I thought that the crazy Democrats were just on television. Then I actually had a conversation with one. The conversation started innocently enough. I am selling a classic car, and have the car listed on the local sales internet site. The ad reads, “for sale or trade”. A guy calls and asks if I would trade for a vehicle he has. As he describes the vehicle he mentions that he is a Chevy or G.M. guy. I tell him that I am also. He goes on to say he’s a retired auto worker from the Detroit area, and a Vietnam Vet. I thank him for his service,of course, and he talks about different vehicles he’s owned, and some health issues, and that he is 73 years old.
Then he starts talking about how he is in favor of a “single payer” health care system. As a conservative Republican, I naturally respond by telling him that system would only create a rationing of health care, place a burden on those who have to work to support it, and create a government debacle of insurance fraud and waste. I said that I didn’t like the idea of government-run healthcare. I told him I thought that government has a poor track record of managing anything. This apparently struck a nerve. The guy said he’s a staunch Democrat supporter, and began his tirade.
What I found so hard to believe, is that a person at his age could be so ignorant of the facts of things, and believe so strongly in his misgivings. He said he hated President Trump, because he’s in league with Vladimir Putin. Then I responded by saying that at least he seemed to be the better choice, given the allegations about Hillary Clinton’s activities. I went on to say that I thought Trump was doing a good job with the economy. This guy became even more absurd, stating that President Obama was responsible for the great economy, and that Trump was only riding Obama’s coattails, and that Obama saved us from the financial crisis that president Bush created by sending troops into Iraq and Afghanistan.
I tried to explain to the guy that President Obama simply threw tons of taxpayer money at the problem, and doubled the deficit in the process, along with other unnecessary expenditures. The guy really came unglued at the seams, when I told him about how Barney Frank and Chris Dodd introduced legislation, passed in a Democratic controlled Congress, during Bush’s second term, aimed at anti-discrimination, not troop deployment, that was responsible. This forced banks to give mortgage loans without secured funding. Huge numbers of low-income people flocked to the banks to secure loans to buy houses. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac issued billions in unsecured loans, the mortgage-backed securities created from the loans were then traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
These financial instruments are commonly traded, and treated just like cash, even better, because they can be leveraged for their intrinsic value over the life of the loans that back them. As huge numbers of delinquencies started pouring in, these leveraged securities became not only worthless, but as leveraged trades at huge multiples of negative or value, their marks when called, were unable to be met financially by the institutions that were trading them. Ergo the financial collapse. First Lehman Bros, Then Bank of America Merrill Lynch, G.M.A.C., Citibank, and so on, like dominoes.
Unfortunately for the guy I was speaking to, he never got to hear the whole truth about the financial crisis, because he became too enraged when I told him about the Dodd Frank legislation, that he hung up the phone.
I feel kind of sorry for the guy going through life believing only what the talking heads on M.S.N.B.C. or C.N.N. tell him and not investigating the real facts about things. Heck, some of these people have just a two-year degree in journalism and little real world experience in anything. I may be conservative, but that doesn’t mean I believe everything on Fox News or the internet. It’s a shame to see a person so entrenched in political belief that they close their mind completely to intelligent dialog.
