Yes, we need more, but welfare reform would be a definite start. When you have women with 2-4 different "baby daddies" (who are most likely unemployed themselves or in jail for slinging dope or something), and they are not even 100% sure that those guys are the fathers, sitting in their Section 8 housing, collecting food stamps and TANF, while the whole family is on Medicaid, and they aren't willing to even take a job cleaning...in the mean time, their kids are running around the projects or some trailer park with snotty noses and dirty diapers, and eventually grow up to be just like their mothers and/or deadbeat fathers! In the mean time, people complain that we have so many illegal immigrants here not paying taxes...but these folks are only working jobs that the people abusing the welfare system refuse to do!

Welfare is supposed to be TEMPORARY assistance, not a way of life...unless you are elderly or disabled. It was intended to provide help in cases of loss, such as divorce, death, illness, sudden loss of a job, etc. If the person is healthy, it was originally expected that at some point the person would get on their feet and no longer need the help. Of course, I don't think the government should be providing these programs at all. If the church was doing it's job (and I'm talking about "the church" as in all the churches put together), we wouldn't need the government providing these kinds of programs! It used to be that you could go to a church for food, clothing, shelter, medical help, etc when you were hit with hard times. However, with only 20% of parishioners paying tithes and offerings, the churches are barely able to pay their bills, let alone have the money to pay someone's rent or utilities, maintain a food pantry, or a clothes closet! All these people who claim to be good Christians and they don't follow the command to bring offerings to the storehouse or help the widows, orphans, sick, and less fortunate!

And if you don't believe in God or Christianity, the people should still be contributing to such services, by supporting such independent organizations that are not affiliated with the church. Time, money,goods, etc...these organizations are in desperate need for help these days. And if people get help, they should then be required, at the very least, to commit to some time to the organization that helped them in return. Like Habitat for Humanity...I think it is still required that everyone who gets a house from the program help build a house for someone else.

Unfortunately, the mind set is that too many people think they are owed something, and will not lift a finger to help any one else! How many people receiving welfare do you see volunteering for things like the food bank or Blue Santa (the police program that helps get toys to disadvantaged kids)? They have all of this time on their hands, they can do that instead of trying to get on Jerry Springer by sleeping with their best-friend's man!! Government run programs should have a requirement that all healthy recipients of welfare be required to do X hours of community service a month...and this would be determined by whether or not they work and how many hours if they do. If they don't work, they should be required to enroll into jobs programs, and show that they are actively looking for work, much like you have to do in order to continue to collect unemployment. I would much rather see my tax money go to programs to help people become more self-sufficient and become tax-paying citizens themselves, than to see it be squandered on people who do not even want to work. I want the peace of mind knowing that my money is actually going to people who really need it..people who are sick, widows, orphaned children, helping someone rebuild after losing everything to a fire or some other act of nature, etc. In this day and age, I don't even want to pay my taxes (though I do reluctantly) because I'm tired of seeing my hard earned money being wasted, while I have less cash on hand to do something for someone in my community that may truly need the help!

Sorry for the rant! As you can tell, I get so annoyed with lazy people, and there are so many of them. They only weaken this country! To be a strong nation, everyone has to get off of their butts and do their part, and that not only means getting jobs. Like I said, if they aren't working, they should be required to put in time helping people who are in the same boat they are...hand out some blankets, sort food, pick up a hammer and help build a Habitat home, etc. We also need to reduce the number of deadbeat parents, but that is a whole other topic! We basically have too many children who are not being taken care of.

yeah well i'm not, i thought the icon in my user block would have clued you in, but that's a differant topic altogether.
you want to talk about the value of money?
HA money has none, at least in places like america which uses the fractinal reserve system. It only has any value becuase the populace use it as suchif they decided to stop and use somthing else like i dunno postage stamps then it's value would be gone. Nothing in the world has more faith then the monatery system, you have faith that currency you have is going to be useable in the shop inwhich you wish to buy some product or service; the shop keeper has faith the currency has value so that they can use it buy more stock or pay taxes or live; it goes all the way up to the top instition, the goverment, that the money they ask for from the central bank will be usable to increase there own money stock, but doing this depretiates the value becuase as you take more money, since it has no value on it's own it leaches value from the already existing currency, aka inflation.

Belive it or not it's physically impossibal for a nation to pay off it's debts. There is one reason and one only, interest, becuase all loans (that's right, even the one the goverment takes from the central bank to fund more money into the econemy) have intereste there is no way to pay it off, this is becuase there is more money going INTO the banks then out of it, so to pay off the extra you take MORE loans, which in turn have interest so the defecit goes up, again and again and again. This market crash we had? it will happen again, and again and again and get progresivly worse each time (well that last part is what i think) and this is all becase of the monotery system they (and any other contry that uses it) use.

They're small and fiddely and I can never remember which is which anyway :p

Ah, but Jericho, the economic crash didn't happen solely because of debt. The U.S has traditionally been a wealthy nation, has traditionally had a lot of money with a high value (whether you consider that value real or percieved, it doesn't matter). It's worth far outweighed it's debt; what you are saying is essentially implying that somehow, ALL money is borrowed. Which it isn't. (And yes, I am aware that, with the exception of the Clinton administration, the States have been in deficit. But they've always had assets that aren't measured numerically, but still are able to express themselves numerically. Hence the continued growth, until now.)

But, with the way the banks essentially crashed the value of U.S currency, via the stockmarket... Well, you ARE right. It created a situation whereby the U.S suddenly had lost so much value that their debt swallowed their worth. But here is where your own proposition foils itself.

Money is measured against an invisible unit of worth. Just as an U.S cent is worth however many Australian cents, all money is kept mark against a comparitive chart. Else, the debt that the U.S was in would have dropped alongside their currency value. And upon realizing that, you have to realize that in destroying currency you can only hope to destroy a method of payment, not a debt.

I mean, if you owe a friend a beer, and then they stop making beer... You're not going to not owe them anything. You'll just owe a wine, or a scotch, or whatever, instead.

And, I have the same thing to say to Arquinsiel, too. I mean, I certainly understand what's happening, this is starting to mimic the patterns of that 1920's era indeed. But, of course, the solution is to inject value into your money. It's how pre-WW2 Germany became the formidable power it did, despite owing so much to France as part of the WW1 peace accords, and losing the Reinlands (prime industrial areas) for many years. It was simply a matter of changing currency, in order to undo the massive inflation, and then immediately working on making what was behind the Deutschmark valuable, hence making the Mark valuable.

And with that, I say that what America needs to recover is many things. Prime amongst them is a leader who can rally people to necessary causes (Which I believe Obama has the potential to be. We'll see.), and related to that, a strong sense of industriousness combined with what has been stated earlier; social responsibility. "German efficiency", as it is known, would cause a boom. America already HAS the infrastructure built for it, after all.

National pride is necessary, of course. But to be proud, I think the nation needs to change. Good thing you've got a guy who built his campaign around the word, I suppose?

What has brought this country to it's knees, in my opinion, is pure greed! Greed on the part of the people, and greed on the part of the banks. People want the big houses, the nice cars, the nice clothes, even when they can't afford it. So, they go to a bank, that even though the person is a high risk for a loan, they give them one anyway...a flexible loan, when they should have really told the person no. I mean, if a friend came to you and asked for money, and that friend was already very in debt to all of your other friends because he is squandering his money, would you give him money, too? I sure wouldn't

However, with the banks, they get to charge you a butt load in interest and fees, which they simply raise on you when they want more money. I have a card which they raised my interest rate on for no reason other than my credit score went down due to the bank on another account of mine going out of the business of lending...so they canceled my account. How did that make my score go down? We, before I had an account where I only owed 25% of my limit...had paid it down considerable. Now, the way it reports to the credit score folks, I owe 100% of my limit, which other creditors frown on! I don't owe any more money than I did before, and owe less every month, because of the way it is reported now, it drops my credit score, so my other card jacks up my interest rate on me! That means that I now have a higher payment, and my higher payment isn't paying down my principal any more!

Okay...that little rant over...so the banks wrote out all of these high risk notes, only seeing dollar signs in their eyes at all the money they would make in interest in fees. Shoot, I never even heard of an interest only home loan until the last couple of years...that is a "you have to pay us for life and we STILL own your house" loan! Talk about greed! So these people who buy all these things on credit that they shouldn't have in the first place, but do so because of their greed, now can't keep up on their payments as the bank starts to dork around with their interest rates and fees, so they default on their loans. At this point, the bank is saying "OH CRAP" because all their figures were based on money they PROJECTED based on the loans they had made. Some fold, others try to pick up the folded ones, etc....you have this wonderful landslide of failed banks.

In all of this, people start getting nervous about their money, and start pulling it out...that adds to the landslide.

As a backlash, people are scared to buy anything, so other business start having problems, because they banked on the greed of the people! They then lay people off because not as much money is coming in, and those people start defaulting on their bills, and the problems just continue!

And personally, I think it started with the greed of the oil industry! Remember that $5 gas for all those months? Many prices still have not gone down on goods since being raised to cover the additional cost of manufacturing and transporting them, even though gas is half the price it was. They kept claiming higher costs in production, but at the same time reporting record profits!!! Having to pay higher prices on the necessary things made it harder for some to pay those loans, or cause people to have to use their credit cards more to make ends meet!

@GothicBfly: I think you're oversimplifying. Yes, there were bad decisions made on the part of banks and insurance companies for the sake of short-term profits, but there were also government regulators who failed to do anything about it and policymakers that tied the hands of the regulators.

Anyway, it reflects badly on the way that we do business when a hiccup in the financial industry sends the whole country (and most of the world) to the brink of economic depression. It's something that really needs to be rethought, and people are waking up to that fact.

I don't think that the US is screwed, but her influence will be dampened in an increasingly multi-polar world.

Maybe that's a normal thing to happen? What's the average length of time a particular country or region remains the leading economic superpower, historically? Anyone?
...Bueller?

Viscus...I left out the government's hand in all of it, but it still is the result of greed. Legislators didn't do anything because the ones that needed the regulation were lining their pockets in campaign contributions. They wanted their prize election and that required money, so they weren't about to tick off the people who were providing that money! It really isn't about the best interests of the people any longer, as much as it is about getting elected to that next position they have their eyes on! I mean, look how many things both McCain and Obama were against during their campaigns that they voted for back in he days when they were looking at presidential election! It is the way politicians work, which is why I don't trust any of them as far as I can throw them! I find myself at election time voting for what I feel is the lesser of evils.

Luna, it probably is a normal thing to happen. At the very least, the whole market needs to correct itself. One cannot keep spending and spending and continue to have unlimited credit and resources. At some point, you come to the end of your supply, and have to regroup and replan. The people are starting to pull back their spending as a result of the crisis, and the corporations and government are going to have to step back and do the same thing to balance it out. The question is, will they? It isn't about how much credit you have any longer, but about how much actual money you have to spend. This past holiday season, for the first time in quite some time, I heard commercial advertise easy lay-away plans, where they used to advertise easy credit! Lay-away doesn't cost any extra over the actual costs of the goods...no one makes money off of it. I remember a time that this is how most people bought things rather than credit when they didn't have all the money up front...they would put it on lay-away and take 3 months to pay for it. Then, easy credit came along, and they could have it now, and take 2 years to pay it, and pay twice as much for it!

America is still quite a breadbasket, she has an abundance of arable land and natural resources and a top-notch higher education system with all of the science and technology that comes along with it. But China and India have more than a billion people each. Barring some calamity like climate change, peak oil, or war changing the situation, we're going to see those two countries gaining an increasingly large amount of influence.



The 2008 Presidential Election took place long after the seeds of the current crisis were sown, I don't see what that has to do with it. As for campaign contributions deciding policymakers' actions: that's new to me. I'm sure the financial industry has a decent lobby, but the GOP have always been chanting "deregulation" as if it was a mantra. And the SEC can't take "campaign contributions" as they are bureaucrats, that would be bribery. So that doesn't let them off for being asleep at the wheel.

Yes there's corruption, but there's just as much if not more incompetence. Blaming the whole situation on greed requires a simplistic and negative view of human nature which I don't agree with.

Yes, the seeds were sown prior to the current crisis, but who do you think helped that? Both of our candidates were Congressmen before they were Presidential hopefuls! They voted in Congress for things that were passed, or against things that weren't passed that eventually changed the situation of today! In Congress, they were still elected officials taking contributions!

I used to work for State government in the legal department of a state agency, and was shocked to find out the kinds of things that went on that are no public knowledge...things that they would cover up with "settlements" to keep people filing suite or complaints quiet. If it is going on at the state levels, it is definitely going on at the federal level, as well.

As my grandfather always says, the only difference between a Republican and a Democrat is that one is out of a job after election day!

Oh yeah, it'll work. Until the NEXT crash. It's just a cyclical problem, and won't ever get better until the underlying system changes entirely.

Could you provide specific examples, please? They were both Senators, but that's a minor point. Sen. McCain has a very long tenure, but Pres. Obama had served less than four years when he was elected president. I don't remember any big financial deregulation bills going through in that period, and I get the feeling that you're just making things up.



That's a nice anecdote, but it's connection to the topic at hand is tenuous at best.

So much content! I feel like a kid in a broke candy store.

Arquinsiel, I'd argue that this isn't as cyclic as one might see. The pattern SAYS it's cyclic, but there's a little more too it. As others have mentioned, post-depression America became heavily financially regulated. The simple answer as to why is basically to prevent another great depression from happening. And, for the most part, it worked rather well. Until around the Clinton administration, as I mentioned earlier. With the boom America experienced in that period, and the surplus... Well, spirits were bouyed. People felt safe. Too safe.

They started to pull out the threads that made up those regulations in order to maximize growth. And that's when this all started. The seeds of this mess were sown so many years ago that there have been market analysts saying this was coming for a decade now. We just didn't do anything about it. Mostly because we couldn't; trying to keep a bank from money is nigh on impossible.

As for everyone else, and the complications that have also been brought up, I have to say I'm with viscus. That is to say, I don't quite subscribe to the bleak view of humanity, at least insofar as it's moral fibre. There's so much talk of greed and laziness, so much "righteousness" tossed around that it can be easy to forget that most people do have a conscience. They just lack particularly strong will, most of the time. Even the best intentions can be twisted by temptation, but even more than that, I think the problem lies in people being afraid to change.

This board knows as well as any that going against the grain is not a common or easy thing for many people to do. Many people do the things they do just because it's what's done. That simple.

Finally, just talking about America as a super power, and how much China and India will also come to be infleuntial, I'd like to add a little something. We're in the grip of the shift into the information age, out of what really has been still the industrial age. It's getting to be that non-existant property, floating in cyber-space, can become billions of dollars valuable. This new industry, and it's resources, are going to play a big part in the economies of the world, I think. And China? For all it's financial might, it's lost a LOT of ground on being an information trader. Intentionally, might I add. On the other hand, though, India is the world centre for tech support, it seems...

I'd theorize that despite China being the player to watch right now, in the very near future India is going to be where it's at.

Quoted from a Wall Street Journal article of October 2008:

"In the summer of 2005, a bill emerged from the Senate Banking Committee that considerably tightened regulations on Fannie and Freddie, including controls over their capital and their ability to hold portfolios of mortgages or mortgage-backed securities. All the Republicans voted for the bill in committee; all the Democrats voted against it. To get the bill to a vote in the Senate, a few Democratic votes were necessary to limit debate. This was a time for the leadership Sen. Obama says he can offer, but neither he nor any other Democrat stepped forward.

Instead, by his own account, Mr. Obama wrote a letter to the Treasury Secretary, allegedly putting himself on record that subprime loans were dangerous and had to be dealt with. This is revealing; if true, it indicates Sen. Obama knew there was a problem with subprime lending -- but was unwilling to confront his own party by pressing for legislation to control it. As a demonstration of character and leadership capacity, it bears a strong resemblance to something else in Sen. Obama's past: voting present."

Here is the link to the full article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122403045717834693.html

Note that I did not say that it was deregulation bills that were actually voted on, but that it was things that changed the situation of today.

Here is also an interesting link where you can see how particular congressmen/women voted on particular legislation:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/

Both parties have screwed this up over the years, and continue to screw it up! I'm one of the ones who think we need to vote them all out and start new! We are in desperate need of term limits in Congress, as to regularly get new blood in there with fresh ideas and perspectives. Instead, seems for the most part, you don't get anyone out of Congress unless they are elected President or die! In the rare cases, they may actually retire or get voted out of their seat, but this doesn't happen often.

So he copped out. He didn't exactly have a hand in the current crisis, but he didn't take action about it when he could have either. That's a bit discouraging.



Think about that for a minute: if you regularly kick all of the congressmen out of Washington, who stays? The bureaucracy does, and all the while they get to build up their funding and influence. Also, it could be argued that freshman congressmen are easier to lobby than veteran ones.

A better way to get new ideas into Congress and increase voter participation would be to introduce a system of proportional representation, where third parties actually have a chance of winning seats.

It would also be nice if both houses ran for four-year terms, synchronized with the presidency, so that the government could actually get things done and not be in perpetual campaign mode. As it is, there's a risk of government deadlock with every midterm election.

Finally, we really need to do something about the Senate. It is far too powerful for being such an unrepresentative body.