For the 51% Who Do Not Believe that the GOP Engineered This Recession...

[McCamy Taylor]

Last edited Wed Jun 13, 2012, 05:01 PM - Edit history (1)

Congratulations! 49% of Americans have been paying attention. They know that Republicans have set up roadblocks to prevent economic recovery for political gain. However...

Since the GOP and its CEO supporters have actively bragged about their efforts to cut jobs, limit cash flow and in general make our lives living hell, I have to wonder about the other 51%. Maybe they are too broke to afford a newspaper or cable or Internet access. Maybe each day for them is a struggle just to get by. If you know someone who has been hit so hard by the recession that politics has become and unaffordable luxury, please share the following. Because none of us---especially those who are victims of the recession--can afford not to vote this year.

For the 51% Who Do Not Believe that the GOP Engineered This Recession I submit the following into evidence:

1. “People Without Homes Will Not Quarrel With Their Leaders”

From the family that got its financial start selling the Union Army weapons that blew up in soldiers’ faces:

Capital must protect itself in every way...Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
-J.P. Morgan

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/03/01/841940/--ldquo-People-without-homes-will-not-quarrel-with-their-leaders-rdquo-J-P-Morgan

Correction: Note that Morgan's son and namesake was a Hitler backer (along with Prescott Bush) and a member of the coup that tried to get rid of FDR.

2. Anatomy of the Murder of the American Dream

The Bush administration actively aided the Banksters as they created the mortgage meltdown crisis. In 2004 the FBI said that mortgage fraud was rampant in this country. Bush’s response? Prevent state attorney generals from prosecuting the criminals involved.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63214.html

When Eliot Spitzer tried to warn Americans in a Washington Post editorial called “Predatory Lenders Partner in Crime”

When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html

he was targeted by the Bush DOJ for malicious prosecution in the press---accusations that never panned out into actual criminal charges.

What does it all mean? You lost your dream home, because Bush wanted you to. And then, Bush rubbed salt in the wound by handing the Banksters who stole your home a tax payer funded bailout.

3. Capital Went on Strike

In the wake of the bailout that was supposed to boost up the economy by providing credit, the Banksters decided to stage a “capital strike”, meaning they refused to lend money even as small businesses---the ones that make good jobs in the U.S. were desperate for cash.

Zero Hedge: "Total bank reserves with the Fed hit an all time high, surpassing $1 trillion, as banks continue to hoard cash. The amount of extra lending that could have taken place but didn't was $65 billion week over week, or a $130 billion increase in just the past month."

http://blendedpurple.blogspot.com/2009/10/capital-strike.html

4. John Boehner Boasted About the Capital Strike That Was Keeping Unemployment High


John Boehner—who should know what the GOP is up to---said last year that the nation’s job creators had staged a capital strike. No, you did not read that wrong. He admitted—correction, he boasted that business leaders in the US had decided to stop creating jobs.

On September 15, House Speaker John Boehner announced that the nation’s “job creators” — a flattering euphemism for “business owners” — were on strike. This was the proximate cause of the nation’s unemployment woes, Boehner maintained. Until those business owners received the low-tax, deregulated world they wanted, they would continue to keep their wallets in their pockets.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/11/hbc-90008323

Again, you are homeless, jobless, living on your brother’s couch if you are lucky and on the street if you are unlucky, because a bunch of mostly Republican ricvh businessmen do not think that they are rich enough.

5. House Republicans Did Their Part to Keep Americans Unemployed


House Republicans admitted to voting against a jobs bills because they wanted to hurt Obama by hurting the economy.

“’Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?’”

Of course, it was the American worker who was on the ropes at the time when the GOP decided that it would be politically expedient not to lend a hand. So, if you are currently unemployed and out of benefits, the Republican Party is extremely pleased to hear it.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63214.html

6. Republicans Embraced Fiscal Policies Designed NOT to Help the Economy or Create Jobs

How did the GOP under Bush spend our tax money? On tax cuts for the rich and military spending---the two forms of federal spending that are least effective at improving the economy. Massive tax cuts for the rich which decrease the government’s ability to spend are actually detrimental to the economy. The most effective way to stimulate the economy through government spending? Education, followed by infrastructure and health care. (See the links below). This is old stuff. Every businessman and politicians knows what is good for the economy and what is bad for the economy. So, if the GOP insists upon more tax breaks for the rich and more military spending and less spending on education and infrastructure and health, it can mean only one thing---they are following Grover Norquist’s advice, which is to drain the federal bathtub so that our tax dollars can no longer do us any good. Why does Grover Norquist hate us? He doesn’t. The lobbyist is simply looking out for his alcohol and tobacco customers who do better when we are despondent.

http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/published_study/PERI_military_spending_2011.pdf

http://nontrivialpursuits.org/economic_stimulus.htm

7. American Business Leaders Vowed Not to Lend Money or Create Jobs

At least not until Obama is out of office. For example:

A Georgia businessman has an ultimatum for America: Fire President Obama, or he will not hire any more workers.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/georgia-businessman-refuses-to-hire-until-obama-is-fired/

And he was not the only one. If someone can remember the name of the CEO who called upon fellow business leaders not to create jobs or loan money during the Obama administration, please share it. Hint: I think he said that they would be "traitors" to their class if they didn't do all they could to keep the economy in the toilet.

[Kalidurga]

1. So, 51% of the people don't believe the GOP when they say they are holding the economy hostage?

That comes straight from the GOP strategists mouths and quite a few GOP leaders and many GOP corporate resource hoarders. What more do they want for proof?

[Sekhmets Daughter]

3. They don't want proof

they want validation that they are somehow superior to those who need government assistance.

[HereSince1628]

10. No. 48% believe that the GOP isn't stifling the recovery...~3% aren't sure.

Sounds VERY much like pre-election polling in Wisconsin.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

2. One correction

***Note that Morgan was a Hitler backer (along with Prescott Bush) and a member of the coup that tried to get rid of FDR.***

John Pierpont Morgan aka J.P. Morgan died in 1913, well in advance of Hitler's rise and FDR

[McCamy Taylor]

4. True. I meant to say his son was those things.

The acorn does not fall far from th etree.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

6. Perhaps

But the father did a great service to the nation when he helped a Democratic president avoid a complete meltdown in 1895.

In 1895, at the depths of the Panic of 1893, the Federal Treasury was nearly out of gold. President Grover Cleveland accepted Morgan's offer to join with the Rothschilds and supply the U.S. Treasury with 3.5 million ounces of gold[9] to restore the treasury surplus in exchange for a 30-year bond issue. The episode saved the Treasury[10] but hurt Cleveland with the agrarian wing of the Democratic Party and became an issue in the election of 1896, when banks came under a withering attack from William Jennings Bryan.

Something the current crop of GOPers would find anathema

[McCamy Taylor]

7. Did that make up for the Union soldiers who had their faces blown off

by the faulty junk guns that Morgan bought for a song and then sold to the Union for a fortune?

[JHB]

9. And how would a complete meltdown have affected their business interests?

I doubt they took a loss on the deal.

[DCKit]

13. It was done to preserve his wealth, a calculated decision. You won't win this argument on DU.

And welcome to DU, by the way. You have high recommendations.

[JDPriestly]

15. I think that the Republicans were the good guys back then.

[maddiemom]

26. J.P. Morgan's SON and namesake.

[freshwest]

5. +1,000. Bookmarking for future reference. K & R.

[Gman]

8. A slight correction... the GOP did not intentionaly engineer the beginning of this recession

as they were cock sure the house of cards they built would withstand any wind. When the whole thing started unwinding starting seriously in mid-2008 they were doing things like scrambling on a Sunday night to make sure the market opened the next day (Bear-Stearns). So the crash was not intentional as they thought the fraud and abuse could continue forever with impunity. (They were right about the impunity.)

However, they have done everything in their power starting January 20, 2009 to minimize if not stop the recovery at all costs and all the while blaming Obama. January 20, 2009 is when the malice begins.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. Yes, they did. Back in 2007 (and before) many, many people predicted the collapse

including me over at Salon in a Thread I called "A dog starved at its master's gate predicts the ruin of the state." And I was just responding to all the economists who were predicting the fall of the house of cards. The press pretended to be bullish to prop up the Bankster's game--and the Banksters pretended to be surprised so that W. could get on TV and declare that we had a "crisis" that could only be fixed by giving the rest of our money to the banks. The bailout was almost certainly intended to be a slush fund for the GOP--and that is exactly where the money has gone, to the GOP and not to small businesses or homeowners. Here is my post about this issue at DU.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/McCamy%20Taylor/366

The GOP knew that the Dems would win in 2008 just as they knew the Dems would win in 1976 after Nixon. Obama was intended to be a one term placeholder a la Jimmy Carter ("A Leader for a Change&quot until they could unveil their Reagan. Their right wing media whores were already calling it the Obama recession in October, 2008.

[Gman]

20. No doubt the warning signs were everywhere

Even I saw it like a train in the night. In December 2007 I moved all of our retirement out of equities and into cash only accounts. I almost completely preserved what we have when everyone else lost up to 60% or more of their retirement accounts. The signs were there if people were to stop and look.

But that doesn't mean it was intentional. Everyone took a beating.

[Alcibiades]

28. I did the same thing in February of 2008

Put it in inflation-indexed bonds, which did mediocre for a while, but still better than equities, but did earn an annualized return of over 13% last quarter.

[Zalatix]

30. But Occam's Razor says it was just Republican negligence!

Notice how that razor has gotten blunt from overuse?

[CanonRay]

11. Morgan sounds like a British Lord circa 1700

[longship]

12. Well argued; well sourced. Top of Greatest.

R&

[abelenkpe]

14. Wish everyone would read this post. nt

[bluesbassman]

17. K&R. Nice work McCamy. N/T

[JohnnyHardhat]

18. While I agree with the substance of this post I have a few historical issues:

1) The beginning quote is highly suspect and has been in circulation for some time on the internet without any verification or citation of original source material. It cannot be trusted at this time. You can make your case without it.

2) JP Morgan did not make his fortune selling faulty guns to the military although it was one of his early deals that enhanced his wealth. He actually bought guns from the US military and then sold them back at a huge increase. The fact that some guns may have been faulty cannot be blamed on him.

3) Jack Morgan (JP's son) hated Germans and particularly Nazis. However the Morgan bank was asked by the US government to prop up the post-WWI German economy so it would not devolve into further chaos. As we now know, Hitler then defaulted on paying the loan back and used the money to build up his military. Not a good foreign policy decision for the US.

Again, I agree the republicans have done zero for the economy and have blocked good economic initiatives but I also blame Democrats for allowing free market ideology to trump regulation. It was the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act under Clinton that repealed the basic separation of banks and investment houses, known as Glass-Steagall, that eventually destroyed the economy in 2008.

Worse though, we had a chance with the Dodd/Frank bill to right the wrongs of the past and re-regulate and we didn't. We got a watered-down bill heavily influenced by Wall Street lobbyists... And this was with a Dem Pres. and Congress after the worst financial disaster since the depression. Therefore we cannot just blame others for all of the horrible decisions and lack of initiative.

We must actively engage our team (Democrats) to do a better job of regulating the industry and ensuring stability, fairness, and transparency. This includes re-instating Glass-Steagall, breaking up "too big to fail" banks, and insisting on specific benchmark terms for credit lending when doling out stimulus funds.

That Republicans do not support these efforts is not surprising. They are a party of the wealthy, for the wealthy. What is surprising, is that some Democrats may not fully embrace these measures.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

34. From Wikipedia re JP Morgan's leveraged sale of defective used rifles to the US as new rifles:

In the early days of the American Civil War Morgan financed a scheme, known as the "Hall Carbine Affair", that purchased 5,000 dangerously defective Hall's Carbines being liquidated by the U.S. Government at a cost of $3.50 each. The rifles were later resold to the government as new carbines lacking the safety flaw at a cost of $22. The audacity of the scheme included not only the $92,426 loss by the government and the selling of weapons known to maim their operators to an army in need of firearms, but the guns were also sold prior to ownership, thus the guns were paid for with money from their sale back to the government. Some authors have suggested that Morgan was somehow unaware that the guns were being resold, however scholarly opinion regards this as "implausible".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan

[Angry Dragon]

19. traitors

traders and traitors sound a lot alike

[Spitfire of ATJ]

21. If someone can remember the name of the CEO

Bernie Marcus. Not the CEO but the co-founder of Home Depot

I still refuse to shop there.

I go to my local ACE or Lowes.

[Lugnut]

22. K&R n/t

[mlhanson]

23. name of Georgia businessman

Bill Looman, owner of U.S. Cranes LLC.

[Alcibiades]

29. A little irony

Overhead cranes of the sort this business appears to specialize in are common at steel fabrication plants, which are themselves highly cyclical enterprises that benefit hugely from infrastructure projects funded by, GASP, big government.

http://uscranellc.webs.com/

It would also seem that this is a free website hosted by webs.com. It appears that the owner has lavished inattention upon it.

[chervilant]

24. Thanks for this:

By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.

The Corporate Megalomaniacs self-identify as intellects who MUST provide guidance for the weak and mentally-challenged Hoi Polloi.

Sadly, too many members of the Hoi Polloi vociferously defend these vile, greed corporatists--it's a documented fact that the oppressed tend to identify with their oppressors.

[Stuart G]

25. k & r thanks for posting...nt

[DallasNE]

27. The Other Day There Was A Report

That showed the average American has seen their net worth drop by 40% in the last 3 years. At the same time a new report showed Romney's net worth now at $250 million, which is an increase of about $20 million. That speaks volumes to the oxygen the super rich are sucking out of the economy.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

36. What are the odds that, after the pending "free-trade" agreement is signed (by whoever),

the net worth will drop even lower?

There's no way that the pending wage-lowering, let's-send-even-more-jobs-to-foreign-countries "free-trade" agreement is going to increase the average American's net worth.

[LongTomH]

31. A 'must-read.' I recommend that you follow the link to the Harold Ickes speech....

....from The Progressive mag, 1938. Here are a few exceprts:

To the 120 million people of the United States they have made the threat that, unless they are free to speculate free of regulations to protect the people’s money; unless they are free to accumulate through legal tricks by means of corporations without paying their share of taxes; unless they are free to dominate the rest of us without restrictions on their financial or economic power; unless they are once more free to do all these things, then the United States is to have its first general sit-down strike—not of labor—not of the American people—but of the 60 families and of the capital created by the whole American people of which the 60 families have obtained control.

If the American people call this bluff, then the America that is to be free will be a democratic America, a free America.

If the American people yield to this bluff, then the America that is to be will be a big-business Fascist America—an enslaved America.

//snip

Since the earliest days of the Republic, the average American has feared, and has been taught to fear, the concentration of private economic power. He has always been suspicious of dominating influence of large corporate enterprises, and not without reason. It has been a hard fight to preserve a free democracy and system of free individual enterprise against the inroads of concentrated economic power.

There are some who say the fight cannot be won. They despair that the government cannot break or control the concentrations of private economic power. But I am sure the fight can be won. I am unwilling to believe that private economic power will succeed in again securing mastery of the government of these United States.

[uponit7771]

32. +1

[Rain Mcloud]

33. Well done.

I have thought for some time that the aim was to install as many Republican party faithful into every civic nook and cranny as possible.
I believe that the National Chamber Of Commerce is the entity charged with creating a right-wing monopoly.
The aim is to defund liberals at the source,Citizens United further cemented this idea for me.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

35. BUSH handed ... "the Banksters who stole your home a tax payer funded bailout."

By himself? Open Secrets reports:

Overall, the 263 House members who supported the bailout Friday have received an average of $833,077 since 1989 from the industries that were most eager to see the rescue bill passed. The 171 opponents have collected $589,417, on average. In the 2007-2008 election cycle alone, the finance sector has contributed at least $182,532 to congressman voting "yea" and $138,040 to those who voted "nay," a difference of 32 percent.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/10/in-houses-final-bailout-vote-m.html

[alfredo]

37. It's called "The Shock Doctrine."