An article from 2001, the Onion predicts the future.

[louis-t]

WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.


On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnation by implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.


http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-pros,464/

[grahamhgreen]

1. Wow

[C Moon]

2. :D that is great!

Asked for comment about the cooling technology sector, Bush said: "That's hardly my area of expertise."

[Scuba]

3. Maybe we should be running Onion writers for public office.

[Enthusiast]

29. Seriously.

[SomethingFishy]

47. Couldn't do much worse...

[Maru Kitteh]

48. indeed n/t

[kairos12]

4. The Onion--that's where I get my news.

[marym625]

5. Cool!

Though, didn't we all know? Great to have it preserved by the Onion. Perfect.

My favorite Onion headline EVER

Bush Executes 253 New Mexico Democrats

ALBUQUERQUE, NM–New Mexico's five electoral votes swung back into the Bush column Monday when George W. Bush executed 253 Las Cruces-area Democrats. With their deaths, the Al Gore-backing Democrats were declared ineligible, wiping out the Democratic candidate's narrow 252-vote victory margin in New Mexico and giving Bush the state by just one vote.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-executes-253-new-mexico-democrats,189/

[AlbertCat]

7. My favorite Onion headline EVER

Mine's not political at all...but social:

COLLECTABLE PLATE INDUSTRY CALLS FOR TRAGIC DEATH OF BARBRA STREISAND

In the article....the Pricess Di plates weren't selling anymore, so....
And of course Barbra's agent was considering it.

[marym625]

8. LMAO!

Good one!

[smokey nj]

15. Here's Mine: CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

http://www.theonion.com/articles/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-highlighters-all,1848/

[Quayblue]

21. lol!

[Kalidurga]

26. and..." it turned out to be some sort of device that cut the paper to shreds."

lmao

[liberalhistorian]

32. Mine happens to be

"Christian Science Pharmacist Refuses to Fill ANY Prescriptions".

It pretty much described the right in a nutshell.

[awoke_in_2003]

35. Here is mine

http://www.theonion.com/articles/shirtless-biden-washes-trans-am-in-white-house-dri,2718/#

[smokey nj]

36. I love that one! They've had a lot of funny Joe Biden articles.

Here are a few that I liked:
Biden Has Guy Named Worm Sit In For Him At Cabinet Meeting
http://www.theonion.com/articles/biden-has-guy-named-worm-sit-in-for-him-at-cabinet,33250/

White House Infested With Bedbugs After Biden Brings In Recliner Off The Curb
http://www.theonion.com/articles/white-house-infested-with-bedbugs-after-biden-brin,7070/

Biden Gets Grow Light Delivered To White House Under Fake Name
http://www.theonion.com/articles/biden-gets-grow-light-delivered-to-white-house-und,36597/

[RufusTFirefly]

42. Two of my favorites: One was never used, the other was

After 9/11:

'American still strong' says Quadragon spokesperson

After the terrible death of Gene Siskel from brain cancer:

Ebert Victorious!

[FiveGoodMen]

6. And from the perspective of the neo-cons (in both parties!) that title is NOT ironic!

[jmowreader]

9. Only one thing didn't come true

After Bush's tax cuts caused the recession, he made the recession even worse by cutting taxes twice more. (I was under the impression he only cut taxes twice. Wrong - three times.)

[louis-t]

10. bush policies cost me $100,000 in income.

but he gave me 2 checks totaling $600 with his name plastered all over them.

[jmowreader]

18. Here's the worst part of Shrub's plan:

http://origin.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2001/04/The-Economic-Impact-of-President-Bushs-Tax-Relief-Plan

"Under President Bush's plan, an average family of four's inflation-adjusted disposable income would increase by $4,544 in fiscal year (FY) 2011, and the national debt would effectively be paid off by FY 2010."

Anyone who would write shit like that needs to be taken out in the ocean, impaled on a shark hook someone made out of half-inch rebar, and thrown in the Gulf Stream as bait.

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. I have become comfortably numb

tps://

&spfreload=10%20Message%3A%20Unexpected%20end%20of%20input%20(url%3A%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhUYzQaCCt2o)

[joshdawg]

38. Holy crap that was great!

Pink Floyd has and will forever be my favorite band. This just lets me know to bring all my P.F. albums out and play them over and over again.
Thank you so much for posting this!
And yes, I am an old codger who is old as Gilmour. He, at least, still rocks!

[SomethingFishy]

46. That show was nothing short of astounding...

Saw it 4 times, and I still get goosebumps when, in this case Dave, hits that high note and Rog "breaks" the wall...

And this is coming from a roadie who has seen more shows in his life than he cares to remember..

[Hotler]

12. I remember reading that when it first came out.

Sure rings true today.
I have no hope. I see no future.

[whopis01]

33. I do too

I remember a friend and I laughing at that one. We loved the "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over" line.

It seemed so funny and silly at the time. Not so much now.

[ffr]

13. National Debt paydown nightmare over too!

"After eight years of relatively sane fiscal policy under the Democrats, we have reached a point where, just a few weeks ago, President Clinton said that the national debt could be paid off by as early as 2012," Rahway, NJ, machinist and father of three Bud Crandall said. "That's not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in." - The Onion 01/17/01

Might as well change his name to Joe "the plumber."

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. Not so much

the 2008 economic crisis didn't happen because of the Bush tax cuts. Those tax cuts didn't help in terms of the deficit and lack of infrastructure spending, but the root cause of the crisis was the years-long runup in oil prices to a high of $147 a barrel, which was driven almost entirely by demand growth in China and India and the peaking of global conventional crude oil production in 2005. The spike in oil prices led to the mortgage meltdown (because a lot of those people with subprime loans were suddenly faced with a choice between putting gas in the tank to get to work, and putting food on the table, and paying the mortgage; in that situation? mortgages didn't get paid). Which has nothing at all to do with Bush's economic policies and probably would have happened regardless of who was president at the time (and will probably happen again, once the current fracking-and-shale-oil boom has run its inevitable course).

[Stargazer99]

16. Sounds rather simplistic

these things may have contributed but not the only things....kissing the rear of the corp and monied by not converting to electric cars had quite a bit to do with the initial cause of the problem

[Spider Jerusalem]

17. Not converting to electric cars? Are you taking the piss?

That's not something that would have happened. Especially not 10-15 years ago when hybrid vehicle technology was still new--and new MPG requirements/moratorium on manufacture of fossil-fuel powered vehicles does nothing to address the existing vehicle fleet which still run on gasoline and diesel.

[louis-t]

19. Outsourcing and downsizing had more to do with the recession.

When you tell someone they are not worth $25 and hour and start paying them $15 and hour and tell them they should be happy to get that, you have just taken away their mortgage and car payments. When you outsource millions of jobs so you can save a few nickels and keep your investors happy, you create an economic nightmare. Sure, combine that with emptying the treasury, starting two wars you have no intention of paying for, removing all regulation on the bankers, plus the price of oil and you've got the mess we are now in.

[Spider Jerusalem]

20. No, they didn't.

helpful hint, it wasn't localised to the USA.

[louis-t]

22. So, the price of oil caused the recession?

Let's see, my gas bill went from $100 a month to $200 a month when oil peaked. $100 a month extra did not cause me to fall behind. The fact that Real Estate commissions went from $3,000 average to less than $1,000 caused me to fall behind. When 700,000 people a month that were losing their jobs or having their pay cut started walking away from their homes, that caused a glut of homes on the market, most of them in really bad shape. That caused prices to fall. Then we had to compete with the investor class who were buying up homes cash and outbidding everyone. A healthy economy would not have been decimated by high oil prices alone. Even if you consider the increase in costs to big business, oil alone did not cause mass layoffs and outsourcing.

[Spider Jerusalem]

23. Were you working poor, with a subprime mortgage? Because that's where the crisis was.

[louis-t]

24. Sub-prime mtgs were part of the free fall.

In 2003, we were told buyers could now get 0 down conventional mortgages. A very small percentage of those were given to people who should never have been given mortgages. Most borrowers had the income to make the payments unless their income level changed or they had a serious illness, etc. The majority of the sub-primes that fell were due to people that lost their jobs or were told they were getting their pay cut. Millions of people lost their jobs in 2008 alone. What created the cascade was the bundling of these bad mortgages and selling them as securities. When they fell, AIG had to pay off on the credit default swaps. They were one of the first to crash. Most of the crisis was building long before 2008. Believe me, I've studied this. I wanted to find out why my business got ruined. The oil spike only really lasted mid 2007 to mid 2008. Oil was already crashing by mid-2008.

[Spider Jerusalem]

28. ...

http://www.voxeu.org/article/greasing-wheel-oil-s-role-global-crisis

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/04/03/did-the-oil-price-boom-of-2008-cause-crisis/

[louis-t]

44. These articles merely say oil prices contributed.

You said oil prices were directly responsible. I'm sorry, $100 a month extra in the tank did not cause a mortgage meltdown by itself.

[Spider Jerusalem]

45. Oil prices affect the price of consumer goods, to a great extent

and for the people who were taking out subprime loans? Yeah, it probably did. (Aggressive lending practices that involved giving 100% loans to people who couldn't afford a down payment and had no savings or ability to make payments if their finances tightened were largely responsible really, but the rise in oil prices was the trigger that knocked over the whole row of dominoes.)

[genxlib]

41. I would agree with everything you say but would add this.

In many cases, people didn't even need a change in life to fail to pay the loan.

In many cases, the loan itself was the change. They were made with 3-5 year rate resets or balloon payments that caused the payments to skyrocket. Many of the loans were actually allowed to pay less than the interest due so that the principal rose.

They were tie bombs set to blow up regardless of whether people still had their jobs.

The loans were made under the assumption that they could always be refinanced later. Which worked until the prices started to fall and people were stuck.

[louis-t]

43. You are correct.

The adjustables and the 125 loans (loaning someone 125% of appraised value) were horrible. Even though there is a form that the buyer signed at closing that said they understand that financing may not be available when the interest rate adjusts, we always thought 'Real Estate always goes up'. The bottom had already fallen out before most of the ajustables were reset. These risky loans were a DIRECT RESULT of removing regulations and relaxing standards. The anti regulation people caused this, the banks wanted it, they made a ton of money writing these loans and then selling them off.

[louis-t]

25. By the way, I had a 30 year conventional mortgage

with 20 % down.

[genxlib]

40. Sorry, but this simply isn't the case

Outside pressures on mortgage payers such as gas prices will always have an impact on whether they can say financially viable.

During normal times, mortgage failures are mostly covered with equity in the house. In this case, there were huge problems with negative equity due to massive increases in housing costs (ie the bubble) and crazy lending practices such as no money down, second mortgages ,option adjustable rates.

The mortgage market was massively distorted by a total failure in risk management. The 'Masters of the Universe' thought they were so smart that they believed they could manage risk completely out of the system. The failure was systemic from the brokers to the banks, investors, AIG, Moodys, etc.

It started with relaxing of credit requirements that drove up the available money in the housing market which drove up prices. As the prices rose, the lenders got more and more creative trying to find ways to lend larger amounts to people. This led to crazier and crazier terms that were destined to fail; balloon notes, rate resets, negative equitity, etc. The lenders kept lending because the risks were never accounted for. In fact, it was so lucrative that they accelerated the process distorting it even more.

Like all bubbles, it worked as long as it headed upwards. As soon as it turned around, the system imploded.

Even then, the system could have been unwound if the loans had been made with real money. There would have been losses but that happens sometimes when you make investments with actual capital. But the banks were lending money that they didn't have. They were lending at something like 32 times how much money they had. When the losses started, they were almost instantly bankrupt.

Aside from that, it affected far more than subprime borrowers. (I hear arguments blaming government policies favoring minorities as well) if this were true, then the problems would have been concentrated in low/middle income areas. But the problems were seen throughout the market including many upper middle class communities. People in all income brackets were given risky loans on inflated properties.

The one factor to this that I rarely see acknowledged is that stress on the economy did not end in 2008. Bad lending practices continued right up till 2007. Those loans often had 5 year rate resets or other booby traps built into them. The time bombs kept exploding through at least 2012. If anyone asks you why the economy has taken so long to get better...the truth is that it only now has the opportunity to start healing those wounds.

Oil prices impacting subprime mortgages may have been part of the pinprick that popped the bubble. But the underlying problem was far deeper.

[Doctor_J]

27. wow

Spooky

[blkmusclmachine]

30. George W. Bush assured the nation "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally

over."


And then 9/11 happened, and he went to work on those plans.







Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

.
.
.

[blkmusclmachine]

31. Pic URL http://attias.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/11_worldtradecenter_memorial_5.jpg

All words are my own.

[ybbor]

34. I remember this article

I still have the "greatest hits" book from that year which contains the prophetic piece. W screwed us all!

[mountain grammy]

37. I remember picking up that copy of the Onion in Denver,

then spent the next few months repeating it to everyone I talked to. Republicans just looked at me, they didn't get it.

[Demeter]

39. I remember that one

Truer words never written. A masterful prediction from a modern Nostradamus.