The Panic of 2008?

If you pay attention to history, you will read of occasional times of financial panic when there were runs on banks and difficult economic times resulting from it. You start to hear about these around the time of the industrial revolution and of course, we all know about the Great Depression in the 1030's, perhaps the worst financial meltdown to happen in this country's history. It seems that our country has developed a serious case of collective amnesia, because this year is now being labeled "The Panic of 2008", which began as a result of the subprime mortgage meltdown and in turn led to the collapse of some very large and venerable investment banks, most notably, Bear Stearns, but most recently, Indy Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, mortgage banks which were created by Congress back in the 80's to make housing more affordable for more people, are now in deep trouble and they handle trillions of dollars worth of mortgages, so if they go under, there will be serious hell to pay financially in nearly every sector of the economy. I suspect that the run-up on gas prices can be directly traced to the mortgage meltdown and the creation of an "oil bubble" to replace the money lost by investors in the housing freefall. You can trace all of this back to Reaganomics and the move to deregulate everything and move the economy toward a more "free market" based economy, the thought being that a free market would encourage more competition, which would then, in turn, lower prices. Instead, it has accomplished quite the opposite and has led to the collapse of a number of venerable banks and businesses, sending the economy into a freefall that economists say is not over yet. I wonder how much of all of this mess can be partly attributed to the dilution of the teaching of history into a nebulous subject called "social studies", which includes geography, history and government (all of which we had as separate classes when I was growing up). If you don't know your history, you are doomed to repeat it, and this seems to be exactly what is going on right now. Prices on everything have shot through the roof and we who are on the lower end of the income scale are left scrambling to pay our bills and survive these tough times. In the meantime, Republicans are still touting free markets as a successful program, but they must be living on another planet, because they obviously don't see what's going on around them with numerous foreclosed and abandoned homes, which ravage neighborhoods, people standing on street corners begging for money and jobs and purchases on durable goods grinding to a standstill. In turn, that leads to a shrinking economy when people don't buy and consume things when times are good, and it all ends up in one ferocious downturning cycle that has to somehow be arrested and turned around. Only I have no idea how that's going to get done. Only time will tell whether we can turn this sinking ship around or whether it will sink to the bottom like the Titanic.

THE WORST PRESIDENT. EVER.

If there is one thing that I am assured of, it is that history will not regard this particular President very highly. All you have to do is to look at the portrait of our "beloved leader" to the left to see what kind of contempt he seems to feel for people other than those immediately surrounding him, his "yes" men and women. In fact, I think that I can safely say that this President will most surely go down in history as the worst President we've ever had, and I think that his legacy as the worst ever has already been safely assured. Our economy is in a freefall, we are caught in the midst of a brutal civil war that we caused by this President's illegal invasion of a sovereign nation that did nothing to threaten us, we let the Number One terrorist in the world get away into the almost inaccessible mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and so far, no attempts to capture him and bring him to justice have been made and apparently, there are no plans to ever do so, and this President has caused a precipitous decline in world opinion of our country and has, if anything, caused terrorism to fester even more among bitter Arab countries, making us an even unsafer country than before 9/11. This President has also embarrassed our country on the world stage by saying and doing utterly foolish and stupid things with world leaders and looking like a complete doofus in so doing. Every time he speaks, he sounds defensive, like he's trying to convince even himself that he's right about what he's saying, which he isn't anyway. He always has a shifty eyed look on his face that makes it as plain as the nose on my face that he's lying through his teeth, so how can you trust anyone who looks that way when he's speaking in public? So between his voice tone and his facial expressions, he looks like a used car salesman trying to sell a lemon to an unsuspecting consumer. Well, may the unflattering portrait above serve as a reminder that the old adage, "Would you buy a used car from this man?" does ring quite true when it comes to judging character. Just thinking that someone would make a good President based on the perception that he'd make a good backyard beer 'n' barbecue buddy is no judge of what kind of leader they could be like while in the highest office in the land. The eyes are the window into the soul. If someone is shifty eyed while talking and constantly adopts a defensive posture while doing so, steer clear. They're a born liar. You can take that to the bank.