What has always bothered me about Obama speeches (and I voted for him) is that he uses the phrase "folks" to describe ordinary people. In fact a few times I heard him call us "ordinary folks." Never calls his own family that. Where I come come, the term "folks" is derogatory.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/the-fiscal-legacy-of-george-w-bush/

This is going to be pretty tough-
"Dems call for fresh message, warn of 'impossible headwind'"

-when they can't even convince their union "middle class" to stick around and cough up their dues.

http://www.nrtwc.org/big-labor-flying-too-close-to-the-sun/

"In less than one year, -AFSCME, the second-largest public-sector union in Wisconsin, has lost more than 50 percent of its membership.

It was predictable. In Indiana, where Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) instituted by executive order a similar reform seven years ago, government-worker unions have since lost 91 percent of their dues-paying membership."

Ouch!

Statistics often do not tell the story but this one sure jumps at you: The median U.S. household lost nearly 39% of its wealth from 2007 to 2010.

Now, of course, we're in full deflection mode from what really caused this meltdown. The corporate media is blaming it on the unwillingness of the rest of us to embrace austerity. It's the unions fault. That's the lesson of Wisconsin. Don't look at the bankers. Look at their account manager President Obama instead, and tell the middle class to stop being so greedy with the entitlements.

Derivatives are behind everything. And it wasn't the median families who thought up derivatives.

He's in an impossible situation. If he doesn't say, "The economy is strong" or "things are improving" even when he knows it's not true, then he's admitting that he (and in fact, no one on earth) has been successful in turning the tide. It will be used against him, even thought his opponent is just as ineffective.

It's too bad that candidates who speak the truth are quickly consigned to the ash heap by the hordes who are looking for "happy talk" and small issues.

Politics.

So the Dems make tax promises, and the GOP makes cuts promises, and neither of them ever follow through. Hmmm. It's almost like neither intends to balance the budget but they put on a big show to distract the electorate. Could it be?

* Robert, my family uses "folks" without meaning anything derogatory at all. I use it mostly in reference to my own parents, as in "my folks". May be a regional thing.

Bill,

The housing bubble and subsequent collapse may have happened without a single derivative ever being issued. The CMO's and CDO's made more capital available to lenders, but they didn't MAKE anybody buy a home they couldn't afford.

If you want a more tangible boogyman, why not pick on real estate agents or mortgage brokers? They fanned the flames of the Real Estate Frenzy as much as anybody on Wall Street, and some of them got very rich in the process.

Or blame the regulators who failed to maintain reasonable mortgage underwriting requirements.

The candidate that is going to win the election is the one who is going to promise to build the Keystone pipeline, drill for oil on all federal lands, reinstate logging on all federal lands and fire all the environment zealots running the EPA. Foster clean coal and develop nuclear power plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah the blue Oregon left thinks this is poison; but give me a break, this country needs jobs and cheap energy. We don’t need Brahmin Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Green Peace and Humane Society limp wristed trust fund smug Kennedyesce people calling the shots.

Mister Tee -

As I see it, it's the SECURITIZATION of those crap mortgages that's the larger issue. No bank or mortgage company would continued with so much subprime lending had they had to hold that risk themselves. But since they could shed the risk (or so they thought), the investment part of these organizations were demanding more and more and more mortgages to securitize.... fueling the boom well beyond what it would have been otherwise.

Mister Tee,
My understanding is that the banks were so eager to gamble with the new derivative instruments that the entire subprime mortgage effort was just a way to front-load the system so they would have more to gamble with.

And the regulators were at the mercy of the Street. The triple A ratings were also not just driven by basic fraud. That rating was required for many pension plans and union funds to be allowed to play.

The "plenty of blame to go around" strategy is another part of the mirage. One sector of the economy created a financial exposure of 600 trillion - now 700 trillion. That is the number that's killing us. It ate Greece and it's eating Spain. There's no way to keep it from unraveling further.

Derivatives make all other economic problems look like chump change. Put another way, if we could go back to 1999 and not allow these banks to start gambling so much, we'd be in a completely different economic world.

That's the final proof of the power of these things. How quickly they can destroy.

"The private sector is doing fine."

Our leader says so.

It cannot be otherwise.

.

We don’t need Brahmin Sierra Club, Audubon Society, Green Peace and Humane Society limp wristed trust fund smug Kennedyesce people calling the shots.

"The private sector is doing fine." Our leader says so.

The election is posed lose-lose for WTF, (We The Folks): Obama vs. NObama.

So if NObama loses, (as expected of the idiot selected), then it means we're all okay with Obama, right? Go on with the drone murder crimes, right? we're all together on that?
Nobody said 'NO', right?

Barney Frank: "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in fine shape".

John, I get where you're coming from, but I think John Kennedy might be considered a moderate Republican in today's political spectrum.

First of all, there is no such thing as a "moderate Republican" in the current political spectrum. Just ask Richard Lugar about that.
Secondly, Obama's financial backers in the 1% don't want to hear about how they've screwed the rest of the country for going on four decades. They just want business as usual, no matter which party is "in power."

How can things get better when none of the problems have been fixed? It's like everyone is thinking we are in a cyclical recession and we are just going to come out of it.

This is not cyclical. It's a systematic issue. Without addressing the problems in the system nothing will get better.

The problems cannot be addressed by our government because the whole freakin' thing is bought off.

So if you want a fix you first have to create an election system not controlled by the big donors. Then you MIGHT see some progress after a couple of elections.

Also I think placing blame on people that borrowed money to buy a house is ridiculous. The individual borrower is responsible for their debt and will feel that pain of default, but they are only responsible for their own individual actions. The people that control the system are the financiers. They are the ones that tanked the system so badly.

Funny though, we bad mouth borrowers who are now paying the price via foreclosure. But the banks that knowingly made bad loans in order to flip a quick dollar are not hurting at all. In fact the reports say they are doing just fine.

This is not cyclical. It's a systematic issue. Without addressing the problems in the system nothing will get better.

+5

However, it's even worse than that. Because we've established that some entities are Too Big To Fail, and then bailed out those same entities (with zero requirement for meaningful changes), we've set a precedent that bad behavior, no matter how idiotic or criminal, will not be punished. What should be private risks WILL be converted to public pain.

And that precedent will NOT be ignored in the future.

Just think - the crooks that pulled this off did so NOT KNOWING that they would be bailed out. Now they know that they will.

We're f*cked.

Larry -

You're an optimist. We are so much worse than f*cked.

I consider Mitt Romney to be a moderate Republican, and for many on the right, too moderate.

The media produces endless meaningless rhetoric (propaganda),
but the real cause of the rug being yanked out from under America and it's golden civilization boils down to TWO things,

1. 1999 repeal of the Glass-Stigal banking act,

2. The Bush massive Tax Cuts for the 1% rich.

Where - I see those 2 things as a symptom of the expanding influence of big money on the system. Just getting those things passed and blocking their repeal requires years and years of election buying. Statistically it started in earnest in 1980 and culminated in the backwards system you see today.

I'm with those other 2 guys really. We are totally 'f'ed. The entrenchment is too complete. I see no easy way out.

That is right!
Most folks don't remember it began with Ronald Reagan!