Credit Crisis

While Americans are wrapped up in the banking crisis, the long-range, international effects of what is happening are being ignored here at home. Der Spiegel has an interesting commentary on what the crisis means to our position in the world that could entail the end of the American world as we all know it today.

The reality of the numbers involved.

The proposed bailout for the fat cat banks on Wall St. was $700,000,000,000 (i.e. $700 Billion)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailout_of_U.S._financial_system_(2008)

The number of owner occupied houses in America (according to the latest Census info) is 75,086,485

I have a hard time putting all the responsibility for the stock market/financial market on the Republicans. We were warned by McCain in 2005 and by the Bush administration at least 17 times in the past 8 years of the danger of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan practices. Other warnings go back to as early as 1995. It is not the deregulation of the stock market that has produced this problem.

  She called on the Bush administration to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to change accounting rules to loosen up the credit crunch.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/WireStory?id=5917510&page=2

From AmeriBlog:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Shares of National City Corp (NCC.N) dropped more than half on Monday as investors wondered which regional bank might need a merger partner as the sector suffered what analysts called a deepening crisis of confidence.

The big Ohio bank slid $2, or 52 percent, at $1.70 on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock fell more than 25 percent on Friday.
----