<p>Just curious if successful businessmen have proven to be good economic policymakers?
Any other examples in either direction?</p>
<p>ya he would’ve been</p>
<p>He’s a smart, well-meaning man, but he can’t be smooth with his inauthenticity like Obama can, which is certainly a necessity, especially when you’ve got the strange friends, etc. that Obama has :D</p>
<p>He’s also a poll-driven guy, hence the reason he’s labeled a flip flopper.</p>
<p>Check out the video,
Gov. Mitt Romney meets a medical marijuana patient–Oct. 6
:(</p>
<p>As to your question…:D</p>
<p>Running a business isn’t the same thing as running an economy. Certainly there are parallels like budgets, but no, I don’t think there’s anything special about Romney that would make him vroom up the economy, not that he’s any less than Obama or McCain though.</p>
<p>he would have gotten rid of the capital gains tax, which would have done wonders for Americans, It would make Americans inclined to save and invest, instead of spending. Just a little more incentive to do so. Slowly such practices will pull America out of its addiction to credit. Thumbs up from me,</p>
<p>Probably not - he was a Wall Street guy who believed in all the deregulation/less oversight bunk pushed by Phil Gramm.</p>
<p>He would have “doubled” Guantanamo, creating hundreds of new jobs in the torture industry, so the answer would be yes I think.</p>
<p>He would have “doubled” Guantanamo, creating hundreds of new jobs in the torture industry, so the answer would be yes I think.</p>
<p>:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Yeah, Gramm caused this mess, this mess that stemmed from the housing crisis, which was a result of subprime gone wild, which was a result of mandates imposed by Democrats to force banks to quota their services to people that shouldn’t have afforded them, with Fannie/Freddie shoring up the crap loans, buying all that they could, under the mismanagement and denial of Democrats. Yup 
</p>
<p>Educate yourself, kid. Watch Burning Down the House.</p>
<p>[Bill</a> v. Barack on Banks - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122282635048992995.html]Bill”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122282635048992995.html)</p>
<p>*Mr. Clinton’s reply: "No, because it wasn’t a complete deregulation at all. We still have heavy regulations and insurance on bank deposits, requirements on banks for capital and for disclosure. I thought at the time that it might lead to more stable investments and a reduced pressure on Wall Street to produce quarterly profits that were always bigger than the previous quarter.</p>
<p>“But I have really thought about this a lot. I don’t see that signing that bill had anything to do with the current crisis. Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn’t signed that bill.”*</p>
<p>The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed the Senate on a 90-8 vote, including 38 Democrats and such notable Obama supporters as Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dick Durbin, Tom Daschle – oh, and Joe Biden. Mr. Schumer was especially fulsome in his endorsement.</p>
<p>[Bill</a> Clinton Says Democrats Resisted Standards For Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac - Digital Journal: Your News Network](<a href=“http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/260301]Bill”>http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/260301)</p>
<p>Let’s see. Clinton is unpressed about Freddie/Fannie and asked about the financial crisis.</p>
<p>*
Chris Cuomo, ABC News: A little surprising for you to hear the Democrats saying, “This came out of nowhere, this is all about the Republicans. We had nothing to do with this.” Nancy Pelosi saying it. She signed the '99 Gramm Bill. She knew what was going on with the SEC. They’re all sophisticated people. Is that playing politics in this situation?</p>
<pre><code>Bill Clinton: Well, maybe everybody does that a little bit. I think the responsibility the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.*
</code></pre>
<p>:)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe you should take your own “advice” - lol.</p>
<p>First off, the subprime mess wasn’t just a result of lending to lower-income people (besides, banks could have given mortgages to lower income people that they could have handled), but ran the spectrum of the socio-economic ladder. </p>
<p>In the places hardest hit - Florida, California, Nevada, etc. we are talking about $300k to $600k homes/condos and the buyers were upper-middle class or speculators.</p>
<p>Second, if Fannie and Freddie didn’t exist, we still would be in this mess. While the execs at Fannie and Freddie made some bad moves as well, initially, they were in significantly better shape than banks or Wall St. firms.</p>
<p>Initially, the mortgage-backed investment vehicles that kept their value were those backed by Fannie/Freddie while those proferred by the IBs were seen as being the most troublesome.</p>
<p>Fannie/Freddie initially stayed away from the more dubious paper, but Countrywide (and other mortgage firms) threatened Fannie/Freddie by stating they would skip Fannie/Freddie altogether and go straight to the IBs if Fannie/Freddie didn’t buy their bad paper as well.</p>
<p>Third, the IBs knew that a lot of the paper they were buying and repackaging had inceasingly problematic debtors, but they ignored this since they were making so much $$ (the guys running the compliance units at the IBs knew they were being fed dubious nos.).</p>
<p>Fourth, the mortgage companies, banks and realtors were making so much $$ by the sale of the paper to the IBs - that the “cop”, in this case, the appraiser either went along since it meant more business for them or they were threatened w/ the loss of business if they didn’t go along w/ the ridiculous assessments (not dissimilar to what the accounting firms/law firms/brokerages did w/ the dot.com bubble or Enron, Tyco, etc.</p>
<p>Fifth, the reason why the big wall street firms, AIG, etc. went under or had to be rescued was due to the reckless amount of leveraging that was possible due to derivatives such as credit default swaps (Warren Buffett famously described derivatives bought speculatively as “financial weapons of mass destruction.”) which became possible due to deregulation pushed by Phil Gramm (who, btw, was McCain’s economic “guru”.</p>
<p>Phil Gramm and his wife had their hands in on every financial/business scandal/bubble of the past decade.</p>
<p>Phil Gramm was the one who was instrumental in weakening of the Glass-Steagall and was the one who fought against regulaton of derivatives trading in the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (including the “Enron loophole”).</p>
<p>It is hardly coincidence that Gramm’s wife served on the Board of Enron and that Gramm was a Vice Chairman of UBS (and while as VC, he lobbied Congress to prevent states from enacting tougher regulations on the mortgage industry).</p>
<p>Gramm and his wife are living the highlife - meanwhile Enron is dust and UBS is in serious trouble (even putting aside the fact that they helped many wealthy clients to hide their assets overseas).</p>
<p>The commodities deregulation pushed by Gramm also played a part in the astronomical price of oil during the summer (where a small no. of hedge funds, etc. were able to buy an alarming % of oil futures contracts).</p>
<p>As for Clinton, he was always right-of-center when it came to legislation involving business (funny that conservatives still hated his guts) and while yes, the majority of the Senate did pass the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the Republicans had a veto-proof majority anyway.</p>
<p>What is happening now is just a supersized version of the S&L bubble/collapse of the 1980s - gee, I wonder what the commonalities are?</p>
<p>This is as much Phil Gramm’s fault as it is Barney Frank’s. Both parties supported deregulation when the economy was doing well, and are supporting regulation now that the DOW’s going down.</p>
<p>Of course, partisans everywhere are ignoring this truth in an attempt to win the election. Sickening.</p>
<p>“But I can’t blame [the Republicans]. This wasn’t something they forced me into. I really believed that given the level of oversight of banks and their ability to have more patient capital, if you made it possible for [commercial banks] to go into the investment banking business as Continental European investment banks could always do, that it might give us a more stable source of long-term investment.”</p>
<p>Bill Clinton, why can’t we be voting for your 5th term?</p>
<p>denial denial</p>
<p>Fact is, Gramm is against burdens, not rules.</p>
<p>The Democrats, swamped in Freddie/Fannie money, basically govt entities, that happened to be broke and corrupt, were against RULES.</p>
<p>It’s a joke, Pelosi saying she’ll bar witch hunts on these companies.</p>
<p>Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina and John Chambers have all supported McCain.
Is it just a general support of lesser regulation?
The employees of their companies are more likely to support Obama, I think (lost the survey link!)</p>
<p>I don’t even get why they nominated McCain. He’s terrible at running for president. Make him the secretary of defense is what they should’ve done.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If the Democrats messed everything up, why didn’t the Republicans do anything about it for the past 8 years? Are they weak or are they stupid?</p>
<p>well when you run congress with a lower approval rating than Bush, that may be the reason.</p>
<p>Mitt Romney was the best choice for president.</p>