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Remembrance of Things Past – Part 1 (of 3)

By CRAIG DELLA PENNA on August 19, 2009 at 3:01 PM in Current Affairs

I think we need to remember how we got into this domestic politico/economic mess. We have a tendency to put one foot in front of the other and just Keep on Truckin’, but sometimes it pays to turn around and review what’s been happening – gives you sense of perspective.

This is a multi-layered mess, like quicksand – just when you think you’ve hit the bottom, it sucks you down into a whole new layer of crud. There are three descending crud layers I want to explore: the surface layer, where we see what we’re meant to see and react the way we’re instructed to react; the middle layer of financial fallacy and folly which is intimately connected to the peculiar political kabuki show we are now seeing; and the lower layer of economic unraveling and global responsibility upon which the American Empire uneasily rests. At the end I serve up some simple suggestions to help us get out of this mess.

There are several reference items you should take a look at to get the full flavor of what we’re experiencing here in Year One of the Reign of the Lightbringer.

First, go to Bill Moyers and watch the interview he had with Simon Johnson about what happened in Sept 15, 2008. here

Next, you should watch the Frontline program “Inside the Meltdown” about the slow moving train wreck of our economy in 2008 (air date: Feb 17, 2009) here

…and don’t miss Rep. Kanjorski’s tale of what happened on Sept 18, 2008 (about 2 minutes in) here

Last, you should watch the Charlie Rose show from Feb 16th, 2009 – the first part is an extremely informative piece on what’s really going on in Afghanistan, but the second part is an interview with Michael Kirk, the writer/director of the Frontline piece mentioned above. here

The articles/interviews mentioned above are all background for the fascinating story of what looks very much like The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (apologies to Gibbon) with helping hands from Bush/Cheney all in the interest of prolonging the financial debacle into and through the next administration. I should also mention that I think this was done with the collusion of and in the interest of the Obama campaign (I think we should dispense with the fairytale notion that this was a Democratic Party campaign at this point, don’t you?)

Let’s take a closer look at these interlocking perspectives and try to establish some sort of rough timeline, shall we?


Crud Layer 1

The Fairytale Analysis.

First let’s use the Frontline piece to examine the pattern. We start with the accelerating overgrowth of the housing market in the past eight years – yes, you may try to lay some of the blame at Clinton’s doorstep – and I’ll come right back and trace the whole thing back to Ronald Reagan so let’s agree to leave the history alone at this point. It is inarguable that Bush/Cheney had eight years to figure the housing bubble out and didn’t lift a finger to stop it, in fact it appears that they willfully eviscerated any meaningful regulation and/or oversight and signaled full-speed ahead to the Wall Street Guild of Thieves.

This had the altogether predictable result that the housing market bubble collapsed. There were early signs of the collapse starting in 2005, and even some brave souls who yelled themselves hoarse (Peter Schiff, for example) saying that there was a bear in the woods. They were, quite literally, laughed off the floor.

So, what is it that ‘they’ want you to believe?

They want you to believe that, basically, things are OK. We had a bad scare but the swift action of the bright, shiny Team Obama has started to turn things around. They want you to go back to the things you know because that’s what they’re going to do: try to go back to the financial world they just blew up. They want you to forget that you just mortgaged your grandchildren’s future to pay for their theft (did you know that you are still paying for Ronald Reagan’s deficit spending? The bonds they issued are still commanding interest payments 20 years later).

They want you to forget that you are living in a country with a real unemployment rate (“official” unemployment + part-time + those who have stopped looking) of over 16.8% as of June 2, 2009. (see here for confirmation). They want you to believe that the housing crisis is over – it’s not, housing prices will decline another 10-20% before the curve flattens. They want you to forget that there’s a credit crisis right behind the housing crisis, only ten times larger.

But most of all they want you to forget that the current bunch of money-crazed madmen who ran this country into the ground in order steal more money than dreams of avarice could provide – are still not in jail and still in charge. No, they don’t want you to remember that at all. You might wake up. You might get angry. You might do something about it…

Stay tuned for RoTP Part 2: Crud Layers 2 & 3

  • hokma

    You start out with a historical presumption that is flawed and false.

    “We start with the accelerating overgrowth of the housing market in the past eight years – yes, you may try to lay some of the blame at Clinton’s doorstep – and I’ll come right back and trace the whole thing back to Ronald Reagan so let’s agree to leave the history alone at this point. It is inarguable that Bush/Cheney had eight years to figure the housing bubble out and didn’t lift a finger to stop it, in fact it appears that they willfully eviscerated any meaningful regulation and/or oversight and signaled full-speed ahead to the Wall Street Guild of Thieves.”

    This began with Jimmy Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act which had to goal of giving every American home ownership which ended up forcing banks to break their lending practices – sometimes through court action – in order to give unqualified people mortgages they could not afford.

    In 1992 legislation forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to devote a percentage of their lending to support the secondary market of affordable housing.

    There were further legislation to further empower lending in secondary markets. Under these demands banks were forced to create innovate instruments and it also resulted in predatory lending practices.

    The Bush administration recognized the problem but between 9/11 and wars it did not receive the attention it should have. Also you have strong advocates of continuing these practices from Chris Dodd and Barney Frank.

    When the housing market collapsed the bravado that Frank and Dodd showed in defending how healthy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were vanished.

    This housing bubble was not an eight year phenomenon. It was a 32 year phenomenon.

    • Craig Della Penna

      Nope, sorry, no sale. Your position is much more fundamentally flawed. While Jimmy Carter and Paul Volcker were taking the steps that Nixon/Ford were too cowardly to do in order to get us out of the stagflation in the ’70′s – knowing it was the right thing to do and knowing it was political suicide as well, Ronald Reagan was promising the banksters that he would undercut any effective regulation of the banking industry.
      And, as I say later on: I’ll talk about all those conniving homeowners who ‘forced’ the banks to lend them money inappropriately – as soon as the banksters and mortgage brokers give back every penny of the obscene profits they made on loans they knew were worthless.

      • lorac

        I usually skip posts that deal too specifically with the economy, because this stuff feels too complicated to me! But I happened to read this one, and I just wanted to mention that I like your writing style.

      • hokma

        I stated the historical facts.

        Clearly you are a Jimmy Carter fan and there aren’t too many of you:)

        Nixon created a problem with wage and price controls and driving up inflation. But stagflation happened under Carter.

        The lack of regulation on the banking industry is not the core problem that precipitated the housing crisis. It started with the CRA under Carter which eventually legally forced banks to break their own lending practices and give loans to people not credit worthy. Then you give the mortgage industry and inch and they will take ten miles – ending in subprime mortgages.

        • Diana L. C.

          I like Jimmy Carter. I felt bad that the crowd in Washington just did not like the outsider coming to change some of their ways. What do we have now in our desire to change the ways of Washington?

          He’s a good man, and if you read a recent post, in one poll he was voted the best ex-president of the recent lot of them.

  • CG

    Thanks Craig, seems we might both be contemplating similar theories and ‘backgrounder’ information to comprehend the colassal mess we face now and in the years to come. In light of all this, a friend and I have been talking this last week about a book we’ve read in the past that we are going to revisit, Howard Zinn’s A Peoples’ History of the United States.

    I look forward to following parts 2 and 3.

    • Craig Della Penna

      Great book! Well worth re-reading, especially in these times.

      • Linda Anselmi

        Great article Craig.

        Looking forward to 2 &3 and getting your insights and perspective on all of this. I would probably add William Black to the must see videos (and not because of my recent post). His interview with Moyers:

        http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

        CG or Craig – What’s the scoop on the Zinn book? Insight please.

        • Craig Della Penna

          Howard Zinn in the poster boy for left wing politics. Blue collar parents, BA from NYH, PhD from Columbia. Zinn worked for SNCC, led Vietnam war protests and published “A People’s History of the Unites States” in 1980 as a alternative history to the triumphalist, manifest destiny propaganda texts overwhelming academia at the time.

          Brilliant, passionate, uncompromising – you could do far worse than to take Zinn as a role model, as evidenced by the troll comment below. If you want to make your right wing friends throw apoplectic fits – just tell them how much you like this book.

      • JRD

        That book SUCKS!

  • candymarl

    OT: I’ve been invited to an pro-Obama healthcare rally in a nearby town. It’s sponsored and paid for by MoveOn.org. So Obama has not given up on this.

    Once again Obama’s public statements are not in keeping with what his followers are doing.

    It ain’t over yet folks. We need to keep up the pressure. I’m going to try to go to this thing tomorrow.

    • Texas Playwright

      Thanks, Craig. I still remember how my friends dismissed my notion that bho the fraud was a puppet tool of fascism. Corporations, banks, media running the country, I said. Greed, I said. They all drank the Kool-Aid.

      We simply must keep educating ourselves.

  • http://www.sonicninjakitty.wordpress.com Sonic Ninja Kitty

    Craig, Are you suggesting here that there is a ruling elite and it does not matter what political label they hide behind? If it is, then I am all on board. Show me the crud!

    • Craig Della Penna

      Like Captain Renault, “I’m shocked, shocked to find out there’s gambling going on here!”

      • http://www.sonicninjakitty.wordpress.com Sonic Ninja Kitty

        And here I took you for a dreamer….

  • Lily

    I listened to Rep Kanjorski and he explains the mechanics of the reaction to the “electronic bank run”, which, quite frankly, didn’t mean much to me. A couple of things he said did register-he didn’t give a hint about what led to the $500 billion drawdown on Money Market accounts and the mechanics of that; I want to know if some individual or small group of high rollers could have manipulated the market in some way….which leads to his comment, “Somebody threw us into the middle of the Atlantic without a life raft.”….exactly…and who would that be. I believe the Bush administration and the US Congress were criminally negligent, if not willful, in allowing this financial collapse.

    So I would add a couple of fictional reference items to the recommended list, both by Robert Ludlom and both copyrighted in the millenial year 2000: “The Prometheus Deception”, about a Bill Gates-like financier who attempts to bring about a world financial crisis to achieve hi; and, “The Hades Factor”, about an evil pharmaceutical executive and his degenerate cohorts, including Congressman Nancy Petrelli, who attempt to unleash a deadly virus on the world so they can achieve their political and financial goals by having the only vaccine to contain the virus.

    Where did the writer get the material for these books? Although I am sure the real-life counterparts to the fictional villains would take exception, it’s not as if these plots are totally farfetched. In fact, the plots seem prophetic.

    • Ellen D

      he didn’t give a hint about what led to the $500 billion drawdown on Money Market accounts and the mechanics of that

      I have watched a number of analyses but they have only told me WHAT happened. I’d like to know HOW it happened. Who launched the 500 billion run on Money Market accounts and how did they do it? Where did this run come from?

  • tzada

    They seem totally like what we are seeing today.
    Baxter International from Illinois was caught with flu vacination that contained live flu virus. WHO knew this, but Baxter International was given the job of the flu vacine for the Mexican Swine Flu.

    http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2009/02/27/8560781.html

    Why did the owner of Amazon take peoples books on Animal Farm and 1984 by Orwell away in the middle of the night? They had bought and paid for them. He apologized and refunded them their money, but theft is theft. What is next book burning?

    • lorac

      Well, tzada…. I think we can both think of TWO books by the same author (or so they say) that would make a nice fire on a cold winter night lol

  • tzada

    Parody of one of the book Animal Farm

    Napoleon and Squealer in the White House
    I read the various articles and blogs concerning the Obama administration seemingly backing off the public option requirement under proposed healthcare legislation. I was reminded of one particular scene from George Orwell’s Animal Farm in which Squealer (think White House spokesman Robert Gibbs) explains to the animals (the White House press pool) why Napoleon (President Obama) pulled a 180 on the building of the windmill originally proposed by the banished Snowball:

    “That evening Squealer [Gibbs] explained privately to the other animals that Napoleon [Obama] had never in reality been opposed to the windmill. On the contrary, it was he who had advocated it in the beginning, and the plan which Snowball had drawn on the floor of the incubator shed had actually been stolen from among Napoleon’s [Obama’s] papers. The windmill was, in fact, Napoleon’s [Obama’s] own creation. Why, then, asked somebody, had he spoken so strongly against it? Here Squealer [Gibbs] looked very sly. That, he said, was Comrade Napoleon’s [Obama’s] cunning. He had SEEMED to oppose the windmill, simply as a maneuver to get rid of Snowball, who was a dangerous character and a bad influence. Now that Snowball was out of the way, the plan could go forward without his interference. This, said Squealer, was something called tactics. He repeated a number of times, “Tactics, comrades, tactics!” skipping round and whisking his tail with a merry laugh. The animals were not certain what the word meant, but Squealer [Gibbs] spoke so persuasively, and the three dogs who happened to be with him growled so threateningly, that they accepted his explanation without further questions.”

    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/08/napoleon_and_squealer_in_the_w.html

    I will forever think of Squealer when I see Gibbs.

    • Diana L. C.

      Except to think Gibbs speaks “so persuasively” is a stretch. :-)

    • Animal Control

      Four legs good, two legs better.
      Some animals are more equal than others.

    • Susan B. Athena

      I say his name should be Fibbs!

  • Diana L. C.

    Craig,

    Thank you for taking up most of my afternoon with your very informative links. :-)

    No really. I have no professional experience in the financial arena. I have always lived basically month-to-month and have had to depend on retirement accounts from my public school teaching and have never been involved in the stock market.

    But I have always been interested in politics and in basically everything, so I’ve read news and followed the news forever it seems.

    yes, you may try to lay some of the blame at Clinton’s doorstep – and I’ll come right back and trace the whole thing back to Ronald Reagan

    I am so happy you included this statement. I know taht that are many who ADORE Reagan on this site, but I am not one. I have always blamed MR. Deregulator and Mr. Trickle Down for many of our current problems. I don’t think he, if his mind had ever really been up to it (I felt the Alzheimer’s kicked in earlier than they ever let on), would have liked what Wall Street became, but I blame him for the monster Wall Street became.

    And I almost destroyed my t.v. screen the first time I heard Dear Leader say he’d like to be like Reagan–never mind the “what I meant” explanation after some dems protested. I wonder what Reagan would have felt about the sub-prime loan situation, but in any case, the Dems do have to take some blame for being totally in fantasy land about the housing bubble in their love of Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae and all Reagan’s corporate buddies would have probably looked the other way, also.

    What I don’t know is this: Is O really the corporate shill many think he is, or does he hope for a collapse of our government as we know it in order to impose his friend’s Marxist government?

    As I watch him and MEchelle enjoy the high life, I have really started leaning toward the first option.

    I have read Proust, though not in the French, so I’ve read the book under the title of your series. You’re not a Proust :-) , though most people will be thankful for that. Still, I can’t wait for you next part.

    • Craig Della Penna

      Ah! You caught me, not many have dealt with Proust. I did read it (or most of it) in French but that was long ago and far away.

      Ronald Reagan did more damage to this country than any other political figure since WWII. We will be long decades further down the road before we dig out from under the mess he created. If I had my druthers we’d dig him up and put him on trial along with his spiritual successors Bush/Cheney for crimes against America. And it looks like Obama is angling for a seat at the defendant’s table as well.

      • Diana L. C.

        In any case, I didn’t start thinking about madeleines as I read your most excellent post.

      • tzada

        Why not Jimmy Carter? The farmers of Georgia bought billboards that said. “We the farmers of Georgia, apologize to the citizens of the United States of America, for Jimmy Carter” I know this is true, because I saw the signs myself.

        We also know or should know that the Taliban were creatures of Carter and Brezenski. How much has that creation cost us in lives and treasure?

        How much has or will it cost America with the gifting to China of the Cray computer by William Jefferson Clinton?

        http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/clinEton.htm

        Carter and Clinton had their hand in the banking/housing mess as had Bush and Obama.

        What we have to understand is this. The two parties are attatched to the same body. It is NOT an eagle but a vampire bat. To ignore this is to do so at our peril.

  • Tricia Spiegel

    Great start with Part 1. I will wait anxiusly for 3 and 3.
    Thanks Craig–great scholarship.

    I would like to see your response to the person (“hokma”) who made the first comment…

  • Tricia Spiegel

    Great start with Part 1. I will wait anxiously for 3 and 3.
    Thanks Craig–great scholarship.

    I would like to see your response to the person (“hokma”) who made the first comment…

    • Craig Della Penna

      Abracadabra! (see above)

  • Peggy Sue

    Tell it like it is, Craig. And good for you! You track the problem to Reagan [frankly I have no problem with that]. But Republicans who want to scream and say, “Oh no, don’t besmirch the King.” Fine. Point fingers at Jimmy Carter [who I personally liked but thought was a disastrous President].

    It’s time to wake up! Neither of these parties have the American public’s long-term welfare at heart. The bailouts started under the Republicans and have been continued by the Dems. The banks are still unsolvent regardless of what party happy face you smack on it. The Tarp Bill, Talf, the Stim, the Omnibus bill, the Budget, the Cash for Clunkers and now the infamous Health Care Reform [which is a sick joke, at best].

    The unemployment numbers are a scam. 9.5-9.4??? Get out of town. All US economic numbers numbers are down, down, down. To put it simply: the numbers, the truth is absolutely awful. People pretend the bogus numbers make it right? No, it makes those who “hope” that they’re right, fools, utterly hopeless dreamers.

    Neither of our “parties” are anything but shills for corporate interests. They were bought long ago. Are there exceptions, individuals within each party who are honest brokers? Sure. But not enough to make a difference.

    The only thing that can make a difference is our voice. And our votes.

    • Craig Della Penna

      Pitchforks and torches!

      Perhaps time for a real 3rd party?

      • tzada

        Yes

        • tzada

          And not socilist, communist or facist. Not one ist among them will I agree to.

          Guess who screened White House appointments!
          Think tank developed by prez links socialist party to presidential picks

          JERUSALEM – Was a far-left think tank partnered with the community activist group ACORN and founded with input from President Obama instrumental in securing the appointment of controversial White House “environmental czar” Van Jones?

          A key member of the think tank reportedly was also a founder of a socialist party that, evidence indicates, included Obama among its members.

          In March, Jones was named the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

          His appointment drew criticism after a WND report exposing that Jones was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader. The Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck hammered away at Jones’ communist ties.

          Months before Obama took office, however, Jones was recommended for the environmental pick in a report by business scholar Chuck Collins, an associate of philanthropist George Soros and a longtime leftist activist linked to some socialist causes.

          http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=107418

  • TeakWoodKite

    A housing flatline? DOA Looking ford to the next installment.

    Is interesting that the finger pointing is relentless.