CHESSNOID

This news was a bit discouraging for me. Right now the economy is in the toilet. We got to this financial mess through decisions made by Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson. Yes, these are the 3 stooges that helped bring down a strong economy. So when I hear the Democratic nominee Obama being quoted:

Presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a vote of confidence to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, saying he had made some good decisions in difficult circumstances.

“I think that Chairman Bernanke was handed a pretty tough hand and I think some of the decisions he’s made have been the right ones,” the presumptive Democratic nominee told Reuters in an interview on Saturday evening.

In a move that some criticized as a bailout, the Fed came to the rescue of investment bank Bear Stearns by helping to broker its takeover by J.P. Morgan Chase.

We can make a list of all the major bonehead moves Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson have executed that put our economy in jeopardy. Although, the list may seem endless, what is clear is that they were for the most part the wrong decisions. The taxpayers are bailing out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and Countrywide because they profited the past 5-6 years and now they have to pay the piper.  The idiots (Bush, Bernanke, and Paulson) in charge are letting them go with a free pass. We live in a free capitalistic economy, so this is just a load of crap.

With foreclosure numbers ever increasing, gas and food prices hyper inflating, and banks being taken over by the FDIC, I think it is plain stupid to say Bush, Bernanke or Paulson made any correct decisions. This is just common sense. No one can have any logical argument that these guys made any correct decisions based on just looking at the current state of the economy. Period! If you think our economy is in great condition, then you must have a ton of money invested in crude oil. If Obama wants to have hope in getting this economy back on track, he needs to understand the cause of the problems so they can be fixed. To say these 3 stooges made the correct decisions makes him look like the fourth stooge. McCain already admitted he sucks when it comes to the economy but he would depend on others for advice.

Back in October 2005 during the frothy housing bubble, this is what Bernanke said:

Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst, he indicated to Congress last week, just a few days before President Bush nominated him to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve.

U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke, currently chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, in testimony to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. But these increases, he said, “largely reflect strong economic fundamentals,” such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households.

Bernanke’s thinking on the housing market did not attract much attention before Bush tapped him for the Fed job Monday but will likely be among the key topics explored by members of the Senate Banking Committee during upcoming hearings on his nomination.

Many economists argue that house prices have risen too far too fast in many markets, forming a bubble that could rapidly collapse and trigger an economic downturn, as overinflated stock prices did at the turn of the century. Some analysts have warned that even a flattening of house prices might cause a slump — posing the first serious challenge to whoever succeeds Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan after he steps down Jan. 31.

Bernanke’s testimony suggests that he does not share such concerns, and that he believes the economy could weather a housing slowdown.

“House prices are unlikely to continue rising at current rates,” said Bernanke, who served on the Fed board from 2002 until June. However, he added, “a moderate cooling in the housing market, should one occur, would not be inconsistent with the economy continuing to grow at or near its potential next year.”

I tried to find the video of his testimony but got frustrated listening to all the other idiotic crap he was saying. So basically when housing bubble bloggers were talking about the doom and gloom on its way, he denied that there was any truth to it. Fast forward to today and we have worse credit crisis since the Great Depression.

This is Bernanke in January 2008 saying the economy is slowing but fine.

This is Bernanke in February 2008 saying the stock markets are fine too. Wrong again. The signs are all over the place and he is still in denial.

Bernanke: Markets ‘working well’

Then this is Bernanke in April 2008 admitting we somehow slipped into a recession.

Bernanke was the genius behind the 7 panic rate cuts in 7 months that helped the price of crude oil skyrocket in that same time period to almost $150 a barrel. If he was your employee, you would have fired him 10 times over.

People are wrong some of the time, but this guy seems to be wrong all the time. You can google everything he said and the bad decisions he made from month to month as we progressed into a worsening economy all the way up to today. He is really one of the guys you could blame for mucking up our economy.

Below is another one of my favorite videos from Daily Show with Jon Stewart talking about Bush and the price of gas when it was still closer to $3.00 a gallon.