Question Everything!

According to our federal government and the Treasury Secretary this recession began with the meltdown on Wall Street caused by sub prime mortgage holders defaulting on their payments.

How does the meltdown on Wall Street translate into the state of Massachusetts laying off 1,000 state workers and the state cutting aid to cities and towns by 10%? Many will state the easiest and simplest answer, it’s the recession.

But how does this happen? Former managing director for Goldman Sachs Nomi Prins states in the Nation magazine that “subprime mortgages have been blamed for the financial crisis, but we’re spending more than five times more money (in Fed loans, injections, bailouts and guarantees) that the value of every subprime loan in the country combined. Of the subprime loans issued during the boom years between 2003 and 2007, roughly 1.5 trillion are outstanding. If the system weren’t so leveraged, and each of them defaulted to zero (which hasn‘t happened), they would represent a 1.5 trillion loss. It should be clear by now that something other than subprime loans defaulting or a “housing correction” as Paulson puts it-is wrong with the system. How were those loans packaged and leveraged into what amounts to a 140 trillion global pyramid of junk?”

What’s wrong with the system could be the federal regulators like Darrell Dochow who during the 80’s delayed regulatory action on Charles Keating’s bank, the Lincoln Savings, which when it failed cost the tax payer 4 billion. This same federal regulator allowed Indy Mac a failed mortgage bank the FDIC took over this year to cook its books which led to an 8.9 billion dollar tax payer bail out.

Thomas Jefferson urged us to question everything. There is more to this recession and Wall Street meltdown than we’re being told.

That 350 billion doled out by the Feds to the banks is being used for these large banks to buy smaller banks which will result in even bigger banks “too big to fail”. Will we bail them out too when they fail because federal regulators allow them to cook their books? After all it’s been shown to them that if they take too much risk and pay no heed to responsibility and then fail, we the tax payer will have to bail them out thanks to a government that thinks corporations are more important than citizens.

The first thing the new president elect can do if he’s serious about more transparency in government (which is dubious) is to open those books on the 350 billion doled out to the thieves on Wall Street, get to the bottom of this “sub prime meltdown” and look into this regulatory agency that protects the FDIC, the Office of Thrift Supervision where Darrell Dochow was a senior official.

Christmas Billions

The Bush administration has decided that we’re bailing out GM and Chrysler, but with the stipulation that the UAW make concessions one being to accept the same pay as foreign auto workers receive.

The only reason they’re making the UAW accept more cut in wages and benefits is because it means more profits for the few.

Ever wonder why the stock market goes up when unemployment comes in at high numbers? Less workers means more profits for those at the top and the select share holders.

We’ve given billions to the banks who in turn use that money to buy smaller banks and pay out dividends. We were told that this bail out money would free up the “clogs in the system” and help the economy which hasn’t happened. The money we’re giving to big auto is not going to help our economy or save jobs.

They don’t care about us, Rick Wagoner CEO of GM thanked the White House for their decisions to “lend” big auto billions. First of all that’s an insult but more importantly it just goes to show how little the corporate CEO’s think of us. Does he even know where these billions are coming from? Mr. Wagoner needs a visit from the ghost of Christmas present to show him the suffering that’s behind those billions he’s so thankful to be receiving.

Unionizing Struggles

Senator Bob Corker has said that the Senate almost came to a deal to bail out big auto, but thanks to the UAW and three words the deal fell through. That’s right let’s blame the unions and the union worker.

My father started a union back in the seventies that still exists today with more people joining.

The lesson I learned is that when you do something to help the little guy and make the workplace fairer for all, then you and your family will be punished, severely.

My mother had died before I went into third grade so my father got a job as a janitor at the school department to be closer to his kids.

A few years later when I was in sixth grade he started organizing a union. It was at this time that my father’s boss changed his hours so that he was forced to work the 2 to 10PM shift after he had been working the day shift, which created difficulties for us.

In the light of these facts, it not hard to imagine the decades long struggle American workers faced in the past.

When the unions were first organizing and calling strikes, the governors of those states would call out the National Guard to shoot the strikers. Something unheard of today.

There was a time in this county when if you were hurt on the job, that was your tough luck, there was no compensation and you were on your own. If you were sick and couldn’t go to work you’d lose the day’s pay, there was no such thing as sick time. Nor was there such a thing as the forty hour work week or the eight hour work day.

If you wanted to go to a funeral you had to find a worker to act as your replacement and if you didn’t and went to the funeral you were fired. Today it’s almost incomprehensible to think we’d be denied the right to funeral attendance.

Get rid of unions and it won’t be long before we face many of these struggles anew. The greedy robber barons are in control and at a time when there aren’t many people like my father with the intestinal fortitude, determination and foresight to leave a lasting legacy which empowers the worker with bargaining rights and protections on the job.

Killing Capitalism

In 1776 Adam Smith wrote his book on capitalism “The Wealth of Nations” in which he said government should not be involved in the markets. The only time government should be involved is to regulate the markets to protect people from cheaters.

The exact opposite is true today. For decades our government has reversed and eliminated any and all regulations that protect the public, and thanks to tax payer funding the government has now become the markets. We‘ve bailed out Wall Street, the banks, insurance companies, and now the Big Three auto makers want 34 billion up from the 25 billion two weeks ago.

Chrysler is a privately held company; GM and Chrysler have already been in merger talks. After we bail out the Big Three, GM and Chrysler will merge taking those tax dollars with them.

The CEO of Chrysler whined to the politicians on Capitol Hill to think of the ramifications of not bailing out the auto industry would have on this country, for instance think of all the jobs that will be lost. Even with a bail out they’ll still close dealerships and plants have been closing for decades in this country, jobs will still be lost.

The disdain these CEO’s have for us is evidenced by their showing up in luxury planes on their first trip to DC to ask for tax payer money. They get the jets and we get the debt. Do we the tax payer own a share in the proceeds Big Auto will make when they sell their fleets of jets as they said they would?

Since this government has staked the future of our capitalistic society on nationalizing debt to bail out the financial industry, we should nationalize the auto industry, jettison the CEO’s who failed miserably at producing a salable product and start back on the path towards economic equality.

What we have now is not capitalism, it’s oligarchy, control is in the hands of the moneyed few and the astronomical debt is forced on us all. That’s not America.

Happy Trails for Some

The Bush administration said “provided the financial situations don’t change, they’d leave half of the bail out funds for the next president.” By January20th, with the amount of good taxpayer money being thrown after the bad, that bail out money will be long gone by the time Obama takes office. Meanwhile our cowboy president and his crooked cronies are allowed to ride off into the sunset with trillions of taxpayer dollars, never to be seen again.

Oil Dependence

The current President an oil man said we’re addicted to oil. Even president elect Obama mentioned this “oil addiction”. The oil companies have made us dependent upon their oil for the ability to support ourselves.

In the 1700’s the British East India Trading Company turned many of the Chinese people into opium addicts so they’d have guaranteed customers for their opium.

According to award winning journalist Steve Coll in his book “The Bin Laden’s; An Arabian Family in the American Century” in the 1930's America said “Saudi oil is firmly in American hands”.

It’s not the addiction to oil that is the problem, it’s the oil companies’ whose addiction to power and wealth have a stranglehold on us. If not we’d have more accessible public transportation, more fuel efficient vehicles and alternative energy sources for starters.

We don’t see much in the way of research and development to get us off this “oil addiction” but we see record breaking profits for oil companies. Not only that, the tax payer is pouring twenty five billion into Ford to come up with more fuel efficient cars. What type of reasonable person could or would expect a company to design something that will reduce their profits? It’s an idea so illogical it’s astounding.

Time and time again America has proven that necessity is the mother of invention. The United States is smart enough to have come up with a multitude of alternatives by now. Where are they? Whatever happened to the guy that designed the 200 MPG carburetor?

Maybe with the pushers and dealers out of the White House, there is a chance we can get the oil monkey off our backs.

Pulling the Tarp Over our Eyes

The US Treasury Department under Secretary Paulson is deciding where the bail out money should go; and it is the belief of the Secretary and the Treasury Department that the banks are more important than the homeowners. The arrogant disdain the obscenely wealthy people like Secretary Paulson and his banker buddies have for the American citizen is precisely the attitude that helped precipitate the financial crisis facing the country today.

Economists from here and around the globe say home prices in America have to be stabilized first to stem the financial storm rolling around the world, Yet our government tells us that banks come first, the exact opposite.

Treasury Secretary Paulson is pouring billions of our dollars into the pockets of the very same people who got us into this disaster in the first place, the corporate crooks; the bankers. In the interest of big money and campaign donations, our politicians went along and changed the rules for banks so that one individual alone could have total control over deposit accounts in their banks. No wonder they have no money left and we have to bail them out!

The bail out bill is aptly named, it’s called the Troubled Asset Relief Program TARP. They’re pulling the tarp over our eyes when it comes to this trillion dollar tax payer give away program. First the Treasury Secretary is going to buy the troubled assets now he’s going to infuse money directly into banks. It’s more like bait and switch, first you see it now you don’t.

There are many of us who believe the government should not interfere in the free market, but the bail out plan nullifies that theory, and it’s time to level the economic playing field when the free market has been tilted upside down because of rampant greed due to lawlessness.

We should nationalize the banking industry to stabilize home prices by getting more people into homes and paying mortgages. Because it’s all homeowners across the country who are feeling the effects of this runaway corporate greed not just those who were greedy, duped, tricked or too trusting.

We’ll all be paying the price for this bail out scheme for a long time and without government intervention those responsible; the bankers, never will pay the price they so richly deserve for the consequences of their heinous actions.

Voting for a Maybe President

Thanks to television and the advent of polling, we have popularity contests, not presidential elections. Whoever has the most marketing money wins. Maybe there wasn’t much of a choice in this presidential election.

Senator Mike Gravel, a 2008 presidential contender and former Senator from Alaska was kicked out of the debates because the networks said he didn’t raise enough in campaign funds. At one of the early presidential debates Brian Williams treated Senator Gravel like a “potted plant” and asked him no questions at all.

This was unfortunate for us because Senator Gravel was instrumental in helping bring to light the Pentagon Papers; proof that showed all the lies the Pentagon foisted on the public to support the war in Vietnam. What are the chances of us getting a look at any of the Iraq or Afghanistan papers now?

In his book “The Kingmakers” Gravel brings to light president elect Obama’s ‘no-show’ on the vote to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. With today’s media there was more emphasis placed on Obama’s association with William Ayers than his no-show vote.

Fortunately for us even though we don’t hear about them, there were people inside the intelligence agencies who made it known that they were willing to go to jail if the Government didn’t release the 2006 NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) report detailing that Iran had already dismantled their nuclear weapons facilities in 2003. If it hadn’t been for the brave Americans inside our intelligence agencies maybe that no show vote could possibly have brought us to war with Iran.

When his friend Theodore Roosevelt was elected president, Henry Adams said “Power is poison. It’s effects on presidents has always been tragic, chiefly an almost insane reaction at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bear the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.”

Maybe in this historic time with this first African-American president, there is a chance president elect Obama can keep the power hounds and wolves at bay, let’s hope so.

Goldman Sachs Takes Over US Treasury

The US Treasury Department under the Bush regime are sinking over one hundred and fifty billion dollars of the seven hundred billion dollar bail out into 9 banks and these banks are going to use that that money to pay dividends and CEO salaries! Imagine, the American tax payer is subsidizing CEO salaries and dividends. That money is supposed to free up the “clogs in the system” of the credit pipeline but instead it’s being flushed down the drain into the sewers of greedy pockets.

As of this moment the banks are being told they can’t do this, it’s not part of the bail out bill, but even if the banks don’t get away with this publicly, they’ll get away with it behind closed doors, they’ll just be more careful to keep all information secret.

None the less, this goes to show what happens when the bail out bill is administered by former CEO of Goldman Sachs Henry Paulson as Secretary of the Treasury who has surrounded himself with former Goldman Sachs alumnus. Neel Kashkari under secretary and overseer of “spreading the wealth” of the tax payer bail out learned the tricks of the trade at Goldman Sachs. Two of Paulson’s current advisors along with Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolton worked for Goldman Sachs. And it was Bolton who had suggested Henry Paulson for Secretary of the Treasury in 2006 when Paulson took over the position.

On the same day this bail out bill was passed the NY Times had an article about a meeting that took place in 2004 when Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs. Paulson along with other CEO’s of the largest investment banks on Wall Street pressured the SEC to lower the regulations on how much capital these investment banks had to have in reserve. Once the amount was lowered, these investment banks used this “freed up capital” to invest in mortgage backed securities, credit debt obligations (CDO’s) and other Wall Street swindles derived from sub prime mortgages.

Now we have Paulson who was part of the problem dictating the solutions with tax payer dollars. Is this a conflict of interest for our Treasury Secretary? Why did Paulson bail out Bear Stearns and AIG but let Lehman Brothers fail? The failure of Lehman Brothers is the catalyst that led to the world wide financial meltdown.

Even a British journalist questioned the lack of investigation as to why Lehman Brothers failed. Maybe there’s no investigation because the failure of Lehman Brothers benefits Goldman Sachs. Treasury Secretary Paulson amassed 700 million while CEO of Goldman Sachs, where does his loyalty lie?

During the presidential campaign of 2008 there was fear mongering that Barack Obama is a commie or a socialist. Which would be a comical charge if the socialists for the rich weren’t in the Treasury at this moment stealing our tax dollars to subsidize salaries of CEO’s who ran banks into the ground.

We can see why the founders distrusted banks, without regulation banks gain the upper hand in redirecting the deposits of the many into the hands of the few.

As Patrick Henry said- “I know of no way judging the future but by the past.”. If we want to see where we’re going we should look at where we’ve been. History shows us it does not bode well for the many when the power and wealth are concentrated into the hands of the few, which the corporations and our government are currently enacting.

Group Think

David Brooks conservative columnist for the NY Times said the financial disaster on Wall Street was caused by a “social contagion” and “group think”.

The Bush regime said the same thing when no WMD were found in Iraq, that the CIA got the intelligence wrong because they were victims of “group think”.

In the case of the CIA getting Iraq’s WMD wrong it wasn’t group think that was the problem, it was group intimidation, the administration wanted them to say Iraq had WMD, so that’s what they said. As Upton Sinclair said it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

What type of sick excuse is this group think? Whatever happened to “rugged American individualism”? And what is this social contagion? It is outrageous that such things can be blamed. But of course it is an easy answer, easy to say and easy to digest. They’re dodging the bullet, just blame it on group think.

Human nature is the same today as it was when the Constitution was written. The founders understood that individuals would seek power. We no longer understand that the colossal failures on Wall Street and in Iraq are the results of individuals seeking money and power, and is not the error of group think.

John MacArthur editor of Harper’s said “In America it doesn’t matter anymore what is right or wrong. The public is conditioned to believe everything: no matter if it is emotional stories or lies on weapons of mass destruction”. Don’t be conditioned! It is group greed of the corporate crooks and their cohorts, poisoned politicians who are to blame for the trillions stolen from the tax payer to bail out Wall Street along with the thousands of lives stolen to bail out Iraq. Neither of these are the result of “group think”, it‘s more like group delusion.

Election 2008 Prediction

Prediction for the presidential election-Obama will win the popular vote but McCain will become the president. And I say this because the corporate sponsored politicians create a story line and then this story is repeated over and over in the echo chamber of the media. This is how we wind up with the story line that ACORN is promoting voter fraud. Notice that the closer we get to the election the louder McCain chirps about voter fraud.

Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is telling us that we are angry over voter fraud. They’re setting the seeds of discontent in our minds so that if Obama wins the Republican candidates along with their media conspirators will cry voter fraud and will try to have all the democratic ballots cast for Obama thrown out, therefore reducing the number of votes for Obama leaving McCain with the most votes to become the next president.

Doesn’t candidate McCain know that as a result of the “voting irregularities” of the 2000 presidential election the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed? How many millions have they spent on this act? And how is it that a community group like ACORN is now all of a sudden able to perpetrate this massive voter fraud in at least 13 states thus far?

If they can do this and get away with it, does this mean that the Help America Vote Act was a waste of time and money? Or is this so called massive voter fraud just another example of the failed policies of George Bush? And why didn’t McCain bring more attention to this issue when the act to correct "voting irregularities" was passed rather than now with just three weeks before the election? Because it isn’t the issue that he and the others say it is that’s why.

The Line Has Been Drawn

There is no middle ground anymore. We no longer have to think, we have the TV to tell us what to think and tell us we have to pick a side, now we are either for or against.

The founders had to find the middle ground. The federalists had to champion for the ratification of the Constitution with cogent arguments and an appeal to reason. One of their arguments for a federal government was the many states could help the one state better than one state could help themselves in times of disaster or an attack.

However those reasoned thoughts no longer apply today. Rather than be the united states with all citizens united under the umbrella of federal laws, we are a fragmented society. The line has been drawn by media politicians who have succumbed to polling and lack the courage of having any convictions other than to stay in power.

Since politics and elections have been corrupted by TV, hysteria has taken the place of reason. With the mass marketing of issues that divide, we end up electing TV personalities, or voting against a politician. We aren’t offered the chance to elect the best individual to represent us in the legislative bodies.

Subsequently the ruling class of the rich capitalists along with their puppet politicians control the ability to shape public opinion with the television.

Images are riveting and contain the power to drive change. Precisely why our federal government prevented pictures of states ravaged by Hurricane Ike in the 2008 hurricane season from being broadcast.

Must be the lesson they learned from Hurricane Katrina when the whole country saw it’s citizens abandoned by the federal government who did the exact opposite of what the federal government was founded to do.

Many people were saying the failures in Hurricane Katrina were due to the locals which is an example of the television’s power to shape public opinion, and not for the better either. They only shape it to the betterment of themselves and to retain power of the media’s favorite politician.

Crash Heard 'Round the World'

We were once a country famous for being started with “the shot heard ‘round the world”, now we’re a country whose financial crash is felt ‘round the world'.

The world’s economy depends on Americans paying their mortgages, and when we don’t pay our mortgages the world’s finances collapse. How did this happen? And where are our leaders?

When we ask our leaders how this happened, they tell us now is not the time to point fingers or ask questions, we need to just fix the problem and fast. George Bush the president tells us to “have faith” the market will come back, but have patience, it’ll take time.

Just like we’re supposed to have faith that “good” will triumph over evil in this “global war on terror”, now we should have faith that the free market capitalism will right itself if we wait long enough.

Just as America has been looked upon as a beacon of light for self governance, Wall Street has been looked up to as the example of free market capitalism. How does this self governing free market capitalism look to the rest of the world right about now?

The free market is fine as long as the fat cats are winning but when the bottom falls out because they have no “capital” they expect the feds and the tax payer to bail them out.

Companies like AIG have divisions that are making money and many of these non bank sub prime lenders and Wall Street firms have offices in the Cayman islands to avoid paying taxes. Take over the divisions making money and close the offices in the Cayman islands to recoup some of the money that was stolen. Since we the tax payer have to bail out these capitalistic crooks then we have the right to do these things.

But of course with the leaders we have today who lack the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing, these ideas will never be put on the table. Eventually the middle class will just run out of money to bail out the greedy bankers. You can bet those at the top of this housing pyramid scheme saw this coming and cashed in their stocks, hiding their money. They’ll be in the Cayman Islands while we’re living in our cars.

A lot of us had nothing to do with the stock market, or living beyond our means like we were told at the beginning of this “credit crisis”, was the problem. As it has been throughout human history it’s the innocent victims who’ll be paying the price for a market that went out of control with human greed and human failures.

With an empire at the helm it doesn’t bode well that the federal government is nationalizing our “free market capitalistic system” especially since America has become a country that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.

After the 1787 Constitutional Convention a woman asked Ben Franklin what they had given them and he replied “A Republic if you can keep it”. Why did he say that, did he know that we could loose it? We’ve seen the fall of communism, are we now seeing the fall of the American free market society?

Economic Infection

Alexis DeToqueville wrote in his classic “Democracy in America” that “there is a general distaste for accepting any man’s word as proof of anything”.

Not so today. When asked why he voted for the first bail out bill, Congressman Paul Kanjorski said “the worst problem that we have is probably a lack of faith and trust by constituents out there to take our word for it that there is a problem”.

“Democracy in America” was written centuries ago, fast forward and here’s a modern day politician telling us to turn back on our heritage and just take them at their word when it comes to handing over a trillion dollars in tax payer money to Wall Street crooks.

Kanjorski said “I've been watching this disaster, if you will, unfold for probably two years now, and particularly since last August -- not this immediate past August, but the August before that, when the subprime mortgage problem was created. And then we saw the deterioration that occurred in October when the auction market started to fail. And then we saw the infection spread throughout the financial system.”

The mistake everyone makes is that the subprime mortgage problem was created in the past few years, it wasn’t, it’s been brewing for decades ever since the Savings and Loan bail outs of the 80’s.

Our current economic problems were created while our government stood mutely on the sidelines watching and collecting payoffs while thousands of subprime players including firms on Wall Street, investment bankers, hedge funds, non bank subprime lenders, mortgage brokers and realtors together created the housing bubble that has just burst. This seven hundred billion is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the trillions and trillions Americans owe on their homes and will not fix the problems.

There is an infection spreading, it’s called the “malaria of power” and it’s not limited to the financial system, it has spread to the people running our government and financial system.

Henry Adams said “the effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends in killing the victim’s sympathies, a diseased appetite, like a passion for drink or perverted tastes; one can scarcely use expressions too strong to describe the violence of egotism it stimulates”.

For over thirty years egotistical politicians have told us to take their word for it, that politics don’t matter, the only things that matter are our stocks and portfolios. We should just shut up, invest our retirement and homes in crooked stocks, sit back, watch our diversified portfolios grow and let the free market prevail.

This is precisely why we’re on the brink of bankruptcy today. The greedy bankers sucked all the money out of our homes into their pockets. And they’re not satisfied with our homes, now they’re going for the US Treasury.

Blackmailing for Bail Outs

Apparently our federal government’s only interests are the war and the wealthy, as evidenced by the tax payer funding of a trillion dollars for Iraq and a trillion dollars to bail out Wall Street.

Rather than give the 700 billion to the bankers who got us into this mess to begin with, why not invest it in Americans with good ideas? Whenever the politicians want to push through shady measures the situation is always so urgent there’s no time to wait, it’s an emergency! Senator John Kyl said the bail out is so urgent we don’t have time for ideas.

One entrepreneur has the idea of developing a way to make oil from mold. But of course this idea and many like them are finding it very difficult to obtain funding. Gee maybe some of that 700 billion could help this entrepreneur develop alternative energy sources, because that’s what we really need to get out of our current mess, get off the oil. That and a redistribution of wealth.

Oh but that smacks of communism you say, so that’s a no go. At this point we are no longer a republic, the feds have nationalized the mortgage industry, socialized losses on Wall Street, subsidized the oil industry and privatized wars all with tax payer dollars, therefore a serious redistribution of wealth is sorely needed to get this country back on track. America used to be a place where you could get ahead through hard work, effort, determination and doing without. Not so today.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said you can have the power and wealth in the hands of the few or you can have a democracy but you can’t have both. If this current economic meltdown and impending credit crisis doesn’t show everyone what happens with the concentration of wealth into the hands of the few than nothing will.

All the talking heads in DC are telling us if we don’t do something fast our retirement and college funds will dry up, there’ll be no more credit loans for cars, millions will lose their homes and jobs. As if these things haven’t been happening for decades thanks to NAFTA and banking deregulation. Why do you think they changed the rules for bankruptcy a few years ago? They saw this coming, they knew it was imminent.

No one has said that this bail out will work, only that if we don’t do it we‘ll be in a recession. The more they say it the more fear it instills to all Americans.

We are not descended from fearful people, the founders risked their lives and their fortunes to establish the United States of America. Don’t let them blackmail us into becoming Amerika home of the scared and land of the financially enslaved.

Privatizing Profits

If we complain about the high cost of living then we’re told “tough luck you should’ve planned better.” The greedy bankers didn’t plan very well with our money market funds and our retirements, but while they get financial rescue we have to pay more in taxes.

The mortgage backed security was a Wall Street plan that created the current credit and home mortgage crisis. Sub prime loans (sub prime loans were created in the 80’s because of banking deregulation) were pooled into blocks of mortgages worth millions of dollars. These blocks of mortgages would be sold to investment banks like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch who then turned them into MBS (mortgage backed securities) bonds that were sold to pension plans and foreign governments. Wall Street made billions gambling on our homes and lost.

In these unreasonable times our capitalistic system socializes losses while privatizing profits, all brought to us by decades of regulation busting politicians and corporate crooks, including but not limited to John McCain. Remember the Keating Five? Charles Keating was a big cash donor to John McCain. The bail out of Keating’s bank the Lincoln Savings alone, cost us four billion. The bailouts of Keating’s and other banks set the ball rolling for this sub prime loan debacle.

Adam Smith who wrote the book on capitalism in 1776 said “only God can fix prices”. Now look where we are after Wall Street fixed the prices in the housing market to explode ever higher with no end in sight.

Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson (former chairman of Goldman Sachs) is putting the interests of the private sector over the interests of the public. Bush, Cheney and their appointees will leave us with an oligarchy; ‘Government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich‘.

Redefining Victory

We’re being told that the surge in Iraq is over and we have achieved victory. The president and the Pentagon are hedging their bets by saying “durability exists” but the “progress is reversible“.

We were told we won in Afghanistan when the Taliban were expelled and were replaced with former Unocal oil company consultant Harmid Karzai. Today the number of American deaths are the highest they’ve been since 2001, violence is up by forty percent, the Taliban are taking over villages without the use of military force and they control 90 percent of the poppy wealth.

Secretary of Defense Gates claims because of this “victory” in Iraq we won’t be seeing large scale operations like this again, instead we’ll be seeing smaller Special Forces Operations.

The steel desk warriors at the Pentagon sent Special Forces and Navy Seals on missions to the tops of mountain in Afghanistan where their helicopters were shot down in in an area they were told was devoid of the enemy. Our brave forces were then surrounded and attacked by Taliban and Chechen fighters. One Special Forces team leader said all modern technology failed them and he had to go back to fighting wars the old fashioned way; with thinking, pencil and paper.

The old fashioned definition of victory is when the dying of American troops stops and the enemy surrenders. Neither of these have happened in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The war in Vietnam (which both the president and vice president dodged) was televised. We’re not seeing any signs of victories now just like we’re not seeing any of the coffins coming home.

Wall Street Eats Main Street

By bailing out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae the US government has become the largest holder of mortgages in the country. As government chartered private enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were able to borrow money at a lower rate, and both were intended to buy mortgages to put cash back into the hands of lenders, enabling them to make even more mortgage loans. Fannie Mae, created in the 30’s, originally could only buy FHA or VA backed loans. Freddie Mac was created in the 70’s and was only supposed to buy S&L loans; loans backed by deposits and put out by savings banks.

During the 80’s, Countrywide; Ameriquest and other non-bank mortgage lenders were funded by wholesale loans made by investment bankers on Wall Street. These wholesale loans permitted non-bank lenders to capitalize on the sub prime loan industry that led to the destruction of our mortgage banking system that had worked for over 150 years. In the 80’s these hugely profitable non-bank mortgage lenders sued and won to have Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae buy their sub prime high risk loans.

The sub prime lenders coerced people into paying higher interest rates to off set closing costs and points amongst other tricks such as using fake appraisers to forge the value of a home higher so they could loan more money to make more money. The higher the interest rate the higher the profits for non bank lenders, mortgage brokers and Wall Street investment firms like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns amongst others who made billions from people who didn‘t have much.

They were able to perpetrate this scam on something called a “Mortgage Backed Security” created by Lew Ranieri of Wall Street. The non bank lenders would sell their mortgages to Wall St, which securitized them as “MBS” bonds and then sold them to pension plans, mutual funds and banks from other countries.

The CEO’s of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae couldn’t buy enough of them to have on their balance sheets, a trick for making future profits look like profits made today. Freddie Mac begged Countrywide to buy their sub-prime loans. Now, we as tax payer are going to pay for these huge investment frauds and scandals while the few walk away with billions bilked from our savings, our retirement and our homes.

Two months ago Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson was saying that we weren’t going to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, he just needed the new bail out powers granted to him by Congress to help the market gain “confidence” knowing they had this possible back stop of a government sponsored tax payer bail out.

Then our government sponsored a bail out of Bear Stearns (a Wall Street investment firm and wholesale lender to sub prime non-banks) by loaning JPMorgan Chase 32 billion at two and a half percent interest to purchase Bear Stearns. At the time of this bailout Secretary Paulson said he didn’t know how many more companies had participated in predatory lending and dangerously risky investments or as he phrased it “moral hazards”.

The underlying ‘secret handshake’ of Wall Street; sub prime lenders, and all those who bought these MBS was that the private mortgage companies; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were insured by the government so… no need to worry. If anything happens the US ‘guvmint’ will bail them out.

For decades the utopian anarchists who run the government have told us that in a capitalistic society the market will “regulate” itself. However, it appears that when the market is flooded like now with “moral hazards”, it cannot regulate itself. It ends up needing a bail out by the same big government they so despised when it came to regulating them. We’re spending billions to bail out the Wall Street bankers who funded these predatory sub-prime lenders.

The mortgage industry had worked well for 150 years, but Reagan and the other Republican and Democrat politicians alike deregulated the industry by using the ruse that these ‘rules’ crippled our capitalistic democracy, with a government that was too big and had too many regulations. We the US tax payers get big bills for bail outs when we get rid of big government.

For all those who are against nationalizing the oil industry they should be against nationalizing the mortgage industry which is what Bush has done by taking over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The US tax payer now owns a 2 trillion dollar debt in mortgage loans.

Trillions for Iraq and billions to bail out the greedy bankers on Wall Street. Where is this money going to come from? It’s the impoverished children, the elderly poor and the disabled veterans who are the ones this government scales back on first, the rest of us are next. Say sayonara to Medicare and Social Security, we can’t afford these “entitlement” programs created by big government that helps society because we’re too busy baling out the greedy Wall Street investors and sub prime lenders like Ameriquest, Countrywide and the CEO’s of Fannie and Freddie who, after being fired, will receive 24 million dollars between the two of them.

Medic! Pass the Tampon please!

US soldiers in Iraq are using tampons sent to them by family and friends to stop bleeding battle field wounds. With today’s technology there are dressings designed for any wounds sustained in war to prevent the victim from bleeding to death. But these are in short supply, so our soldiers are using tampons in place of the dressings to stop the bleeding.

Bush, Cheney and all the other neocon Republicans should be held in the highest contempt for running these wars ‘on the cheap’ (when it comes to supplying the troops) and treating our soldiers like disposable pawns on a chess board.

It is these same people who blackmail the Democrats into funding their failed wars by saying anyone who doesn’t vote for the war funding doesn’t support the troops. Meanwhile they’re the ones sending Americans into battle without the proper supplies or protections.

But let’s not exonerate the Democrats from their responsibilities to fight back, because the founders put the war funding powers into the hands of Congress as they are the ones who decide what the price of the war will cost us in lives and taxes.

Soldiers using tampons on the battlefield should make us all livid. Do people know this is going on and if they don’t they should. To learn more about the treatment of our soldiers read it here.

What Liberal News?

In 1776, there were 26 newspapers for thirteen colonies. Today five news conglomerates own all the newspapers and media outlets for fifty states. We're getting canned news, the same AP article is on the computer news, in the newspaper and aired on the local news stations. News today has been turned into a litany of tragedy and we're the voyeurs watching.

James Madison said "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives".

Alexis de Toqueville said in his classic "Democracy in America" that in America "there is a general distaste for accepting any man’s words as proof of anything". We are not being empowered with the knowledge that a healthy democracy requires nor are we demanding it. We have less information about the politicians who run our government and take more people at their word, the complete opposite of the way it was at the nation's founding. After all, if it's on Fox News it must be the gospel truth.

Henry Adams grandson and great grandson of presidents said "power is poison". Corporations own and have the power over our media. They have poisoned the air waves to instill their propaganda; that the media is controlled by liberals. Since when are corporations liberal?

Complex times require simplistic answers, blaming the liberals for the failures of the media is easy and keeps us divided with misinformation delivered with inflammatory tactics. This division diverts the attention on the true culprits, rich corporations along with the FCC who changed the rules on monopolization of media outlets, so the few can own the many.

The American way is to always question everything and to look for the story behind the story, which we're not doing. The founders knew full well that governments are not to be trusted as they are the depository of power and contain the seeds of despotism. That's why a free and ubiquitous press is essential for a well informed citizenry to prevent the tyranny of the minority.