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In order to understand our current mess, a little history is needed: back in 1971 under Republican Nixon, our monetary system -the Bretton- Woods system was in place-it required that our currency be backed by gold. Once Bretton-Woods was nuked, it meant the Federal Reserve (which is a consortium of PRIVATE banks) could print fiat money all day and all night.
Then the leverage numbers went crazy, just like during the Depression, banks were supposed to only be able to loan out money at about 12:1 meaning if they had one dollar in their vaults they could make loans of up to 12 dollars and collect the interest to make their money. When Fanny and Freddie blew up they had been leveraging up to 80:1 and all these criminal Bankstars were somewhere up there too.
There were also a few important laws, enacted after the Depression to prevent it from happening again, like Glass-Steagal, that were all nuked by OUR representatives (under Demon-crat Clinton) The banking industry thru gargantuan contributions basically could write their own rules-there are a number of other factors of course, but these three items: gold backed currency, tighter leveraging and repeal of Glass-Steagall were major contributors to our current mess.
I think it is a bit more complicated. The experts cannot agree and I am so far down on the food chain that it doesn’t really matter to me what the many causes are except as a casual object of amusement. I have a personal bias to believe that a weak, criminally ineffective president, a morally bankrupt Republican governing philosophy and the evil excesses of capitalism run amok are mostly to blame. Go ahead and blame Clinton if you like.He left office with a huge budget surplus which Bush immediatle began spending on a war and on ways to enrich his oil buddies.
It has been 8 years since that gruesome boob was elected and look what has happened. People get the government and economy they deserve.
Both parties serve the same Gods-I am merely saying these 3 items were huge, “allowing” capitalism to run amok and dont forget it was Clinton who signed off on NAFTA, turning Americans into Wal mart minimum wage slaves and bartenders. For 20 years our entire economy has been based on our spending, we dont make anything, dont save anything and have borrowed our way into the abyss.
I am happy to at least see some tea being thrown overboard-the people woke up long enough to realize that this bailout was wrong.And don’t forget Greenspan’s role in all of this! Some experts don’t expect the markets to recover until 2015!!! Read “The Creature from Jekyll Island” to get a read inside look at how our monetary system was hijacked going back to 1913!!!
I am reverting to the barter system…I mow your lawn with my tractor and you give me 20 lbs of fresh salmon.
True that…except in started in the early 1900’s when the Fed (read: the Enemy) was established.
Also our pal Clinton signed off on the Telecommunications act of 1996 that created those time honored stalwarts of journalistic integrity like Fox news and CNBC.
We are looking at revolution in the US. We have to let the markets collapse in order to survive. You cant cure an addict by giving them more drugs. Let the assets mark to market and let the dollar recover. Let private equity participate. Right now a foreign bank can get bailed out through creative transactioning under the bailout.
In Italy people are already bartering, just as they did during the War. At least in the country people have gardens, vineyards, they raise animals for slaughter, they make cheese. During the war the once-rich pigs were living in the cities eating rats while those in the country were fat and happy and bartering one item for something else. My husband and I already do some of this on a small scale. Fasten your seatbelts because the worst hasn’t happened YET!
Just absolutely AMAZING
We go to slept (Rip Van Winkle) with a surplus and wake up with a 9 trillion deficit and we blame??
Thank God for President Roosevelt and Social Security because if NOT!! I would be living with my Republican son.
Warren
The biggest scam ever is the credit reporting agencies. They should shut those monsters down once and for all. The very concept of credit scores is something that makes my stomach turn: You get a low score for not having enough debt; you get a low score for paying off your credit cards; you get a low score unless your debt to income ration is completely out of whack. What’s wrong with this picture? You’re not rewarded in this society for being frugal, not spending beyond your means, or not wanting to max out those high limits on your credit line. I haven’t had a credit card in almost 15 years. I pay cash for everything. I have one debt: the mortgage on one of my houses; the other house is owned free and clear. And I would bet that if I applied for a credit card I would get turned down because I don’t have enough debt. Doesn’t my total net worth count for anything? They brainwashed the general public to spend spend spend spend; stupid commercials about boosting your credit score are aired on TV all the damn time; you are told to continue to spend even if you have to borrow on your house to pay off the credit cards so you can spend more to boost your score, and then wow, the thugs with all the money steal what little money you have left, and there you are — up to to your eyebrows in debt and the crooks want a bail-out. Are our politicians smoking crack? And why aren’t people marching on Washington and demanding their money back? I guess if you don’t have any money, you can’t even buy a Greyhouse bus ticket to go protest. Ahhhhhh, now they have you where they want you, a totally indebted slave society. Whew.
It almost smells like a conspiracy….the ultra rich stay rich and the laborers keep them in cheesy-poofs. Why did the slaves build the pyramids? The roads in Rome? In retrospect, it’s hard to imagine, revolt-rebel there are more of us-we didnt then and we arent now….
Genghis Khan simply raped, looted and stole. He couldn’t conceive of making Wampum out of thin air.
Can anyone spell “Ponzi”? How bout a tough one, derivatives? And under this IPO/dot.com is…?? My gosh, nothing!!! Quick, get in fast, tell your neighbors, then get out.Amazingly we agree Maravilla, I knew it would happen sooner or later. Great rant but don’t say to much more I want this to last for awhile.
yes, it is amazing, Roark, that you agree with what I said. But if you disagreed, I would really worry about you. I watched a truly frightening documentary last night on PBS called “Critical Condition” that profiled 4 different families and their struggle to get medical care for their potentially life-threatening conditions. The stats that were quoted on-screen regarding how much our gov’t spends on frivolous items and the true cost of providing healthcare for everyone was astounding — they said it would cost less than $130,000,000 to insure EVERYONE. That’s a fraction of what we spend on an illegal war every month! Or how about that 377 people lose their medical coverage EVERY hour! Or that someone without insurance pays 2.5 times the cost for medical care as someone WITH insurance. There are now 44,000,000 people who are uninsured. Without insurance you cannot get medical treatment, and people who are uninsured are more likely to die from their illnesses than anyone with an insurance policy. The people whose lives they profiled were hard-working people who just happened to get sick, or laid off, or down-sized, or any of the other myriad ways in which you can lose that all-important coverage. It could happen to any one of us. Watching these people as they tried to get medical care actually made me sick to my stomach. Two of them died, leaving their families with monstrous medical debt; one actually got the surgery he needed — for free — because some high-faluting doctors at UCLA took pity on him; and the fourth person actually got another job with insurance after he lost a foot to diabetes, lost his home and everything else, all because he had no money for a prothetic device. When the program ended, the only thing I could be grateful for was that I have medical coverage, both in the States and in Costa Rica. And to think that the gov’t is ready to pony up $700B to bail out a bunch of greedy crooks when they could spend a fraction of that money and provide medical coverage for every person in America makes me so disgusted. It is the duty of the gov’t to provide for its citizens, and to protect the borders. These self-serving goons don’t deserve to hold public office, but if the citizenry isn’t smart enough to demand that these people do their jobs, which is working for their constituency, then yes, they deserve what they get! Anyone know what airfares are running to Costa Rica?? I think I’m ready to go home!
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