Next President and why

[fabsroman]

I must have been busy the past couple of days, because I completely missed Tennessee's post.

The Roman Empire fell after it was rich. Right before its fall, they were handing out bread in the streets (e.g., welfare, food stamps, section 8 housing, Medicaid) and they were watching the gladiators in the Coliseum (e.g., NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL).

On a battlefield, tough choices need to be made. Sometimes, you just cannot save everybody. To save the nation, that is what might have to happen. We just cannot save every poor person out there, especially if they do not want to work.

To answer your question, I am definitely better off now than I was 8 years ago, and I'll probably be better off than I am right now 8 years from now. Not because of any specific President or other politicians, but because I work hard and save my money. This entire melt down has been coming for a while. The stock market went out of control on Clinton's watch, and then it crashed. When it crashed, people took their money out of the market and put it into real estate, and just like they got caught up in the stock market, they got caught up in real estate. Guess what, the real estate market crashed too. Now, people are scared of the stock market and the real estate market. Good, that is the way it is supposed to be. There was no easy lunch 50 years ago, and there isn't one now. One of my friends invested in an IPO 8 years ago and he made enough on it to pay off the mortgage on his house, but he didn't sell. He wanted more. So, he watched the stock fall to the point where he barely made anything.

Pigs get fat (i.e., they get fed), hogs get slaughtered.

This country is going through a tough time, and I seriously doubt that it will get better any time soon. The next President might be able to make a slight difference, but he or she won't make it all. Instead of blaming this economy on Bush, how about thinking about Greenspan and Bernanke. The FED is completely independent of the President, Congress, or the Supreme Court. Maybe they should have tightened monetary policy before the stock market got way out of control. Greenspan tried to warn people back then that they merely had a paper profit. Same thing goes for the real estate market. The FED kept the rate too low for too long, and house prices soared. They soared so high that people were worried about being able to ever afford a house, so they were desperate to buy. Along come the mortgage brokers that made a quick buck and came up with new, innovative products to sell. I know too many mortgage brokers and realtors that are broke right now, but they made a ton of money over 3 or 4 years. Problem is, they didn't save a thing.