DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... If the King had his way

I have an easy solution to your dilemma:

send it to me in a PM.

You should know by now that I don't pick. pick, pick... I try at all times to discuss. Just you and me... and some good talk. No interference from others. [OFFICIAL INVITATION]

Hey: it's only fair. I mean, let's review our very first exchange, shall we? I seemed to do a reasonably good job of discussing the topic while YOU picked, picked, picked. As I recall, you actually thanked me for my responses.

40's give & take with Clem

I'd like to return the favor- some day. If not this time, perhaps at a later date.

Sounds nice but I don't think I have the time to dedicate to a discussion. I jump on here while investing during the day and can barely handle making money and fixing these people at the same time.
It is a kind offer and perhaps in the future we can try it, thanks.

I remember when Clinton left office. The tech bubble had just started bursting. The subsidies that Clinton had granted to the tech industries to bring about the internet had stopped, and tech businesses were failing. The balanced budget was the brainchild of Newt Gingrich and the republicans of congress (contract with America) and forced Clinton to sign the bill through a series of government shut downs. I also remember the distaste the military had for Clinton after he put US troops under the UN for the fighting taking place in the former Yugoslavia. We should also not forget that Clinton had a chance to kill bin Ladin with an air strike, but decided against it, and the first WTC bombing had happened under his watch along with embassy bombings and the USS Cole.

I'm sure if we look hard enough, you could find unfinished work that George Washington handed off to John Adams. I expect new presidents to try to fix unfinished work handed off by the previous president, instead of whine about them like our current president.

Don't forget the rugs!

Are you speaking of the rugs stolen from the white house, along with the 'w' keys from keyboards?

It wasn't perfect. But it was about as close as we're going to get.

4% unemployment and a balanced budget. In 2008, that did look like Utopia.

No I was speaking of the rugs and carpeting that had to be replaced after Clinton left due to stains!

[rim shot]

He's here all week, folks... try the veal.

And it couldn't last. As DC said, the dot com and housing bubbles burst, and the market crashed. That brought the economy crashing down. Then 9/11 hit, and that finished off any boom we had left.

I am actually stunned that the crash wasn't worse than it was.

It always amazes me that the Republicans wrote the budgets that "balanced the budget". (led, in part, by John Kasich, the current Governor of Ohio) How come they never get any credit?

they don't get any credit because they destroyed whatever good they did after 9/11

It did, but it was unsustainable. The dot.com explosion that was creating a new millionaire in this country every 30 seconds plateaued. People started to realize that not every kid with an idea and a computer was going to invent the next great thing and that the whole technology sector was tremendously overvalued. The market started to weed out the fluff.

It's not like Clinton did anything wrong (though in hindsight there were some things he could have done to allow the dot.com bubble to come to a softer landing).. it's just a natural economic cycle that had to play out. And it was to his benefit and to Bush's detriment that it played out after he left office instead of before.

Once again, I will disagree. Clinton made drastic changes to Carter's Community Reinvestment Act that would bring the 'housing bubble' to it's bursting point. Part of the regulations that passed during his presidency put the federal government in a position to secure loans for houses, which were then traded as securities by allowing banks to create this new business model.

In what way? I have some problems with the way Republicans handled the economy ..... but what, exactly, do you see as problems they created?

The market started to crash before Bush took office.

Bush took office in Jan 2001. The NASDAQ hit its high on March 10, 2010. The dot-com bubble started to burst in April, 2000, with its worst week ever. (losing 1125 points)

Here is the data. Bush wasn't President yet.

http://www.davemanuel.com/nasdaq-historical-data.php

Week of 2000-04-10, -1125.16 points
Week of 2000-07-24, -431.45 points
Week of 2000-11-06, -422.59 points
Week of 2000-03-27, -390.20 points
Week of 2000-01-24, -348.33 points

By the time Bush was inaugurated, the NASDAQ had dropped from its high of over 5700, IIRC, to roughly half that level. (2770 on January 19, right before Bush took office)

Greed and carelessness were the biggest issues of the day. People thought that they could invest in anything tech related and become a millionaire. Money was being handed out, hand over fist, to companies without any business plans whatsoever. The NASDAQ soared ..... until that bubble blew up into a billion pieces.

I agree with you that Clinton had nothing to do with that, and neither did Bush. That was completely outside of either man's Presidential control. My only problem with things is that people somehow seem to think that it was Bush's fault, and that the bust took place under Bush. It wasn't, and it didn't. It is amazing how history is rewritten though.

The dot-com bubble exploded in 2000, and then the 9/11 attacks hit 9 months into Bush's term ...... and we were in trouble as an economy.

And, to be fair, Bush expanded that program to the point where a person with a welfare check could use that as income to buy a home, and they also waived income requirements as far as debt level restrictions. (debt to income and such)

The whole program was ill conceived, and was a way to artificially inflate the housing market. Again, both parties had a hand in it.

I agree with that completely. Banks have a business model, and the government forced them to give loans against that model.

Sour grapes. The 1%, Big Oil, Banks, and Automakers get bailed out and Joe six pack along with every middle class home owner that pays his/her bills and mortgage on time get's stuck with the bill as usual. Moving on.

Fairly confident if a poor person, a middle class person. and a 1%'r was asked to share a box of cookies, the 1%'r would gobble all but two of the cookies and tell the middle class person to hurry up and eat his cookie before the poor person takes it away from him. Really moving on now.

Huh? How does a government force private businesses to hand out loans, but can't force the same business from shipping jobs overseas?

Banks used to check credit, used to require down payments, used to require proof of income sufficient to afford a home.

Congress "eased" the laws/restrictions, and even, in essence, went so far as to say "we'll buy the paper (loan)"

Consequently, people that couldn't afford homes were buying homes anyway.

That's the "short" of it.

The same way they do everything, though audits, regulations, and sanctions. The government brought forth regulations on who could get a loan and for how much. Didn't you notice how all of a sudden everyone was able to qualify for a 4 bedroom house with a 2 car garage, 1/2 an acre of land, and no down payment?

If you've noticed lately, the government has forced banks to stop making loans to gun stores and gun manufacturers? I believe they call that Operation Choke Point.

One was legislation, the other, which isn't really "force" is that you back those loans. Fannie and Freddie were buying those loans, the good ones, the bad ones, all of them and the banks were making a profit without having to deal with the long term viability of those loans.

If I told you to go buy some shoes and I'll buy them all from you for $20 more than you paid for them regardless of their condition, how much effort are you going to put into finding me good ones? Probably not much. You would buy them from the shoe store, the Goodwill, pull them out of dumpsters.. doesn't matter to you because you don't have to live with them, I'm going to pay you $20 for every pair you bring me... well that's what the government was doing. Then they packaged them into various forms of investments (which I have to admit I don't fully understand) but the whole market was built on loans that should have never been made in the first place and that banks would probably not have made if not for the government safety net.

I was in elementary school throughout the 90's. so no, I didn't notice.

I knew of a guy who never had two dimes to rub together and he bought a home back around 2000. The market kept rising as homes were getting bought up left and right. He kept refinancing on the value of his home, I think it was 3 times. When the housing market crashed, he just walked away from the home and the mortgage. His credit rating went back to where it always was, near zip, but he walked away with over a hundred thousand dollars in his pocket.

I saw people buying homes that I wouldn't lend $20 to until payday. That's when you know for a fact something has gone terribly wrong.

Yes, this is the stuff that made me as an investor aware that something was terribly wrong. I began moving nearly ever penny I had into Gold and Treasuries. When the crap hit the fan, followed by 9/11, I was well positioned. Thieves aren't the only ones who made money during those years.