My Take on the Economic Problem

This week's events have caused mass panic concerning the economy. Lehman Brothers going under, AIG needing the government to bail them out, and Bank of America's purchase of Merrill Lynch have made this week quite tumultous. How can our economic situation have gotten so far out of hand? Where was the congressional regulatoin? How can the current president be forced to shoulder most of the blame? Was he secretly a CEO of one of the said companies? Frankly I don't know anything about economics, but I believe there are several factors that are responsible for our weakened economy...

• The election. I read in several places that over 1 BILLION dollars will be spent on this election. Are you kidding me? One billion dollars. That certainly seems like a large amount to spend campaigning, especially when you consider that we're going to be doing it all over again four years from now. The 1 billion dollars that has been going into the election is one billion dollars that ISN'T going into the economy. One billion dollars. We're not going to see any return on this. Why is it neccessary to spend so much money ever four years. It's no wonder our economy is in the shitter.
• Offshore drilling. It would bring tons of new jobs and money into our economy. You better believe we sell the oil to Europe at competing prices with the middle east. First, anyone else find it interesting that the senate waited until a crisis before finally approving an offshore drilling plan? Our congress is like a freaking ant, it just plods along passively until someone puts an obstacle in its way, then it changes direction. They need to be more proactive. Now about the offshore drilling plan. What a sham that is. (Perhaps this is why they waited for crisis, so that they hope it gets lost in the news, which it pretty much has.) The plan is going to produce no oil at all from the intercontinental shelf. It stipulates that drilling can only take place 50 miles off the coast. Interestingly, there are an estimated 18 billion barrels of oil located between 10-50 miles offshore. Second, a state must agree to have oil drilled off its shore. However since there are no financial incentives or royalties for the state to agree to this, no one will be drilling oil. Florida is also supposed to be off limits until 2022. Basically, while offshore drilling should really stimulate the economy, it will have no effect other than to continue our dependence on foreign oil, since this basically prevents us from drilling. Anyone willing to bet some of the current senate majority are in bed with the oil companies? If I'm president Bush I veto this bill and tell congress to come up with something that will actually work.
• Dependency on foreign entities to purchase our debt. In our current financial state no one would be willing to purchase our debt. This will have very bad effects on our economy.
• Irresponsible spending by Americans. Spending money on things outside their means (I am also slightly guilty of this). There are many Americans who pile up credit on purpose, never pay it off, then file bankruptcy. This practice should be illegal and prosecuted. It is a dishonest act and results in people who spend their money responsibly being punished. We buy too many things on a whim in this country. And so much of what we buy are things that we don't actually need.
• In the 1990's Clinton passed the Community Reclamation Act, which resulted in lowering lending standards so that more people could buy houses. This perhaps is the birth of the whole crisis. Clinton was the quintessential "live it up now because it's going to get worse later" president.

To put this mess solely on the president is unfair. We have caused alot of our own pain. It is time to stop bitching, get our heads out of our asses, and unite to fix this problem. It is fixable. As John McCain says, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.