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‘.