Obama on economic crisis: 'We didn't know how bad it was.

Didn't know how bad it was huh? That's why the real estate numbers have neen doctored upwards for five years.

towermonkey wrote: Didn't know how bad it was huh? That's why the real estate numbers have neen doctored upwards for five years.

So the Obama administration is in charge of producing figures for the National Association of Realtors? I think you might have that a little backwards. It's kinda hard to tell "how bad it is" when people producing the numbers give you phoney ones, wouldn't you agree? And something tells me NAR wasn't the only business group trying to make things look better than they were.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they got a call from the Bush admin saying "It's all going down if you report those numbers. Make them look better." and then it stuck. Wild speculation on my part, but I tend to distrust government and statistics both and when they are in the same room I run like hell.

towermonkey wrote: I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they got a call from the Bush admin saying "It's all going down if you report those numbers. Make them look better." and then it stuck. Wild speculation on my part, but I tend to distrust government and statistics both and when they are in the same room I run like hell.

Sorry, but people in the know have been skeptical of NAR figures for at least a decade, long before Obama was even on the horizon.

Like I said, its just wild supposition. I'm fairly used to being wrong. BTW, I said Bush, not Obama.

AspenValley wrote:

towermonkey wrote: I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they got a call from the Bush admin saying "It's all going down if you report those numbers. Make them look better." and then it stuck. Wild speculation on my part, but I tend to distrust government and statistics both and when they are in the same room I run like hell.

Sorry, but people in the know have been skeptical of NAR figures for at least a decade, long before Obama was even on the horizon.

Well... it really doesn't matter because in the larger picture of things... "President Barack Obama said Tuesday he wishes he knew the full extent of the economic crisis when he took office, if only so he could have let Americans know just how tough the coming years would be." That was the topic of this thread. The real estate numbers doesn't change Obama's stupid one bit.

So maybe you can explain to me how you can know the full extent of the crisis if large business organizations lie, and continue to lie for years, about the figures to vastly understate the problem?

towermonkey wrote: I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they got a call from the Bush admin saying "It's all going down if you report those numbers. Make them look better." and then it stuck. Wild speculation on my part, but I tend to distrust government and statistics both and when they are in the same room I run like hell.

Like how the numbers for inflation have been "fixed" for years?

AspenValley wrote: So maybe you can explain to me how you can know the full extent of the crisis if large business organizations lie, and continue to lie for years, about the figures to vastly understate the problem?

Now we've gone from a single reference to a problem with some figures from the mortgage industry to a broad brushed " large business organizations lie." There would have to be a hell of a lot of corporations lying, for many years, in many areas, to bring down the economy... and totally without the knowledge or understanding of Washington or our current President Obama. And, if we accept your supposition (a supposition totally unsupported by any references) then President Obama and the Democrats needs to stop blaming Bush for all the problems, since Bush must have been lied to also. After all... President Obama has been saying for years... it all didn't happen under his watch.

And how do we reconcile the fact that Debbie Wasaman Schultz, Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, just yesterday said that unemployment has not risen under President Obama ( http://communities.washingtontimes.com/ ... mployment/ ) ... did some large corporation lie to her.

Sorry Charlie, but you can't keep tap dancing to the same tune, because the tune keeps changing, the spin keeps coming and the administration is looking more and more like they couldn't cover their asses if their asses were on their shoulders and you gave them a hat. You're looking silly.

All I can say is if you think it was only NAR lying, I've got some swampland you might be interested in.....

And since the housing collapse is in and of itself a HUGE part of the economic problem, even if not one single other organization fudged any of their numbers (Sure they didn't. All of those mortgage based securities were just as good as gold, too!) just having such bad information on home sales alone is enough to totally skew the picture.

And if you want to talk about being unable to keep up with spin, what about your post? You are rocking and rolling there, throwing in a bunch of crap that has absolutely nothing to do with what Obama did or did not know about the economy in 2008. What the heck does fwhat Debbie Schulz has to say about unemployment have to do with what Obama knew in 2008? You don't make sense.

Even aside from all the lying and cover ups and lack of transparency on the part of many industries, especially the financial one, I don't think Obama possibly COULD have known the extent of the problems when he took office because the collapse was still unfolding. How many people out there can you point me to who did? No one short of a psychic.