's at stake is more than just statistics. It's personal," Obama told an audience at a community center in Falls Church, Virginia. "This housing crisis struck right at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America."
But significant parts of the plan need the approval of members of Congress, which President Obama, taking a dig at the body's inaction, urged them to give.
"We're going to need Congress to act," Obama said, repeating the phrase twice for dramatic effect as scattered chuckles arose from the crowd at a community center in Falls Church, Virginia.
"I hear some murmuring in the audience here," Obama said, grinning at the crowd. "We need them to act," he repeated.
But Congress has previously rejected, during budget negotiations, one of the most significant parts of the plan: a tax on banks that would pay for a special fund through which some homeowners could refinance their mortgages.
That program would allow qualified homeowners with privately held mortgages (not through the government-subsidized programs at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac) to refinance their loans through the new fund and would be administered by the Federal Housing Authority.
Obama said measures like this were specific actions the government could take to help shore up the housing market, taking a subtle jab at Mitt Romney who in October said in an interview that the industry should be allowed to "run its course and hit the bottom."
"It is wrong for anybody to suggest that the only option for struggling, responsible homeowners is to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom," Obama said.
While Obama's speech was mostly a broad outline of the proposal, he gave a nod to the financial conditions in two of the swing states crucial to his re-election campaign: Virginia, where his speech occurred; and Nevada, coincidentally the site of the next Republican presidential contest.
"Here in Falls Church, home values have fallen by about a quarter from their peak," Obama said. "In places like Las Vegas, more than half of all homeowners are underwater."
Key campaign states were also mentioned during today's White House briefing, when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan took questions from reporters.
"Put yourself in the shoes of a family that the president described this morning," Donovan said when asked whether it was more expedient to simply let the market bottom out, as Romney has proposed.
"You've done everything right' you've paid your mortgage -- whether you're in Florida or Nevada, California, or right there in Falls Church, Virginia," he said. "We should not sit on our hands when we know we can help those families to be able to refinance."
But Donovan demurred when asked how the parts of the program that need Congressional approval -- including the bank tax, which failed previously -- would survive another vote.
"I'm the housing secretary," Donovan said. "I'm going to leave the politics and the discussions about what's possible in Congress on that to others."
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The School Taxes,is why I Lost my Home!!!!!!It goes up 25% every year!!!You really never Own your Home,when you have to Pay 6 Thousand Dollars a Year,to Greedy School Administrations!!!Consolidate Schools Administrations!!!
And what is the democratic solution to this! Cut spending? Not a chance!! Tax more,,,Bingo! Every single lie comming out of hussain oBAMAS mouth is about createing more and more fed agencies to "overlook things" and to tax or fine someone or something! Nothing about cutting current spending on the MOOCHERS and entitlements,fraud and out and out thievery on the American people!!!!
No cleatus - If you can't afford your home because of school taxes your are one of those GOP idiots that bought a home they couldn't afford.
oBAMA just wants to keep doing the same failed things that did not work before! And the moochers just keep closing their eyes to the debt our children/grandchildren will wake up to!This puke of a president and administration should be INPEACHED immediately and jailed for their roles of the MURDER of the fast and furious victims!
Dear Government: please don't try and "fix" anything else...you have done enough damage already. This new legislation to "help" home-owners is paid for by placing a tax on banks, who would then (guess what?)...pass this tax on to us, the consumer. Please Mr. Prez...don't do us anymore "favors". We don't need to be taken care of by the likes of you and your socialist agenda.
I don't know how many people read Obamas Executive order on the housing market, but this is it in a nut shell.
If you stop making payments on your mortgage, the FIRST 6 months you can just TELL them you lost your job, the next 6 months you have to PROVE to the mortgage company you lost your job. Essentially you can just stop making payments for 6 months and then resume making payments and nothing will happen to you!
I'm scratching my head on this one as to how this helps the housing market!
Brian : I"m confused, how can you scratch your head when it's so far up your.......fill in the blank.
There's quite few theories running rampant for the housing crissis and I will not go into them.
However, it is VERY common for businesses to purposely let the commercial properties they own or lease go into foreclosure, it is a strategic move to save liquid capital.
Why is that ok to some of you but not ok for the General Public?
Answer that.
If it was up to me......I organize a movement.....Where everyone would stop paying their mortgage.
Seriously if everyone did that what could they possible do? Nothing.
Start with the A's...B's....C's. It could take 20 years or more for it to see the light of a courtroom.
We could force them into refi's that make sense or just screw them alltogether.
Blame Romney ? Obama is such a joke !
Hey folks,, Obama's last 2 solutions both failed. Why would the current one work ? Obama is clueless on the economy.
And if you think most Americans think the Unemployment rate numbers are actual,,, you are misguided.
If the numbers are true,, what did Obama have to do with it ? He has been at war with private businesses since the day he took office.
Maybe his rejection of the Keystone Project was the reason Unemployment is supposedly falling ? LOL
The Libs on here crack me up ,, ,they are so clueless . :-)
Alan W - I'm curious, since the same people that put out the unemployment statistics now are the ones that put them out forever, were they wrong then, or is it just now that Obama is in office they are wrong?
And if they are wrong and have always been wrong, how to you propose we fix it, let YOU do it.
And if Obama's administration isn't responsible for the improved numbers how to you account for them? Since time began, we've known the stock market comes back first, followed by jobs. That's been the case since we started studying this. So, hows the Stock Market doing? You think thats an indicator of business investment? And so when you start seeing job creation (22 straight months), and it lags behind the stock market, and it's always been that way, well guess what, the economy is improving...it's just the GOP dug one heck of a hole.
Look at 1929, another GOP boondoggle...they remained in control of congress, and the presidency for 4 years after the crash. They had four years to implement GOP polices...the same you are calling for now. How'd that work. By the end of 1933 unemployment sat at 25.6%... What's it three years after Democratic polices?
Everytime something has went horribly wrong, the GOP was in charge...is that just by happen stance, or do you think maybe they have no clue what they are doing.
Obama is going run a very nasty and dirty re-election campaign and it's going to really turn of the independent. Politics is politics, but play dirty is not a win-win for anyone.
Terrie - Any dirtier than the GOP....or Newt...come on, we are not stupid. It doesn't get any dirtier than when the GOP is doing it.
Doesn't anyone see what this is? It's another slush fund for Obama and his cronies. There's no oversight in the FHA. How do you think Barney Frank and Chris Dodd got so rich and avoided being prosecuted? Aside from the media covering these things up, there was no accountability with Fannie and Freddie. Now they're wanting to create more beaurocracy. Now watch, the leftist media will report that this is the cure for the housing crisis and will create millions of jobs and end poverty and reduce the debt and lastly, make Al-Qeada love Israel...
Also, it's another way to appease the flag-burning, America-hating Occupy Wall Street losers by punishing banks. Breaking news people, banks and other large companies dont pay taxes. They pass them dont to the consumers so dont make the mistake of thinking "yeah, stick it to the big evil corporations". This will be a tax on the little guy..
My home isn't underwater!!! Why, when I sell it I will just pass the difference down to the consumer!!! I mean they have to pay any price I ask Right?!?!?!
This notion that corps don't pay taxes, they just pass the added expense on to consumers, is one of the most destructive delusions of the right wing-nuts. They just don't understand that the market, and therefore corporate pricing options, is driven by consumer demand. Supply side economics is truly voodoo economics.
In order for corps to do as they say, all their competitors must do the same, AND the product must be a necessity of life which people have no choice but to buy whatever the price, otherwise people will stop consuming their products or services. Corps don't set prices, consumers determine prices, otherwise I could sell my home for whatever I thought it was worth. I can ask what I paid for my home, but nobody will buy it. The same is true for all products and services which are not necessary to sustain life. The market and only the market determines price, not producers (unless they want to go below market price to take business away from their competitors) but going above what consumers are willing to pay is never an option.
If you wing-nuts can't bring yourselves to read up on Marxism, at lease study the theory you are advocating. You obviously don't know squat about socialism, and you don't know much about capitalism. According to free market theory what is the source of all new wealth? Don't look it up. A free market champion should already know the answer. But of course you don't have any real answers. Obama 2012!
hey thunder:
The reason you dont accept the facts is that you care more for partisan victory than you do for your country!!
Tell me: Why do you continue to support the party whose last 3 presidents signed TWENTY deficit riddled budgets that added over $11T to the debt AND saddle Pres. Obama with a $1.3T deficit even before he took office???
Why do you continue to support the party that helped crash the economy and has been opposing its recovery??
Why do you continue to support the party that deliberately created this debt crisis, using tax cuts and overspending, for the purpose of privatizing SS and Medicare? Do you want to place all the entitlement money into the hands of those who crashed the economy???
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/06/tax-cuts-republicans-starve-the-beast-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html <=== CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN
HARDBALL TRANSCRIPT/VIDEO: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/28/999759/-Hardball:-Bruce-Bartlett-desroys-every-Republican-fiscal-talking-point-in-5-minutes-?via=siderec
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/04/07/paul-ryan-and-the-republican-effort-to-finally-starve-the-beast/?utm_source=allactivity&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=20110408
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/10/27/126318/gop-privatize-socialsecurity/
The GOP's goal, if one goes strictly by the evidence, is to turn this country over to the corporate and moneyed elite! Why does anyone still support the GOP despite their proven lies?? Good Grief, Charlie Brown
Not this household!!! Obama 2012.
Obama should have done this long ago, and not now that he needs to look better and get votes. Is this why he now mentions his Christian practices and even misquotes the Bible? Votes, votes, votes!
Juanita Dominguez hits a homerun!
Banks will come up with fees upon fees on all existing relationships, and invent more fees and apply them as soon as possible, and charge even more fees for the lowering of interest rate paperwork to make up for their new Obama caused loss.
Obama is again misleading and lying to the uninformed, and being dastard to the rest of us.
Oh no they won't wing-nut, the law will forbid them to do so. Obama and us Democrats are going to see to it that the preditory banksters who played such a large part in crashing the economy are going to pay the lion's share of the cost of fixing it. Look, you have to consider EVERYBODY's opinions, and study ALL the data from as many diverse sources as possible, or you can't claim to know what you are talking about. Either do your due dilligence, or shut up and get out of the way, and that goes for ALL of you! Vote Democrat 2012!
Obama has his nerve, I'll give him that. He slams Congress for being incompetent while he defends the likes of Eric Holder who has had 13 months to explain operation "Fast and Furious" and he still doesn't know who authorized it. Let's look at that debacle.
Eric Holder reminding everyone in America, and Agent Terry's mother, what an arrogant jerk he is, he had a little lecture for Rep. Raul Labrador who dared question the Mighty DOJ King on Thursday. Labrador established a pattern of behavior by Holder of using "I don't know" as testimony during hearings. Responding, Holder began, "There's a whole bunch of things that I could say about what you just did, maybe this is the way you do things in Idaho or wherever you're from..." Wait, what? This man is, at least partly responsible for the death of over 300 Mexican citizens and a U.S. Border Patrol Agent and he has the audacity to address a U.S. Congressman like that? During a hearing? He should be impeached immediately.
Holder went on to say, "You should respect the fact that I hold an office that is deserving of respect." The office was one deserving of respect, however, Eric Holder's total disregard of the Constitution, his blatant racism and his incredible arrogance has demolished any respect it had. This is way beyond a Left/Right issue. The man is a disgrace to the United States of America.
Obama defends Holder and criticizes Congress. Holder and Obama should be impeached
Ron - You realize the agency and those in charge of fast and furious, vote republican...and are in fact, republican... Yea, who's behind fast and furious, republican's....put in place during the Bush years and still in control of that agency..
Don, please don't confuse Ron with facts. You wouldn't want to be responsible if his fragile little mind implodes in on itself. He probably can't afford a private asylum, he would end up in the state nut-house with the rest of us paying for it!!! LOL
Ron, see above
Barrack Hussein Obama = a total failure.....this is what happens when you elect a affirmative action president...
Your vine name says it all! Sure lets put a filth rich repub back in office so he can finish the job that bush left for the country ( A total failture ) Except for himself & all the other 1%ers. ( NOT A CHANCE )
Obama 2012 no question!!!!
Dixie girl, - Did you know that in 2008 Obama only got 42% of the white vote, he did however get 63% of the educated white vote. It's fairly obvious which group you fall under.
Why has Obama waited 3 years? what will he do with those who still miss their mortgage payments? Why should the tax payer be stuck with helping those who have gambled and lost on their investment? Where does it say your house will go up in value,all of the house closing I have been to and Never once have seen a guarantee that a house would go up in value.
Good for President Obama, Putting the blame right were it belongs!
Check the statistics!!!! Obama did not make the economy worse. Try to fact check.
Am I reading this article right?? When Obama speaks, you really have to read between the lines.
Is Obama proposing using my hard earned tax dollars to bail out people who were so stupid as to buy a house they knew they couldn't afford?? Is that what this is?? More deficit spending by the spender in chief??
Remember whose idea it was to force the banks to make those toxic loans?? That's right. The dizzy Democrats.
This would be throwing more money at a failed policy. Why?? To buy more votes of course.
We need to throw all Democrats out on their ears. Not politely either. Throw them out, and down the capital steps.
Romney 2012
Really wish people would stay on topic - Obama = increased spending and debt with the hope to raise taxes to cover the bad checks he is writing. Yes just like health care something needs to help housing but like Obamacare his ideas do not pass the smell test continue to hold back our recovery. (that smell would be the gasoline he is adding to the fire to burn our tax dollars)
Republicans Destruction of the economy ,the housing market,the manufacturing, the banks, thanks George Bush and Republicans
We the Democrats will do it with out them
Slight correction, we the Democrats ARE doing it without them, we always have, and we always will!
John,
You need to do some more thinking; very hard thinking.
kansasfsdafsdafsadf, I could say the same of you. History as always, will prove who is correct.
Cain, Perry, Bachmann and Gingrich are the "puppet" candidates who would just perform as "their strings are pulled", to be representing only "the few" and failing drastically for the majority. Ron Paul can't overcome that his policies always seem extreme and even bazaar. Santorum just lacks appeal and real credibility. So, with his ability to avoid negative attention, that leaves Romney.
However, Romney too spouts the Republican propaganda, aimed to appeal to biases, prejudices, fears, loyalties and emotions, intended to con the people and manipulate public opinion ... to justify returning to "more of the same", Bush-Cheney style, which is at the base of all of the problems. While the deficit, government spending and being too "liberal" are valid concerns ... they are not the cause of our problems and we really haven't moved too far "left" but rather our problems stem from moving too far "right", from catering to "the few". Our problems are from aggressive exploitation by "the few", where a permissive government encouraged their run-away greed, gross dishonesty and self-indulgence with favorable policies, excessive deregulation, lax oversight and non-enforcement, just making government co-responsible. The proof is in recognizing their continually moving us towards being a two-class society with "the few" (1%) competing in having it all while the majority (99%) struggles to survive. To return to "more of the same" would be a continuing catastrophe for the majority.
Ron Paul sounds bizarre because the people of this country are addicted to borrowing and spending as a solution to everything they want. Close to half this country now makes a substantial portion of its living off the manipulation of the currency through government borrowing the "other half" pays for.
Whatever they can't make the other half pay for they force onto the next generations. We have children not even born yet who will inherit debts from people who will have died before they will be born. Rich and poor they are all alike........ parasites.
Having classes of people able to live simply off of debasing the earnings of others, and other classes dedicating their lives to finagle their way into the debasing benefiting classes, simply does no good at all. One class takes more per person with fewer people while the other takes less per person but has massive volumes. The results are the same.......... debt, debt and more debt........... they don't pay for. Nobody is born in this world obligated to support anyone in a lifestyle they cannot afford for themselves.
The "right and left" paradigms died in the 1970's. There is only money and acquisition of FORCE to manipulate the taxation and borrowing to your benefit or the benefit of a group however large. It is called mob rule and we just change "mobs" we now call party's. The two party system is nothing but two hanging party's fighting over who gets to hang the taxpayers.....again
Lets get this right the TEA PARTY was made by Dick Army, Koch Brothers, Carl Rove
Its never been by the people(maybe a few) or for the people, its been backed by Millionaires and Billionaires for the Rich
Not only that what Hypocrites they are, most are Retired on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, are lower income and want to do away with the very support they are on.
TEA PARTY is the Republican Party the very right part of it, fueled by the KOCH Brothers who want to take over America State by State, they back Scott Walker, Rich Scott, Mitch Daniels, and the like
Out with the Republicans they have already caused enough Damage to America
And the Democratic party has been backed by the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Goldman and Sachs families. The Warburgs, Fannie/Freddie, AIPAC, the Trial Lawyers, Teamsters Union, PhRMA, General Electric etc etc etc etc I mean these people and corporations read like the who's who of criminal and global racketeering, tax evasion and federal regulation violators. They are like the largest crooks on the planet for the last 100 years! Heck those people and corporations had more money in their spare change pockets 75 years ago than all those three you mention put together. These people took over the country 75 years ago and still have it as evident by every Obama signed bailout.
Oh and then there is the "new crew" of multi billionaires like George Soros Obama's puppet master who is also worth more than all three of those put together.
So your point is? Are you saying the Democratic Party has not taken billions in lobby money from the above people?
If you conservatives really believe your economic ideology is the best, why are you still here mired in government intervention. Just south of the border is a shinning example of your policies put into action. In the United States of Mexico there is virtually no socialist intervention in the economy, no minimum wage, no 40 hour work week, NO EPA, no socialist security or medicare, no public health insurance, no food stamps, and if you try to start a union you get shot. According to you that's Paradise!!!
Rather than engaging in all this unpleasant bickering why don't you all just pack up and move to Mexico where you dream is already a reality, and make your millions! You would be happy, and the rest of US would be overjoyed!!!
If you value your hard won American way of life vote Democrat in November. If you value the Mexican way of life vote Republican! It really is that simple.
I want to add that I am disparaging the government of Mexico and not it's people, the majority of which are honest hard working people, who are horribly oppressed by their wealthy masters. Make no mistake the Republicans will do the same here if we are foolish enough to let them, and if we do, then we deserve it.
While we are at it let's dispel the conservative notion that our Gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-grandchildren will still be paying our debt to China. In reality the Chinese owe US more money than we owe them. That is a fact of reality, like so very many others, that Republicans conveniently forget.
When the ChiComs conquered China they stole all American property (several $100 million worth even back then), and refused to pay back the money we loaned them in WWII (another few tens of millions). Adjusting for inflation and adding 60 plus years of interest, that now amounts to more than we owe them. Our debt to China simply gives US a way to collect their debt to US by nationalizing it and calling things even. We can always say to them, shame on you for exploiting the workers. See we've seen the light and did what you did. You should be happy! We couldn't just refuse to pay and be deadbeats in world opinion, but we CAN collect a debt owed to US with impunity.
If you want to live in a modern prosperous society vote Democrat in November. If you want a system which conforms to Republican ideals move to Mexico. Mexico's wealthy masters will be grateful for more slaves.
Credit is power and debt is weakness. They have our Treasury Notes and we have a story about the ChiComs which is about as logical as the US taxpayers paying the entire net worth of the entire country to the Indians for "stealing it all". Then we pay off the Mexicans for stealing Texas and California. What the hell were we doing over their anyways? Pillaging their natural resources, forcing them to buy US arms, installing puppet rulers and trying to destroy their central banks to replace them with FED/World Banker owned ones as always.
Oh and then there is the $2 trillion in Treasury Notes. All they have to do is dump a trillion on the open market and that would cause a panic to the rest of the Treasury Note holders who would start dumping those and the stockmarket would collapse. You see we could not back one dollar much less a trillion. We are $16 trillion in debt and running a $1.7 trillion dollar deficit so we don't have a pot to piss in. All they have to do is say no to the $1.7 trillion in loans every year and the federal employees, military contractors and entitlement junkies all have to go find real jobs!
Also you fail to understand why all our corporations are over there buying land, building factories and putting money in their banks. What has changed? Why the sudden trust in a communist government that has confiscated everything before? It is because the Federal Reserve and World Bank are backing the US and European corporate investments with US currency from communist confiscations.
Obama is letting the worst and most corrupt conflict of interest in global history continue as he lets the FED strip this country like a car to be sold for junk. Let's see the Federal Reserve is in charge of the US economy but is insuring US corporations to move to China.......... hmmm? The US economy is tanking because of the and the Chinese economy is booming.....hmmm? The FED is investing trillions in China and won't put a nickel into recovering the US.....hmmm? Any you believe Obama does not see and know all this?
The Federal Reserve did the same thing with their front corporation Stewart Title in Mexico 15 years ago. They are backing all the gringo land leases in Mexico and now the entire coastline from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas is million dollar US owned homes and there are Walmarts as well as every major bar and restaurant chain in Cabo and La Paz. More real estate, jobs and business leaving the US.... hmmm?
The Federal Reserve and World Bank could no more back all these corporations from a communist or even Mexican take over than fly to the sun....... but the Federal Reserve printing machine will and Obama will cover the whole thing up and call it a national emergency...... time for trillions in bailout money because another greedy corporation screwed up.
Yeah right...... Obama and the same Democratic crooks that have been in office for the last 15 to 20 years pulling all this crap off are going to save us......... what are you smoking?
Any way you look at it, if we go down they go down. Our government would rejoice, and our economy would boom if they fell, and their economy would crash and burn if we fell. Think about it. And yes as a measure of absolute last resort, we really can nationalize the debt to China. It won't happen, because it will never be necessary, but it IS an option. The threat of it is a deterrent to any truly unfriendly activity on the part of China.
It is also interesting to note that even the ChiComs have discovered that only a mixed economy such as we have in the states can be prosperous. The closer a nation gets to pure unregulated dog eat dog capitalism, the more it Will resemble nations such as Mexico. The closer a nation gets to pure stand-alone socialism, the more it will resemble a nation such as North Korea. In the real world the pure form of either ideology leads to disaster. It is only a proper mixture of the two that can create a nation such as ours, and it is only a mixed economy that can preserve it. Radical capitalists and radical socialists are two sides of the same destructive coin. They should both be feared for they lead to the same end result.
But the Chinese can survive off just the flourishing India, Chinese, Russian, Eastern Europe and Middle Eastern countries. They don't need the US to survive at all. They would take a temporary hit then just whiz on by the US as India and China cultivate a booming middle class consumption. With no debt as a country or individuals the sky is the limit. We are worth less to China and the rest of the world every dollar we borrow. Debt is weakness and we are a house of cards. We are in debt up to our asses both as a country and individuals with a society literally completely built around borrowing to support an unrealistic lifestyle
Socialism helps nobody but the parasites getting more than they put into the system. If you stop the borrowing socialism immediately collapses that day. As you attempt to make the government reallocate wealth and control incomes based on wealth redistribution all the wealthy, entrepreneurs, daring, creators etc etc contributing leave the country like chetahs at a salad bar. Why stick around to be regulated down to financial mules?
You can't build a society based on the ridiculous insanity that everyone is as intelligent, educated, risk taker, motivated, and most of all makes little if any poor life choices so they deserve the same or even close. Most people breed themselves into into low income and poverty. Most of the rest are simply victims of their own other poor life choices being too numerous to list but all self perpetuated upon themselves. Somehow you have some logic the rest of us are obligated to support them all in a lifestyle they could no more provide for themselves than fly to the moon.
You don't even understand what true capitalism is today because we live in Fascism. We have a massively controlling totally corrupted titanic size federal government run by corporations many of which are foreign. We have a small handful of greedy investors managing our currency and economy for their own personal profits. Capitalism is no government intrusion unless people are being hurt and built around a system of multiple competing currency and most of all bartering. It is set up where small business's rule and corporations are rigidly controlled by states and communities to have short term goals that benefit the communities and are then dissolved as their charters expire. If they interfere with small business's their charters are immediately revoked. All corporate ownership is 100% PERSONALLY liable for all debts, injuries lawsuits et incurred by their corporations.
This is a glimpse of a what true capitalism is and it does not even remotely resemble the Fascism most confuse with capitalism. Capitalism died after the Civil War when Federalism took over the country and all corporate charters If you look corporate growth and power has grown in direct proportions to the growth of Federal power. They are one in the same and you cannot distinguish where the corporations end and the government begins. Federalism and socialism have totally failed.
The only people who understood and lived in true capitalism were those before states rights were dissolved and most of all before the Federal Reserve central bank took over the economy and country. Socialism is totally unnecessary in true capitalism. It only appears necessary when a country turns into Fascism which is brutally unfair to everyone but those at the top.
All large centralized governmental structures are doomed to fail. Decentralized capitalism is the only one that consistently flourished in this country.
Adams, you make salient points which deserve a proper response. My time is limited during the work day so I will briefly address your first paragraph. China sells the vast majority of it's exports in the US market at present. If our economy collapsed today, the Chinese economy would also crash and burn. As you pointed out there are other markets they sell in and when the day comes that those markets account for the lion's share of Chinese exports, then on that day if the US economy collapsed it would be a different story.
I will also point out that while the government of China is not in debt, it's people most certainly are. Presently China has the fastest growing consumer debt in the world, far surpassing US consumers in money owed as a percentage of personal income. Their private debt to income ratio is very bad.
I need your definition of socialism before I can comment on paragraph two. If I am understanding you. you seem to be defining socialism as taking money from one citizen and giving it to another. Is that your whole conception of socialism?
Not at all the case, Adams. The US is both by far the largest consumer of Chinese goods and their largest investment. If we fail China fails.
Meanwhile the Conservative-generated shift toward an evermore impoverished middle class has left us absolutely dependent upon Chinese goods.
Like it or not (and I don't) our two countries will remain joined at the hip for a good long time. Neither can afford for the other to fail...and it's all due to commerce, despite your wailing about the evils of an imaginary socialism and quaint wish that we could all return to the 19th Century.
It is frightening to note that we have a huge number of people running around screaming that President Obama is a Marxist who is turning the USA into a socialist nation, but these same people have no knowledge of even the most fundamental teachings of Marxism. They don't even HAVE a working definition of socialism, or if they do, they refuse to share it with the rest of US.
Even more frightening is the fact that these free market champions can't even quote the fundamentals of capitalist theory. Any conservative out there, what is the source of all new wealth according to free market capitalist theory? Anybody? How about in Marxist theory?
Was President Eisenhower a marxist in your view? Anybody?
Americans are naive
The fundamental problem is economics
Until we elect competent leadership S&P & the creditors will run the country
All these partisan issues are irrelevant
Economics are the problem, however federal dependancy is the true economic problem as far as voting.
The deficit junkies make up about 60% of the population and growing. We have 47% that pay zero federal income taxes and use the most entitlements/services. Then we have all the federal employees, federal retirees, military, military retirees, defense contractors, other federal contractors, union pensioners that were bailed out, corporations that were bailed out, retirees of bailed out corporations, banks that were bailed out etc etc etc.
That makes up about 60% of the voting population. How do you ever pass responsible legislation when 60% of the country is dependent on and addicted to deficit spending? Their lives are centered around debt creation and they would elect Adolph Hitler to keep it going.
It is no longer a left/right or Democratic/Republican paradigm anymore. It is a federal dependent and taxpaying non-dependent paradigm we have now.
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic". FDR killed the Republic and the rest have been throwing dirt over its grave ever since.
The Unites States government has violated Ulyanov's First Law of Economics.
When your outgo long exceeds your income it will be your downfall