The End of the American Empire?

[Len Colby]

If you could refute any of this you would, but since you can't you instead choose your faviorote tactic to make your argument appear to have merit...you attack the source.

Are you sure if I go over your posts I won’t find any examples of you attacking a source? If someone is presenting verifiable facts they can be a child rapist who swindles little old ladies out of their money it wouldn’t matter. On the other hand if someone offers their opinion or analysis that person’s honesty, objectivity expertise etc are fair questions. I might have missed where you’ve done otherwise but so far you’ve only presented people claiming this with out providing much evidence.

Now let’s suppose you’re right and Freddie and Fanny started making loans to lower income applicants due to Clinton and Cuomo. Reiterating previous points/questions (some of which Pat mentioned as well).

-If this were such a bad move why didn’t Bush put a stop to it?

-Show that Clinton policy led companies like AIG and Morgan-Stanley etc to invest in sub-prime mortgages. They are supposed to carefully analyze potential investments before sinking money into them especially if it is in amounts that could bankrupt the company.

-Show that the majority of the defaulting mortgages were made during Clinton

- The following is from page 2 of the Voice article:

When HUD released the next set of goals in 2004, it reported that after Cuomo's previous edict, there had been a sudden spurt of GSE subprime investment, "partly in response to higher affordable-housing goals set by HUD in 2000." Fannie had gone from $1.2 billion in subprime-mortgage and securities purchases in 2000 to $9.2 billion in 2001 and $15 billion in 2002. Freddie's numbers were murkier, but clearly also on the rise. In 2003 alone, the two bought $81 billion in subprime securities—which also count against the goals.

2001, 2002, 2003, – hhhmmmm let’s see – who was president again those years? Wasn’t it that Texan draft-dodger from Maine. I only included that paragraph for brevity but the following ones also mention that this grew under Bush.

The facts are quite clear. This started with the CRA and Clintoon. No amount of liberaltard shucking and jiving will ever change this fact.

That may be true but it continued and was encouraged to grow under Bush. According to YOUR source Fannie went from 1.2 to 15 Billion a 12.5 X increase 2000 - 20002. There is a lot of blame go around including Alan Greenspan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspa..._housing_bubble

PS – If Cuomo is such an idiot you should ask the state of Indiana if you can change your vote. McCain wants to make him head of the SEC:

…the Arizona senator said Cuomo has done a good job as New York's attorney general and did a good job as housing secretary for Democratic President Bill Clinton.

I've admired Andrew Cuomo," McCain told CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people )' "60 Minutes" on Sunday. "I think he is somebody who could restore some credibility, lend some bipartisanship to this effort."

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/22/ap5455796.html

Edited October 15, 2008 by Len Colby

[John Simkin]

Please take the time to listen to Hudson here on the cryptocriminals on Wall Street and their paid shills in the Beltway!

Part I

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=28790

Part II

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=28908

(you can and I'd suggest you listen in the reverse order - Part II first)

IMO a brilliant and correct analysis by a brilliant and perceptive economist who sees behind the scams and the magic show. He describes the greatest pre-planned, carefully-executed theft in world history (and the 'bail-outs' are all part of the theft).....do listen [a few times!] He predicts the USA will soon resemble Russia post break-up of the USSR and that we are not going to be 'out of this' mess for a long, LONG time.....and the 'shoes' have just BEGUN to 'drop'.

Say bye-bye. All hope is now lost....only rebuilding from the ground up and putting these criminals in prison....nothing can now save the US or World economy - only lessen the pain [slightly]. What we can do with this information is never let it happen again - which will call for a new kind of economic and political system - long overdue!

I highly recommend that everyone listens to these interviews. It will provide a clear view of what is currently happening to the world economy.

You will also find some interesting articles by Michael Hudson at:

http://www.michael-hudson.com/

It includes the following:

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Hudson, we’re talking government bailout, which means taxpayers stuck with the bill. Do you think this is the right move?

MICHAEL HUDSON: No, it’s the worst possible move, and it puts the class war back in business with a vengeance. Wall Street has been preparing for this for years, because every financial analyst knows that the debts can’t be paid. And the question that Wall Street has, if you’re going to take a gamble on bad debts that can’t be paid, how are you going to come out a winner? And there’s only one way of coming out a winner, and that’s to make the government bail you out. This has been known for years, because it’s inherent almost in the mathematics of compound interest. Every banker I know knew that the loans they were making were going to go bad. They were trying to sell them to somebody else, ultimately expecting them to end up with some sovereign wealth fund.

And now, you had at the beginning of the show, McCain saying that this is the result of fraud and incompetence. The government has now bailed them out. But by bailing them out—Wall Street was coming to terms with the bad debts. When Bear Stearns went under and when Lehman Brothers went under, this began to wipe away the bad debts. And when the debts exceed the ability to pay, there’s only one thing any economy can do, and that’s wipe them out. Instead, the government is trying to keep the fiction alive. And what Paulson did yesterday, in bailing out AIG, was to try to lock in whoever is the next president not only to further bailouts of Wall Street, ostensibly to protect the public money, but to make it impossible to write down the debts of the four million homeowners that are expected to default this year, impossible to write down the debts of companies that have issued junk bonds, impossible for the country to get rid of this excess of debts that can’t be repaid. And you’re having really a war now of creditors against debtors. And this is what Wall Street has been preparing for. It needed an emergency to do it. It’s really not an emergency at all. This has been building up for many years. Everybody expected it. And breathlessly now, the Secretary of Treasury has done it.

AMY GOODMAN: But, of course, the argument was, if you don’t bail out AIG, it could lead to a global financial meltdown.

MICHAEL HUDSON: What you—it’s a meltdown of the gamblers, as Nomi said. These are people who’ve gambled. You had McCain saying they’re gamblers. If these people have gambled, we’re talking about derivative trades, billions of dollars of bets on which way interest rates will go, billions of dollars of bad loans beyond the ability of debtors to pay. Why on earth would you want to bail out these creditors?

AMY GOODMAN: So, what would happen if you didn’t?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Then you would prepare the ground for writing down the debts of the homeowners that have no way of repaying the exploding mortgages. Those interest rates are going to be jumping up this year. You would be able to bring the debts down to the ability of the economy to pay, and you would save these four million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they’re going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to now say, “Gee, we’re going to have to cut the property taxes to enable the debts to be paid to save the financial system.” So, if they cut the property taxes, they’re going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers.

[John Simkin]

In the UK we are constantly being told that the world economy is in trouble because the banks are not willing to lend money to each other. However, Michael Hudson points out that the reason foreign banks are no longer willing to lend money to American banks is because they no longer trust them to pay the money back. If this is the case, what is the British government doing in offering £250bn of loan guarantees to back loans between the banks?

[John Simkin]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...a&aid=10698

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...a&aid=10670

It's hard to believe it's really happening. The eastern European countries, whom experts predicted would escape the global meltdown, are starting to fall like dominoes. Hungary hopes an IMF loan will stave off collapse while Latvia, Lithuania and others wait on death row. Their problem is heavy reliance on credit from international lending institutions, which has now evaporated. Their currencies are in freefall. Ukraine's stock market has lost 75% of its value in a year. Even Russia is in trouble, despite--and because of--it's status as a net energy exporter. The slowdown with its resultant fall in commodity prices including oil, has caused a drastic revenue shortage. Russia relied on American-led global consumerism more than it realised.

The potential for social dislocation throughout Europe boggles the mind.

As has been noted here and elsewhere, it's the end for free market capitalism, especially the extreme variety formerly practised by Wall Street. The lunacy of a dogma which rewards greed and punishes honesty is now abundantly clear. The recent public denunciation of greed by the American political establishment as the root cause of these problems is a huge belly laugh. I would guess the US political and power establishment has already been told that the rest of the world wants Obama elected full stop. This should put an end to any last ditch plans for vote rigging or false flag stunts by the GOP and their backers.

One of the features of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe was the replacement of the old elite with a new force that was an alliance between Neo-Con capitalists, former Communist officials, the KGB and the Russian Mafia. This relationship enabled the economic boom to take place in the US, UK and the emerging economies in Eastern Europe. This included the US investing a lot of money in these cowboy economies. It was inevitable that after the US and UK introduced state capitalism to stop the run on the banks, the crisis would then switch to individual countries that had been backed by dodgy loans. I will be writing about this in more detail in The Corruption of New Labour: Britain’s Watergate:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6382

[John Simkin]

Randy Newman - A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

[William Kelly]

Randy Newman - A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

Lyrics:

http://www.randynewman.com/tocdiscography/a-few-words

I’d like to say a few words

In defense of our country

Whose people aren’t bad nor are they mean

Now the leaders we have

While they’re the worst that we’ve had

Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen

Let’s turn history’s pages, shall we?

Take the Caesars for example

Why within the first few of them

They were sleeping with their sister

Stashing little boys in swimming pools

And burning down the City

And one of ‘em, one of 'em

Appointed his own horse Consul of the Empire

That’s like vice president or something

That’s not a very good example, is it?

But wait, here’s one, the Spanish Inquisition

They put people in a terrible position

I don’t even like to think about it

Well, sometimes I like to think about it

Just a few words in defense of our country

Whose time at the top

Could be coming to an end

Now we don’t want their love

And respect at this point is pretty much out of the question

But in times like these

We sure could use a friend

Hitler. Stalin.

Men who need no introduction

King Leopold of Belgium. That’s right.

Everyone thinkshe’s so great

Well he owned The Congo

He tore it up too

He took the diamonds, he took the gold

He took the silver

Know what he left them with?

Malaria

A President once said,

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid

It’s patriotic in fact and color coded

And what are we supposed to be afraid of?

Why, of being afraid

That’s what terror means, doesn’t it?

That’s what it used to mean

[To the first eight bars of "Columbia The Gem Of The Ocean"]

You know it pisses me off a little

That this Supreme Court is gonna outlive me

A couple of young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now too

But I defy you, anywhere in the world

To find me two Italians as tightass as the two Italians we got

And as for the brother

Well, Pluto’s not a planet anymore either

The end of an empire is messy at best

And this empire is ending

Like all the rest

Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea

We’re adrift in the land of the brave

And the home of the free

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

[John Simkin]

The National Intelligence Council (NIC), America's leading intelligence organization has published a report admitting that the US is no longer able to "call the shots" as its power begins to wane. This is in direct contrast to its 2004 report which predicted "continued US dominance as most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US." The NIC now expects emerging economies such as China and India to grow in influence at America's expense.

[William Kelly]

The National Intelligence Council (NIC), America's leading intelligence organization has published a report admitting that the US is no longer able to "call the shots" as its power begins to wane. This is in direct contrast to its 2004 report which predicted "continued US dominance as most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US." The NIC now expects emerging economies such as China and India to grow in influence at America's expense.

You know, I just read an article that said USA losing economic dominance as well, but then every night I hear the radio describing the Asian stock markets and the European markets as they come on line in the morning and every day they are depending on responses from the USA.

It is the USA the world is looking to resolve the economic crisis and to come up with the answers to the problems.

BK

[Steve Mcdonagh]

I have a question.

Would it be fair to say that that two of America’s strongest post war political periods where they enjoyed vast international support and goodwill, were the Cuban Missile Crisis and 9/11?

Please submit any others.

Thanks - Steve

[Steve Mcdonagh]

Hi,

It is the USA the world is looking to resolve the economic crisis and to come up with the answers to the problems.

Bill would you say this was because some may believe that “You helped get us in this mess, so you get us out” or because they believe “the mighty USA can lead us through these troubled times” – A vote of confidence or a lack of another alternative?

The National Intelligence Council (NIC), America's leading intelligence organization has published a report admitting that the US is no longer able to "call the shots" as its power begins to wane. This is in direct contrast to its 2004 report which predicted "continued US dominance as most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US." The NIC now expects emerging economies such as China and India to grow in influence at America's expense.

Personally, I believe China will play more of an 'Economic Leadership' role in the next 5-10 years than a 'Military' one.

Thanks - Steve

[William Kelly]

Hi,

It is the USA the world is looking to resolve the economic crisis and to come up with the answers to the problems.

Bill would you say this was because some may believe that "You helped get us in this mess, so you get us out" or because they believe "the mighty USA can lead us through these troubled times" – A vote of confidence or a lack of another alternative?

The National Intelligence Council (NIC), America's leading intelligence organization has published a report admitting that the US is no longer able to "call the shots" as its power begins to wane. This is in direct contrast to its 2004 report which predicted "continued US dominance as most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US." The NIC now expects emerging economies such as China and India to grow in influence at America's expense.

Personally, I believe China will play more of an 'Economic Leadership' role in the next 5-10 years than a 'Military' one.

Thanks - Steve

I don't know Steve, I just know that the world's markets are riding on USA.

As for China, much if not most of American industry went to China, but China still depends on USA giving them the cash for their products. If we stop buying, China's industry stops too.

If the USA is no longer calling the shots, then why is the rest of the world looking to USA for answers and responding to what happens in USA every day?

I'm not a player, and just making observations.

Who is going to emerge the leader and begin calling the shots then?

BK

[Steve Mcdonagh]

Hi Bill,

Thank you for your honest answers below and I actually agree with your observations. It is difficult to see any country apart from the US leading the way right now - it’s not a good idea to change your goalkeeper when the opposing team has just been awarded a penalty - and to be honest I have a lot of confidence in them doing just that.

I do expect China to become even more prominent in the next few years though, which may be a good thing and I do not see too much decline in the overall strength of the US. Maybe some policy changes that may well make them appear to be less ‘dominant’ – This is what I hope for.

America has been working a long shift and it’s time for a lunch break, but by no means time for clocking off.

Thanks - Steve

"I don't know Steve, I just know that the world's markets are riding on USA.

As for China, much if not most of American industry went to China, but China still depends on USA giving them the cash for their products. If we stop buying, China's industry stops too.

If the USA is no longer calling the shots, then why is the rest of the world looking to USA for answers and responding to what happens in USA every day?

I'm not a player, and just making observations.

Who is going to emerge the leader and begin calling the shots then?

BK"

[John Simkin]

The National Intelligence Council (NIC), America's leading intelligence organization has published a report admitting that the US is no longer able to "call the shots" as its power begins to wane. This is in direct contrast to its 2004 report which predicted "continued US dominance as most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US." The NIC now expects emerging economies such as China and India to grow in influence at America's expense.

You know, I just read an article that said USA losing economic dominance as well, but then every night I hear the radio describing the Asian stock markets and the European markets as they come on line in the morning and every day they are depending on responses from the USA.

It is the USA the world is looking to resolve the economic crisis and to come up with the answers to the problems.

BK

The US remains the most powerful economic power in the world and of course everybody is looking for them to get out of this mess. Although China will eventually take over from the US as the number one power, it is not yet ready and its economic growth is highly dependent on the buying power of the US and Europe.

The real problem is that we do not know exactly how bad the bank situation actually is. Because of the way debts have been packaged, even the banks do not know exactly how much they have lost over the last few years.

This view was reinforced yesterday with the decision to save Citigroup with a comprehensive bail-out that saw taxpayers guaranteeing $306bn (£201bn) of risky assets and injecting $20bn of capital into the banking group.

Yesterday the UK government announced a £21bn package of tax cuts and spending increases designed to lift the economy out of recession by next summer. The chancellor said he would borrow £78bn this year and £118bn next to fund tax-cuts in order to stimulate the economy. These measures will double the national debt to £1 trillion. Even these amazing figures are based on a short recession. Very few experts agree with the chancellor and expect him to be borrowing even more money than this over the next two years. Getting this money is not guaranteed as those lending the money are beginning to have doubts about the ability to pay the money back.

As the NIC report pointed out: “Today wealth is moving not just from west to east but is concentrating more under state control.” It seems to me that throughout the world we are moving towards a state capitalist world.