Part 2 of a 5-part series…

[Click Here for PART 1]

Obama speech to The National Economic Council, March 2009

I want to talk this morning about our understanding of the roots of our current economic crisis, the rationale for the administration’s recovery strategy, and connect that recovery strategy to the central objective of sustained and healthy expansion. Economic downturns historically are of two types that different not just quantitatively, but qualitatively. Most of those in post-World War II America and probably in most other countries have been a byproduct of the monetary authority’s efforts to control rising inflation.

You’re going to actually have to click the research links to keep up with this one.

There is strength in numbers (quantity), but also in quality (the strength of the strength of those numbers). What matter in an economic downturn is not only how many [Black] people got burned, but what is the “good stuff” (the quality of those numbers) of people who got burned?

That leaves out all of the folks who were not well-versed enough not to get into debt that they could not afford, or who didn’t read the “fine print” and turned to holla. This left many capitalist whites with their hands on the money wheel with the impression that Black folks think that if they scream and cry loud enough about FRAUD! they can have their homes for free, and burn the mortgage debt. (Think: Eminent (or Imminent, if you like) Domain – .pdf.)

Not gonna happen in our lifetimes. Obama can’t even pull that rabbit out of his big ol’ Chicago, Texas-sized 10-gallon hat.

So what about appraisal reassessments and refinancing the debt at better rates of interest, or what some may refer to as “principle reductions”?

Great idea. If you can get the lender to fall for it.

They are better off packaging up your house and selling it off in a capital gains portfolio to other investors than refinancing a debt that someone could not afford in the first place.

Here is the trick:

The gist of predatory lending is that the lender or broker is going to make far more than they ever lose by capitalized ignorance. So, what you don’t know can, and will, hurt you in this case.

When they hedge bets on lending to people who can’t afford the house, they know they have about 2-7 years before they will be foreclosing on it. They tell you “the banks don’t want your house,” but in fact, they do. The idea is that they simply make more money “flipping” the house to another person who is as easily taken in by the “bling” of home ownership than if the debtor/homebuyer actually can afford to stay and does.

They preyed on ignorance. They still do.

So what was Obama to do? Tell THEM to kiss YOUR arss, take the home from them, put it in your name and cancel the debt?

Here is how LULAC addressed it later on, in 2013. They didn’t go for debt cancellation, they went for PRINCIPLE REDUCTION. Banco Americano didn’t want to hear that ‘principle reduction’ mess, but the other goal was restructured refinancing and jobs to make up for the damage – at twice what they were accustomed to being paid. ‘Big Bank’ damned sure ended up hiring a whole bunch of Hispanics/Latinos and paying them at LEAST $15 an hour plus benefits … KAPISH?!

President Obama went on to say…

But an alternative source of recession comes from the spontaneous correction of financial excess, the bursting of bubbles, deleveraging in the financial sector, declining asset values, reduced demand and reduced employment. Unfortunately, our current situation reflects this latter, rarer kind of recession.

Inflation, financial excess, bubble-bursting, deleveraging the financial sector, declining asset values, reduced demand and reduced employment. Hm. (Click on the link above and then come back here and rub your chin. We’re not done yet.)

He stated:

On a global basis, $50 trillion in wealth has been erased over the last 18 months. This includes $7 trillion in the U.S. stock market, $6 trillion in housing wealth. Inevitably these losses have led to declining demand with GDP and employment now shrinking at among the most rapid rates since the Second World War; 4.4 million jobs have already been lost since the recession began.

What, if anything, had changed for Black Americans between 1929 -the years of the Great Depression- and 2009, some 80-odd years later? [GDBP = Gross Domestic Black Product.]

At a current unemployment rate of more than 11-percent -twice that of the American unemployment rate overall- what, if anything, has changed since the Obama Administration? Or are we at least back to where we were before Bush the Latter was selected President?

Certainly, these declining but still extremely high unemployment numbers are nothing new for Black America. Our unemployment rates have rarely (I didn’t say ‘never’) dipped below the double-digits even when the economy was good.

At one point, just prior to and shortly after Obama’s administration took office, the Black unemployment rates had nearly shot up to a scandalous THREE TIMES higher than the national average. That meant that nearly one-third of the eligible working Black population was unemployed and unable to find work back when white America was flipping over ten-percent unemployment.

Sync: WE had already entered a true depression in Black America some four to five years or so before Bush the Latter left office and McCain came close to picking up where he left off.

Get on the boat with those economic enslavement debt shackles in place and get braced for that ‘rising tide’ that’s coming. Oh yeah.

President Obama said:

Our single most important priority is bringing about economic recovery and ensuring that the next economic expansion, unlike its recent predecessors, is fundamentally sound and not driven by financial excess. Without robust and sustained economic expansion, we will not achieve any other important national goal. We will not be able to project strength globally or reduce poverty locally. We will not expand access to higher education or make health care more affordable. And we will not be able to create opportunities for new small businesses to thrive, or, most importantly, to raise incomes for middle-class families.

Black America in the “Middle Class Sector“

Here is what is problematic with the Black middle class, because we can almost look around us and tell that the Black family has ‘moved on up to the East side’ considerably in today’s America, truly far from where it was in 1968. And, I may add, at some point prior to 2000, Black America was making some pretty darned good and considerable economic strides, too.

However, let’s take a look at the stance of the Republican Party in 2008, just before Obama was elected.

This is “as told by” came from the mouth of John McCain himself about his definition of “rich” from the stance of just income alone. Forget the assets and liabilities.

Get it? Got it. Good!

Hold up.

If Black people were and are still already behind white people on the income- to- wealth gap strata (and most of that is based on racism and classism, and nepotism, whether you want to admit it or not) — then where the hell does that leave even a six-figure salary Black man or woman when it comes to “middle class” status except IN THE POOR HOUSE?

Five million a year, really? How much money does the MIDDLE CLASS make in your neighborhood, John McCain? More than a million a year? Middle Class America, not Middle Class McCain, makes around $50-$80k a year, and more than a $100k is a RICHsonofaBITCH where WE come from.

The running “joke” (which really isn’t a joke) is that California is the only place in America where you can make a six-figure salary and still can’t afford a home. It’s not a joke. Seriously. Not unless you can afford to pay $1,500-2,500 a month for a piece of shyt apartment in L.A.

But let’s do the right thing and take Party partisanship politics out of this conversation, because we already know that if President Obama is getting on one surfboard, most of them are heading for the other one.

Seriously. Like little white kid’s parents telling to get out of the pool as soon as the black children jump in. Immature imbeciles.

President Obama said, in the style of JFK, “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Once you get past all of the misquotes in that Fox-oriented news(?)link above, you kind of get a strange off-handed insight into what Rush Limbaugh and his kind are actually saying. They are saying that President Obama bet that he could grow the nation’s economy from the middle out instead of the top down.

And they bet that he would lose that bet. [Hint: He didn’t.]

Limbaugh and his “folks,” were praying for that “Latter Rain Trickle Down” effect, badly. But it just won’t quite seem to cooperate with them this season, or this year. Or any other season or year.

Trickle down wasn’t meant to empower you, only themselves. We are seeing the end results of that now, and we saw where that financial philosophy got us as of Y2005.

The only question that remains is: Are we, Black folk, going to let them return to that dirty ‘trickle down’ trick of a lie in 2016?

Part 3… we’re talking solutions, now — not how we can get yesterday back. It’s gone.

Fool us once … from a Black American perspective.