The left keeps using the political rhetoric that Republicans want to take us back to the Bush years that caused the economic mess we are in today. Let’s look at that.

Bush came into office in 2000, the stock market crashed in 2000 (remember the Internet bubble) trillions were lost in pension plans and people’s retirement plans (IRAs and 401ks). Bush installed tax breaks and we were coming out of the recession when attacked on 9/11, recession again, tax breaks resulted in our coming out of it. Then the housing bubble in 2008, people lost 30 percent-plus of their net worth.

Let’s look at the housing bubble which started in the ’80s. What caused it? There is lots of blame to go around, but the driving force was the GSAs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) telling banks they had to loosen lending requirements.

Fannie and Freddie were giving loans to everyone with a down payment and no concern for their ability to repay the loan. This caused the banks to do the same, to stay in business. This flooded the buying market and drove up prices in the ’80s, ’90s and 21st century. The result is well known history.

Remember the 2000s — even with the Internet crash and 9/11 Bush found ways to bring the economy back, unemployment between 2000 and July 2008 was 4.6 to 6.0 percent, peoples’ net worth was growing until the housing bubble burst. Bush tried numerous times to get Congress to do something about Fannie and Freddie, but Barney Frank said they were fine, “Republicans were trying to hurt poor people.”

Three and a half years and $5,000,000,000,000 later and we are still over 8 percent unemployment, and things are getting worse.

Paul Roullard

Embden


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