The "free market" "deregulate" Republican self-serving, self-enriching policies have brought us:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

Economic disaster. Recall that in the 2000 election people were squabbling about how to spend the SURPLUS. In just 6 short years, a Republican executive with a Republican controlled Congress brought us:

Enron
California electric grid gaming
Oil Speculation
Real Estate Meltdown
Salmonella and E-coli on our daily menu
Media consolidation and loss of a valid 4th estate
Deficits beyond comprehension
Trade imbalance
Weak dollar
Consistent loss of jobs
Erosion of wages and salaries except for CEOs
Astronomic uncontrolled health care expenditures
The highest pharmaceutical costs in the world
Spiraling personal bankruptcies
Bank failures

The Republicans are nothing more than bunco artists who have siphoned off the assets of the nation and the corporations and lined their own pockets. Republican "change" is what the little guy gets to keep as he vacuums out their Hummer.

[lonestarnot]

1. Yours is prettier than mine! LOL

[liberal N proud]

2. Good list

[Iris]

3. excellent reporting on the meltdown of Lehman Brothers this a.m.

Interviews with people placing blame directly into the laps of the corps that "self-regulated" themselves to death.

[Supersedeas]

10. spinning and spinning and spinning is what I see from the powdered faces in Cable News rooms

[Iris]

11. meant to say on NPR

[fasttense]

4. Remember when Greenspan was warning about having too big of a surplus

and that a big surplus could be bad for America. So, the bushes increased the US debt by 90%. I wonder if that made Greenspan feel better?

[crickets]

5. K&R

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Trickle down corruption.

Don't underestimate how far down the pike they were willing to go to corrupt everyone they needed to corrupt so that no one would question their tactics.

Which now makes it impossible for one honest person in the community to take them to court. This was endemic. The media was subdued so as not to give the public time to organize and demand that the governments do a better job of protecting their interests.

[amborin]

7. agree!

except for one: the bank failures' history is bi-partisan and the causes stretch back through several administrations

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. "But the DemocRATs are gonna take our guns away!"

:banghead: :argh: :nuke:

[Overseas]

9. K&R -- Revolting Results of Republican Rule.

And don't forget WAR PROFITEERING on a massive scale.

[pokerfan]

12. "Capitalize the gains; Socialize the losses"

The Treasury Department’s bailout of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this month has an estimated price tag of that could be as high as $200 billion, expected to be the biggest such takeover in history. BusinessWeek assembled a list of some of the biggest corporate and national bailouts in history, going back to J. P. Morgan. Here’s the list, from most recent to oldest:

• Bear Stearns, Mar. 16, 2008: $29 billion guaranteed by the Federal Reserve

• MBIA, Dec. 10, 2007: $1 billion from private equity fund Warburg Pincus

• UBS, Dec. 10, 2007: $11.5 billion from Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, along with an unnamed Middle Eastern investor

• E*Trade Financial, Nov. 29, 2007: $2.55 billion from Citadel Investment Group

• Citigroup, Nov. 26, 2007: $7.5 billion from Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund

• Countrywide Financial, Aug. 22, 2007: $2 billion from Bank of America

• Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund, Aug. 13, 2007: $3 billion from Goldman Sachs and investors including C.V. Starr & Co. and Eli Broad

• U.S. Domestic Airlines, September 2001: $15 billion from the U.S. government

• Russia, 1998: $17 billion in loans from the International Monetary Fund

• Long Term Capital Management, 1998: $3.6 billion from various Wall Street firms

• Apple, August 1997: $150 million from rival Microsoft

• Mexico, 1995: $50 billion in loans ($20 billion from the U.S. and more than $30 billion from the International Monetary Fund, Europe, private banks, and other trading partners)

• Salomon Brothers, 1987: $700 million from Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway

• Various U.S. Savings and Loans, 1986-1995: $124 billion from the FDIC

• Continental Illinois, 1984: $1 billion in capital from the FDIC, which also guaranteed the bank’s $30 billion in uninsured deposits and assumed $3.5 billion of the company’s debt

• Chrysler, January 1980: $1.5 billion in loans from the U.S. government

• City of New York, 1975: $150 million from the New York City Teachers’ Union plus refinancing $3 billion of its debt

• Lockheed Aircraft, 1971: $250 million in loan guarantees from Congress

• New York City Trusts, 1907: $50 million ($30 million from John Pierpont Morgan, along with other bankers and $25 million from the U.S. Treasury)

http://www.getlisty.com/wfaa/biggest-corporate-bailouts/">Biggest Corporate Bailouts

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

13. Otherwise known as : Private profit, Public losses. nt

[pokerfan]

14. Or as I like to phrase it: Heads we win; Tails you lose!

x(

[Patsy Stone]

15. It's good ol' Reaganomics followed out to its logical conclusion.

Except for the reduce the size of gov't/paying for a war part. Frankly, the Iraq War is what sunk their sham voodoo economics this time. Even though Daddy was letting the little greedy children run amok, at least his Gulf War was short and sweet.