Obama: the biggest drag on U.S. economy

the president may have been talking about something else in his remarks:

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Wednesday said the sluggish housing market is probably the biggest drag on the U.S. economy right now.

Obama, speaking at the headquarters of the social networking giant Facebook, also said the time has past when Americans could buy a house with very low down payments.

He was responding to a question about the challenges faced by those with low and moderate income in getting home loans.

frankly, i thought he was talking about his lack of leadership in taking on the criminal banking cartels that nearly crashed the economy in 2008. no one was charged with any crimes, no one was prosecuted, and no one went to jail.

just this past week, sen. carl levin called out goldman sachs and deutsche bank for their role in the housing collapse. “The threads that run through all the chapters in the sordid story are conflicts of interest and extreme greed,” according to levin, as he charged that "Goldman Sachs executives weren’t truthful about the company’s transactions in testimony before the subcommittee at an April 2010 hearing. He said he would refer the testimony to the Justice Department for possible perjury charges...In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress.” Levin said.

the housing market isn't going to heal, and the economy isn't going to come back until the guys who ran it into the ditch, lied about it and ran away with their ill-gotten gains -- only to be bailed out by the taxpayers -- are held to account and put out of commission. that's what investors are looking for, as has been pointed out time and again in such worthy sources as washingtonsblog.com. who wants to get caught up in a system that's still run by and for the fraudsters who ripped off the system in 2008, and continue to operate largely without adult supervision?

obama may not have been steward at the time leading to the collapse, but between hank paulson and tim geithner, there was seamless continuity in the banking system, with the too-big-to-fail institutions being not broken down and sold off, but bolstered and encouraged to get even larger, in order to more efficiently hold the entire world economy hostage. this is a system that's built on a foundation of malignancy, and the contagion ensures that no one will want to allow himself to become infected with this disease.

i call it a drag when a politician refuses to call a spade a spade. when i look at obama, i think to myself, is this the bankers at work?