America: Land Of The Fleeced & Home Of The Brazen
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 24, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Sunday, January 24th, 2010I’m not sure I know how to live in this country any more, they’ve changed too many rules. Maybe we need to start making our own.
I’m not so sure I know how to live in America any more. When it comes to politics, I’ve always been the sort who’s in favor of a mixed economy, believing that a balance of free markets and social programs is the best choice for governing. Regardless of the finer points of my political opinions, I got good grades in Civics class, and was properly indoctrinated as a US citizen growing up. Although what I’m about to say is going to sound like it’s partisan and politically motivated, it’s really not. It’s about lifestyle, and responsibility to my fellow citizens and financial agreements. Like many, I’ve had some credit issues here and there, but as we’ve learned recently, lenders are kind of like drug dealers, offering a magical solution to all your problems, without advising you of the long term dangers of the solution they provide. But by and large, I’ve always believed in hard work and paying my bills and taxes on time. The entire fabric of my basic moral fiber as a citizen of the world’s leading capitalist democracy has been slowly unraveling for a while though, and I find it harder and harder to keep living like the American I thought I was. For me it all started when 19 Saudis engaged in terrorist acts against the US, and the administration at the time perplexed the world by responding to the attacks by starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And as if going against a long-standing tradition of not engaging in wars of aggression wasn’t bad enough, it was clear that a large part of that administration’s motive at the time was personal financial benefit, and a desire to privatize the military, so other “disaster capitalists” could do the same. Check out Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine
Is Obama’s Proposed Bank Tax Purely Political?
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on January 15, 2010 by admin in Politics
Friday, January 15th, 2010Well OF COURSE it’s political, but something like it is certainly warranted. Or maybe we could do the old Roman thumbs-up thumbs-down thing, complete with lions and stuff.
If you’re a conservative, you may be finding yourself in a slightly untenable position right now. Your obligatory knee-jerk response to Obama’s new proposed tax on bailed out banks will be to say: “Sure. More taxes are the solution for everything for you ignorant weepy liberals“. At least that’s the stance of business-minded republicans like Tom Donohue, the CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce, who calls the plan a bad idea. So why is your position going to be untenable? Well, the first part of your problem is that if they’re not taxing the banks, they’ll be taxing you and your offspring for generations to come. And because the next part of your argument is going to be that that the banks won’t even feel it, or will pass the buck to consumers. Which suggests that either a.) The fees should be even higher, or b.) That we need to regulate the banks so they’ll stop raping the consumer and anybody else in sight that they’re not directly invested in. Granted, this is a complicated situation, and there’s a fair amount of political populism in the president’s proposal, but how could any American – other than a banker who just got his multimillion dollar bonus, of course – be against the idea of punitive measures against the bankers who created this entire travesty continuing to benefit from their failures and miscalculations? I mean, especially if you believe in Ayn Rand-driven laissez-faire capitalism like a good Republican should? Even Timothy Geithner says it’s sensible. Of course, he’s got his own problems, so maybe that’s some personal damage control at work. In any case, I have a better idea for dealing with the bankers. Put it to simple popular vote and see what the average hardworking American would do about it. I’m sure the results would be fairly grisly, but gratifying. What do you think?
Why I Don’t Care If The Health Care Bill Passes
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on January 3, 2010 by admin in Health & Wellness, Politics
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system. But the Health Care Bill certainly will present someone with a bill.
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When I’m in a hospital room, I usually have a |
I feel sorry for Barack Obama. Not only will history likely blame him for the long tail of the bank failures and bailouts for which the Bush administration was actually responsible, it will also likely blame him (because of the passage of the health care bill that has divided the country recently) for the continued malignancy that is our decrepit, bloated, and corrupt “health care system”. I put that phrase in quotes because I believe that – as the late Walter Cronkite once said – “America’s health care system is neither healthy, caring, nor a system“. While a bunch of Democratic congressmen who have nothing to worry about regarding their health care plans sit around patting themselves on the back for passing a health care bill that has supposedly been the dream of generations of Democratic politicians, the fact is that things won’t change for many, and we’ll still be left saddled with the most expensive and least effective health care in the developed world. The bill does NOTHING to fix what any intelligent person sees as the fundamental problem; it might in fact worsen it. Whether you describe the problem as being a result of government meddling and insurance, or as patient overuse of treatment because insurance will pay for it, or as a result of doctors requiring malpractice insurance, you will notice the word “insurance” keeps popping up. The fact is that the mind-boggling arrangements for billing and payment that exist today would be IMPOSSIBLE without the insurance industry supporting its piece of what really is an incredibly elaborate and blatant ponzi scheme being pulled off by an industry and a profession that operates under the ultimate smokescreen: an illusion of benevolence Read the rest of this entry »
It Takes A Pillage
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 26, 2009 by admin in Politics
Monday, October 26th, 2009The public has been slow to react to investment banks’ plundering of the economy, but some protests are finally taking shape in Chicago.
If you’re amongst the nation’s 14 million unemployed, maybe you should see if you can get a job delivering the plasma screen TV’s and cases of champagne that bailed out bankers will be buying to celebrate another year of million-dollar bonuses. Finally, even people like billionaire investor George Soros say you should be angry about the obscene bonuses received by Wall Street. In spite of the fact that the White House “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg is imposing restrictions on certain companies’ compensation, it’s largely agreed that this is pointless, because what bank executives don’t get in salary and cash bonuses, they get through stock options and other benefits. So while New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo releases a study (see No Rhyme or Reason: The ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’ Bank Bonus Culture) that looks in detail at how bailout recipients Merrill and Citigroup both lost more than $27 billion in 2008 but still somehow justified paying nearly $9 billion in bonuses, and while Treasury Department watchdog Neil Barofsky continually points out the appalling misuse of bailout funds, 2009 bonuses at companies like Goldman Sachs will be double what they were in 2008. Call me naiive, but I remain astounded at the idea that one can run global economy into the ground and get a bonus for it. I was originally going to use the analogy of a man with gambling problem for today’s little rant, and thought it a little corny. But Nomi Prins – author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street
Are We All Just Marks In The Hugest Hustle In History?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on October 18, 2009 by admin in Politics
Sunday, October 18th, 2009I can’t help noticing that some people are getting richer while the rest of us struggle to get by.
 Tim Geithner Demonstrates Just How Much He Cares About The Average Working Stiff |
I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve been conned in the biggest pigeon drop in history. While it’s nice to see the FBI go after a few greedy billionaires for insider trading, I’m tired of wealthy capitalist guys in suits that cost more than my housing for a year first telling us that we need a socialist banking system, then that they need 23 trillion of our imaginary future tax dollars to save capitalism, then that it’s none of our business where the money goes, even when we sue and win to find out, then that in spite of the fact that they deceived us at the outset that these same rich banker capitalist guys will be happy to loan the government banks money to save them. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture? In a similar era in US history, Franklin D. Roosevelt said “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics“. This idea is highlighted by the points made in the NYT piece Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth, in which they quote Gary Richardson, a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research as saying (in reference to the banks that have been bailed out): “we have just shown them that they can have the most frightening things happen to them, and we will throw trillions of dollars to protect them. I have big concerns about that.” So do I. How about you? Read the rest of this entry »