It's Official: We're Screwed »
Posted By vizion 8 months, 3 weeks ago in Political NewsIt's over. We're officially screwed. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline -- a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy
itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.
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vizion
I'm just a lonely guy from the Lone Star State (Texas) who likes to run around town on my horse wearing my cowboy hat ...
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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This is an excellent article that many more here should read. In the end we have been screwed by the same kind of "wall street corruption" that caused out first Great Depression.
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FTA:
The most galling thing about this financial crisis is that so many Wall Street types think they actually deserve not only their huge bonuses and lavish lifestyles but the awesome political power their own mistakes have left them in possession of. When challenged, they talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.
"But wait a minute," you say to them. "No one ever asked you to stay up all night eight days a week trying to get filthy rich shorting what's left of the American auto industry or selling $600 billion in toxic, irredeemable mortgages to ex-strippers on work release and Taco Bell clerks. Actually, come to think of it, why are we even giving taxpayer money to you people? Why are we not throwing your ass in jail instead?"
But before you even finish saying that, they're rolling their eyes, because You Don't Get It. These people were never about anything except turning money into money, in order to get more money; valueswise they're on par with crack addicts, or obsessive sexual deviants who burgle homes to steal panties. Yet these are the people in whose hands our entire political future now rests.
Good luck with that, America. And enjoy tax season.-
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b-happy8 months, 3 weeks ago
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I just don't get how we can waste all this money and our government wants to make an even higher budget for next year leading us into even higher deficit. Doesn't it make sense that if most Americans have to be save and cut back on spending that our government should do the same? I just don't understand how borrowing money from China and adding more deficit to be paid with more interest can help AMerica. Where is the logic?
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Screw this AIG fiasco. It's just a cover-up to the real problem which is our own government being the real thieves in this mess. People talk about $200 million that AIG employees got while we still don't know where the $300 billion from the first bailout went. And congress won't even investigate it. WHY? Because we are seeing the biggest mob in American history steal our money in guise of saving or economy.
It's time folks. We have one issue the can unite Liberals and Conservatives. The thievery by our government of it's people. If we all focus our energy on stopping this then we will be a great country again.
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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I would add that it is not only financially that we are screwed. We have been on a destructive path for a long time now. we are going to have to demand a lot more radical solutions from the Obama administration to get out of the gigantic hole we have dug for ourselves.
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Obama and the System: The Economy and the Big Picture
None of the reporting I’ve seen on the “economic crisis” discloses to the American People what is at the core of the crisis... In 1948 George Kennan, one of the chief architects of post-war US foreign policy, famously stated the chief object of US policy in the post-war era: "We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. ... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.....” US foreign policy during the last half of the 20th Century conforms closely to Kennan’s statement of that policy’s core object...
The 60s and 70s conditioned Americans to expect a standard of living which Kennen and the ruling class knew could not be maintained over the long haul. They understood that world military dominance could only hope to delay the inevitable time of reckoning.
But military dominance required expenditure of vast sums. The problem became how to make these expenditures and at the same time maintain the consumption level of working Americans. The only solution was massive deficit spending...
By the 1980s the chief concern of the ruling elite became making sure that when the reckoning finally came it would be working Americans – not the rich – who would bear the brunt of the adjustment. That required transferring wealth from working people to the rich in advance of the reckoning. This has been the main projects of the ruling class since the election of Ronald Regan....
Personal income data suggests that the wealth transfer project of the ruling class has been spectacularly successful. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, income for the bottom half of American households rose six percent since 1979 but, through 2005, the income of the top one percent skyrocketed by 228 percent. The Wall Street Journal reports that the top .01% of the population, or 14,000 families, hold 22.2% of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 90%, or over 133 million families, have just 4%.-
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hyperbola8 months, 3 weeks ago
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While the income and wealth gap between rich rulers and working Americans continued during the Clinton, Bush 1 and Reagan Administration, wealth transfer during the eight years of the Bush 2 presidency has been unprecedented in scope and audacity...
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The so-called “mortgage crisis” represents some of the chickens coming home to roost. A good part of the consumption that was maintained by borrowing went into the housing market. The result was massively inflated prices.... The credit crisis which the mortgage crisis triggered is also an aspect of the reckoning. Fortunately for the ruling class, they had already used the two Bush, Clinton and Reagan Presidencies to make sure that the loss of wealth associated with the credit adjustment is born disproportionately by workers as opposed to rulers. True to form, however, the rulers’ greed caused them to overreach....
...If the voters had been less mesmerized by Barack Obama’s rhetoric they would have realized that the changes he favors are designed to buoy the existing economic system rather than to fundamentally reform it. The President subscribes to the proposition that these financial institutions are “too big to fail.” A real reformer would have concluded that institutions which are too big to fail need to be broken up.
Teddy Roosevelt harnessed the political tsunami of the Progressive Era to break up the trusts. The ruling class has worked tirelessly since then to build them back – albeit in new forms. We need TDR-type trust busting now while the ruling class is weakened and working Americans are impatient for change.
Will Barack Obama be our Teddy Roosevelt? So far the indications are that he will not.
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/03/01/obama-an... -
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humemacdonald8 months, 2 weeks ago
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Wow I knew the disparity was huge but I had no idea it was that bad! Visions of the movie Dr. Zchivago come to mind when the poor are singing outside the restaurant while the rich dined in lavish style, eventually mocking their crimes for justice.
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humemacdonald8 months, 2 weeks ago
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This is a fantastic article. Sumpt had the hard copy of it and so he pointed me to the online version. Everyone should read this article for a good background primer on what was going on behind the scenes. Time to increase our financial literacy. As the author states, "literacy is power".Without that knowledge we are becoming (even more so) essentially illiterate citizens unable to fully take part in the political realm.
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I remember reading an article years ago that stated that as the power of the average citizen increased in Britain, so too did the rise in secrecy legislation. As much as we are extolled to take part in the political process, elites don't really want us fully engage in the process as we might upset the "apple cart". -
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humemacdonald8 months, 2 weeks ago
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I agree that many in public office are just as liable for this mess as the greedy executives of these corporations. I hope everyone linked to the related article called the "Dirty Dozen"; I just wished they had put their addresses below each bio.
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