Amidst Increased Security, We Get Ripped Off

Securities fraud cases are down 87% since 2000. Great News! On the surface, it appears that Wall Street has finally turned away from the dark side and the free market system of letting the market take care of itself is working for the good of everyone.

Don’t bet your life savings on it. This ‘miraculous’ turn of events is simply another Ponzi scheme. Instead of shifting money around to cover other debts, as is the idea of the Ponzi scheme, the federal government has been shifting investigative resources towards preventing terrorism and away from preventing the U.S. economy from being ripped off.

As a result of spending less time ferreting out the con artists that everyone knows are there, the FBI and the SEC has allowed the American taxpayer to be ripped off to the tune of billions of dollars to bailout the economy. How did our government best serve our interests in this brilliant maneuver?

We now have armed security forces roaming our airports rummaging through our luggage forcing us to take off our shoes and empty our water bottles. They see through our clothing to view every personal detail of our bodies. When they see fit, they confiscate our electronic equipment and force us to sit in rooms designated as ‘international zones’ so that the ‘authorities’ are not encumbered with Americans’ civil rights while we await further investigation. All this so we can visit relatives and friends. We are subjected to this humiliation while our fellow Americans on Wall Street are allowed to rip us off of our savings and our government further rips us off to bail them out. What a country.

Have we even had any terrorist threat to our airline industry since 2001? Some will argue that its because of all the security that we haven’t had any threats. How about using that same logic on Wall Street? If we watched our money handlers as stringently as we scrutinize our ‘friendly skies’ we wouldn’t be in this financial mess.

Wall Street claims it doesn’t need to be regulated. Free market cheerleaders say the economy should handle itself. The current state of the economy, swirling down the toilet, is a great argument for more regulation and less ‘free’ market.

It always comes down to humans cannot be trusted with other people’s money.

We will never see an end to corporate abuse. Even if there was a regulatory investigator on every corporate staff, there would not be enough honest, un-corruptible individuals to rid the American people of this type of evil.

To these guys, money no longer represents a hard working individual trying to make a better living for himself and his family by buying into the stock market dream of having your money work for you. This money becomes nothing more than another commodity that can and should be controlled and used to make more money for the fund manager. The implied promise to protect the owners investment becomes secondary. And if they have to bend a few rules or make unethical decisions that could result in a quick profit for themselves while there is no one watching over his shoulder then he will take that chance.

Obama has promised an overhaul of the SEC, but this is just a matter of course for an incoming authority when the current system has failed. In the end, nothing will really change, as long as humans are handling other peoples money, unregulated and without the threat of severe punishment, there will be fraud and deception.

Whose Money Is It?

The Republicans rode in on their white horses, at the last minute, and saved the day. Everybody cheer! Pats on the back to everyone for a job well done! Hip, hip, hooray!

The party atmosphere in the White House is almost palpable. Champagne corks are flying, party favors are passed out at the door. While that address on Pennsylvania Avenue celebrates its heroic victory of snatching Wall Street investors from the jaws of almost certain doom, taxpayers are footing the bill, again. Ex-homeowners are setting up new residences in tent cities across the country adding to the already shameful number of homeless right here in the richest and most affluent country in the world.

Sure, bailing out these large financial institutions was the most expedient method to prevent an even deeper recession, which, by the way, was created by these very same people, but how about sending some help to those people whose dreams of owning their own home were preyed upon by unethical money lenders whose own personal goals were to sell as many loans as possible.

By extending credit to questionable, borderline, at-risk individuals whose qualifications were based on some pretty creative credit score criteria, these short-sighted, greedy mortgage lenders knew these loans would probably never be able to be repaid and therefore they became one of the instruments that brought this economy to its knees. They were paid their salaries so they didn’t care if the loans would be paid or not. After all, to their irresponsible way of thinking, it wasn’t their money.

The result of the devastating wave of foreclosures will be felt for years to come in neighborhoods across this country, with the potential to affect entire cities. But, hey, it wasn’t their money so why should mortgage lenders care. They think their responsibility began and ended on the dotted line.

Lenders and servicers who hold those loans need to now step up and restructure high-risk loans, that they were responsible for, into lower-rate mortgages to help people stay in their homes in order to continue to be productive in this economy instead of a drain on it. It is their moral responsibility.

Here’s a message for anyone who deals with money: any government bailout comes out of our taxes and takes money away from other necessary projects. Projects we all benefit from, so, yes it is your money too. These narrow-minded mortgage lenders who wrought such havoc on our society will pay for their bad decisions, right along with the rest of us.

They share the blame for this faltering economy with those heroic rescuing Republicans on their white horses who saw to it that the wealthy don’t pay as much tax as the rest of us. In pushing corporate welfare they have upset a very basic tenet of a capitalist economy: there has to exist a buyer and a producer. When the buyer is drained of all financial ability to buy then the system falls apart. Very simple explanation, true, but this is what is happening. This republican government, in its zeal to do everything in its power to shift as much financial wealth as possible to the wealthiest among us, has, without going into an actual depression, created the largest welfare-dependent group of people in U.S. history.

The very backbone of this economy is being bled dry. America cannot afford to go deeper into debt. Americans cannot afford to support the fiscal irresponsible republican sacred cow of throwing money at a problem until it goes away. Corporate America has unashamedly raided pension plans to cover their leaders bad financial decisions, the federal government has tapped the Social Security system to cover short falls from a vast array of financial mis-management. An illegal war has drained billions of dollars away from needed infrastructure projects, healthcare, education, etc that still need to be paid for. The health and welfare of the American populace is being pushed aside to protect the rich from the after effects of their own lack of financial responsibility.

While the CEO’s and politicians responsible for this economic misery walk away, counting their financial spoils, millions of American taxpayers will be saddled with this bailout for years to come.

While politicians are enriched by corporate America’s lobbyists and CEO’s savor their sweetheart golden parachute deals the American taxpayer struggles to pay the ever increasing costs for the very basic needs of survival that these same politicians and CEO’s will never have to struggle for.

As long as our political leaders are more concerned with ensuring a profit for corporate America than for the public welfare of the working class whose hard work and purchasing power are instrumental in creating that profit, taxpayers will never get a break.

So, in the end, the venerable and steadfast hard working American taxpayer once again has his pockets ripped open by the unethically greedy and immorally bloodied hands of this administration in order to scrape out the last remaining nickel to cover their mistakes and feed the insatiable greed of corporate America.

Once again I ask, Whose money is it?

America has fallen, can she get back up?

The U.S. has rendered ourselves so reliant on foreign countries that we are in dire danger of becoming a second-class financial and industrial power. Thanks to the Bush Administrations policies and the mishandling of economic conditions, we are about to be passed by China in both rankings.

The U.S. is a bankrupt nation. Medicare and Social Security are under-funded, our state and local governments are under-funded, private-sector pension plans are under-funded. How did we get into this mess? Inept politicians, apathetic voters, and rampant greed and cynicism on all levels.

We are becoming increasingly indebted to China and they are buying Wall Street. The very financial cornerstone of our economy is failing and they are taking advantage of it by buying an ever increasingly larger stake in our financial future. Capitalism is taking a hit and its hurting us all. George Bush’s response is as long as money is changing hands and his cronies are getting their share it is all good. Never mind that the rest of us are loosing our shirts, homes, and jobs.

Our dependence on foreign oil has allowed Saudi Arabia to wield a much larger controlling stake over our economy than any foreign entity should ever have. The very greedy and selfish nature of capitalism has brought us to this point. And Americans refuse to curb our driving habits to ease this dependence.

Our greatest chance to reverse these trends is to replace George W. Bush’s policies with something that will return America’s future as top priority ahead of personal gain. We have fallen victim to greedy political power hounds who have distanced themselves from any accountability and in doing so has left this country to flounder due to a lack of direction. The needs and concerns of the citizens of this once great nation have fallen to the wayside while political hacks like Karl Rove, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have decimated and dismantled the constitution. They have, in less than eight years of political circus-acts, the likes of which this country has never before seen, have turned this once thriving, self-reliant nation from an industrial and financial power into a groveling street beggar for foreign oil and money. They need to be booted out immediately. At this point, anyone is a better choice.

Our Congress, the very people who are charged with keeping this country focused on our future, spends countless millions of dollars and expends countless hours pursuing such secondary and tertiary issues as steroids in sports and pointing the finger at each other over who did or said what to whom instead of tackling one of the greatest threats to our sovereignty: illegal immigration.

We have been coerced into funding an illegal war, we have been spied upon under the thinly-veiled disguise of terrorist threats, our dollar is shrinking at an alarming rate, and Congress spends its time on preserving the purity of baseball! The irresponsibility and incompetence is outrageous!

There was a time when citizens would stand up to our government at all levels and demand to be heard and listened to. There was a time when the future seemed promising. There was a time when citizens actually believed that if they did stand up and speak their minds, if they did protest, they would be heard and the future actually had promise. These political dark ages that have befallen us are the direct result of politicians who are more concerned with their own re-election and therefore place more importance on their financial backers than on what the everyday blue-collar taxpayer has on his mind. Public outcry for the common good has been drowned out by special interests so often that we no longer see the point of voicing our opinion. Apathy has finally won out. The ‘Silent Majority’ has grown larger and as a result wealthy special interests now run this country. And look at where it has gotten us.

Lawyers get rich defending insurance companies who back out on their obligations, ad agencies get rich peddling products they try to convince consumers we can’t live without, corporations get rich selling products that help ruin our environment, and our federal government passes legislation to protect them all. What do taxpayers get? We get to foot the bill and the occasional joke of a handout in the form of a $300 tax refund designed to ‘stimulate’ the economy.

Our political system has become a game where the expectations of the voters are acknowledged and then step by step, debate by debate, through name-calling, character assassination, and generally dirty politics, the candidates are whittled down to the smoothest talkers with the thickest skins. And in the end, what do we have? A changeling who is able to bend, twist and re-invent themselves at a moments notice to whoever can get them re-elected. We have given up on using our moral compass as a guide. Political integrity and courage, along with personal pride have taken a backseat to money. Capitalism, perfected.

That ‘Going to Hell in a Hand basket’ phrase I grew up hearing about seems more relevant today than ever before.