News crews camp outside Lehman
Brothers Manhattan headquarters
It is, of course, a political year. So it's time to start pointing fingers of blame, and positioning oneself to take advantage of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Especially if one's name is Barack Obama.
During a campaign stop in Colorado today, Obama charged that the Bush administration's financial policies have led to, "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression."
Of course, Obama is promising reforms to avert a recurrence. So too, to his credit, is John McCain, who told supporters in Florida that his administration would "clean up Wall Street."
All of this, of course, is little consolation to the more than 20,000 Lehman Brothers employees worldwide, most of whom are spending what may be their last day on the job.
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Photo credit: Gary Baumgarten
3 comments:
Barak Obama is even more naive than I thought if that is the position he is taking. Doesn't he realise that this is a global trend - not some plot by GW to undermine his country.
Maybe greedy speculators should come under the hammer of Obama since they are the ones, together with the horrendous rising cost of oil from those Middle Eastern friends, who have caused a wave that could lead to a tsunami.
"Greedy speculators" have a minimal effect on the price of oil. It is a market driven commodity.
The following is from an AP article from Sept. 11th, 2008:
"The Commodity Futures Trading Commission released a much-anticipated report examining the activities of large index investors and so-called "swap" traders — those who trade on behalf of banks or wealthy individuals — in the commodity futures markets including crude oil.
"This preliminary survey is not able to accurately answer and quantify the amount of speculative trading occurring in the futures markets," the report said. The problem is that the available data does not differentiate between speculative and legitimate hedge trading activities, it said.
It is very easy to take a political talking point to use in the "blame game" but it is not supported by any facts.
This isn't about the Bush administration. This is about corporations run amoke.
Why do these politicians have to jump on everything that happens and point fingers, pound their chests and then promise us things they know they just can't deliver?
No wonder our political system is in such disarray.
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