I keep wanting to concentrate on my day job and leave this blogging stuff to the real bloggers (whoever they are – I’m going to have to check the so-called blogosphere out at some point). However, on days like today, I just can’t resist – or maybe better yet – I can’t stand to not write. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight if I don’t let some of the “angst” out. Of course, for anyone who’s got their head in the sand, today was further evidence that bush/cheney/mccain are incompetent at more than war. The fact that the stock market dropped over 500 points today was only surprising to me in that they (they being the invisible people who have been behind 30 years of trickle down economics – propping up bushes and reagans along the way) managed to keep it at just around 500.

With Lehman brothers soon to be a bad memory to thousands of Americans who have invested in the stock market, with Merrill Lynch now being an “arm” of Bank of America (as long as Bank of America remains “standing”), with predictions that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are headed in the same downward direction, with the largest, I believe, Insurance company in America teetering on the brink of insolvency, with the housing crisis spreading like the plague, with the Fed strained to the point that their own “liquidity” has been stretched to the max and, according to investment analysts that have proven correct in the last year and a half, they have little ability to stop the downward spiral – today I heard john mccain – I saw it come out of his mouth and heard it with my own ears, no interpretation – say “the fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

Well, I wasn’t too surprised in the sense that I’ve heard so much garbage coming out of his mouth that nothing surprises me. But as the day wore on and I thought about what is impending for me, my family, my friends – none of us who have experienced any kind of really severe economic depression – I thought I must be a bit on the extreme contrarian side. Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a mole hill. So when I got home from school I checked out as much news as I could on TV and the internet to get a better grip on what is happening. Paul Krugman, a columnist for the NY Times and a professor of economics at Princeton (I know that republicans would put that down as a liberal university – you know as opposed to a real “think tank” like Robertson’s regents university) was interviewed on Keith Olberman’s Countdown show. Now I realize that Olberman is not an unbiased member of the media – but Krugman is a well respected member of accademia who has a sound understanding of economics and our economic history. This was a segment worth watching, whether you’re a republican or democrat or whatever (we’re all getting screwed by the bumblers in the white house)

I make that last statement with a bit of reservation. Krugman put the blame for the present crisis on two people – that is to say the most blame. Alan Greenspan and phil graham. Now if that last name doesn’t ring a bell for you – if mccain manages to lie and smear his way into the white house phil graham is destined to be the treasury secretary. If him in that role doesn’t scare you, it is the treasury secretary in bush’s administration who is trying to manage the mess our country finds itself in. It is widely agreed that the abusive lending practices that have taken place in the last 5 or 6 years is the cause of the economic meltdown. While Greenspan has been encouraging “deficit spending” (I say this even though Bill Clinton managed the economy into a surpluss during his 8 years in office and Greenspan was at the helm of the Fed during those years – it must be said here that Clinton’s economic “plan” was put in place without a single republican vote in the senate and Greenspan basically went along with it) – Greenspan was a willing “partner” with the bush tax cuts that took Clinton’s surpluss and turned it upside down in less than a year – and I don’t remember him putting up much of a stink, if any at all, when Graham ushered in the banking consolidation bill passed at some time in 1999 which allowed these Wall Street brokerage houses that are falling like flies to supposedly “cut off a fat hog” in the sub-prime investment market by allowing them to purchase large bundles of these risky loans, thereby encouraging more risky lending practices (ye old viscious cycle).

They purchased millions of loans that were unsound by any historic standard, betting on the indefinite rise in the price of real estate. They encouraged ordinary citizens to use their houses as credit cards by offering them loans that were easy to get and had terms that were unbelievable. At one point I was looking for a second mortgage for my house and the bank was willing to loan me up to 125% of the value of my home – which I found incredible – and I had options for interest only payments or even loans that had negative amortization. I couldn’t believe it at the time. Fortunately, I am old enough to have gone through the banking crisis of the 1980’s (and, of course, mccain was right in the middle of that one too) and didn’t bite for any of the exotic loans. They had “adjustable rate mortgages” that allowed people who were unqualified to get into a house – all the while the bank knowing when the interest rate “advanced” in anywhere from 3 to 5 years the people wouldn’t be able to meet the payments unless they had a significant change in income. Of course the bank is protected by the increased value of the real estate! Oops!!!

The reality is that most people’s incomes have either stagnated or gone down while these interest rates have gone up. On top of that, now the prices of their (our) homes are going down so that in millions of instances people are in homes where their mortgage exceeds the value of the home – and the gap is widening every month. To make matters worse, the government has tried to prop up the big investment companies by infusing hundreds of billions into the market and it is just eventually making matters worse because, as I see it, they have no “bullets” left in the barrell to stop the falling housing prices – which is where their efforts should have been directed in the first place. Their policies (and in this case I’m pointing the finger at the Fed and the bush administration – with an assist from a congress which has shown little spine or sense of leadership) have been directed at the big businesses – surprise surprise – I’ve even heard both bush and mccain say that the government should not bail out citizens who made foolish loans they cannot repay.

The problem, to me, with that line of thinking is that that is exactly what they should have done – in an attempt to stop the falling prices. Lehman brothers is now in bankruptcy with losses supposedly in the 60 billion range, Merrill Lynch wrote down 45 billion in the last year and a half, and I could go on. The Fed is on the block for about 30 billion from the bear stearns bailout – with Morgan Stanley supposedly vulnerable for the same outcome. I find it interesting that the Fed and the bush administration were willing to pump something like a half a trillion dollars at these brokerage houses, the classic good money after bad, because their philosophy is they didn’t want to bail out citizens who got sucked into these bad loans. I guess I’m thinking that the money could have been much better spent!

Well, I’m finally getting to my point. As I write this – the stuff just seems to be flowing out and even, should anyone else read this and think I’m nuts, no disrespect intended but I could care less because it’s sure making me feel better. As I get closer to my point, ugh! I start feeling worse again – much worse. Getting back to mccain and his comment that the economy is fundamentally sound, I get sick to my stomach because I think his smear campaign might work. He might win in November. Tonight on the same Olberman show where Krugman was interviewed (and by the way he compared the present situation and comments mccain has made to herbert hoover – now if you don’t know your American history – google herbert hoover) the polls show that the race is tightening. sarah palin evidently is having a positive effect for mccain (I guess if educated people will fall for the muslim thing, convincing them sarah palin is qualified to be commander in chief is no big deal). This race is definitely up in the air. Today, a teacher at my school, a person with a master’s degree, asked me if Obama really took his oath on a Koran. I about came out of my shoes. Then she told me to calm down because she was voting for Obama, but her husband was voting for mccain because he “loves his guns.” The economy is on the verge of the worst downturn since the great depression, 4100+ American troops have died for a lie and oil that is now going to China, we are losing our civil liberties, the government is being dismantled and the Supreme Court will be antagonistic to true American ideals for the rest of my life if mccain gets in, and there are highly educated people all over the place who believe Obama is a muslim (although that wouldn’t disqualify him for me) and he’s going to take away our guns. YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!!