THINK!

It's been a while ... sorry.

At varying times in the past, I've hinted at the possibility that the previous administration, with the help of the congress, facilitated the mortgage mess through increasing loan limits and decreasing qualification guidelines for the GSE's. That is, it became easier for Fannie and Freddie to buy junk. Nobody gave any real thought to the possible fallout, and here we are.

How can our rulers possibly be that obtuse? you may ask.

Lately, there has been some evidence that my worst possible suspicions might actually be true. The ascension of some not too bright people into the upper echelons of American politics has, sort of, codified the idea that the over extension of credit to American families was allowed to happen for political reasons.

One can easily conclude, that when people are so pre-occupied with staving off creditors, they don't pay enough attention to what is happening outside their immediate environment. This enables politicians, and judges, to tilt the playing field to their advantage.

It couldn't be more obvious that the only thing that our elected officials really care about is raising money. It matters not, that the corporations and the really wealthy few that supply the money, have only their very selfish interests at heart.

If you think about it, the dumber (and greedier) the politicians, the easier it is for the "donors" to get their way. Does anybody else appreciate the irony expressed by political hacks for the most elite in our society, dumping on Obama as an elitist? Does anyone else think that American society really is getting dumbed down - just listen to any sports broadcast - the announcers are idiots - they have no clue as to how to express themselves using proper English.

Not to sound overly cynical, but it really seems to me that this whole tea party movement is nothing more than a bunch of very well meaning people that have been duped into doing the bidding of a very few elitists. You can see the same thing happening in California as it relates to a proposition on next November's ballot overturning the states well crafted emission guidelines.

How could any politician of any party, under the present economic circumstances, not let the ill-advised Bush tax cuts expire for the top earners?

Anyhow, I've always been paranoid about the whole Big Brother thing so it's been easy for me to ignore my instinct on the subject of an actual policy that facilitated people buying houses that they could not afford. In retrospect though, I really don't think that there is another rational explanation. A very potent brew consisting of naive consumers, predatory mortgage lenders and avaricious investment bankers all facilitated by the SEC, lawyers, accountants and rating agencies that had blinders on and here we are ... and here we deserve to be!