Three weeks into 2008, markets plunge 1300 points.
Can we stop blaming 9/11 now?
January 23, 2008

 
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It’s been more than six years since September the 11th. Ever since, “9/11” has been President Bush’s “Get out of jail free” card. Everything bad that has happened in our economy, every crime he has committed in the name of “protecting us from terrorism”, Bush defenders have pointed to “9/11!” as their ultimate defense. You say: “The economy is in the toilet.” They say: “We’re still recovering from 9/11.” Gas prices too high? Blame that too on a Middle East that declared war on us on 9/11.

Not once when the Administration was bragging about “Record home ownership” leading up to and immediately after his re-election in 2004, did I hear anyone claim “9/11 was still hurting our economy”. The “Record home ownership” they bragged of really only existed on paper. A rapid series of interest rate cuts by the Fed to rescue an already floundering economy rocked by 9/11, spawned a flurry of shady sub-prime mortgage lending.

When the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke the 14,000 mark for the first time last July, the Bush Administration was quick to take credit, claiming the new record was “evidence” that President Bush’s economic policies were working. So then, what does it say when the markets are on the verge of wiping out eight years of gains since the Bill Clinton high of 11,722.98 on January 14, 2000?

Tuesday, the DOW closed at 11,971.19… that’s just 248 points in EIGHT YEARS!

And if you adjust for the devaluing of our currency under President Bush… printing money like wallpaper… which it is quickly gaining parity with:
 

Value of a dollar
(Click to enlarge)

…our economic collapse under President Bush has been even more devastating. Consider that when Bill Clinton left office, the new Euro was worth $0.98 to the strong American dollar. The Euro is now worth approximately $1.44. So, adjusted for inflation, the DOW closed today at “8,313” in “year 2000 dollars”.

The thought of “$75 a barrel oil” five years ago would of been unthinkable, with $100 a barrel oil the stuff of science fiction… the price of oil in a post-apocalyptic America. This is our reality under George W. Bush.

After markets crashed the world over the same day U.S. markets were (mercifully) closed for MLK Day, the Federal Reserve met overnight for an emergency meeting and took the unprecedented step of cutting interest rates before the markets even opened Tuesday morning, cutting “a key interest rate” 3/4 of a percent… the largest one day cut in 23 years… to prevent the worst market crash since the markets reopened after 9/11.

My report last March about a “one day loss of 242 points, more than 650 points in a week” almost seems quaint by todays standards, and proof that the “Astounding growth” of the Bush economy is a Right Wing Fantasy that never was and never will be.

I think that after 6 years of BRAGGING about the anemic growth, and now near total implosion, of The Bush Economy, I think Bush’s defenders have lost their “9/11 trump card” when it comes to defending George Bush’s absolutely horrendous and disastrous stewardship of the U.S. economy for eight years.

Postscript: And just as they declared “economic” victory too soon only to have the consequences of their policies blow up in their face years later, so will the success of “the Surge” in Iraq… which was instituted as a way to give the Iraqi government the breathing room it needed to start making progress. Only half that equation has come to pass: a decrease in violence. Yet, they are already declaring “success”.

Want to know what the Iraq government did today with the added “breathing room” our soldiers are literally dying to provide for them? They agreed to adopt a new flag:

Old and new Iraqi flags

I figure by November, the bubble will have burst on Bush’s “Surge” as well, exposing it for the policy disaster we already know it will be.

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January 23, 2008 · Admin Mugsy · 2 Comments - Add
Posted in: Politics

2 Responses

  1. Digital Components - January 23, 2008

    First of a small batch of posts x-posted from Amato’s Crooks & Liars, this one is date stamped: January 17th, 2008 at 6:55 PM – PST:

    The Dow was at 13,057 on the 3rd of January, 2008, and today it closed at 12,159, so it is now down 898 points since the start of the year, for a two week decline in value of 6.9%, with no end in sight.
    On January 22, 2001, on the first trading day of Herr Busch’s Presidency, the Dow was at 10,578, which means in the last 7 years it has climbed all of 1,581 points, for an average gain of about 225 points a year.
    Considering that it’s considered healthy for the Dow to gain about 10% a year, right now it should be hovering near the 20,000 point mark, so seen this way, we’re looking at a shortfall of somewhere around 8,000 points.
    Heck of job, Buschy.
    What’s really scary in all this is that you just know that Wall Street has not even begun to come clean as to how deep the damage is.
    So far all this wreckage is being blamed on the sub-prime loans, and the CDOs these rat fuck geniuses sold amongst themselves, in probably the greatest legal Ponzi Scheme in financial history, but I’ve heard nary a mention in the Financial Press that not only were sub-prime loans CDO’d to the hilt, but they’ve been doing the same damn thing with credit card and Stupid Ugly Vehicle car loans.
    Which might not be a bad thing, if people pay their credit card and Stupid Ugly Vehicle car loan bills on time, but we’re now starting to see a wave of mass defaults in both those sectors as well, which will render the CDOs based on those loans just as worthless as the sub-prime ones.
    Gonna be an interesting year, glad all my assets are in Euros, and out of the country, though when the inevitable collapse comes, after this slow moving train wreck of a crash we’re in the middle of runs its course, that might not matter.
    Where ya gonna go?
    This is the subject of another post, but I find it fascinating how the new founded attacks by the Right Wing Noise Machine on FDR’s Legacy have picked up in frequency and volume over the course of the last few months. Gotta wonder just how far they’re going to take it? Especially since what we’re going to need more than anything else from this point on is for one of our leaders to step up and assume FDR’s mantle, or ready ourselves to be consigned to the dust-heap of history.
    祝你生活在有趣的时代, indeed.
    ~Nyc

  2. Digital Components - January 23, 2008

    Some wing nut left a response to my above C&L comment, which is so out there, that I’m not even go to bother to repeat it here, you’ve got google for that, if you’re so inclined, but it was so retarded, (and if you can’t figure out what they said from my response, then I need to not waste your time here), I felt compelled to post the following response shortly thereafter:

    Michael Richards, please.

    I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night.

    It’s not propaganda, but a stone cold fact that when Clinton took office the Dow was trading at the 3,200 point level, and even when the dot.com.bomb bubble burst in 2000 it stayed at the 10,000 point level for a good year after he left office, triple with what he started with in 1993, and even when it bottomed to the 7,500 point range in October of 2002, it was still double with what Clinton started with in 1993, and not back down to the 3,200 level.

    At its worst, the Dow was up 100% over what Clinton started with, at its best, under Bush, the Dow hasn’t even risen over 50% with what Busch started with, and today it’s barely up 20% over the course of the last 7 years, or roughly 3% a year.

    See the difference?

    I know you can.

    There’s a word for how our markets have performed under Busch, and that word is…. pathetic.

    In order for the Dow to reach such comparable levels that it did under Clinton, under Herr Presidente Commandante For Life Busch, it will have to reach either the 20,000 to 30,000 point levels within the span of this coming year.

    Do you see that happening?

    Neither do I.

    As far as FDR’s Legacy being the Great Depression, that’s an interesting concept, considering that Crash of 1929, that evaporated 90% of the Dow’s value between then and 1932, happened in, like, such as, you know, the year 1929 and FDR wasn’t even sworn in as President until March of the year 1933.

    So how do you spin the Great Depression as being his Legacy, since he was elected to unfuck what his predecessors did, and by all accounts, given what he had to work with, did a bang-up job.

    Did he have a Time Machine that’s not mentioned in any of the history books?

    And on top of that FDR defeated Germany, Japan in World War II, pretty much with one hand tied behind his back.

    Herr Busch can’t even handle an occupation of a country that’s 12 times smaller than the United States, what’s up with that?

    Not bad for a cripple who was a traitor to his class because he couldn’t abide the thought of America’s elderly poor starving in the streets, like they’re on the way back to doing now, which is exactly what’s going to happen to yours, mine, and everyone else’s parents in this country if things keep going down this path.

    ~Nyc

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    January 17th, 2008 at 9:08 PM – PST

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