Letter: A different look at our 'Taxmageddon'

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October 30, 2012

Letter: A different look at our 'Taxmageddon'

Anonymous Gloucester Daily Times The Gloucester Daily Times Tue Oct 30, 2012, 01:33 PM EDT

To the editor:

I keep hearing about our current economic woes being caused by G.W. Bush, and a fiscal cliff coming due to his tax cuts.

Taxmageddon they call it.

Now I may getting old, but my memory still works pretty good. I seem to recall that, when G.W. Bush took office, unemployment was around 7.5 percent. I remember right after 9/11, seeing President Bush standing on the rubble of the twin towers, saying that anyone that was capable of work and wanted one would have one.

Not all that long after, the tax cuts were enacted, and by 2006, the unemployment rate had dropped to around 4.5 percent and was hailed as virtual full employment.

Then came the Democratic push for home ownership to all, and Congresssman Frank got his bill passed that opened the door for banks to issue what came to be known as NINJA mortgages — NINJA being an acronym for “no income, no job, or assets.” Everyone was able to get a Fanny Mae-backed mortgage, whether they could afford to repay it or not.

Housing went boom, and then came the bust, and the collapse of the economy into a recession. And at the end of President Bush’s term unemployment had risen, back to that 7.5 percent mark.

President Obama stepped into office with an economic anchor around his neck, the crumbling of the banks holding bad government backed mortgages, and our debt and deficit has climbed to the pinnacle of the cliff where it now stands —while the economy has sunk like a stone.

Now, it appears we are about to throw it off that fiscal cliff of taxmageddon. But before we give it that final push, I have a couple of questions:

The president has had the government take over all student loans. How many jobs were lost in the banking industry by that move. And where has all the interest paid by students to the government, gone?

Answers anyone?

GERALD MAHIEU

Langsford Street, Gloucester

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