Systemic Malarkey

May 21, 2013 in Montana

by lizard

On the 11th of this month, president Obama said this about the housing market:

“Today, seven years after the real estate bubble burst, triggering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and costing millions of responsible Americans their jobs and their homes, our housing market is healing. Sales are up. Foreclosures are down. Construction is expanding. And thanks to rising home prices over the past year, 1.7 million more families have been able to come up for air because they’re no longer underwater on their mortgages.”

Mike Whitney has been tracking the housing disaster for years now, and when he calls this statement by our liar-in-chief “malarkey” he is being charitable. Here’s how Whitney counters the bullshit being spewed by Obama:

What a load of malarkey. The truth is housing is in a shambles. Starts are down, inventory is tight, demand is weak, mortgage originations are flat, household formation has fallen off a cliff, (The homeownership rate is now at levels last seen in the mid-1990s), and the entire industry is precariously propped atop artificially-low interest rates and the Fed’s bogus $40 billion per month QE giveaway.

Does that sound like a thriving market to you?

No, Mike, it doesn’t.

From the very beginning, it was clear Obama had no plans to hold the big banks accountable for massive fraud. Back when the hopium was still potent and being imbibed by Democrats, stacking the cabinet with Wall Street sycophants was something that had to be either ignored or downplayed.

Because the core problems with the housing market haven’t been addressed, the banks are looking to suck in more victims with government backed loans that require no down payment. Don’t believe me? Read the whole article. It’s beyond maddening this shell game is being allowed to continue. It’s criminal, and Obama is complicit.

This should be a scandal, but it’s not.

Speaking of scandals, because of the disaster in Oklahoma, Democrats get a reprieve from having to hear about their Nixonian president doing to the AP what he’s been doing to whistleblowers for years, among the other scandals plaguing the administration.

And speaking of the disaster in Oklahoma, I was incredibly disappointed to see Bob Brigham gleefully politicize the destruction yesterday evening with tweets like this:

Cost of @jiminhofe climate change denial. RT @AP State medical examiner’s office: 37 killed in Oklahoma tornado; death toll expected to rise

It doesn’t make much sense to give disaster aid after severe weather to people who elect climate change deniers. Unafforbable cycle of waste

Will the harsh realties of climate change dampen this activist’s support for his beloved coal cowboy, Brian Schweitzer? I doubt it.

Maybe we should finally acknowledge that we don’t have a political system capable of producing the kind of leaders we need to address big problems, like an economy manipulated by criminals and an environment heating up from the destructive inclinations of humans.

So let’s stop investing hope in political shucksters and pathological liars, and start doing the work ourselves. Plenty of folks are already doing it, both inside the system and outside.

If more people play a direct, active role in addressing the systemic inequities affecting billions of people across the globe, then there’s hope. There’s no hope in sending impotent little tweets to stupid politicians taking orders from their funders.