shhhh

This is SO misleading! Sure, Glass-Steagall was repealed at a time when the neo-con henchmen lead by con-man Tom DeLay were taking over Congress. Their goal:  hand over wealth to the handful of back-door puppets. And to accuse the current administration of "failing to stanch the meltdown" is ludicrous. Sure, deficits were necessary but EXACTLY to stanch the meltdown. Take a look at Europe, where the plutocrats have influenced almost every major economy to impose austerity measures to cover THEIR "wealth-shift."  The result? -- massive recession.

Those who advocate repressive measures and "no government" can only prevail if the citizenry is willing to accept widespread poverty and destruction of the middle class. And their voices are either immune to rational economics or are paid shills for the puppeteers.

The author said: "True, George W. Bush fanned the flames with tax cuts while fighting two wars, but Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress did nothing to stanch the meltdown in 2008 except borrow and print money at unprecedented rates." "Fanned the flames?" Is this the understatement of the year? Two unfunded tax cuts and two unfunded wars PLUS The Great Republican Recession were on President Obama's plate days before he took office and you say he did nothing? You have a short memory. First, any economist worth his salt said that we had to buy our way out of this recession. TARP and the stimulus straddled both administrations. Both worked. The economy is improving. Obama got us out of one war and in a few months hopefully, we will be out of the other. Tax cut? Republicans are again arguing and stonewalling for the very wealthy: first they get their tax cut then the rest of us get ours. This is not what the president ran on and not why the American people elected him. If Republicans are so intent on helping the middle class, why not vote to give them their tax cuts THEN haggle about those for the rich.

The author's evident dislike for President Obama could not be clearer. First, Obama did not take office until January 2009. He was not in a position to stop a runaway Bush administration. When he did assume office, he implemented a bipartisan recovery plan, most of which money has been repaid. I would also note that it was John Boehner who tucked his tail and closed up shop early, putting an end to the fiscal debate. President Obama has left his family early and returned to DC to resume work. I certainly don't consider a well-deserved vacation to be hiding. Unless it was to figure out which article of the 14th Amendment Obama was supposed to invoke and for what reason. Mr. Suojanen has clearly not gotten over the election, yet continues to attack the President as if he were campaigning.

"but Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress did nothing to stanch the meltdown in 2008 except borrow and print money at unprecedented rates."

Perhaps the the letter writer is unaware that the one and only way to standch the metldown that was occurring when Obama took office was to "borrow and print" money.  This "borrowing" was to create an economic stimulus, and the "printing" of money was done by the Fed to prevent complete collapse of the financial system.

In other words, the very thing that the letter writer complains about is the thing that saved this country from total collapse.

The trouble with using the words "printing money" to describe what the fed does to pump liquidity into the economy, is that it hides the fact that the Fed can "unprint" the money when the time comes.  This is all done by computer with credits and debits to accounts at banks.  There is no actual "printing".   

I should also point out that during the inflation of the financial bubble, the banks and the shadow banking system had "printed" excess amounts of "money". The freeze in the financial system occurred because all these entities suddenly "unprinted" this "money" to such a degree that the Fed had to step in to balance their over-reaction. This is all very hard to understand if you think that most money is "printed". In fact the shadow banking system is responsible for far more liquidity in the economy (or at least it was during the bubble) than is the Fed and the explicit banking system. When the value of all the stocks in the stock market suddenly declines by trillions of dollars in a few days or weeks, do you actually think that some one is burning money or burying it in a hole to make it disappear? If you cannot explain what is really happening, then you need to learn a lot about the economy before you can be so sure as to who is helping and who is not.