BernieHund: The Political Watchdog

Perhaps, Kenneth Lewis, CEO of Bank of America was trying to make our current situation of 10 commercial bank failures this year seem minute in comparison to the reported 350 bank failures per year from 1986 through 1991. This came from a speech he gave on Friday, as shown on CSPAN.

However, as I watched the speech, I could only think of one thing. During the years of 350 bank failures per year, Republicans we in office touting the values of deregulation in the banking industry. Many of us remember the Resolution Trust Corporation (”RTC”) and the failure of the Savings and Loans, and the plummeting values of commercial real estate. That was during the administration of Daddy Bush, following eight years of Reaganomics.

Now, with Baby Bush in office for eight years, we see the second real estate debacle and the crashing of the U.S. economy.

I’m not about to suggest that real estate values fall like a rock or that our financial institutions have a tendency to go belly up when a Bush is in office… Perhaps, that is coincidence. But, I will draw the conclusion that our greatest economic crises have come after seven or eight years of Republican administrations being in office. You can put the name and the face on the failures.