yeah right



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The Obama–Ayers controversy arose during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign regarding Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama's contact with Bill Ayers, a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a former leader of the Weather Underground.[1] He served on two nonprofit boards with Barack Obama. Both Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, hosted a meet-and-greet for Obama at their home in 1995,[2] where Alice Palmer introduced Obama as her chosen successor in the Illinois State Senate.[citation needed] However, investigations by journalists concluded that Obama does not have a close relationship with Ayers.[3][4]

The matter was brought up by the campaign of competing candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in February 2008, revisited during a debate between Clinton and Obama in April 2008, then subsequently picked up by Republican presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as an issue in the general election campaign. Obama condemned Ayers's past,[5] and stated he does not have a close association with Ayers.[2]

Contents [hide]
1 Underlying circumstances
1.1 William Ayers
1.2 Interaction between Obama and Ayers
2 Presidential campaign issue
2.1 Primary debates
2.2 General election campaign
3 Reaction to the controversy
4 References
5 External links



[edit] Underlying circumstances

[edit] William Ayers
Ayers and Dohrn are fixtures of their Chicago neighborhood, "embraced, by and large, in the liberal circles dominating Hyde Park politics", according to Ben Smith, a writer for The Politico.[6] Ayers has been described as "very respected and prominent in Chicago [with] a national reputation as an educator."[1] But they have not been embraced everywhere due to their past leadership of the Weather Underground, a 1960s radical organization that placed bombs at a number of government institutions, causing damage, but no deaths or injuries.[7] Ayers and Dohrn were members of the five-member central committee of the Weathermen in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[8] Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, some alumni of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where Ayers is a tenured professor of education, and Northwestern University, where Dohrn is a law professor, have protested their presence, though colleagues believe their achievements since overshadow those actions.[citation needed]


[edit] Interaction between Obama and Ayers
Obama and Ayers served together for three years on the board of the Woods Fund of Chicago, an anti-poverty foundation established in 1941. Obama had joined the nine-member board in 1993, and had attended a dozen of the quarterly meetings together with Ayers in the three years up to 2002, when Obama left his position on the board,[1] which Ayers chaired for two years.[9] Laura S. Washington, chairwoman of the Woods Fund, said the small board had a collegial "friendly but businesslike" atmosphere, and met four times a year for a half-day, mostly to approve grants.[2] The two also appeared together on academic panel discussions, including a 1997 University of Chicago discussion on juvenile justice. They again appeared in 2002 at an academic panel co-sponsored by the Chicago Public Library.[1] One panel discussion in which they both appeared was organized by Obama's wife, Michelle.[10]

Obama served as president of the board of directors for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a large education-related nonprofit organization that Ayers was instrumental in starting.[11] The board disbursed grants to schools and raised private matching funds while Ayers worked with the operational arm of the effort. Both attended some board meetings in common starting in 1995, retreats, and at least one news conference together as the education program started. They continued to attend meetings together during the 1995-2001 period when the program was operating. [11]

Ayers and Dohrn hosted a "meet-and-greet" for Obama at their home in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where the Ayers and the Obamas lived. [11] It was at this meeting that then State Senator Alice Palmer introduced Barack Obama as her candidate for the 1996 Democratic primary.[11] Although the exact date of the meeting is not known, it was sometime in the second half of 1995, according to Ben Smith, a reporter for The Politico.[6]

In 2008, a spokesman for the Obama campaign said the last time Obama and Ayers had seen each other was when Obama was biking in the neighborhood in 2007 and crossed paths with Ayers. The spokesman said "The suggestion that Ayers was a political adviser to Obama or someone who shaped his political views is patently false".[12]

The New York Times reported that Obama did not have a significant relationship with Ayers.[11] According to several people, Ayers played no role in starting Obama's career which was primarily launched when Deborah Leff, then president of the Joyce Foundation, suggested Obama be appointed as chairman of the board of the six-member board that oversaw the distribution of grants in Chicago.[11]


[edit] Presidential campaign issue
Obama's contacts with Ayers had been open to public knowledge in Chicago for years.[13] Mainstream British news organizations and blogs began covering the matter in the context of the 2008 Presidential campaign beginning with conservative British writer Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail in early February, 2008.[14][13][15]

The connection was soon picked up by blogs and newspapers in the United States, including the Huffington Post.[16] In a February 15, 2008 article, a Bloomberg L.P. reporter quoted Obama's rival, Hillary Clinton, who stated that the Republican Party might use the supposed connection with Ayers to discredit Obama if he were chosen as the nominee of the Democratic Party.[17]


[edit] Primary debates
Howard Kurtz has written that the connection between the two Chicagoans was "all but ignored by the news media, other than Fox" until it was raised in a presidential debate.[18] At the Democratic Party primary debate in Philadelphia on April 16, 2008, moderator George Stephanopoulos (after Sean Hannity suggested the question the day before[19]) questioned Obama about his association with Ayers, asking the candidate: "Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?"[9] Obama responded as follows:

This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense, George.[20][2]

Obama's response led to an exchange between him and Clinton, in which Clinton said, "Senator Obama served on a board with Mr. Ayers for a period of time, the Woods Fund, which was a paid directorship position." [9] Obama then referred to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of Linda Sue Evans and Susan Rosenberg,[21] two former Weather Underground members convicted for their actions after joining the splinter group May 19 Communist Organization. The following Sunday, Stephanopoulos asked Republican presidential candidate John McCain about Obama's patriotism, and McCain responded: "I'm sure he's very patriotic", then added, "But his relationship with Mr. Ayers is open to question."[9]


[edit] General election campaign
In April, 2008 John McCain began to question Obama's interactions with Ayers[22] and it became an issue later in the general election campaign. In August, 2008, the Republican Party created website, barackbook.com, as a spoof of Facebook, on which Ayers is listed as one of Obama's "friends", and that contains a mocked-up user profile for Bill Ayers, which describes the controversy and Obama's alleged connections with Ayers.[23]

Also in August 2008, the American Issues Project began running an ad that emphasized the relationship between the two, which contained the following text: "Barack Obama is friends with Ayers, defending him as, quote, 'Respectable' and 'Mainstream.' Obama's political career was launched in Ayers's home. And the two served together on a left-wing board. Why would Barack Obama be friends with someone who bombed the Capitol and is proud of it? Do you know enough to elect Barack Obama?"[24] In response, the Obama campaign's attorney Robert Bauer wrote TV stations running the ad, saying, "Your station is committed to operating in the public interest, an objective that cannot be satisfied by accepting for compensation material of such malicious falsity," and wrote Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General John C. Keeney, describing the ad as a "willful attempt to evade the strictures of federal election law."[25]

The same month, the Obama campaign ran a TV ad in selected market that said in part, "With all our problems, why is John McCain talking about the 60s, trying to link Barack Obama to radical Bill Ayers? McCain knows Obama denounced Ayers's crimes, committed when Obama was just 8 years old."[26]

In late August 2008, Fox News reported on their examination of the University of Illinois at Chicago records for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), for the period in the 1990s when both Obama and Ayers were employed there. Minutes from an October 1996 gathering show that Obama was concerned with the program's effectiveness. [27]

Stanley Kurtz, a conservative commentator and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, thinks Obama's association with Ayers should raise questions in the minds of voters. "The fact that Obama and Ayers were working together stems from the pretty sharp left-leaning ideology that both of them shared to some extent," Kurtz said. [27]

Kurtz has also examined the University's Annenberg records, and reported his findings and opinions in the Wall Street Journal in late September 2008. "The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association," Kurtz wrote. "Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle." [28]

In October 2008, after the McCain campaign announced that it would step up attacks on the Democratic presidential candidate,[29] Sarah Palin delivered speeches claiming that Obama is "palling around with terrorists". For support, Palin cited a New York Times article that also concluded that Obama and Ayers were not close. The article stated that other "publications, including The Washington Post, Time, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic, have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship."[3] CNN has independently deemed Palin's allegations false, saying: "There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now 'palling around,' or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are."[4]

Obama's response to the Palin speeches came on October 5, 2008 at an event in Asheville, North Carolina: "Senator McCain and his operatives are gambling that they can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They'd rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. That's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas, and running out of time."[30]


[edit] Reaction to the controversy
Obama has condemned Ayers's past through a spokesman.[5] After the controversy arose Ayers was defended by officials and others in Chicago. Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a statement in support of Bill Ayers the next day (April 17), as did the Chicago Tribune in an editorial.[31][32] Ayers remains on the Board of Directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago[33] Washington said it was "ridiculous to suggest there's anything inappropriate" about the two men serving on the foundation board.[1]

Michael Kinsley, a longtime critic of Ayers,[34] argued in Time that Obama's relationship with Ayers should not be a campaign issue: "If Obama's relationship with Ayers, however tangential, exposes Obama as a radical himself, or at least as a man with terrible judgment, he shares that radicalism or terrible judgment with a comically respectable list of Chicagoans and others — including Republicans and conservatives — who have embraced Ayers and Dohrn as good company, good citizens, even experts on children's issues." "Ayers and Dohrn are despicable, and yet making an issue of Obama's relationship with them is absurd." [35]

In August, the Obama–Ayers contact was mentioned in Jerome Corsi's The Obama Nation, a book intended to defeat Obama's election campaign, and in conservative author David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama, where he wrote that the situation raised questions about Obama's judgment and influences.[36] Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial board member Steve Chapman suggested that while Obama was "justly criticized for his ties" to Ayers, the coverage of that connection should be matched by equal coverage of John McCain's associating with convicted Watergate burglar Gordon Liddy.[37][38]

On September 9th, journalist Jake Tapper reported on the comic strip in Bill Ayers's blog explaining the misrepresented soundbite: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being....'When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough s---."' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.'"[39]


[edit] References
^ a b c d e Drogin, Bob and Morain, Dan, "Obama and the former radicals", article, The Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
^ a b c d Slevin, Peter, "Former '60s Radical Is Now Considered Mainstream in Chicago", article, The Washington Post, April 18, 2008; p A04, retrieved June 6, 2008
^ a b New York Times article: "Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths".
^ a b "Fact Check: Is Obama 'palling around with terrorists'?", CNN (2008-10-05).
^ a b Scheiber, Noam, "Parsing the Ayers Allegation", blog post, The Stump blog at The New Republic website, February 22, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
^ a b Ben Smith (February 22, 2008). "Obama once visited '60s radicals", politico.com.
^ Berger, Dan, Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity, AK Press: Oakland, California, 2006, ISBN 1904859410 pp 286-287
^ Montgomery, Paul L., "Last of Radical Leaders Eluded Police 11 Years", article, The New York Times, October 25, 1981, retrieved June 8, 2008
^ a b c d Berman, Ari, "Obama under the weather", The Nation, May 1, 2008
^ Becker, Jo and Drew, Christopher, "Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side", The New York Times, May 11, 2008, retrieved August 24, 2008
^ a b c d e f Obama and ’60s Bomber: A Look Into Crossed Paths New York Times, October 3, 2008
^ Claiborne, Ron, "McCain Campaign Goes on Offense: Campaign Stepping Up Attacks on Obama", August 27, 2008, retrieved August 30, 2008
^ a b "How Obama and the radical became news:Story highlights the path from blog to mainstream", Boston Globe (2008-04-18).
^ Peter Hitchens (2008-02-02). "[The Black Kennedy: But does anyone know the real Barack Obama? The Black Kennedy: But does anyone know the real Barack Obama?]", The Daily Mail.
^ Michael Dobbs, Obama's 'Weatherman' Connection The Fact Checker, The Washington Post
^ Larry C. Johnson (2008-02-16). "No, He Can't Because Yes, They Will". Huffington Post. Retrieved on 2008-08-10.
^ Timothy J. Burger (February 15, 2008). "Obama's Ties Might Fuel `Republican Attack Machine'", bloomberg.com.
^ Kurtz, Howard, "The Military-Media Complex", The Washington Post, April 21, 2008, retrieved June 6, 2008
^ AUDIO: Hannity Feeds Stephanopoulos Debate Question On Weather Underground»
^ Transcript: Obama and Clinton Debate, April 16, 2008
^ An Almost Oppo Free Zone, The Hotline: On Call, National Journal Group, April 16, 2008
^ Cooper, Michael, "Republicans Focus on Obama as Fall Opponent", article, The New York Times, May 8, 2008, retrieved June 5, 2008
^ Carla Marinucci (2008-08-07). "Obama, McCain campaigns bust out the brass knuckles", San Francisco Chronicle.
^ http://nevada-rlc.org/2008-election/ad-ties-obama-to-60s-radical/
^ http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D92PL7400&show_article=1
^ http://www.wtop.com/?nid=213&sid=1466240
^ a b "Newly Released Documents Highlight Obama's Relationship With Ayers", Fox News report, August 26, 2008
^ "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools", Wall Street Journal editorial, published 9-23-08
^ "[http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/05/palin.obama.terrorist.claim/index.html Obama campaign rejects Palin 'terrorist' gibe]", CNN.
^ CNN article: "Obama accuses McCain of looking for distractions."
^ Mike Dorning and Rick Pearson, Daley: Don't tar Obama for Ayers The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
^ Chicago Tribune editorial board, Guilt by association The Chicago Tribune, April 17, 2008
^ Board of Directors and Officers Woods Fund of Chicago
^ Smith, Ben (2008-05-30). "Kinsley on Ayers". Ben Smith's Blog. Politico. Retrieved on 2008-06-01.
^ Kinsley, Michael (2008-05-29). "Rejecting Obama's Radical Friends", Time. Retrieved on 2008-06-01.
^ Freddoso, David, The Case Against Barack Obama, Regnery Publishing Co., 2008, pp 122-123
^ Chapman, Steve, blog post, "Obama's radical friend", August 22, 2008, 10:37 AM, "Minority of One" blog, The Chicago Tribune website, retrieved August 28, 2008
^ Chapman, Steve, With friends like these ... The Chicago Tribune, May 4, 2008
^ Tapper, Jake In a Not-Remotely-Comic Strip, Bill Ayers Weighs In on What He Meant By 'We Didn't Do Enough' to End Vietnam War ABC News, Political Punch, September 9, 2008

Virgil.

google him.

start with wiki

go to ancient Rome and see the connection to novus ordo seclorum. it is in a prose of his.

He is a facinating character.

The steeping of these phrases is wrapping the flag around christianity, the roman version.

It is worth understanding about the mindset of our founding fathers.

But the rabbit trail is convoluted and appears gnostic and stoic to me.

It doesn't appear to address the relationship due man with God through the Holy Spirit, but anyway............

I need some sleep, war.

perhaps tomorrow night we can carry on some more.

peace, out.

I told you before and others that muslims will not allow a direct descendant of muhammed to be killed or captured by infidels.

Sadaamwas an exception because he was killing his own and members of the family too.

that is a big no no in islamic circles.

we will never get bin Ladin.

That is why the Shah was removed by islamicists in 79. He had Khomeini's son executed for writing anti Shah graffiti on the streets of Tehran.

everyone thinks I am nutz on this, but it is true.

This war is not going to yield bin Ladin except by accident. And that is highly unlikely. We trained him LOL

oh well.....

the union is here already.

The Amero coin is minted in Denver.

look at my avatar
or go to my profile to get a better look at it. The image is clearer when enlarged.

you can see the "D" on the lower right hand corner of the back.

done deal?


we're already there, I guess.

it gives me a buzz, and that buzz isn't the Lord, if you know what I mean.

zMy son had an algebra class in the 6th grade and they took three weeks to cover the pythagoriaan theorum.

I showed it to him in 15 minutes, the first day.

He brought a few friends over. I taught them too.

wtf?

I went on to show them shortcuts.

Then I had a talk with the teacher.

He said what I was doing was great, but he wasn';t allowed to do that.

wtf?

He had to follow the curicullum given, whether or not he agreed, if he wanted to keeo his job and b tenured.

wtf?

This year, my son is a sophomore in high school and his pre calculus and advanced algebra classes and his trig have a teacher that teaches the short cuts.

I asked him to teach my son th short cuts to calculus and about probab;lility and such. He said OK. But he is teaching the school way and teaching the shortcuts too.

This guy is getting results and the few kids thaty have him are actually learning something and why they are learning ti and how it applies to real life situations.

This guy was a professor and very accomplished and made himself wealthy and decided to walk away and teach for pennies on the dollar.

He is a happy man now.

Life is funny, war.

There are some amazing people around, here and there.

better in waht way, war?

more buildings?

better roads?

quirkier gismos, gadgets, and whirlygigs?

better how?

quality of life can be excellent in a third world nation, given that such a nation is principled and moral and ethical.

Might not be as fun as Vegas, but it won't be as detrimental to ones financial health either.LOL

I suggest we teach classes on Madison's Federalist Papers.

and then teach, if anyone really understands it, the Hamiltonian model we are presently in with the Federal Reserve Bank's leadership of a currency backed only by credit and good faith of a nation.

That is Hamilton's view, which Nixon signed into law in 1971 when he broke the chains of backing currency with gold reserves. Churcill did it in 29 in England and it tanked the economy overnight.

Lincoln and both Kennedys fought against it. gee ya think?

The ones that acceeded lived. for a while anyway. LOL

dnrkg earg v,dslacn I am repeating myself.

mi lago

like I've said and probably, you are the only one that remembers me saying it, but i don't mind being a citizen of a third world country as long as it is California.

i remember that.

McCain dodged a bullet then, and i rememebr it well.

I was a millionaire in those days. LOL lots of properties. Lots of work with S&Ls. None of the hoo hah.

Then I met Jesus.

That was a long time ago. I am still in my bliss.

I remember also what I was taught by bankers and friends that were manipulating the real estate market with me in those days as we ramped up the MLS activity thjrough buying and selling to create the appearance of a hot local market.

LOL buy low and sell high. sell into demand.LOL

I was 24-30 at the time.

Anyway, they told me that legislation had been passed to raise the capital reserves of S&ls and that banks were not re-writing S&l loans for lower rates as they cost of fund was lowering.

It seems that the banks didn't want to allow the S&ls to recapitalize and become more competition for them since the S&ls had so much political favor and this move made s&ls have to come in line with capital reserve minimums of commercial banks on a mandated timeline.

This lead to the collapse of S&ls, more than anything. Keating got caught in not being able to recapitalize quickly enough to cover convertibles gheld in street, or something like that. LOL

He wasn't the only one.

Why was i told? I was a good guy!

My friends wanted me to know what time it is.

I made them filthy rich with my scheme.

I may have started all of this, who knows.



I told only a few, but not til after I was out of the game and a christian.

It was a fun game. But it left my conscience unfulfilled.

I saw the greed. I saw the frenzy. I laughed at it.

how smug.

It can still be done today by anybody.

pick a friend or two with deep pockets.
Pick a market and a line of whatever, it doesn't have to be real estate, but it must have a mechanism to be rated and valued and trusted by lenders. The appraisal process must be contingent upon sales momentum and creating a spiral in any market is possible.

Hunt did it with silver.

Kennedy did it before the crash in 29.

Enron did it and Gov, Gray Davis sold California away to utility contract well into the future past his democratic confusion and helped make the state deficit worse for this state.

But in the end, it appears, very few ever hold on to the gains playing that game.

For whatever reason, quitting and getting out is not an option for most.

Anyway, the Keating 5 is the precurser to this debaucle.

And it is far from over.

will we learn from this second go round?

I had a great video that got bum,ped off youtube.

apparently warner had some copyright iissues with it being out there and it was censored.

I posted it in another thread on the 30th, but it won't link now. drat.

I have this though. It is imformative.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/subprime-overview.asp?viewall=1

you know something, war....

it's always been this way, even before the two party system became entrenched with a balance of power exclusive of all other alliances and caucuses.

It started with the amalgamation of the Magna Carta and the French Constitution being the premise for the US Constitution, if for no other reason than the familiarity of our founding fathers with those codifices of the rule of law.

It was further cemented to be the mindset of this nation by the polar dissimilarities between Madisonian economics and Hamiltonian economics, each deriving a uniquely different ideal of accounting for trade balance, and they were each mutually exclusive in their intent of the other.

This idea of Novus Ordo Seclorum vs. E. Pluris Unum also frames the stalemate of ideas and purposes to forward the advantage and privilege of access to the meat of these philosophical premises.

But there is one more. Annuit Coeptis

Basically, war, this is a cabal of freemasonry.

That all seeing eye has been the image of this nation from its inception.

Annuit Coeptis means "He favors our undertakings"

it is reference, romantically perhaps, of Egypt.

"The gods who exercise their dominion over the earth will be
restored one day and installed in a City at the extreme limit of
Egypt, a City which will be founded towards the setting sun, and
into which hasten, by land and sea, the whole race of mortal men."

Hence, the pyramid.

Losing ya?

Novus ordo seclorem means new secular order, or new world order. Refer to Annuit Coeptis.

losing ya?

E pluribus unum means all are one, or, out of many, one. Refer to Annuit Coeptis.

These three concepts are a triangle, a pyramid, a triune expression of a singular purpose.




This is what America means by its evolution of thought and ideas and the mission and objective and purpose of this nation, according to its foundation, is being built to its intended end, war.

Whether you or i or anyone likes it or not.

Voting rights originally were afforded those that had a stake in losing everything if they were wrong about their consaensus building.

That is not what voting rights evolved into, war.

Voting rights evolved away from that preposition as control of the economic future of this nation gave waty to autonomous impunity in the world at large.

T Boone Pickens said a number of years ago, " I don't care what religion, what form of government, what form of laws are written to guide, but give me control of the money and I have everything"

He wasn't speaking for himself.


What do you want with a shell of servitude and indenturedness?

That is all that is left.


Remember that these men were stronger than kings when they made kings acceed to their demands while under the sovereigns.

Thesemen knew that they had power over kings and power over kings assumed to be possessing divine right to sovereignty by the masses, were yet subject themselves to passions and ambitions and empire building that required the builders, architects, masons, craftsmen and their armies.

Out of divine right being supplanted by the will of man, the Church was dethroned as sage advice.


As far as nation building and empire building goes, so goes the freemasonry and their power.

They have yet to yield to any.

Name one that knows what they know, and can do as they please to stop them.

food for thought.

That is precisely how we got where we are.

and who is that?

Did we learn anything from this?

Why weren't the American people kept apprised of the knowledge gleaned from the past?

Or should we all have known by now anyway?

Why did Congress and Presidents alike not heed the warnings about this current meltdown being given since 1999?

Without going into it, this forum has already peered into the facts of this freddie and fannie debaucle enough to know by now just what is being reflected from the S&L problems endured prior to this current problem.

It is history repeating itself.

Why?

and who really is responsible for allowing it but Washington and our elected officials?


These questions do not have unanimous answers.

Here's the story.




- Introduction
- The Story
- The Aftermath
- Lessons Learned
- Timeline
- Notes




This case study was written in August 2002


Introduction


In February 1989, newly elected President George Bush announced to the American public that he would set up a programme to rescue the stricken Savings & Loan industry. The announcement made plain for the first time the depth of a financial sector crisis that had been brewing throughout the 1980s and which regulators had been unable to defuse.

Estimates of a clean-up bill of around $30 to $50 billion shocked US taxpayers at the time, but turned out to be optimistic. Today we know that between 1986 and 1995, when the storm abated, the underwriting of US thrifts by the financial industry and the US taxpayer cost an extraordinary $153 billion.1 The extent of the disaster turned it into a major threat to the US financial system, and one of the most expensive financial sector crises the world has seen.

The losses were the result of unmanaged asset/liability gaps that led to interest rate exposures, speculative investments in junk bonds and service industries, fraud, and - most especially - massive losses from lending to and investing in the US commercial real estate sector.

But how could such a crisis have developed in a backwater of the US financial industry, dominated until the early 1980s by the simple business of taking in retail savings deposits and lending out these funds in the form of residential mortgages? The story of how it happened continues to haunt US financial industry regulation and bank risk management practice, and reverberates with today's rash of corporate reporting scandals.2


The story

The S&L industry was an unlikely candidate for the nation's largest-ever financial scandal. At its roots it was a conservative residential mortgage sector, surrounded by legislation put in place in the 1930s to promote home ownership.

The sector had its own regulator, the Federal Savings & Home Loan Banking Board, and its own insurance fund to protect depositors, the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC), which was funded by the S&L industry and backed by the US taxpayer.

But the sleepy S&L industry was the child of a particular regulatory and interest rate environment, and between 1960 and 1980 that environment changed out of recognition. From the early 1960s there were growing worries that the S&L industry was not competing effectively for funds with commercial banks and securities markets, leading to large swings in the amount of money available for mortgage lending.3 But the real threat emerged in the 1970s as inflation joined forces with the deregulation of US interest rate markets to produce an increasingly volatile interest rate market.

Sharp price movements demand new risk management structures, skills and tools. But as interest rates became more volatile, particularly in the late 1970s, the S&L industry failed to tackle the risk inherent in the funding of long-term, fixed-interest mortgages by means of short-term deposits.

One problem was that regulation intended to help the S&L sector in the 1960s had put a ceiling on the interest rate that S&Ls could offer to depositors. This measure succeeded for a while in dampening competition for depositor funds between banks and S&Ls. But as new money market funds began to compete fiercely during the 1970s for depositors' money by offering interest rates set by the market, S&Ls suffered significant withdrawal of deposits during periods of high interest rates - a process known as disintermediation.

The biggest problem, though, was more fundamental. When S&Ls tried to compete for funds by offering relatively high rates or - after deposit interest rate ceilings were eliminated between 1980 and 1982 - by offering interest rates in line with or above market rates, an unsustainable gap opened up between the cost of their funding liabilities (short-term interest rates) and the income generated by their assets (long-term, fixed-rate mortgage repayments).

Worse, as interest rates moved higher, the economic value of existing S&L portfolios of long-term, low interest rate residential mortgages moved sharply lower, threatening institutions with insolvency.

The trigger for the closing shut of this asset/liability trap was the shock rise in oil prices in 1979, pushing up inflation and headline interest rates around the world. By 1980, with interest rates on US government debt hitting 16%, many S&Ls had already been fatally wounded.

Luckily for the owners of thrifts, regulators in the early 1980s lacked the political, financial or human resources to close large numbers of institutions. Rigorous enforcement would have meant paying out much more money to insured depositors than was held in the industry-funded FSLIC insurance fund. It would also have meant working with literally hundreds of insolvent institutions, and overcoming numerous political obstacles at a federal and state level to radical S&L industry reform.

Instead, between 1980 and 1982, regulators, industry lobbyists and legislators put together various legislative and regulatory mechanisms to postpone the threatened insolvency of the sector in the hope that interest rates would quieten down and S&Ls would be able to engineer themselves back into profitability.

As we recount in our accompanying Timeline, the sum effect of these mechanisms was to loosen S&L capital restrictions, while offering S&Ls new freedom to extend their activities into potentially lucrative (and therefore risky) areas.

In particular, regulatory rules on 'net worth' - the amount left over when S&L liabilities were subtracted from assets and taken as a key indicator of solvency - were changed so that thrifts could continue to operate even when their net worth reached historically low levels.4

The loosening of the solvency and risk capital regime surrounding S&Ls also included important changes to the treatment of an accounting concept known as 'supervisory goodwill'. Supervisory goodwill helped to compensate any institution that, in a regulator-agreed merger, took on the economically impaired tangible assets of another, insolvent institution (such as mortgages paying low rates of interest). Although largely meaningless at an economic level, supervisory goodwill could be used to balance out the thrift's books in terms of its capital requirements and its accounting numbers.

Indeed, changes to the accounting and capital treatment of supervisory goodwill in 1982 made it possible for acquiring thrifts to post stronger apparent accounting and capital numbers for up to ten years after merging with a failing institution, even though their underlying economic situation had deteriorated.5

The legislative moves of the early 1980s also included the raising of the level of insured deposits from $40,000 to $100,000. The issue of deposit insurance is critical to the S&L scandal. In an uninsured environment, depositors would have been wary of continuing to fund the industry, whatever the rate of interest paid by the S&Ls, for fear of losing their savings in a collapsed institution.

But because savers knew their deposits were insured by government guarantees, even badly damaged institutions could attract funds by paying interest rates marginally above the market rate. The increase in the insured amount, and the phasing out of interest rate ceilings on the interest that S&Ls could pay depositors after 1980, helped the S&Ls to attract depositors through both traditional and non-traditional means.

In particular, S&Ls began to access increasing amounts of their funding via brokered deposits. In this market, which emerged through the 1980s, brokers gathered together deposits from individual savers and channelled these to institutions that offered higher rates of interest - significantly increasing the rate at which S&Ls could take in deposits and build their business.

But the loosening of regulatory restrictions on S&L activity meant that institutions could use these new funds to gamble their way into profit. The S&L industry's focus began to shift away from mortgage assets and towards assets that were more immediately lucrative (and risky).

In particular, from the early 1980s, S&Ls began to both lend to real estate developers and to invest in real estate, construction and service companies. In key regions, such as Texas and Florida, S&L lenders competed with other lenders such as commercial bankers to fuel a real-estate boom, as US investors queued to take advantage of a 1981 change in federal tax laws that rewarded investments in construction.

But although this lending sector offered sweet upfront fees and relatively high interest rate margins, it was a honey trap that could be sprung by any marked downturn in the commercial real estate market. Furthermore, as both the credit quality of developers and the value of the bank's security depended upon the same fundamental risk factors - property values, rental income, occupancy rates - the loss rates on commercial real estate loans were likely to prove savage in any slump.

An additional problem was that while the regulations surrounding the S&L industry grew more and more lax, the already-limited quality of the on-site supervision of individual institutions declined in the early to mid 1980s, partly due to regulator budgetary restraints.6

With the restrictions eased, supervision at a low ebb, and little funding market discipline (as a result of deposit insurance), the sector's main bulwark against poor decisions became the integrity and internal risk management practices of individual S&Ls.

In too many cases, these proved feeble defences. In particular, the traditional risk management skills of mortgage lenders, where credit risk is relatively low and predictable, and property and collateral prices relatively stable, did not equip most S&Ls to venture into the strongly cyclical commercial real estate market.

Across the S&L industry, many institutions allowed bad practices to evolve that allowed economic risks to be underestimated and lie unrecorded, while dubious and fraudulent revenues were recorded up front.

In relation to commercial real estate lending, these practices included:

Over-emphasis on the up-front fees generated from advancing commercial real-estate loans (fees that were often paid from the money that the bank itself loaned to the developer).
Loosening of underwriting standards which should have ensured creditors were likely to possess robust cashflows from the development, and which should have limited the size of any loan to a fraction of the value of any property used as security.
The use of untrustworthy property value appraisals that often took little account of the likely downward movements of property prices in local markets but sometimes included speculative assumptions about upward movements (misvaluation of assets with uncertain values is a common theme in failed bank risk management)
The practice of adding unpaid interest payments to the capital to be repaid on a loan, and a host of similar practices designed to prop up apparent asset quality and revenue streams even as an S&L's asset portfolio began to deteriorate
Churning impaired loans by using bank credit to persuade developers to purchase shaky bank collateral and investments at inflated values (from the bank itself, or the impaired credit).
Out and out corruption also played its part, both in terms of direct economic losses - it is estimated to account for at least 15% of the total S&L loss, some put the figure much higher - and in setting the scene for reckless decision making, misvaluation and deliberately obscure financial reporting and documentation.7

From 1982, the FHLBB jettisoned many regulations concerning S&L ownership, so that individuals and small powerful groups of shareholders could more easily gain control of institutions. But the opportunity to grow a financial institution fast from a minimal capital base - leveraging the risk and potential return of any initial investment - attracted the wrong style of management and owner to the industry. Even while the underlying economics of the S&L industry remained poor, the relaxed rules meant that between late 1982 and late 1985 many new thrifts entered the market - 133 in 1984 alone - and the total asset-base of the thrift industry grew by 56%.8

After a short respite in 1983 to 1984, as a more favourable interest rate environment helped ease the original cause of the S&L malaise, the mid to late 1980s saw S&Ls lurch back into crisis once more. This time round, a series of US regional crises, triggered by collapses in the oil, property and farming sectors, acted to realise the credit and investment risks now embedded in S&L portfolios. By 1984, for example, the oil-price inspired boom of the early 1980s in Texas was faltering, and by 1987 that state's oil and real estate sectors were in deep recession. A similar process of increasing rates of default and falling collateral values remorselessly undermined S&L asset around the US, right through until 1992 (though Texan S&Ls remained among the worst hit).9

From late 1984, the FHLBB began to try to tighten up on S&L risk management and to put a brake on risky investment activities at near-insolvent S&Ls. But it was too little, too late. By the end of 1986 it was clear that the FSLIC, the safety net that insured S&L depositors - and which regulators depended upon when resolving failed institutions - was itself insolvent in the face of overwhelming sector losses.

As our Timeline recounts, from 1986 onwards, politicians and regulators struggled with a series of measures to fund the restructuring of the industry, but these failed to match up to the scale of the problem. Although by 1988 the FSLIC was able to resolve thrifts with assets of $96 billion, much of the restructuring was accomplished through encouraging mergers and acquisitions between S&Ls (rather than by confronting the fundamental problem that much of the sector was insolvent).

S&L owners and managers generally opposed moves to restructure the industry through the wholesale closure of financially precarious institutions, and proved to be powerful political lobbyists.

In one incident in 1987 that has come to be seen as symbolic of dubious lobbying during the S&L crisis, the chairman of the FHLBB and other key regulators were taken to task by five leading senators over the pressure that regulators were exerting on the activities of a specific S&L, Lincoln Savings & Loan. The meeting had been set up by the controller of the S&L, Charles Keating, a politically well-connected developer, and his assembling of the senators - known in later press accounts as the 'Keating Five' - was interpreted by some of the regulators as a show of force. Lincoln Savings & Loan was to become one of the largest S&L failures when it was closed in 1989, sparking a series of major court cases.

Public awareness of the enormous scale of the S&L crisis continued to be relatively muted into the late 1980s, despite financial scandals and heated political debate that had already exposed many of the key issues.10 But this changed significantly after President Bush's speech in February 1989. Later that year, Congress passed the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), substantially restructuring US financial industry regulation. The new laws belatedly recognised that industry-funded measures were not enough, and that US taxpayers would end up paying much of the bill for the S&L fiasco.

Under FIRREA, the discredited FHLBB and the insolvent FSLIC were abolished in favour, respectively, of the new Office of Thrift Supervision and an extended function for the FDIC (already responsible for deposit insurance in other US banking sectors),11 while the Resolution Trust Corporation was set up to liquidate hundreds of insolvent institutions.

With new powers and funding, regulators began to act aggressively to close down institutions, though it quickly became clear that the situation in the S&L industry was even worse than had been imagined. In 1989 and 1990 the S&L crisis reached its height in terms of public expense, with the RTC resolving 318 thrifts with total assets of $135 billion in 1989 and 213 thrifts with total assets of $130 billion in 1990.

The drain on the public purse continued into 1993. But market fundamentals in the form of the interest rate environment, and the bottoming out of regional economies and real estate markets, were beginning to turn up again for S&L asset portfolios. From 1993 to 1995 the industry began to stabilise, and the portions of the industry that had survived the great S&L crisis moved steadily back towards profit over the next few years.


The aftermath

For some years the final bill for the S&L crisis remained uncertain. However, we know now that, setting aside ongoing legal action, the thrift crisis cost an extraordinary $153 billion - easily the most expensive financial sector crisis the world has ever seen. Of this, the US taxpayer paid out $124 billion while the thrift industry itself paid $29 billion.12

The consequences of the S&L crisis for the structure and regulation of the US financial industry were profound. The number of institutions in the S&L industry fell by about half between 1986 and 1995, partly due to the closure of around 1000 institutions by regulators, the most intense series of institution failures since the 1930s.13 The failures prompted an overhaul of the regulatory structure for US banking and thrifts, a shake-up in the system of deposit insurance and implied government guarantees, and a series of legal battles and corruption scandals fought out in the courts.

Regulators shifted towards a policy of earlier intervention in failing institutions so that the principal costs are more likely to be borne by shareholders than other stakeholders. There was also a shift towards more risk-sensitive regulatory regimes with respect to both net-worth assessments and the payments made by individual institutions to deposit insurance funds, while deposit insurance reform made it less likely that taxpayers would shoulder so great a burden in any future crisis.14

At a wider level, the S&L crisis taught politicians, regulators and bankers how misleading rules-driven regulatory and accounting numbers can be in relation to risky bank activities. At different stages of the crisis, and at many different levels from bank executives through to regulators and politicians, a formalistic reporting of the financial condition of S&Ls was deliberately selected by interested parties to cover up the true economic extent of the unfolding disaster. It was a risk-reporting failure on a grand scale that greatly worsened the long-term economic consequences for the ultimate stakeholder: the US taxpayer.


Lessons learned

Regulatory capital and accounting numbers are not a good guide to risk-adjusted profitability in the banking industry
It's easy for wounded institutions to move out of the frying pan and into the fire by taking cash up front for assuming long-term or unreported risks
Poorly controlled lending institutions can easily 'recycle' poor loans (by granting more credit) and fabricate fee income (by churning transactions) to disguise their true level of risk and return
Rapid growth into new lines of business signals the need for tighter risk management and financial controls

First, let me share this link as the inspiration for this thread.

http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo

Second, the Keating 5 made clear tat problems associated with S&L failures were made less likely in the future through more regulation and oversight governing the rules by which these thrift institutions operate.

Sentiment was high for S&Ls as they were the thrifts that helped those coming out of the Great Depression get on with their lives again.

But like the current meltdown of liquidity and solvency in the financial markets, it was deregulation, re-regulation and changing tax accounting procedures that lead to abuses and ultimately to failures of these institutions requiring a bailout from the federal government.

Starting with this timeline, let's look at it with a birds eye view of the political winds at the times each step towards failure and repair occured, since the 70s, when the abuses began.

Ford 74-76 nixon resigned mid second term

Carter 76-80

Reagan 80-88

Bush 88-92

Clinton 92-2000

Bush W 2000-2008







http://www.erisk.com/Learning/CaseStudies/USSavingsLoanCrisis.asp


Timeline of Events

1932: Federal Home Loan Bank Act establishes Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB)

1933: Home Owner's Act promotes home ownership via mortgage loans offered by savings & loans associations regulated by the FHLBB

1934: National Housing Act sets up Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) to insure deposits at S&L institutions

1960s: Congress applies Regulation Q to the S&L industry to put a ceiling on the interest rate that S&Ls can pay to depositors.

1970s: Congress deregulates interest rates opening up potential asset/liability and interest rate risks for S&Ls, but politicians fail to act on various studies and commissions recommending a mix of consolidated supervision and liberalised regulation of the sector.

1979-1982: Sharply raised interest rates lead to an asset/liability crisis at many S&Ls that is at its worst in 1980 to 1982.

November 1980: Following the March enactment of the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 (DIDMCA), which allowed the Bank Board to ease the previous statutory 5% of net worth requirement to anywhere between 3% and 6%, FHLBB eases 'net worth' rules to only 4% of insured accounts. DIDMCA also raises the bar on federally insured deposits from $40,000 to $100,000 and allows some S&Ls to put money into property development and other risky activities.

1981: Changes in federal tax regulations under the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 help spark the beginnings of the real-estate boom of the early to mid 1980s.

September 1981: FHLBB introduces various rules and accounting changes to make the financial condition of S&Ls look better, including allowing the deferral of losses from the sale of impaired assets over a ten-year period, and the issuance of capital 'certificates' that artificially boost apparent capitalisation.

January 1982: Net worth rules eased again to only 3% of insured accounts.

July 1982: FHLBB allows S&Ls to amortise 'supervisory goodwill' over a period of up to 40 years, up from an original 10-year restriction. Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 allows easing of capital rules, and greatly eases restrictions on the proportion of a property's value that S&Ls can loan to a property developer. Deposit interest rate ceilings (Regulation Q) phased out for S&Ls, enabling them to compete for wholesale funds by offering high rates of interest.

Late 1982: FHLBB starts to count equity capital as part of an S&L's reserves

January 1983: Restrictions lifted on state-chartered S&Ls in California with regard to investments in property and service companies, as state legislators compete with federal legislators to ease restrictions on S&Ls.

1983: Interest rates fall, temporarily making some - though not all - of the S&L industry solvent on an economic basis. But the opportunity for rational closure of institutions and reform of healthy institutions is missed.

Late 1984 and after: Regulators begin to tighten up regulations to try to prevent weaker institutions making rash loans and investments following a number of attention-grabbing S&L collapses.

1984-89: S&Ls pay above-market rates to attract deposits, particularly in hot spots such as the Texas S&L industry. It's clear that the industry is in deep trouble but its regulators lack resources and political backing to close insolvent institutions quickly enough.

1986: FSLIC, itself clearly insolvent by year-end 1986, resolves 54 thrifts with total assets of around $16 billion. But far more thrifts are insolvent according to their book values, while many others hover on the brink of book insolvency. The economic reality is even worse, with perhaps half the industry now under the water.

1986-1992: During the later 1980s, the real-estate bubble bursts in regions around the US, partly prompted by the passing of the Tax Reform Act in 1986, which removes federal tax incentives to invest in commercial real estate.

1987: The passing of the Competitive Equality Banking Act, and the setting up of a Financing Corporation (FICO) to fund FSLIC resolution of failing thrifts by means of issuing bonds, channel some limited resources to the programme of S&L closure, but the emphasis remains on keeping wounded S&Ls afloat.

1988: Regulators resolve 185 thrifts with total assets of $96 billion, but it's not enough to stabilise the industry and many resolutions continue to be by means of regulator-agreed acquisition: sharing rather than ending the economic woe.

February 1989: George Bush, newly elected in November 1988, announces a programme for rescuing the S&L industry using taxpayers' money.

1989: Congress passes the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), which as part of a programme of reform sets up the Resolution Trust Corporation to liquidate hundreds of insolvent institutions.

1989-1990: In terms of public expense, the S&L crisis is at its height. RTC resolves 318 thrifts with total assets of $135 billion in 1989 and 213 thrifts with total assets of $130 billion in 1990.

1990-92: RTC continues to resolve large numbers of thrifts, but the annual figure for 1992 falls to 59 institutions with $44 billion assets.

1993-95: The number of thrifts requiring RTC intervention falls away sharply to only 13 over this three-year period as industry fundamentals begin to improve. The crisis is over, but legal wrangling over the restructuring process will continue into the next millennium.

This ERisk case history was contributed by Rob Jameson.

California is just like the whole country.

excet for no Federal REeserve Bank to lean on for free lunches.

this little note I got says it all

remember, as goes California, so goes the nation.

This is how it gets played when borrowing can't happen, and when the democrats run things.

sound like the last two years in Congress?

over look tyhat little nuance about withholding. It almost happened by arnie ratted them out




i have been out of work for a few months. 0 income and i still pay all my rent so i could care less about your griping ohh no rent subsidies. 1400 paid last week no government hand out not even help from my imaginary girl friend..

now the state legislators have to write a budget, the budget has to be approved by 2/3 of these people. the democrats control almost 2/3 of the legislature.

the democrats stopped working on the budget to go to a convention.

the democrats thought they could cover part of the state shortfall by increasing the income withholding but not increase the tax. so next year's budget they would have to find the money to pay back the extra withholdings that they collected. Arnie had to veto it.

simple thing politicians don't seem to get, if you have less money coming in than what you are accustomed to you need to cut back. Friday night at Le Fondue gets replaced with friday at Outback. but they don't want to cut back they want to keep spending like there is no tomorrow.

Elect McCain and maybe he will tap our governor for a cabinet position and you can have a democrat running the state again.

mad man, you inspire me sometimes.

I wasn't going to touch this.

oops, I did.

McCain has had alife lived before the American people.

He has the dough, so why bother?

Yeah, dig on him.

They all have skeletons in their closets.

I give them a shout out, all, for their thick skin , but I am perplexed at why they ever bother given the nature of politics.

The founding fathers were mudslingers.

the historians were mudslingers. Case in point-Custer's last stand.

Revisionism is alive and well in the classroomms of America, and still, mudslinging is the national sport.

But McCain plowed through over the years, learning as he went.

He had inadequate backing at the begimming of this primary and was not in contention.

Then something happened.

He hit the nail on the head that moved the establishment to implement his ideas about the war in Iraq and Pteraeus was known for holding the same view and had a plan that echoed mcCain's rant.

Here we are with McCain the cadidate from the right with the least chance and the least backing and the least charisma.

But it is the toughness of McCain that gets people listening.

He is nt a quitter.

He has been through hell and back and has served this nation with his life and all that is in him.

Why?


I will leave that for others to figure out.

All I know is that he says government spending must be reined in.

No one else says that at all.

The National Debt is an imminent instrument of mutually assured destruction.


Inbelieve him when he says he will do his best for the American people's best interests.

solely because of that.

But that does not mean I will vote for him.

He cannot do anything alone, but he can stomach crossing the aisle. I can't and I won't enable him to do it either.

Barack cannot do it alone. I cannot stomach him, period. He is not ready.

He lied to his constituents. He promised to serve his term in Cngress the full 6 years.

F*ck That!!!!!!

oops.



that's just how I feel.

glad i am not voting?

the Keating 5 has been eclipsed by the freddie fannie obama triangle.

that little menage a trois has some lovers too. Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and Cox. maybe even Pelosi, but I tend to think she is just along for the ride. She is San Francisco's darling, next to Feinstein and Boxer.

All clintonesque masqueraders. Sorry, hillaryus, but the left has had enough of your name making things just a little too tough to cover their a$$e$ if you are still in the limelight.

as for the right, well, that's another story.

Bush has done nothing to bridge differences and cross the aisle and afford the left any mandate becdause of their offensive and poor sportsmanship concerning Gore's defeat. Kerry was a lame attempt by the left to lerave Bush at the helm, knowing full well that clintonomics were going to blow up in the face of Bush if they let Bush get past the election.

We all saw it from the right.

We all knew the clintonomic mess was about to implode.

Try as we might, the libs in Congress resisted vociferously.

Not wanting to be found out and responsible for cleaning up clinton's mess which they didn't understand completely anyway, was just laziness, pure and simple.

The last two years giving us the catatonic paralysis of the "deer in the headlights" inaction of Cngress speaks more to biding time to get away from the mess than biding their time to figure out a solution for the mess.

The implosion of liquidity offered them the smokescreen.

Pelosi had the audacity to flip it at the vote on the floor and the first bail0out package actually authored by them on the left failed.

If she hadn't been such an a$$, the republicans would have let her lead the left out of the mess while tagging it on Bush.

But noooooooooooooo..............

she had to spout.

Either she choked and sabotaged it which is a brilliant move, if she did, or she is actually just an emotional idiot and couldn't help herself in having the NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT ON HER AS SHE "SMOKED" THE RIGHT WITH THIS BAILOUT.

Paulson gave a three page outline to Bush. What does Bush know? nothing, regarding liquidity issues.

Congress turned it onto 106 pages, as we know.

Now, with the right involved, thanks solely on Pelosi's big mouth, the bill is 450 pages and 2.4 trillion plus interest over the next five years.

I don't care who gets the White House, he will preside over the greates leap in the National Debt's balance on account in history, just on the basis of the compounding interest alone.

10 billion on Bush from 5 billion. Not his fault. It would have happened irregardless of him.

But now, 12.4 billion will be 25 billion in five years.

Hey barack?

you got this?

pretty brave of him. reckless too.

welcome to the big leagues.LOL

I have spoken.

Ted Nugent for VP!