First off I will thank God he won. Then I will wait and see how he goes about unscrewing the mess this country and even the whole world appears to be in. I hope he has some plans to deal with the coming unemployment crisis, and yes it is coming.
What if ol' GW pulls that little known clause out of the Patriot Act and declares a national emergency and declares the elections null and void then he becomes president for life?
That scares the crap out of me it would be the end of American democracy as we know it. And when you think about it is only a small step from where we are now to fascism.
Gunny, I really don't think the American people, Congress or the Senate would allow Bush to set up a monarchy. I think he knows this and would be hard pressed to convince anyone there is a big enough national emergency to do so. As for the financial and unemployment crisis remember the roots of this came during the Clinton era, as evidenced from the following excerpt from a NY Times article:
Septembe30, 1999
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending
By STEVENA , HOLMES
ln a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae
Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York
metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not
good enough to qualifu for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by
next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton
Administr4fq4.!oexpandmortgageloansamonglowandmode rateincomepeopleandfel@s
t6- mainGffiLen&nenal gto;nflr in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more
loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough
to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates --
anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
"Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment
requirements," said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. "Yet there remain too many
borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying
significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market."
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that l8 percent of the loans in
the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving. even tentativelv. into this new area of lendine. Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk. yhich may
not pose any difficulties during flush ec o troubld
iiTfeconomic do@overnment rescue sim
"From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us," said Peter
Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "If they fail. the government will have to step up and ,
bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry."
