Republicans deny economic reality

Can you believe Republicans are actually trying to pin the blame on President Clinton for the drumbeat of bad economic news we hear day after day?

The U.S. credit-card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said.

The credit card is the second key source of consumer liquidity, the first being jobs, the Oppenheimer & Co analyst noted.

Reminder: George Bush is the only president to ever preside over an economy that has lost jobs, and now the people who probably need that credit card so they can fill up their gas tanks to hunt for jobs may be cut off.

Obama can't come to our rescue fast enough. We desperately need jobs in this country. High unemployment numbers continue to strain borrowers, leading to more foreclosures and delinquencies.

"The unemployment rate is highly correlated to consumer defaults," says Arpitha Bykere, an analyst at RGEMonitor.com, an economic consulting and research firm.

Well, duh! That's pretty simple to understand. If people aren't making money, they can't pay their bills, especially the big ones like mortgages. And according to Calculated Risk via the WSJ: Delinquent mortgages are set to nearly double in 2009.

TransUnion LLC ... predicted that the proportion of consumers with mortgages that are 60 days or more past-due will hit 7.17% in the fourth quarter of 2009.

That would be the highest level reached since the Chicago credit bureau ... first started tracking these statistics in 1992. It compares with an expected delinquency rate of 4.67% at the end of 2008. [...]

"There are a lot more loans that will be resetting throughout 2009 through 2011," says Ezra Becker, principal consultant in TransUnion's financial-services group, who notes that rising unemployment and depreciating home values are other contributing factors. "There may be an ongoing flow of consumers who may now be able to pay their mortgage but may not be able to a year from now."

Republicans willfully ignored warnings about the financial meltdown and now we're all paying the price, but you won't get them to admit they screwed up. It's never their fault.