Friday, October 17, 2008

"The Great Depression II" Brought to You by the Letter O

From the same people that brought you this past fall's blockbuster "Financial Crisis", brought to you by the letter D, comes "The Great Depression II",  the exciting sequel to the 1929 hit - a thriller that topped the charts for 15 years. Everyone loved "Financial Crisis". The ensemble cast included superstars both young and old: Barney Franks, Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, ACORN, and last but not least, a cameo by Barack Obama.

They are joined by George Bush and John McCain as the villains of the movie. Bush and McCain try to foil the success of Fannie and Freddie by putting unneeded regulations on them. Thankfully, our heroes were able to stop those evil doers from putting more regulations on the companies. Since 2001, McCain and Bush started talking about the possible failure of Fannie and Freddie. In 2003, Bush tried to create an agency to regulate government sponsored housing enterprises like Fannie and Freddie. Year after year, our heroes are able to stop those evil regulators.

Bill Clinton, who plays a minor role in "Financial Crisis", claims in a recent interview that the democrats were the ones who fought against the regulation of Fannie and Freddie all of these years.
The heroes were vigilant in their attacks on Bush and McCain. They accused them of being racist and supporting the rich by keeping the poor, who cannot afford the loans, from coming up in the world. They distracted people by focusing on Bush's high spending and "war-mongering ways". They called him financially inept, so how could he have known that Fannie and Freddie were going down?

Everyone remembers how the "The Great Depression" story went. Herbert Hoover and FDR starred in the 1929 blockbuster. Prior to the beginning of the story, Hoover canceled drilling for oil on government lands which took away jobs from people that could have used a job during the upcoming depression.  The story started with the stock market crash of October 1929, shortly after Hoover took office. Hoover began by trying to let the crisis solve itself. Much to his dismay, the economy didn't rebound on its own. There was a run on banks. As a result, the banks had no money and collapsed. He finally tried helping the banks out in 1932, but it was three years too late. Then, contrary to normal economic logic, he raised taxes (tariffs, income tax of higher incomes, corporate taxes up 15%, estate tax doubled, and a check tax) during a depression which made us go into an even deeper depression. The tariff hikes made other countries raise tariffs in retaliation. We were buying our own products, but no other country was - at least until WW2. If it wasn't for World War II, and Europe buying military and other necessary supplies for the war effort, the high taxes and big government policies would have kept us in the depression for a long time.

The sequel stars a new, up and coming star named Barack Obama. He plays the role of a Hoover-like character by stopping domestic oil production and raising taxes in a recession, turning it into another depression. The high corporate taxes cause many companies to move out of the US or simply fire employees that they cannot afford to employ anymore, causing unemployment to rise. Many CEO's say that it is just too expensive to do business in the US. People cannot invest in the stock market because they've lost their jobs from the outsourcing and layoffs that the high corporate taxes cause. The US economy will cease to grow as a result of a government growing so big that it chokes national growth. Will it take World War 3 to get us out? You will have to wait until after November 4 to find out the fate of the United States.

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