Enough. That’s what you said during your campaign. In the face of scurrilous charges, you were content to believe, as you said, that the American people were smart enough to see through those charges, that they had had enough of racism.
Well, Mr. President, we proved you right, but now, we fear you are proving us wrong. You see, it’s not just racism we’ve had enough of – we’ve had enough of cronyism, favoritism, and yes, even capitalism – at least the kind of capitalism that has been waged against us for nearly three decades.
We may be simple people, Mr. President, but we are not stupid people. We keep being told this financial rigamarole is too complicated for us to comprehend, but it's all too apparent we comprehend it a lot better than the financial wizards. We're onto them, and we've had enough of being played for fools.
We know what a Ponzi scheme is, and we know it operates on the Greater Fool Theory, meaning it works as long as you can find somebody dumber than you to buy the hole in the doughnut.
So, Mr. President, no more doughnut holes, please. Enough.
No more bailouts and no more bonuses for people on Wall Street who knew or should have known their fancy financial shenanigans were nothing more than a gigantic Ponzi scheme. If we have to go down with them, then so be it. But we are sick and tired of being played for patsies by people who think they’re smarter – and better – than us. They’re not; they’re fools.
Even the most ignorant savage knows better than to shit in his own nest, but these educated fools never learned that. Even the most backwoods, ignorant farmer knows better than to let the hogs loose in the seed corn, but these educated fools never learned that.
Some of us tried long ago to explain to educated fools like Alan Greenspan that turning the nation’s economic engine over to the greediest bastards on the planet was not going to work out well in the end. Now he listens too late.
Any fool should have known better, unless they were the fools some foolishly elected to public office. Some must share the blame for voting for people who cared not a wit for the people. We may not all share the blame for that, but we will all have to share the pain. And we will all have to pay for that – and pay dearly.
We accept that, but we refuse to pay any more of our money to bailout or “retain” those who caused us to visit this vale of sorrows. Enough.
We are told again and again that we must prop up these failures, but we know better. Mr. President, we are smart enough to know you can’t fill a hole with another hole. We know that the best advice when you are in a hole is to stop digging. So stop digging a deeper grave for Wall Street; let it die a much-deserved death. Enough.
By giving our money to corrupt corporations already “too big to fail”, you are giving them even more advantage over companies that made money the old-fashioned way – they earned it by producing good products and making good loans.
Enough. But if you must spend our money, spend it as you promised – on education, energy and healthcare; spend it on infrastructure, something that has been virtually ignored in this country for the last thirty years.
And if you want to bail-out somebody, bail-out our auto companies and maintain at least some semblance of our once proud manufacturing base that won the war and was the envy of the world. Or spend it to bailout homeowners who made an honest mistake or lost a good job or had serious health problems.
But do not spend another nickel of our money bailing out greedy, rotten bastards who think they should be rewarded with a king’s ransom for failure. Let ‘em eat CDO’s.
Enough.
©2009 Tom Cordle
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I've had enough too; and I'm letting you know. Thank you for fighting the good fight, my friend. I'm adding you now. rated
I'm starting to feel a Howard Beale moment coming on......
Thumbed.
While Main Street is scrimping and working two or possibly three jobs, just to make ends meet; Wall Street & our Mega-banks are getting bailouts to help them continue, business as usual. With the recent additional bailout funds going to these companies, nothing has come the way of the average American home. No wage increases, no health insurance, no break on everyday expenses.
Mr. President and members of Congress - act on our needs for a change!
I fear it is business as usual. As for capitalism, the united States has practiced this sort of capitalism with adjustment to the playing field to keep it at least somewhat level.
It is normal in cycles of 25-50 years for some companies to become so large that their very size and money and marketing muscle creates if not in name in function a monopoly. At that point the market becomes unfree and subject to the whims of the limited suppliers. Government has to readjust for the good of all society.
This cycle with the mega mergers of the past two decades has produced an imbalance in the market and Washington. Most of the past trade and regulation laws (presented by democrats and republicans) over the past 20 years have favored the few at the expense of the many. Healthcare, energy, media, and entertainment have been reduced to a very few major players. In media 7 global corporation control 90% of all movies and TV shows. Energy production and pricing is controlled by a few, and most hospitals systems are in the hands of less of corporations like Humana, United Health care and Keiser.
Many of the financial bailouts make me sick. First the Government deregulates so the banks can charge loan shark interest, then bails them out when they bleed everyone dry. Wall Street tells the investor to buy long and save in 401Ks and IRA and then manipulates the market with short selling and after reaping billions and billions from those trusting investors and then has the balls to ask for a trillion more because they crashed the market.
It is time for the Government to be afraid of the people again. It is time to start cleaning house and get rid of those who have been in Washington for decades. We did it with our president now we need to to it with congress and the senate.
If they have served more than 2 terms vote them out. Our country can survive any more of their "experience"
I'm not ignoring the positive changes that have occurred since the inauguration, but they've mostly been on "culture war" issues like stem cell research and family planning (not to mention the new White House kitchen garden) that don't really affect Big Business's bottom line. On the far more important financial front, though, it's still "whatever Wall Street wants, Wall Street gets" - including a foolproof way to unload its toxic assets at taxpayer expense.
As I've said before - and will keep on saying for as long as it takes - the root cause of our financial and societal problems lies in capitalism itself, and the problems will not go away unless and until it is replaced with a humane system based on production for human needs rather than for profit. Electing Democrats will not make this happen.
Fuck the bonuses---These cats are making SALARIES in the millions upon millions!
And why can't we just say NO MORE CORPORATE JETS. Period. If these execs started traveling on commercial carriers, wouldn't that help the airline industry? And reduce the carbon/gas/etc. footprint?
We are all in this together. The real joke is, they don't get that---these masters of the universe. They really think they are self-sustaining---fuck, they're not even self-sufficient.
The bailout which also cannot work, simply because nobody knows how big the actual financial whole actually is. And then of course the issue of leaving the bill for future generations to contend with...
The only way out is, as you indicated, is accepting the pain (the consequences of the actions-albeit the average American did not really cause it), and salvaging what is of true value for the langhaul, that you may rebuild your country on solid ground, and not on the quicksand that Wall street now has proven itself to be.
Yes I had enough! Because the actions of a few buffoons are affecting us all
I just don't understand what you--and many other posters here at OS who advocate this same thinking--suggest as the alternative. Surely you understand how integral the banks are to the entire global economy? We simply cannot let them fail. What we have seen since September is only the tip of the iceberg if we let them fail. It's been standard procedure since forever that the government steps in and takes over until the bank returns to solvency. (Happened quite properly in Texas in 1987). It's just that here in the good ole USA people are scared by the boogy monster of socialism, so bailing out a bunch at a time feels threatening. The answer is to nationalize the banks temporarily. Which is, of course, the same thing as bailing them out, in a way. We bail them out by buying them.
At this point we the taxpayers own 80% of AIG. We are AIG.
Do I want to bring that on? Certainly not. But before I agree we ought to spend any more public money propping up this Ponzi scheme, I want someone to explain in plain English how they even project --I say again, even project -- all this bailing-out os going to fix things. Trust me doesn't cut it anymore, trust was the first casualty of this war.
One thing sure, Tim Geithner won't be able to explain it or project it any more than Alan Greenspan did. As Greenspan admitted in his book, his main function was to obfuscate and confuse Congress with his pedigree and his four-syllable words, and let the lunatics run free to gamble away our money in the asylum/casino.
The plain truth is these financial wizards are the ones the can't see the forest for the trees. They've been too long lost in the Ayn Rand woods to comprehend that the purpose of govt is not to make it easy for the rich to get richer and let crumbs fall from the table where they may for the rest of us. And while we're on that subject, please don't lecture me about socialism vs capitalism, I think I've made my views abundantly clear in my posts here.
I hope you understand the Fed is only financial institution that matters here - the others can rot -- are rotten -- as far as I'm concerned. The Fed matters because it's the only institution that has its name on our money. Our money is no longer redeemable in gold - it no longer even says silver certificate. It's called a Federal Reserve Note, and it is backed by nothing save "the full faith and credit of the United State of America".
Well, the wizards of Wall Street have seen to it that the faith and trust in our financial system have been destroyed, and now they want to stuff their pockets with what little can be borrowed from foreign nations that no longer trust our financial system, or borrowed from our children and grandchildren through simply printing trillions more in Federal Reserve Notes.
Oh, I understand this all right. But, hey, if you or Geithner or Obama or anyone else would like to try and convince me I'm wrong, I'm willing to listen. Here's the crux of the matter, as far as I can determine:
There are roughly $6o trillion dollars in obligations of one kind or another leveraged against roughly $12 trillion dollars in assets (depreciating assets at the moment). So whose going to take the $48 trillion dollar bath? The investors here and around the world (including, unfortunately some pension funds) or American citizens and their children and grandchildren?
I look forward to someone answering that question.
and hell, i'm going down anyway. let the bastards come with me.
Lainey, while I really wish that I could agree whole heartedly with your optimism, “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” (Albert Einstein)
Forced socialism is a path lengthy and full of suffering; I suggest that the alternate (good) path is education and communication.
And how does an entire globe full of banks failing not cause massive global catastrophe? This is what I'm asking.
This bubble is different than other financial bubbles because it affected the one aspect of the economy that has traditionally been bulletproof and not subject to speculation -- the private home. Homes have traditionally appreciated at roughly the rate of inflation, but from 2000-2005 they roughly doubled in price, with areas like CA, FL and AZ showing even larger increases.
Because of the inflation of homes values, millions of people who have never been "investors" got sucked into the game, and took out loans on their home. As might be expected, millions of people got taken advantage of.
I'm not sure anyone knows how accurate all the numbers are, but there is over $10 trillion dollars in residential mortgages outstanding and the default rate on them is approaching 10%. Add to that the fact that over the last few months homes that back those mortgages have depreciated 20% in most areas and as much as 50% in others, and you begin to get a hint at the size of the problem.
Now add in additional trillions in mortgage-backed-securities and other derivative obligations, some of which are simply bets with no real assets backing them, and you begin to see that pumping a few trillion into large financial institutions can't begin to solve the problem. Some of them are going to have to die, and a lot of investors are going to have to go along for the ride.
Is there no alternative? I'm afraid I don't see a viable alternative unless the administration -- or someone -- is able to convince investors around the world to buy $40 trillion or so in CDO's and other obligations backed by nothing but trust in corporate speculators who have proven themselves unworthy of trust. Calling them Legacy Assets instead of Toxic Assets won't be enough, especially when much of them shouldn't even be called assets.
It seems to me the best use of already strained public monies is to invest in immediate infrastructure needs, invest in companies that produce jobs and products rather than paper profits and speculation, invest in alternate energy and conservation, and invest in limited mortgage assistance.
As much as possible, we should also be making long-term investments in our people through education and healthcare reform. And by healthcare reform I do not mean subjecting 50 million more customers to the whims and tyranny of insurance companies and giant hospital chains.
Nice rant. We’ve known all along that Obama is fairly close to corporatists in his views.
I’ve said it before, I’m saying it now, and I’ll say it again: until we dismantle, or at least completely disempower, corrupt, virtually useless corporations, there will be no meaningful change in matters such as these major issues we face. I don’t know how much real change we can actually expect as Obama continues to put the same types of ex-wall-streeters in charge of running the show.
It’s still early in his administration and maybe time will reveal some changes in his approach that might actually lead to changing these broken parts of the system, but I’m not counting on it.
It seems that a simple question has been lost: what is the purpose?
What is the purpose of a corporation? What is the purpose of capitalism? What is the purpose of an economic system?
I like the following as an answer to those questions:
The purpose is to harness private interests in service to the public interest.
RATED
My honest-to-god take on this is that we are on the precipice of a disaster that would simply undo the United States of America as we know it. What gives us as a country so much in the way of wealth and influence in the world stems from a single thing: our stability. I am truly frightened that focusing on bonuses and regulation (attaching strings at this point) is to feed into distractions. I think the absolute priority must be to stabilize the economy, and to do so probably requires several distasteful decisions like rewarding bad behavior. I'm genuinely upset at the partisan sniping going on--Republicans/FOX picking on Obama's upbeat mood lately precisely after picking on his doomsday language just a week ago--when so much is at stake.
I'm totally with you on infrastructure and health care, btw. I'm all for that. But I think the economy won't function--will not function--if we don't immediately put the banks back on solid ground. We won't have construction companies to do the bridge-building or hospitals to perform health care if they cannot borrow money. Everything in our economy seems to rely on credit.
You mention something about investors being talked into buying these bad CDOs, and my understanding is that that is exactly what Obama's plan is--to build a foundation that allows private investors to buy these bad loans. Personally, I don't know who the hell would, and I'm with you that pretending they're not toxic doesn't make it so (although, interestingly, there's no discipline more than economics where perception can create reality), but at least he's getting them on the market and getting a price on them. If I'm understanding this correctly. And it's entirely possible that I'm not.
Rated.
Why should I, who have no job and no income at this time pay even $200 in taxes when I see it being handed to someone who surely could at least sell their yacht.
I guarantee you, those execs may be suffering emotionally from the loss of their largesse. They may be very unhappy about having to downsize their lifestyle so drastically, and perhaps now being unable to send their children to Harvard, but they are nowhere NEAR the poorhouse, unlike some of us.
Let me say, I'm not arguing with the aim of stabilizing these "too big to fail" financial institutions; I think we all wish that could happen -- although I think it should be a requirement as part of the rescue plan that they be divested and that all future mergers and acquisitions be subjected to a test for systemic risk. But all that's a dream scenario, as far as I can see.
The original TARP pitch was that the govt would acquire the toxic assets and hold them until the market for them recovered. The problem was no one could decide what, if anything, they were worth -- or even how to decide what they worth, since private investors wouldn't touch them.
That added to the problem since the bad assets affected the price of good assets -- that was the crux of the whole "mark to market" discussion. If there's no market, then all the assets have no "market value" and the reserves of financial institutions would have to be increased dramatically -- effectively ending lending.
The "geniuses" on Wall Street couldn't figure a way out of this box, so instead, Paulsen arbitrarily changed the whole aim of the TARP program and decided just to give away as many billions as he could to his cronies with no strings attached.
I think that was all the proof anyone should have needed that there is no private market for these "derivative assets", and they are even more suspect now than they were when the TARP was first proposed.
I wish I didn't have to say this, but I simply don't believe a nation that is already $10 trillion dollars in debt has any business going in debt another $2 trillion dollars to buy up toxic assets, when there may well be another $40 trillion or more in questionable assets on the books of major financial institutions.
I am not without hope, however, in that there are still plenty of sound banks in this country who didn't get caught up in the casino mentality. There's also trillions in cash in private and govt hands around the world looking for a safe place to invest, and in these troubled times willing to invest at a low interest rate. BUT none of that money is likely to go willingly into the hands of the people who screwed the pooch.
By the way, if anyone thinks I'm wrong about any of this, I'd love to be educated. And if anyone has a solution to this problem or at least some less frightening numbers, I would LOVE to hear about them.
Great documentary !
Full of many significant facts.
Everyone who completely agrees with this post should watch it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
Quite frankly I think you must trust your president, and trust that he has done his homework, and that he is acting in the interest of the American people. I'm not American, but I'm totally convinced he is. Truly, that is all you've got going for you right now, and at least that amount of faith is needed. Without the banks your economy together with the entire world economy, will come to a halt, and life as we once knew it will be no more.
I'm sorry, Rick. I wish you were right, but that will NEVER be the purpose of corporations or capitalism. The entire point of capitalism is to harness public goods and the labor of the majority in service to the private interests of the wealthy and powerful.
The only way we are ever going to harness private interests to serve the public interest is to convert them to public ownership. Yes, AIG and the other financial industry crooks have made themselves "too big to fail." Fine - prop them up, if that's what's needed in the short run - but do it by nationalizing them, not by throwing more dollars at them to use however they wish. If the public has to bear the risk and burden entailed in turning things around, then the public should reap the benefits as well.
But I don't believe we have time to resolve those meta questions at the moment, a moment in which we are apparently about to risk another $2 trillion in public monies investing in Toxic/Legacy Assets and pumping several tens of billions more into propping up AIG.
I understand the earlier desperate decision to invest in AIG in order to try and stabilize the financial system, and it may have seemed like a good idea at the time. And yes, I understand that now that we own 80% of AIG, why we are trying to protect that investment.
But at some point this has to become a cold, calculating business decision, and we have to decide whether what we're doing is throwing good money after bad. Back when we had an investment economy rather than a speculation economy, financial decisions were based on numbers - so what are the numbers?
There are roughly 2.7 billion shares of AIG outstanding. In May 2008, those shares traded at about $50/share. Today the stock price is 33 cents/share. Do the math -- stock valued at $135 Billion in May 2008 is now valued at $800 million despite the fact that we have pumped $170 billion in public money into that firm with the expectation of more to come.
What any sensible analysis says is that for practical purposes, this company is bankrupt already -- and nobody in their right mind invests in a bankrupt company. Smart money waits for the firm to be liquidated and buys up assets at fire-sale prices of pennies on the dollar.
The Geithner plan will not change any of this for AIG or any of the other severely over-leveraged, over-indebted companies like Citibank and Bank of America. Private money is saying quite clearly to the market that they expect these companies to fail.
The machinations of Bernankhe and Geithner may be able to forestall the day when these banks fail, but it is doubtful they can prevent what appears to be inevitable. In the meantime, I wouldn't bet the farm on it, as we are being asked to do now that the hogs have eaten the seed corn.
http://open.salon.com/blog/lairderg/2009/03/23/workers_walk_away_for_a_day_or_two
Agreed.
The difference between our comments is that I was posing the idea of determining purpose as opposed to what you present, which is what is currently practiced and has been presented as the purpose.
Tom,
I think your assessment is accurate. And I see your suggestion of letting these guys fail as a first step towards accomplishment of disempowering them.
We agree. Thanks for the links.
True freedom and capitalism is about accountability. Make a bad investment, you lose your shirt. Government shouldn't bail these things out.
This is the first time I have ever rated one of your posts.
Begs the question, though, how many times in eight years did you openly disagree with Bush, or are you one of that 22% who still thinks "Heckuva job, Georgie!"