Leno/Limbaugh

As a guest on Jay Leno's new show, Rush Limbaugh stated that the subprime mortgage crisis can be blamed on: Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Bill Clinton and.....ACORN!?! As my son would say- wow, wow wubsy! Now I thought it was crazy that former President Bill Clinton was blamed for September 11th. I thought it was nuts that Saddam Hussein was blamed for September 11th. And now, I truly feel Mr Limbaugh better put down his handful of oxycontin and fast! To blame a community action organization for the subprime crisis!?!!? Even conservative listeners to my radio talk show agree that is ridiculous! As I said on my program; the financial crisis, subprime housing included is a world wide problem. It began during the Bush administration; and as much as I like to blame GW, even this isn't his fault. Nor is it Clinton's. or Obama's. How about the lenders? Homebuyers? Underwriters? Credit Approval ratings organizations? The reality is that the economy was at risk of a deep recession after the dot com bubble burst in early 2000. September 11th only made things worse. So how did the world respond? Banks tried to stimulate the economy; and not just here in the U.S., but throughout the world. And that pushed investors and lenders to take greater risks. Like lenders approving subprime mortgage loans to borrowers with poor credit or no credit and even some who had no jobs. So it was the consumer's demand that drove the housing bubble to it's all time high in the summer of 2005. And that didn't give a happy ending, that gave us incredibly high foreclosure #'s. So how does ACORN get blamed? How does President Clinton get blamed? For those that say Barney Frank could have regulated these lenders and didn't, let's not forget former President Bush's speech on October 15, 2002 at Georgetown University, when he encouraged those loans being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To paraphrase, he said that lower income people could get good quality homes. And GW Bush was President during the time of this financial fallout. He was the captain of the ship. He cannot have no responsibility, or in this case, blame for this problem. Neither can the top dogs at the Treasury under his command. And back to ACORN.....individuals go to ACORN when they're faced with foreclosure, or after they've lost their home; so how would a ACORN and it's members benefit from a subprime mortgage circus? Wouldn't they basically be screwing themselves to profit from something like this? Most of us never heard of ACORN until about a year ago; before then, ACORNS were little nuts that squirrels munched on!!! Lastly, why cant we ever look in the mirror and blame ourselves? Or in this case our/the borrowers and the lenders greed? Nothing too good to be true is. Too much money too fast isn't a sure thing, it's a bad thing; just ask those that borrowed from Bernie Madoff. Not to be religious here, but the bible doesn't say it's money that is the root of all evil, it is the "love" of money that is. The lenders love their money, so do we, that's how we got here and we didn't it without nuts...I mean acorns.
Leslie Marshall
The Leslie Marshall Show
“The Only True Democracy in Talk Radio – Of For And By The People”
www.lesliemarshallshow.com