Because we are shoveling cash into bankers' pockets as fast as we can:

For the American economy – and for many other developed economies – the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. In the United States, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion. Extrapolating over the coming decade, the numbers would approach $5 trillion, an amount vastly larger than what both President Barack Obama’s administration and his Republican opponents seem willing to cut from further government deficits.

That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees. Such transfers represent as cunning a tax on everyone else as one can imagine. It feels quite iniquitous that bankers, having helped cause today’s financial and economic troubles, are the only class that is not suffering from them – and in many cases are actually benefiting.
Mainstream megabanks are puzzling in many respects. It is (now) no secret that they have operated so far as large sophisticated compensation schemes, masking probabilities of low-risk, high-impact “Black Swan” events and benefiting from the free backstop of implicit public guarantees. Excessive leverage, rather than skills, can be seen as the source of their resulting profits, which then flow disproportionately to employees, and of their sometimes-massive losses, which are borne by shareholders and taxpayers.

In other words, banks take risks, get paid for the upside, and then transfer the downside to shareholders, taxpayers, and even retirees. In order to rescue the banking system, the Federal Reserve, for example, put interest rates at artificially low levels; as was disclosed recently, it also has provided secret loans of $1.2 trillion to banks. The main effect so far has been to help bankers generate bonuses (rather than attract borrowers) by hiding exposures.

More here.

(via)

Labels: bank bailout, banksters, greed, just another outrage

Now you don't even have to fall behind on your mortgage in order to have the bank take your house. In fact, you don't even have to have a mortgage:

Charlie and Maria Cardoso are among the millions of Americans who have experienced the misery and embarrassment that come with home foreclosure.

Just one problem: The Massachusetts couple paid for their future retirement home in Spring Hill with cash in 2005, five years before agents for Bank of America seized the house, removed belongings and changed the locks on the doors, according to a lawsuit the couple have filed in federal court.

Early last month, Charlie Cardoso had to drive to Florida to get his home back, the complaint filed in Massachusetts on Jan. 20 states.

The bank had an incorrect address on foreclosure documents — the house it meant to seize is across the street and about 10 doors down — but the Cardosos and a Realtor employed by Bank of America were unable to convince the company that it had the wrong house, the suit states.
[snip]

According to the complaint, here is what happened:

Last July, the couple's tenant called the Cardosos in a panic. The single mother of two teenagers accused the couple of lying when they told her she could rent the house as long she wanted. Three men were there to clean out the house and change the locks, she told them.

Charlie Cardoso talked to a real estate agent for Bank of America, who said he would inform the company that it had the wrong house. The couple thought that was the end of the ordeal.

It wasn't. A landscaper Bank of America hired in August to mow the grass on the property broke a fence to bring in his equipment. The tenant got spooked and moved out just before Christmas.

On Jan. 5, a friend of the Cardosos who was helping the tenant pick up belongings found men putting a lock box on the front door. The workers said the house belonged to Bank of America. The friend called the Cardosos.

When Charlie Cardoso called the bank, a representative told him there was a mistake, the problem would be fixed, and he would get a return call. The call never came. The lock box remained.

Four days later, Cardoso and his son drove to Florida, missing the homecoming of another son who was returning from Iraq for a two-week leave.

Cardoso had to prove to police that he owned the house. The next day he broke in through a back door and used bolt cutters to remove the lock box. The water and electricity had been turned off, and pipes had frozen.

The couple filed suit 10 days later.

"Unclear"? I'd put twenty bucks on the table right now that if the Cardosos look at their credit score, it will have dropped a few hundred points.

Now cue the Usual Suspects screaming about "frivolous lawsuits" and "tort reform." If you aren't entitled to damages when a bank can take your house on which they don't even have a mortgage, get rid of all your belongings, and wreck your reputation and credit rating, then I don't know when the hell you are.

Life in this country is every day becoming more of a Terry Gilliam nightmare:

Funny how the Information minister looks a lot like Dick Cheney.

Labels: bank bailout, greed, movies, scumbaggery

Earlier this week, over 100 people lined up in Ridgewood, New Jersey to meet Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who successfully landed a US Air jet in the Hudson River last January. He was there for a signing of his book, Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters. One woman waiting on line said "He's everything that's good about America."

I wonder what she meant by that. Did she mean that what's good about America is that pilots like Sully and like Bryan Lawlor get demoted and have their pay cut in the middle class' race to the bottom? Or that the people who have our lives in their hands when we fly are moonlighting at Starbucks and collecting food stamps to make ends meet? I wonder if she thinks he's a good right-wing Republican because he wears a uniform, or if she knows that he appeared before Congress to testify in favor of better pay and working conditions for pilots. God knows the GOP doesn't know that Sully is a union guy; they recently tried to get him to run for Congress as a candidate in their I Got Mine And Fuck You Party.

Meanwhile, unemployment is up over 10 percent, even more Americans will lose their health insurance next year while members Congress dicker around about just how far up the rectums of insurance company executives they have to stick their noses in order to collect a nice paycheck for their next campaign, and the results of an economy which said that we don't have to make anything here and we don't even have to keep our knowledge work here are coming to fruition. The middle class is dying, but it's Party On Dude time on Wall Street:

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year -- a record high that shows compensation is rebounding despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street's pay culture.

Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did the peak year of 2007, according to an analysis of securities filings for the first half of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end by The Wall Street Journal.

Total compensation and benefits at the publicly traded firms analyzed by the Journal are on track to increase 20% from last year's $117 billion -- and to top 2007's $130 billion payout. This year, employees at the companies will earn an estimated $143,400 on average, up almost $2,000 from 2007 levels.

The growth in compensation reflects Wall Street firms' rapid return to precrisis revenue levels. Even as the economy is sluggish and unemployment approaches 10%, these firms have been boosted by a stronger stock market, thawing credit market, a resurgence in deal making and the continuing effects of various government aid programs.

The rebound also reflects growing confidence by some Wall Street firms that they can again pay top dollar for top talent, especially once they have repaid the taxpayer-funded capital infusions they received at the height of the crisis. So far, regulators and lawmakers have focused on making sure pay practices discourage excessive risk-taking, leaving to companies the question of how much is too much.

The Journal's analysis includes banking giants J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc.; securities firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley; asset managers BlackRock Inc. and Franklin Resources Inc.; online brokerage firms Charles Schwab Corp. and Ameritrade Holding Corp.; and exchange operators CME Group Inc. and NYSE Euronext Inc.

These are the same companies to which WE gave billions of dollars back in September 2007, when George W. Bush held us up at gunpoint and said "Gimme your dough or lose your house." And then millions lost their houses anyway. Does anyone still believe that this hasn't been some giant scam perpetrated on us? Does anyone still believe that our government represents us?

That's the tragedy of the "teabag" movement. The rage of the people standing on streetcorners with the signs showing Obama as Hitler are on to something, but even they aren't really aware of what it is. It's so much easier to buy into nonsense about Obama's birth certificate, or that he's a secret Muslim terrorist, or whatever crap gets thrown at them because it's not OK to use the "N" word than to realize that the very system that has been sold to them since Ronald Reagan talked about "a rising tide lifting all boats" is nothing but a massive transfer of wealth and standard of living away from them -- but not to the poor and the immigrants, but to those who already have more money than they could ever spend in 1000 lifetimes. How long have we heard blue-collar guys call into radio talk shows and defend massive tax cuts for the wealthy, saying "Rich people create jobs." During the Bush years, these "rich people" got billions in tax cuts, and where are the jobs? These people have been scammed the way Flounder got scammed by the Delta House guys in Animal House (and I'm not going to post that clip again even though I could post it every day and it would be appropriate). They fucked up. They trusted them.

When people who would gun everyone to the left of Ron Paul down if they thought they could get away with it start calling George W. Bush a war criminal at a Lindsey Graham meeting, you start realizing that left/right is not a continuum but a circle. And that if the "teabaggers" ever wake up and realize that the Scary Negro™ in the White House isn't the one making him poor, it's the system that has sold the current President, his staff, and every member of Congress except perhaps Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, and Alan Grayson, to the very corporations that have decided a middle class isn't in their best interest after all, the combination of the Angry Left and the Angry Right could be a potent force indeed. Because this isn't about red state/blue state, or liberal/conservative. It's about government of the people, by the people, for the people vs. a corporatocracy.

Labels: america R.I.P., bank bailout, rant

And you thought it couldn't get any worse: Now it turns out that thirteen companies who received Federal bailout money are tax deadbeats too:

At least 13 companies receiving billions of dollars in bailout money owe a total of more than $220 million in unpaid federal taxes, a key lawmaker said Thursday.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., chairman of a House subcommittee overseeing the federal bailout, said two companies owe more than $100 million apiece.

"This is shameful. It is a disgrace," said Lewis. "We are going to get to the bottom of what is going on here."

The House Ways and Means subcommittee on oversight discovered the unpaid taxes in a review of tax records from 23 companies receiving the most money, Lewis said as he opened a hearing on the issue.

The committee said it could not legally release the names of the companies owing taxes. It said one recipient of bailout money had almost $113 million in unpaid federal income taxes from 2005 and 2006. A second recipient owed almost $102 million dating to before 2004. Another was behind $1.1 million in federal income taxes and $223,000 in federal employment taxes.

"If we looked at all 470 recipients, how much would they owe?" Lewis asked.

Lewis said the panel plans to review tax records from other firms receiving federal money, but he was unsure if it would look at every one of them.

"We're not done," he said.

Banks and other companies receiving federal money were required to sign contracts stating they had no unpaid taxes, Lewis said. But he said the Treasury Department did not ask them to turn over their tax records.

The article doesn't say which administration's Treasury department decided not to demand tax records, but at this point it doesn't matter, because it's clear that Tim Geithner is committed to taking care of his own, and his own are the very Wall Street guys who caused this mess. And Barack Obama doesn't get a free pass either. He's the one who hired this guy, he's the one who keeps him, and he's the one who keeps guys like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Nouriel Roubini out on the sidelines while simultaneously handing the Republicans, who for the last twenty-eight years have been Wall Street's BFFs, a giant honking populist cover, however bogus it may be.

Then we have the symbolism of Citibank deciding that its CEO Vikram Pandit, who ran one of the biggest banks in the world nearly into the ground, simply must have a new $10 million executive suite -- that this is the best expenditure of $45 billion of taxpayer money. These people don't have a clue. And they aren't about to get a clue; not as long as Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke keep throwing cash at them and demanding absolutely no accountability.

Last night Barack Obama showed on The Tonight Show that he does understand what's going on. But there's only so long that he's going to be able to talk about "fixing the banks" while "the bankers" are continuing to do nothing with their bailout money but stuffing their pockets.

Labels: bank bailout, economic death watch, just another outrage

Elliot Spitzer is back and hes talking. The thought of this, no doubt, brings a small shiver to the boardrooms of some of the perps walking around trying to figure out how to hide the money this week. Today Edward Liddy testified that there have been death threats made to or about executives who received bonuses, so no names will be put on the record, but these anonymous players must know that the jig is up in the land of easy-money. Isn't what to do a no-brainer for these great Americans?

Spitzer may be as "disgraced" as any anonymous sex loving Republican loser, but America is known for its great second acts, and we may be witnessing the curtain rising on Spitzer's.
Today in Slate Elliot Spitzer has a short op-ed that speaks volumes about what is going on, and indirectly, if you follow the money, what happened to him. Plainly stated, Spitzer brings the AIG Ponzi Scheme one step closer to the revered establishment when he explains how the bailout money was funneled straight into the top players, with Goldman Sachs being the name that comes up again and again. These top players already got bailout money, and Goldman is looking at zero losses at this point, while regular Americans are being asked to make concessions or just plain losing everything. here are the biggest financial entities in the world, making billions on what appears to have been nothing but air traded back and forth, and having gutted the American people they are walking away with 100% return to their stockholders. In return AIG seems to think that its appropriate to pay themselves bonuses with the leftover funds. This leaves AIG still a wobbly shell with no plan of how to go forward, and the threat of the collapse of all of the world's financial markets still up in the air. So, what was all that bailout money for? Apparently to make sure that no one at Goldman or the other few top firms in the hand-out-line lost anything!

The relationship between AIG and Goldman goes back long enough that one would think that Goldman would know, having bought so much of this "insurance" or whatever it was, whether the "products" were ...er...real or feasible at all. Indeed, Goldman and AIG almost merged a few years ago, but Spitzer notes that the unknown black hole of AIG's business practices were probably what prevented it. Still, that didn't stop the incestuous dealings; it almost makes one think that this whole thing was a setup.

This is country that Spitzer is familiar with; he has been a terrible liability to entities that, under the Bush administration, were allowed to literally gut the country and its citizens. All of this seems to have been part of the Bush Administration's own Ponzi Scheme, which figured that the illusion of an ownership society, terrified of the "terraism" and steeped in the me, me, me, culture would look the other way while they finished clearing out the vault. Beyond that, it's clear that the media hyped housing bubble encouraged the house flip mentality and the idea that anyone could be rich. The idea of the lottery dropping on our own heads made us more protective of the rich, because we might one day be one....or look, we could be one with no money down, if we could just balance that on this, and flip that house!!

Every week came a new offer from our bank or credit card to just put the enclosed check into the bank for a $50,000 loan, unsecured and with a low APR!! Who would know that those same banks would go out of their way to cause a day or week default by changing the cycle or stopping refusing cards that went over-limit, in order to charge fees and raise the rates. Who could know that the fine print on all those little fliers talking about privacy rights and how they are selling all of our information, also said that by-the-way the interest rate is now 25% and the minimum payment has tripled! Default on that and likely AIG has sold insurance to your lending institution that should repay them for making the bad loan in the first place....no money down mortgages? No problem....its the same story. This is the ownership society and we all need to own alot of stuff. It is... what did he say?...uniquely American!

Spitzer was questioning this back in February 2008 when he wrote his Valentine to predatory lenders in the Washington Post. He detailed that Attorneys General across the country had entered into litigation in an attempt to protect the people of their states from predatory lending. The response from the federal government was astounding!

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

snip

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Now, they will say that they fought the consumer protection laws to actually protect the consumers and assure that they could get credit in the future. But actually, Americans could get credit; just credit that they were able to handle and could, by reasonable standards, pay back. This was just more of the same in hindsight. Looking back that all that the Bush administration has done, the beginnings of this disaster looks almost quaint, and not like an institutionalized foray into the dirty underside of criminal activity. There were quotas passed by the government as to who got the loans and the focus was on certain populations who would be helped into homeownership even if they couldn't maintain the credit. It was treated as some sort of fulfillment of the American Dream for people to own something, but really had more to do with the insurance on the loans than the people involved. The American dream is dead, as we well know, but what it was, way back then, was that people could afford to own a house and put their kids in college!

AIG sold insurance to the biggest entities in the financial world to cover the proliferation of bad loans. This insurance became so common that it was impossible that the lions of finance didn't somehow have an inkling that something was wrong. Didn't Goldman and the rest of these huge firms know something about the stability of an impossible business plan? Hadn't Goldman gone over everything in their bid to merge? And what of the government and their mandating of certain loans that were bound to go bad. There were people involved in these things, and its not like regular people understand the ins and outs of the financial industry. They rely on brokers to explain it to them. But these brokers were being forced to see a certain product to an unqualified population. How could they? Why would they? Those are questions for another time.

Spitzer has been fighting these guys and asking questions all along. Coincidentally, right after the WSJ editorial appeared on Valentine's Day 2008, Spitzer was caught up in what was an extremely unusual sting. So unusual is an investigation like this that it seems almost like it was a set-up; and considering where it all came from and how it all came down, it might well have been.

It seems that Spitzer's bank was investigating expenses under the auspices of the newer Homeland Security laws of the Bush administration. Greg Palast wrote about this compellingly, and in light of how the whole thing is shaking out now, and what Spitzer said back then about this financial mess and what he tried to DO about it, Palast had a pretty good early grasp on what had gone down. So now, with Spitzer poking his head up from the underground of "healing his family," at this most compelling of moments, its probably worthwhile for Americans to screw their heads on straight and forget the details of the hooker, and look at what Spitzer was working on when he was taken down. We might all find ourselves wanting to thank the egotistical crime fighter who cant keep it in his pants.

I am no apologist for breaking the law, and usually its the highest and mightiest that fall the hardest. But when the mainstream is showing us the shiny object, we must resist the temptation to succumb to our base natures and try to see the bigger picture. There was never a real case against Elliot Spitzer, and no charges were filed. The release of embarrassing personal information was at the discretion of the Bush Administration's Justice Department.

Why was this information released? It wasn't that he was a crusader against such crimes, because many who have been caught were exactly the same and their information has been kept quiet. It wasn't that the press is all so great in their investigative journalism, either...because we know they're loathe to get off their asses if they can just read a talking point; as is evidenced by the reportage on this case.

Palast:

Not all crimes lead to federal bust or even public exposure. It’s up to something called “prosecutorial discretion.”

Funny thing, this ‘discretion.’ For example, Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, paid Washington DC prostitutes to put him in diapers (ewww!), yet the Senator was not exposed by the US prosecutors busting the pimp-ring that pampered him.
Naming and shaming and ruining Spitzer – rarely done in these cases - was made at the ‘discretion’ of Bush’s Justice Department.

Or maybe we should say, 'indiscretion.'

Bush's Justice Department.
Its clear to me that all things being equal, this was at the very least, not a transsexual streetwalker a la Hugh Grant, and it was all very ho-hum and quiet. So, whatever the problem that leads to this sort of behavior, I don't want to know about it...its personal, so just walk on by...nothing to see here.



Welcome back Elliot Spitzer. I hope we hear more from you very soon...your voice is needed in this matter.


c/p RIP Coco

Labels: AIG, bank bailout, Bush Administration crimes, lies, spitzer

Our good friend Richard Blair of the All Spin Zone is traveling today to AIG headquarters in NYC to make some noise (look for the guy in the leather jacket with the sign that says GIVE IT BACK MR LIDDY!! ) If you're around there go and find him!...and Richard, text if you need to get bailed out! Security is tight in the big city!
He's not the only one, apparently....It seems that protests are popping up all over the place, and they seemingly stem mostly from guys like Richard who have just had enough and who want to jump into the thick of things in this drunken town.



The new Tea Party movement is gaining momentum, and as the bailouts come down with little reasonable explanation or accountability, the turnouts are growing. If this was the thing that was gonna get people into the streets then so be it. I always thought that it would be tent cities and people dying in the streets, which is likely not so far off. We witnessed Hurricane Katrina and were so numbed that we just watched in horror and maybe sent money. Some went there immediately, but not enough in light of what was going on and the government's non-response. It had to be something that effected us all; and here we are. The thing is that this is all so blatant and corrupt that its almost unbelievable!

Ive been struggling to understand the details of the AIG thing, and its all so illogical that I cant quite believe that the government has given them anything. Why are we bailing them out? I'm hearing alot of this hold-your-nose-and-bear-it talk because its necessary for the world economy...? When it becomes clear that bonuses are being paid out at the same rate as before, and that its business as usual. Are we bailing them out so that they can just continue on with what they were doing that got us into this mess? How are they going to go forward? and what gives them the idea that they don't have to answer to us?

Here, thanks to the Cognitive Dissonance blog is some explanation of the swindle via post and video:



I'm working on this, and I hope that I don't end up with some novella length post about the ins and outs of this nonsense, because it seems that we really have little more to do than to take to the streets; and it occurs to me that people will be spurred to action by short bursts of easy to understand facts about this rather than a long lament.

Its just all too much.


c/p Brilliant at Breakfast

Labels: AIG, bank bailout, crime, lies, mortgage crisis

I have doubts about America moving forward without investigating what happened during the past 8 years and addressing it strongly through the laws of the land. I've long thought Bush and Cheney should have been impeached; pretty much from the start, and at least by now that some special prosecutor should be looking at what happened. The toothlessness of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of them, was and is maddening with that old line about moving forward and not dwelling in the past; we wouldn't want to appear like we're dwelling on...er...laws, the constitution, or anything like that....it seems like they all swing between feeling some helplessness about being able to actually get the support they need to investigate fully, and the old forget-the-past-and-move-on line. I guess that with the media the way it is, we always stand the chance of being looked at as dwelling on something that's over and done with; now what are we gonna do?

Well, get with the program or get outta the way; these days I'm all about the blame, the ounce of flesh and rehashing the past, who pays and who slips past, who ends up in jail, at the Hague, or crudely hung while dirty Americans in bars pump their fists in the air. This is about creating a record so that future generations, hell the generation growing up now, see that no one is above the law and that America doesn't operate this way. Blindly moving forward just to create space between us and the crimes serves no one in the long run. It does maintain the status quo, which is more comfortable for alot of people, but isn't that what got us into this in the first place? The questions once asked in high school and college level civics and government classes have all fallen by the wayside in an educational system that is barely able to teach the 3 R's, and without the knowledge of how things are supposed to work, people expect less from their elected officials. Punishing those who break the law is less about a pound of flesh and more about preventing a repeat by looking hard at who we've become and who we want to be; how far have we strayed from the founder's ideals of who we might become. You don't get to erase the past 8 years....ignoring the past is guaranteeing that we will repeat it.

The news of interrogation tapes from Guantanamo being destroyed during the Bush years is no real surprise to me, but news of existing evidence being destroyed by the last vestiges of the CIA is troubling, to say the least. More scary are the newly released Bush memos detailing that what was supposedly the insane ramblings of conspiracy theorists were not so far from the truth. If Bush and Co. had their way, America could easily have been turned into a police state in which the president could order a lockdown of all citizens at any time, and a suspension of our rights. This is dangerous stuff, and if they ever were trying to deny that innocent people were seized and renditioned to other countries, held and tortured, well, these memos are the groundwork by which all Americans could lose any semblance of due process or privacy. The government would only have to decide that the country was in some sort of danger. It could happen in committees where top officials hold up vials of white powders and show tubes and maps...oh, wait a minute, that already happened.

This material is a smoking gun, and its not like its the only smoking gun out there...the Bush administration boldly went about their business above the law because they really believed that they were above the law. The question is, can a country of laws continue on any reasonable path towards healing if we skip over these criminals and the evidence right in front of us? Shouldn't we at least be afforded a special prosecutor to just go over things a little?
The shredders are whirring somewhere in the bowels of the gulags where shit went down....what are we going to do about it? Why hasn't Obama put this all in a state of investigation, frozen so that no more evidence could be destroyed? Where are the special prosecutors?

I'm waiting to see what the Obama line on this is gonna be, and I'm not all so positive about it. And so far he seems to be distancing himself from what the law folks are doing, which is neither here nor there. He did make the memos public without much fanfare, and it seems like any real lawbreaking will be responded to with an actual investigation rather than a pardon, but, I'm not sold. As much as I like his populist way of coming to the American people and laying it out on the table that we have a choice of who we want to be. This is a choice that we have to make and stand behind before our doors are kicked in and our treaties are canceled at our leader's discretion.

I love to see Obama speak, and its refreshing not to have to spit at the TV or run to turn down the sound of the voice of that sneering madman, but I can already feel the malaise of the thousands of people out of work or working 3 jobs and barely making it, just coalescing. It seems like we're in good hands and we're all so busy, so why not just let them try to handle it as best they can?

Regardless of how selfish we want to be in keeping more money in our own accounts, it must be clear that what the Bushies had in the works was the actual dismantling of our system in the guise of a tax break or a stim check. I've lost all faith in any politician actually standing by an idea as big as prosecuting an ex-President and an ex-Vice-President, but in my hopes and dreams I envision a world where a leader is bold enough to just say fuck it and throw politics to the winds to do whats right. Those sorts of leaders usually go down in history, but they don't necessarily have long lived careers (or lives for that matter.) There is a tremendous fear in the government that if we start prosecuting wrong doers, we may be knocking on alot of doors; but isn't it time?

This past weekend I turned on Sunday's This Week with George Snuffleupagus, and saw that no less than Karl Rove was on the panel. There he was sitting at the round table, spouting his beliefs and ideas, as if hes not a criminal and as if George and every other idiot there hasn't been masquerading as a news person at one time or another, or at least as a public servant. How does it work that this guy gets his great American second act before he even responds to the subpoena? How can news people sit on a round table with him as if nothing is wrong? Who are they inviting next, Bernie Madoff?

Even Arianna could not believe her eyes, and thank god in a way, for the netroots and all of my politically astute friends out there, because when this whole thing began, back in the dark days of Bush's first term, I felt so crazy and lost and alone. But with the gelling of the force there, I knew that as much as I was shaking my head and saying no-no, so were thousands across the country opening their laptops to begin the day..."today I saw a living nightmare commenting on my president's bailout package, as if he has anything to say to us ever again!"
As Arianna said, this is no way to keep your viewers at a time when TV is on the way o-u-t.

Just because Rove has a certain amount of expertise in advertising and the old bait and switch, does not mean that he should be given a platform. He sat at the right hand of someone who may be one of the worst criminals in history. Why is he being elevated like this? I guess that its because the punditocracy seems to want to normalize him and therefore lessen their own guilt, as well as keep their bridges to the bad guys because it's likely they will be in power again at some point...I don't know anymore; none of it makes any sense.

So, he gets to sit there all nice and social and give commentary on Obama's strategies? There is something wrong with that picture and I'd prefer to not have him on the screen when I turn on the TV on a bleary Sunday morning. They've had their say and they actually lost big time on the merits of whats happened. So its safe to say that the old Rovian terrorizing of the masses, until they cant think straight or look at evidence, is over. I have no interest in his ideas...not at all.

Time Magazine isn't my favorite read. I tend to shy away from those weekly rags that encapsulate what they think you need to know of the news. They do, however, have something interesting online from time to time, and I caught something this week that I found so interesting that I had to...um...borrow a copy from the gym so I could read it in hard copy. Its the Faith Healing issue, and it has, by the way, a great little piece on how boomers are taking over FaceBook...kick ass!! (And if I hadn't un-friended my niece I would send that link to her, because she seems to think that the thing belongs to the college aged kids with no spending power....as if anyone has any anymore.) But, the piece that got me was about The 25 People to Blame for the Economic Mess We're In., and its lineup of the expected suspects, most of whom I won't go into here because you can follow the link over there if you're really interested in what Time thinks, (and I'm ultimately not).... its the attitude that gets me.

At Time they see fit to barely scratch the surface of the problem, and present it as a faux lineup, with heads crudely pasted on fake bodies or some such silly photoshop. There is Bush and a whole mess of movers and shakers that we may or may not know. And smack dab in the middle is YOU, the American Consumer; come on now, take your medicine! You got yourself into this and now that you cant get yourself out of it you're gonna complain and ask to be bailed out? Wait a minute!

I'm going to try to explain what I've had circling for days only to gel today in light of old Karl sitting there, and I'm gonna do it without slanting things towards my own socialist tendencies and without letting the American consumer off the hook:

Americans are bombarded with advertisements that imply that the American Dream is just a credit card away. We are offered cards upon checkout at every store from Target to Tiffany's, and promised 15% off our purchase that day if we sign up. Most of us have many of these cards, not realizing that they are mostly owned by a few big banks (aka Chase usually...Chase owns just about everything these days.) We've been fed a line and promised certain things that are explained in small print, too small to read, and we've signed up gladly because next week's paycheck will surely come and we'll surely pay that off. Of course the interest rate is 21% or more, and if we don't get the entire balance paid that month, or within the designated period, the 15% we saved is only an offset of that for the first month. Everything is like that these days; nothing is simple as things were even 20 years ago when I was putting things on layaway and not picking up the merchandise until I had paid it off!

The get-it-now, need-it-now culture has sprouted out of nowhere, but it couldn't have happened if the banking industry hadn't become more and more reliant on the consumer credit part of their business. It used to be hard to get a credit card, and then suddenly every kid was getting offers and you didn't have to have an income or a credit record. You can shake your finger at the people who signed up for mortgages they couldn't afford and didn't understand, and people who lost track of the money needed to support those plastic cards, but not without noting that deregulation has allowed for the biggest advertising schemes in history to dupe us all into believing that we could have it all! And more, that ALL was not good enough. If you had the house you needed the bigger house....if you had the bigger house you needed to win the lottery. The American Dream has become more, more, more; and I'm sorry, but that little secure job and comfy life on the cul-du-sac just wont cut it. That's because we are AMERICA!
Look comrade, at a point, you gotta decide whats the norm, and if what you aspire to, like the rest of us, is winning the lottery, well, chances are stronger that you'll get hit by lightening. So maybe its time to set out some basic norms, so that we aren't struggling to achieve what has been presented to us and what is unachievable.

All of American life has become predatory...how many of us can really make it on just our incomes without relying on credit from time to time, or all the time? Its not just that credit is an integral part of the capitalistic landscape, its that our culture has turned on itself and somehow we find ourselves in a situation where it matters little if the purchaser/borrower loses everything, so long as the predatory bank is bailed out.

Now, that predatory bank that I owe a certain amount to on a card has been sending out fliers. I often find some blowing down the street and they sit unread in garbage cans. Those fliers, it turns out, say that the cycle is being made smaller and the minimum payment is being raised. At that point, if like me, you have automatic payments set up from the bank and you're not checking all the time, you're screwed! The deal is this, you get called on the day you're late, and as you're saying that your payment isn't due till next week and rifling through the stack of bills, they offer you a deal to pay on the phone for a small fee of $14.95....then, since you're late, they charge $39 as a late fee. Oh, and that thing they used to do when you went over your limit where your card was denied? Most of 'em don't do that anymore; instead they allow you to go over your limit and then they charge you an overlimit fee!...oh, and by the way, in the other little flier with tiny letters that you may or may not have gotten in your junk mail there was mention of how they were lowering your limit....so chances are you don't know that a card that had $1000 on it actually now has half that! And one more thing, your card holder bank has just bought all the little banks and they now own all your store cards...and they've reported you to the credit bureau and in response to all of this your limits are raised, your minimum payment is raised, your credit is lowered and you cant get a consolidating loan to try to make sense of this because your score was lowered for any one of 3 or 4 reasons which range from just silly to insane! Welcome to my world!

Of course, the whole thing is stupid and we shoulda known, but how many of us are able to read the fine print legalese and fight the brainwashing....the brainwashing...yes, I said it! Besides that and more important is that many of us have been putting groceries and medical bills on these cards...forget about if there is an emergency and a huge hospital bill.
So, I take responsibility for my own credit, and Ive never paid late until they started to change the date regularly, but obviously Ive only paid a day or few late and I always paid much more than the minimum! Who stops them from from doing whatever they want? You know, you can refuse these changes but then they are gonna shut down all of your cards and call in the loans...and remember, they own all the little cards too! This is all AFTER we, the tax payers, bailed them out!...now they want more! You know what? why not let them fail to hell and see what happens?
Credit may be the cornerstone of business from the newspaper stand on the corner to the biggest banks, but there is no reason not to bail out the businesses that have a need to be guaranteed to their vendors or whatever. It sure would be cheaper, wouldn't it?

Meanwhile, back to my Sunday morning hate fest, and seething by now, Ive got to ask: Who is the king of brainwashing and deregulation? Karl Rove! The same Karl Rove who now gets to sit on a panel on Sunday morning and discuss Obama's bail-out stimulus plan! The same lying cheating neocon who so firmly believes in that odd somehow bigger "less government," privatization, and deregulation of everything, until the financial dealings of this country are more like the wild west than a civilized society. That's the same Rove who masterminded the terra threat and the go shopping to support your country lines. There has not been a time when Rove wasn't sitting at the right hand of the president, and therefore he doesn't deserve a place on the roundtable until hes cleared, even if its a kangaroo court set up just to smooth the transition. He has refused to answer a subpoena on many occasions, and now hes saying he will but there are always rules and things that cant be asked in the interest of national security. Well, I'm not feeling very secure, are you?

I'm also not so happy to note that he does not appear in Time's lineup of who to blame....how about looking at him as being criminally culpable in the government's disinformation campaign, causing the disassembly of how we had previously handled money in this country? Is it legal to lie and propagandize until there is little left of this house of cards? And is this someone who should be advising us on the quick progress of Obama, who is at least doing something; something that Rove didn't suggest that his buddies in the oval office do in the last few years.

This whole thing and who is to blame is really not so hard to figure out; just follow the money, pundit chairs and book deals. If the game was to loot the country and then hand the war and ruined economy over the the democrats, and then float that its Obama's problem and try to even tie it to Clinton, as if Bush had nothing to do with any of this, well then Rove is a fucking genius! The catch is that 80% of Americans believe that Obama inherited these problems from Bush, so its apparently gonna take a little more than what Rove has been trying to dish in the talking points, along with disgusting flunky "party leader" Limbaugh. So, maybe Americans are wising up and maybe, just maybe, we're sick to death of being lied to.

So, who is to blame? it seems to me that every damned bit of this economic crisis can be traced back to that day that Reagan was standing at a podium saying that large corporations don't need the government to police them! They don't need regulation; they can regulate themselves, by god!!I remember staring in disbelief at the man basically carrying out what had been planned for a long time, and what was the beginning of the end of the American Dream.

Government involvement or disinvolvement in how money has been handled in this country brings me to a very interesting piece on 60 Minutes last Sunday night. It seems that one Harry Markopolos figured out that Bernie Madoff was a fraud and he told the SEC quite a few times over many years, and they didn't investigate properly. It was quite straight forward actually, and the hedge funds in Greenwich that were making money hand over fist by putting client's money into Madoff's fund, should have realized something was amiss. Its impossible for a fund to not ebb and flow with the market, and its impossible that no one noticed that something was wrong. What seems clear is that those who were able to pull a profit from Madoff, kept raking it in in an impossible scenario that was as intoxicating as it was a ticking time bomb. Any money person could see the few things that Markopolos found, and the SEC should have looked. Madoff's neice had married an ex SEC man, and he was heard to say that he had ties with the officials. There are huge conflicts of interest in every area of this, and beyond that Madoff is such a sociopath that he is unable to even feel the pain of the not so rich people who thought they were secure only to end up having to go and work menial jobs to live day to day, its clear that lax enforcement puts a big piece of the blame on the government that we fund to police these things.

New York Magazine has a great article on Madoff as The Monster Mensch, which is telling in its dissection of the making of someone so removed from what he has become, and one who clearly is a sociopath. But what interested me was the depiction of Madoff as an climber, an outsider, who upon achieving the dream and being in a position to hold court with some of the most influential people in the world of finance, still was the scrappy boy from the streets. He retained a sort of anger at the people for whom he had made fortunes, and felt "ennobled" that he had worked his way up and enabled these people to have such fine lives. Maybe the resentment was a necessary first step in the break from ethical reality, in that things would go south or had already gone south, and so a bit of anger and resentment made it all the easier to fabricate his detailed statements and lie so convincingly, while acting like he cared for his clients and employees so much. As an outsider, he created an exclusive club that people were so happy to be in that they didnt question. It reminds me of Stevie Rubell standing at the velvet ropes of Studio 54, a little balding guy who never really fit in, controlling who would get in and who wouldnt; always there was that underbelly of resentment for people not of whatever the code was for that night....the shoes wrong, the chains wrong, the party mix wrong....and regardless of the law breaking that went on inside, once you were in, you werent gonna rock the boat.

Madoff is in the lineup of Time's 25 people to blame for the financial crisis, you see, along with Chris Cox, who was the Chief of the SEC, and who didn't investigate the allegations of wrongdoing in the Madoff case. Even as Cox claims to have lacked the authority to do much, as if his hands were tied by deregulation, he still didn't stand up and blow the whistle....There were reports of wrongdoing all over the place, not just in Madoff's case, but the SEC lacked authority to investigate? It seems to me that a few people were blowing whistles and the masters of the universe who were running these supposed "regulatory" agencies lacked the balls rather than the authority. It seems that the concern over and over these days is in one's own career and future rather than ethics and logical decision making.

The money in many of these cases has disappeared, but yesterday the paper noted that Switzerland holds some 147,000 American accounts where money has been stashed tax free. Of those they will only divulge a few in current hearings amongst a particular 52,000. How can that be ethical? You know what? UBS is one of the biggest businesses in my town, having gotten huge tax breaks to build its headquarters here, and I dont see why they should be given such a huge footprint in the US if they are harboring the money of tax cheats and criminals. It has to do with Swiss law not allowing Swiss employees of the banks to implicate themselves in crimes, but shouldnt foreign companies operating in the US have to follow our laws and not be screwing us over offshore? I say shut them out of America until they pony up the names of all of the cheats. I think we might see many familiar names on those accounts, and we might recover some of the missing Madoff money as well. Oh, and those big financial operations that make Stamford the second largest trading floor in the country; operating on tax breaks meant to bring jobs to the area. Those operations are laying off thousands of people in little bursts. So, what are we getting and who is protecting our citizens?

This country is rife with really sick people. It seems that no sooner have the laws been softened than the movers and shakers begin some descent into a convenient madness that is really just a form of what happens when the Freudian id loses its social restraints. I have long marveled at the human brain's ability to twist situations to a point where it makes perfect sense to resent and blame the victim as you steal them blind. The unfettered id is not a good thing, but it is a pretty transparent thing, just like the accounts that cant possibly make the return they are making. It is the thing that we, as human animals, have been working against, towards a more ordered and kinder society. It is the animal urge to fight for resources as if they were limited in this forum where the people in question have more than any group could ever need. Either we just admit that we migrate and kill each other for resources, or we try to keep up this facade of the good churchgoing populace...the seedy underside is always there no matter what part of history you look at. The common thread is always that we strive to be better and to end violence and unfair tactics that leave part of the population out in the cold in a way that is well removed from the Darwinism of yesterday, before the decks were stacked against certain groups from the getgo.

And who are the leaders in the unfettered department; the inability to understand your effect on others, and to see how big of a footprint you have, or the air that you suck out of a room? The most ill of them all? Rush Limbaugh is claiming that prize proudly as he opens another button on his shirt because its s-e-x-y! In the following clip Janeane Garafalo and Keith Olbermann discuss the incredible pathos there, and what is great is that its just so clear that Limbaugh is a lonely, ugly, guy who is out of the loop, abhorrent, self loathing, and so even in the middle of adoring fans, he finds a way to hate, and a way to soak up the bucks; while also furthering the cause that allows him to profit off of the misfortune of our country. Rush just serves as an example of the the other half that I have struggled to understand for so many years.
Its the Rovian hook and lie, the hate in their eyes that gives permission to all of the writhing ids, barely held in check out there, to go for it. Its a devilish wink and nod that lets the underbelly of our society know that its OK to take what your instinct tells you are resources, and not to feel much empathy for anyone.
The fascinating thing is that with these Bush neocons, the KKK hood is off. They boldly display themsleves so that their employers will know where to send the checks. hate sells in this culture...and maybe it would be about time to ask ourselves why? Let them throw back the freedom of speech argument at us all they want. At some point we have to stop trying to be so politically correct and call a spade a spade.




Christian religions are based on the all-men-are-born-bad model, which seems to allow for alot of straying and repenting, with forgiveness by the ultimate authority a given bonus, even for the worst crimes. Darwinists see the prehensile tail and layers of pre-reptilian brain telling the human man to survive and to excel, and whats so wrong with that? Its understandable and it allows for a certain acceptance of the crimes committed in the service of resources and land. Its a hard cruel world out there in the animal kingdom, and as much as you can dress up a chimp or the human race for that matter, eventually their instincts take over. Its very hard to tell a billionaire that he has enough money, because its not about money anymore; its about pounding your chest and peeing on the edges of your territory.

Fundamentalist religion seems to be about one angle or another that allows a group to be exclusive of those who might otherwise be welcomed as a brother; meantime denying the survival of the fittest and espousing the survival of the one that follows the convenient word....and of course if you stray there is the forgiveness as well....but the whole thing seems to end in a fiery pit anyway, with a heaven goal, so all bets are off. Strange that so many of the other 50% have embraced the fringe of the fundamentalist creed.

The deregulated government and waning culture seems to ultimately free the barely contained id usually contained by the weak vessels of theory proven wrong, to wreak havoc on those who might trust in the logical and empathetic order of things. You would thinkthat in absence of some superego, a social structure might come forward to keep this all in line so that no one gets hurt. Where is the superego or even a little regulation? When did it become OK and even just part of business to state that you screwed people over but it was lawful? If the conflict of interest is between the patient in the hospital and the shareholders....when does it stop? when you've denied care because your first responsibility is to the business dealings of the shareholders? The answer is that it doesn't stop, and it may signal the end of the cycle of pure unfettered capitalism...which might mean a sharp turn back with a new administration or possibly that a tipping point has been reached and the whole thing is gonna come crashing down.

We live in whats left of the shell of a country looking over the fallout of the last 8 years, while those who are not served whatsoever by espousing the neocon ideas of yesterday, continue on in what is the cognitive dissonance of the conscious colliding with whats gone on, or just plain old-fashioned denial. Its sick and it appears sick, even to regular old conservatives looking at what has become of their party. I dont want to play games anymore; I'm tired. There is no status quo in this ever changing landscape of the spotty history of our country. There is only us deciding who we want to be and shutting down the bad influences out there. Bad begets bad, and anger begets hate and blame.... Short of using our laws, damn the torpedos, we return to the gutter that we barely have emerged from.

Who's to blame? You tell me...


Time's 25 people to blame for the financial crisis Vote on their level of guilt



c/p RIP Coco

Labels: bank bailout, credit card industry, crime, Karl Rove, liars

Whats it gonna take to open the eyes of Americans in denial?

Frank Rich scratches that surface, in his Sunday Op-ed, What We Don't Know Will Hurt Us, and all that's clear is that its all unclear.

No one knows, of course, but a bigger question may be whether we really want to know. One of the most persistent cultural tics of the early 21st century is Americans’ reluctance to absorb, let alone prepare for, bad news. We are plugged into more information sources than anyone could have imagined even 15 years ago. The cruel ambush of 9/11 supposedly “changed everything,” slapping us back to reality. Yet we are constantly shocked, shocked by the foreseeable. Obama’s toughest political problem may not be coping with the increasingly marginalized G.O.P. but with an America-in-denial that must hear warning signs repeatedly, for months and sometimes years, before believing the wolf is actually at the door.

Its starting to sound to me like Americans are slowly backing towards the real rude awakening, and no matter how many years of warnings there have been, the evidence laid out on the table in the hard light of day, and our crushing need, need, need to hold on to the dreams and possibilities; the American Dream, with all of its boring stability, yet promise of how things could change with one lottery ticket or game show win, the reality of the situation is so bad that even considering the alternative of a normal life of making ends meet causes many to cling hopelessly to the chance rather than live in the reality. Its not the safety from the terra that we really want, its our 15 minutes of fame! That's because we're special! I don't know if we know what we want, really. With all that information out there, it seems that we have become more provincial in our tastes than ever. Maybe the menu is too big.

Rich talks about our "cultural pattern of denial," as if it just came about on its own and wasn't born of a system that purely and clearly doesn't work. Yeah, I'm talking about capitalism; the unregulated brand. American Dream Capitalism can only flourish, and then temporarily, in a world where credit companies go hand in hand with advertisers, hand in hand with retailers, paying less and less to workers, who then need more credit to fulfill what the advertisers tell them to want. The media claims that they are just giving the American people what they want, but I don't think that its possible to know what you want with no clear idea of whats out there, relatively, in a world full of differences and possibilities. Its all a big manipulation for which each generation will blame the one before it, but clearly, we have a skewed world view anyway, so infighting isn't going to help. The truth may be that the sham of the American Dream is that its not really enough because we are so spoiled that even if we don't personally need that fame, we need to watch others gaining and losing it on our large screen TV.

The fear that we are traipsing down the path to socialism is very real to many for whom capitalism has done little. Why is that?
We are, in fact, a semi-socialist country with what little that really works here being part of that redistribution thing that is so hated. Most people knee jerk about keeping the money they earn and yet pay private insurance companies a premium level premium only to have to do battle when push comes to shove, and live at the mercy of which doctor takes which.

I'm not against everyone making a fair or comfortable living, but its clear to me that if regulation stopped the money up top from all traveling upwards, like we used to have a rule of thumb to put a certain amount of profits back into the business, and then pay back into the workers, community, society, and the infrastructure, maybe we all would be a little safer and happier.


The problem is really more of a sociological phenomenon in which rather than being angry at the rich, we direct our anger towards the poor for taking up our resources with their neediness. The truth of this is far from whats disseminated and somehow billions more in corporate welfare is OK, but feeding children is not. Its taken so many, many years of this manipulation for the tables to finally turn. It's taken home movies of gold fixtures and multi million dollar birthday parties, empty accounts where hedge funds were supposed to be, and no bid contracts, carried out by crony companies with ties to the government, (to put it mildly;)...companies that carried out their duties so negligently as to feed tainted water bottles to our soldiers fighting their war of profit, build buildings in which pipes burst and shit dripped from ceilings, and that managed to lose truckloads of cash...truckloads...all of this with evidence in front of the American face. Evidence like videos, documents, drawings, and testimony, and all anyone had to do was to dangle the carrot or the threat of losing the carrot that you don't really own, and we went right back in line.

My big disappointment in the past 8 years has been less the crooks that would steal their own country blind and walk away able to sleep at night, because there are some bad people and absolute power corrupts, etc... but that half the American people went along with it because of some shiny, shiny, and a vial of white powder, to lazy to do the research or even open their eyes.

Its probably not that all of those people are bad, but more a sort of cognitive dissonance, where what is accepted societal behavior becomes corrupted by what is the line from the propaganda team, and the actions following go so against what one stands for that the opposition of the two creates a mental vacuum. It becomes a matter of accepting the unacceptable behavior or admission that one has played a part in something that is criminal or wrong. The wrong becomes the new truth and the person clings to it as if it was the gospel truth because the alternative of having been so wrong and acted on it is too much.

Americans are not raised to look at their reality under the light, lest we become dissatisfied with our position in the order of things, so we cling tighter to the truth that we have come to believe, based in fear or denial, and the slightest possibility of joining the monied classes and the belief that they should be able to keep what they have earned. Every successful American CEO has stood on the shoulders of this entire society to get where he or she is, and a society that allows success even one tiny bit as big as many of them have achieved, deserves a kickback into society's pot; not a tax loophole and an offshore account to try to keep the money that they have earned. The regular American, as well as the poor American is expected to kick back in, but its accepted that the loopholes for the rich exist because they somehow deserve them. This is the group that has benefited the most from the Bush years and their tax cuts. Now some of those guys actually sunk their businesses, took bailout money from taxpayers, and managed to give themselves their huge bonuses at the end of last year. What are we supposed to do with that? Let them get away and we've reinforced the helplessness of law abiding citizens everywhere. Rock the boat too much and the corporate influenced government ceases to move forward.

So, yes Obama is up against it, and he may be the one we need right now in that, as much as he skirts around the truth in the interest of not overwhelming the undereducated masses and offending the cronys, he will state the truth, and he will do what has to be done. I believe that because I have to. I believe that because there is nothing else, except that the specter of families with babies on the street and on the soup line may not hit home until that family is your neighbor...or you...and until the post apocalyptic country starts to look too much like a Mad Max scene that even the Reaganomics of the 80's couldn't fully carry out in NYC. That NYC was where I stepped over the AIDS ravaged homeless and the broken glass of car windows every day for years, shouting at a deaf government, and it was heartbreaking. This is much worse, but we no longer have a government with its fingers in its ears and humming.

How bad does it have to get before we take action? It has to come right to the front door and maybe inside the house! Its gotta take a camera into the Willowbrook asylum and drop a microphone down the well so that we can hear the stuck baby wailing. Its beyond 9-11, obviously and way past Katrina....Being out of work may the the thing that creates time for Americans to reassess whats been happening and to get back to basics.

The same people who very gravely told me in the past 2 presidential elections "I'm not sure if your guy can keep us safe," have to realize that this is not something that any individual can figure out, but rather a broad policy of base belief that got us into or is gonna get us out of the current can o' worms; that base belief should probably start with at least following the constitution and laws, and then turn to how our neighbors are treated. If we give up our base beliefs out of fear, then we have nothing.

Rather, what I was seeing in those frightened voters was the wielding of the power of the vote in the direction of the possibility of winning the lotto and joining the Halliburton class, or remembering some Pearl Harbor memory of America as the Hero, in the right, which was just laughable in its gravity and sincerity, considering what was going on in the world and how we were acting. The same people who wouldn't know a Thief from a Socialist if they hit them in the bank account, thought that they were influencing the halls of power with their belief in a Bush or a McCain or a Palin as a way to stay safe and right; because if the simplistic neocon view of things could keep us safe, then any working stiff espousing at the local bar could make it big, and there is a certain leveling in that bluster, as much as its totally nonsensical.

Americans may need to be slowly led into the harsh reality of what lies ahead. But hopefully it will be done before its too late in a world of tipping points. We may see Obama nationalize the banks and we may see a "socialist" turn to how things are done in this country. The alternative has been tried and it doesn't work, so get ready for something new and maybe even a little familiar.
If its not dawning on the other half by now, then it may never. That doest stop the necessity of moving forward before things get worse.

If in light of the bailouts already put out there, the executives at the huge corporations and banks cant see the path ahead, then they have to go; and not with their golden parachutes either! If the credit companies are only using the bailouts and reorganization to put the screws to their customers rather than stop offering up new credit at every turn and make a sane way to get out of debt, then they will go too, and along the way they will see many more Americans in straight default, rather than honestly trying to pay their debt down.

The real point of this illustrated lesson for the American people and the world is that the dream that you were promised is earned, not promised, and you were bamboozled into a position where you can't earn, beg, borrow, or steal it anymore...its dead! and no matter what anyone says, you cant get anything for free. If the credit industry had to fold and stop offering credit to individuals, how would we live? well, we'd learn. If that effected the world economy horribly and the CEO couldn't get the corporate jet he wanted this year along with his 20 million dollar bonus, well, we would go on and dig out. What we are seeing may be the collapse of unregulated capitalism, and surely, if America doesn't hold those responsible accountable right up to the top, then we are doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over. Laws are no good if they are only for the rabble, especially if everyone right up to the president and his VP get away with murder.

Industry in this country may be based at this point on the vinyl to CD, CD to MP3 player model, just as the digitization of the television signal, (our airwaves,) serves to force new equipment onto Americans credit cards at a time when people just don't have the money to pay that debt back. But at some point, the camel's back breaks; especially when the paying jobs to make that new equipment are long gone to other countries that have entered their own cycle of Americanized mistakes.

So I look forward to hearing a little hard truth. As I said, frank Rich barely scratched the surface of the problem here. Its a problem of growing up and getting with a reality based model, and having the government carry that out in regulating how much these companies can lie to us and entice us to get in too deep, while they stab us in the back, and blame us for being negligent for not reading the print so fine as to serve the smaller denizens of the doll house world. I'd like to see simple terms in normal layman's print, and I'd like to see the country get back on a track that is livable and from which we can recover to a sensible level of realistic living where everyone has a chance and the worker is once again valued as much as the CEO.
c/p RIP Coco

Labels: bank bailout, denial, Frank Rich, liars

Somehow I don't have a whole lot of faith in Tim Geithner's ability or willingness to be a champion for the middle class, and this doesn't exactly give me any more:

In the end, Mr. Geithner largely prevailed in opposing tougher conditions on financial institutions that were sought by presidential aides, including David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, according to administration and Congressional officials.

Mr. Geithner, who will announce the broad outlines of the plan on Tuesday, successfully fought against more severe limits on executive pay for companies receiving government aid.

[snip]

He resisted those who wanted to dictate how banks would spend their rescue money. And he prevailed over top administration aides who wanted to replace bank executives and wipe out shareholders at institutions receiving aid.

The $500,000 pay cap for executives at companies receiving assistance, for instance, applies only to very senior executives. Some officials argued for caps that applied to every employee at institutions that received taxpayer money.

Abandoning any pretense about limiting the moral hazards at companies that made foolhardy investments, the plan also will not require shareholders of companies receiving significant assistance to lose most or all of their investment. Some officials had suggested that the next bailout phase not protect existing shareholders. (Shareholders at most banks that fail will continue to lose their investment.)

Nor will the government announce any plans to replace the management of virtually any of the troubled institutions, despite arguments by some to oust current management at the most troubled banks.

Finally, while the administration will urge banks to increase their lending, and possibly provide some incentives, it will not dictate to the banks how they should spend the billions of dollars in new government money.

And for all of its boldness, the plan largely repeats the Bush administration’s approach of deferring to many of the same companies and executives who had peddled risky loans and investments at the heart of the crisis and failed to foresee many of the problems plaguing the markets.

In the last few months, we've seen automobile workers -- people with no decision-making capacity, excoriated by the right (and by many of their fellow Americans) as "welfare recipients" simply for having an advocate for pay and benefits and doing actual work. But here we have the Treasury Secretary of a Democratic president, taking care of his Wall Street buddies with taxpayer cash, and no one utters a peep. When workers collect unemployment, we have to be prepared to present evidence we are looking for a job. And yet, if you are a banker, and you have run not just the company you run, but also the economy as a whole, you get the Treasury Secretary saying that we shouldn't make you account for how you spend the taxpayers' money when you've already shown that you can't handle anyone's money.

Labels: bank bailout

When I started my new job at the end of last September, one of the first things I had to do was to get ready for a big divisional meeting in a fabulous European city. I remember thinking at the time, "How can a company afford to do something like this right now?" So when the trip was cancelled, I not only wasn't surprised, I wasn't disappointed either. I would much rather be employed by a company that doesn't lay people off and is willing to make small, sensible cost cuts than one that continues to run expensive get-togethers after accepting piles of taxpayer cash. I've come to realize that when you work with congenial people, team-building exercises can be fun, not the kind of trauma that such things were when I was in college in my provincial little college in eastern Pennsylvania where half the kids had never met a Jew before.

But our European meeting was cancelled, and no one pitched a fit. For we all know that we're fortunate to have jobs and to work for a company that doesn't seem to succumb to the kind of short-term thinking that far too many American companies do these days.

But at Wells Fargo, they don't have the confidence that their employees will do a good job without being treated to the dog biscuit of free trips. This is from their full-page ad in the New York Times yesterday, in which the company blames the media for everything from disgruntled employees to putting the jobs of hotel housekeepers in jeopardy:

The proglem is many media stories on this subject have been deliberately misleading. These one-sided stories lead you to believe every employee recognition event is a junket, a boondoggle, a waste, or that it's for highly-paid executives. Because of the misperceptions these stories have created, Wells Fargo has decided to cancel all its major annual recognition events for its team members for the rest of this year.

So who gets hurt when this happens? The Wells Fargo team members across America who are most deserving of recognition and our gratitude. Tellers. Personal bankers. Phone bankers. financial advisors. Mortgage sales people and processors. Operations clerks. Technology specialists. Credit analysts....

Do you believe that the tellers at your local Wells Fargo branch get to go to these things? I don't.

It goes on:

Annualy, for the past 20 years, we'verecognized our top team members from various businesses at several special four-day events, like the one we had planned for our terrific mortgage team wh helped us originate $230 billion in mortgages in the last year. For many, it's the only time in their lives that they're publicly recognized and thanked for a job well done. This recognition energizes them. It inspires them and their team members to want to create an even better experience for our customers. Another annual event -- which our top performers in community banking had all looked forward to -- was to have been held in May. But not this year. Who loses besides our team members? The workers who depend on our business. The hospitality industry. Hotel housekeepers. Restaurant servers. The airlines.

Yes, really,. We're supposed to believe that Wells Fargo employees won't do their jobs unless they're rewarded with a fancy trip. What does it say about how they're treated on a daily basis? I can tell you from personal experience where I work now that when you treat employees with respect, pay them well, and recognize exceptional achievement on an ongoing basis, you don't have to send them on expensive trips to resorts to make them want to do their jobs.

If Wells Fargo doesn't want this kind of scrutiny of their practices, perhaps they shouldn't take the government money.

Labels: bank bailout, employment