Bailing Out Greedy and Irresponsible Rich People
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When I bought my first house in the late 1970’s the “system” was very rigorous about verifying my income and my ability to pay. When I first graduated from college and I wanted to apply for a credit card, the “system” verified my income before I was granted a credit card. Same with the first car I bought on credit (24 month loan).
In each case the banking and lending system were properly regulated by the United Stated federal government. There were enough regulators, and they were ethical, experienced, and well educated.
What happened to America is that over the course of many years the pro-greed, pro-business Republicans stopped (invalidated) much of the essential regulation going on by the government. They called this concept de-regulation, and they said it was positive. They claimed that the market economy would “trickle down” a good bit of money to the poor if the rich were allowed to get even richer with almost no constraints, laws, or regulations.
In all fairness, many intelligent and prominent Democrats went along with this greed-driven deregulation and ethical blindness, including self righteous lawyers like Bill and Hillary Clinton.
For a long time virtually anyone, regardless of their income or lack thereof, could borrow many hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy their dream house, and their ability to ever repay the loan was not properly verified.
In December 2008, well over a year into this financial debacle, banks are still sending me unsolicited offers of “pre-approved” credit cards. And credit card maximum authorized balances are being automatically increased. In fact my credit card company got downright huffy when I asked them to lower greatly the maximum loan amount on my Visa card and to stop the automatic, non-customer approved increases in this limit.
The soon to depart Secretary of the Treasury for America, a great big tall and charming guy named Hank Paulson, has a degree in English. In college he played football, and he was the chairman and chief executive officer at one of Wall Street’s top firms, Goldman Sachs. He also earned an MBA from Harvard. But keep in mind that Harvard grants this degree to people who are not terribly bright and certainly not good students, like George W. Bush.
To keep the interlinked world economy from going completely catatonic and failing completely, the American government has recently been travelling pedal to the metal almost blindly bailing out practically every greedy and irresponsible financier they can find. I call this socialism for the rich.
The poor and middle classes are left to their own devices. They do not have access to medical care, their 401k pensions are now just a figment of the imagination, and after their houses are re-possessed they may even be sleeping in their cars.
Remember serfdom? How about the French revolution? When the government only protects the rich and powerful one needs to beware. Average people just won’t put up with this stuff forever.
During the Vietnam war it was fashionable and common to talk about revolution. What is happening in the early 21st century is that the rich and powerful are heavily screwing over the vast majority of middle and working class people, and not even using vaseline. And these greedy guys at the top of the mountain need to beware. Honest. The biggest problem with revolutions is that there is no predicting where it will all end up. America revolted from England, and things worked out alright. But this certainly has not been the end result in many other cases, maybe not even in most other cases.
People need to be held accountable and responsible for their actions or inaction. This applies equally at the individual level all the way from school students and teachers, to arrogant government officials and billionaire capitalists. This must be a system of laws, where everyone is treated equally under the law, or the entire house of cards breaks down.
It is still unclear if the not yet inaugurated Obama administration will eventually call the majority of these crooks to task for their evil deeds. They need to or we will face an even more serious breakdown of society.
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When I bought my first house in the late 1970’s the “system” was very rigorous about verifying my income and my ability to pay. When I first graduated from college and I wanted to apply for a credit card, the “system” verified my income before I was granted a credit card. Same with the first car I bought on credit (24 month loan).
In each case the banking and lending system were properly regulated by the United Stated federal government. There were enough regulators, and they were ethical, experienced, and well educated.
What happened to America is that over the course of many years the pro-greed, pro-business Republicans stopped (invalidated) much of the essential regulation going on by the government. They called this concept de-regulation, and they said it was positive. They claimed that the market economy would “trickle down” a good bit of money to the poor if the rich were allowed to get even richer with almost no constraints, laws, or regulations.
In all fairness, many intelligent and prominent Democrats went along with this greed-driven deregulation and ethical blindness, including self righteous lawyers like Bill and Hillary Clinton.
For a long time virtually anyone, regardless of their income or lack thereof, could borrow many hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy their dream house, and their ability to ever repay the loan was not properly verified.
In December 2008, well over a year into this financial debacle, banks are still sending me unsolicited offers of “pre-approved” credit cards. And credit card maximum authorized balances are being automatically increased. In fact my credit card company got downright huffy when I asked them to lower greatly the maximum loan amount on my Visa card and to stop the automatic, non-customer approved increases in this limit.
The soon to depart Secretary of the Treasury for America, a great big tall and charming guy named Hank Paulson, has a degree in English. In college he played football, and he was the chairman and chief executive officer at one of Wall Street’s top firms, Goldman Sachs. He also earned an MBA from Harvard. But keep in mind that Harvard grants this degree to people who are not terribly bright and certainly not good students, like George W. Bush.
To keep the interlinked world economy from going completely catatonic and failing completely, the American government has recently been travelling pedal to the metal almost blindly bailing out practically every greedy and irresponsible financier they can find. I call this socialism for the rich.
The poor and middle classes are left to their own devices. They do not have access to medical care, their 401k pensions are now just a figment of the imagination, and after their houses are re-possessed they may even be sleeping in their cars.
Remember serfdom? How about the French revolution? When the government only protects the rich and powerful one needs to beware. Average people just won’t put up with this stuff forever.
During the Vietnam war it was fashionable and common to talk about revolution. What is happening in the early 21st century is that the rich and powerful are heavily screwing over the vast majority of middle and working class people, and not even using vaseline. And these greedy guys at the top of the mountain need to beware. Honest. The biggest problem with revolutions is that there is no predicting where it will all end up. America revolted from England, and things worked out alright. But this certainly has not been the end result in many other cases, maybe not even in most other cases.
People need to be held accountable and responsible for their actions or inaction. This applies equally at the individual level all the way from school students and teachers, to arrogant government officials and billionaire capitalists. This must be a system of laws, where everyone is treated equally under the law, or the entire house of cards breaks down.
It is still unclear if the not yet inaugurated Obama administration will eventually call the majority of these crooks to task for their evil deeds. They need to or we will face an even more serious breakdown of society.
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