Democrats are anxious to spin the tail on the asinine Tea Party, to label the credit rating adjustment made by Standard and Poor’s as the “Tea Party Downgrade.” Except a Twitterverse wiseacre already gave the Teabag idiot racists a downgrade, by cutting them down a K.
What can we expect of a capitalist system gorging itself on the misery of others? The energized “food speculators” have found another way now to skim money off of commodities (and off those producing them) by racing out of their burnt down, failing criminal derivatives scams – that are and will continue to cause job loss, retirement and savings loss, home equity loss – and into food.
This should be stopped immediately by Congress in the interests of the nation and the poorest countries that are now experiencing riots and unrest over high prices and shortages. But you can bet the millionaires in Congress are profiting from this hideous behavior and won’t do a god damn thing about it other than throw money, our money, at it. Worthless solutions from bankrupt minds.The liars in the mainstream media blame everything else but the real cause …the Wall Street vipers. This is our American culture …profit at all and any costs.
Ethanol is turning out to be a speculative tool as well, besides taking land away from corn grown for cattle feed and humans. Sugar cane, other forms of bio-fuel will become speculator targets as well. Even water! All of this investing in commodities is driven by the falling dollar created by the Fed who crashed the dollar!! Lowering interest rates and opening cheap credit windows to Wall Street floods the economy with more worthless paper. This is driving the commodities bubble as well. Investors are trying to hedge against losses from the subprime/derivatives scams. It’s all related… not as the mainstream news claims that weather or high oil prices are driving this. Bullpucky.
“According to Grünewald, “Raw materials are the mega-trend of the decade,” and his company intends to intensify its involvement in both water and agricultural stocks. MIC investment in wheat alone has already yielded profit levels of 93 percent for the 2,500 members of the club.” – WSWS
Read these two articles and see if Wall Street is mentioned: NY Sun: food rationing or Yahoo: food crisis.
In the current housing bankruptcy “crisis” which was in fact created by the privately owned Fed through interest rates that reached 1% in 2003 combined with lax oversight of the banks, the bail out now being talked about in Congress will help… no surprise… the banks by and large. It is meant to deceive the public again by using words such as “helping” the homeowners, or “saving” peoples homes. NOTE: When you save a mortgage you save the bank’s payments by insuring they keep coming in. Besides the fact that people don’t own their homes, the banks do!
Regardless, in a socialist system this kind of gross manipulation would never have happened in the first place. And the half honest sensible solution by these charlatans in Congress should be to refi these homes to these homebuyers at the new lesser value. Because the value is lost anyway. And these homes were wildly overvalued by an out of control speculatory financial cabal. Besides, the bundled debt obligations and structured investment vehicles are worthless. Adding misery, the value of these homes will keep crashing. The rub? The banks and Investors made millions off these paper schemes and walked away… and probably paid little or no taxes. And now, the home buyers who were preyed upon by these lenders, owe money on a devalued home that was used only as a commodity by the “gentlemen” on Wall St. to manipulate, through the creation of CDO’s and SIVs? Sure! That’s capitalism. Systemic political and corporate corruption. And it’s going to get worse.
Congress desperately needs this property tax, interest payment, revenue stream to keep flowing to the banks and the states. But the reason this is a problem for Congress of “what is the best poison” to cure this, is that to bail out the home buyer who got screwed, is using tax money to keep receiving tax money. It’s double taxation!! And a zero sum game… besides rewarding the crooks. More deficit spending. But the Fed doesn’t care about homeowners and thusly told Congress as much by introducing Paulson’s new scheme to have the Fed take over the duties of the SEC and oversight of the big investment banks and their financial debauchery and chicanery. To keep the graft and secret deals going. The “dark trades” as they’re called. And spineless Congress cannot protest. They are owned by the Fed. In fact they are linked in responsibility by their repealing of the Glass-Steagall act with Greenspan’s urging (which Clinton didn’t veto) and attaching the Commodities Reauthorization Act attached to an appropriations bill in 2000. Ahhh the rewards for the capitalist elite are sweet indeed. No accountability, no worries, no chance of getting the blame. The yellow press at their beckon call.
Socialism would put all properties under the ownership of the people with all rents going to the citizens public fund and distributed to each social association for necessary services, loans, needs. There is no reason for housing or land to have any kind of increased value over the years. NONE. Ask yourself why your car then, doesn’t appreciate in value? Or your furniture? Real estate has been another way to oppress and exploit people by putting them into massive debt and making them pay banks twice the value of the home over the term of the loan. Besides the fleecing by the middlemen realtors and speculators using homes as commodities,(thus the current death spiral in housing). Have you ever looked at your amortization schedule? On a fixed rate 30 year loan? You pay twice or more of purchase price, if you paid off your loan! And you’re paying the bank first. We are insane for agreeing to this but that’s why the banks are the most powerful sector of capitalism. Which include the privately owned Federal Reserve. Oh you say, I made thousands when the market was good! No, you made the banks richer and more powerful by putting the next person into new debt for 30 years at 1 1/2 to 2 times the mortgage payment. Now your house increasing in value, puts upward pricing pressure on all homes and finally drives them out of reach of buyers. Thus the 1% housing bubble. For every person who “wins” in the capitalist system, 8 people lose (and those who depend on them). Otherwise you wouldn’t have a system where 10% of the population own 85% of the household wealth and property. The trick is to keep you thinking you’re winning when you’re really just up to your neck in debt in this American Casino Land.
Capitalism is a constant barrage of fairy tales and propaganda aimed at deluding the masses into believing there is no other way a social/economic system can be run. And that to be rich (or at least have the opportunity-possibility to be) is the ultimate goal because that is the genuine expression of self freedom and self worth! Or the lie that mercantilism and worker owned production could not work alone… without the corporate structure or Wall St. But the facts on the ground show us the truth, that capitalism is a fascist system designed to concentrate wealth at the top, steal our productive gains, and by doing so, makes those at the top the most powerful, privileged members of a society. It’s Monarchical. A plutocracy. Oligarchs rule. Fascism! Congress, the court system and state/city regulatory systems are subservient in every way to maintaining the fascist construct. Question: Ever taken part in an organization by volunteering to help change one of the many injustices in this country? You know what I’m talking about then. Wall after wall after obstacle after pot hole after bought off politician …all lined up to trip you, slip you and flip you upside down. New rules to increase petition signatures required for public ballots. Electronic vote stealing and manipulation. Redistricting. Third parties crushed. City council and board meetings held during weekdays. Hundreds of fees and licenses required to run business. Lobbyists at every turn. Zoning codes that dis-allow creative housing solutions and energy use. State insurance commissions. Mineral rights sold for pennies on the dollar… On and on and on… Unless of course your organization/church is involved in taking up the slack for capitalisms failures… then you’re a Mother Theresa! What’s that saying? “I work to feed the poor, they call me a saint. I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
Many people I talk to, on all fronts, are frustrated. And many realize that it is the corporate structure, their power to manipulate policy, to move jobs overseas, encourage wars, and the massive deregulated profit taking and currency manipulation that is at the center core of this American milieu. Besides the fact that no one I talk to has make a thin dime or dollar on Wall St. But the thing I keep running into are differences on how to solve the problem without changing the system drastically. A hypothesis that can be presented is that there is much delusion and neurosis in this land. The idea that we can somehow keep the system we have and make it work for the masses of productive working people, is the delusion as repeatedly, the corrupt one party system consistently proves otherwise. The neurosis is contained within this same idea that is the crux of the delusion. Knowing that something needs to change drastically and on the other hand knowing (by experience or observation) that it is irrational and impossible within the corrupt fascist matrix that will not allow drastic change that is needed. This creates neurosis. The constant tension of this negative psychic entrapment, is energy that has to be released and is finally. Usually negatively in some way. But it could be positive and productive IF there were a real alternative to work toward. Democratic socialism.
Socialists are realists. They are objective creative intelligent humanitarians who know that this delusion and neurosis is not healthy and requires a clean break from the causation. Often I am scoffed at by others for this view. Where? Where would – could this happen? I think that if it’s possible anywhere it would be in a state that seceded from the nation. Vermont’s trying and testing the water. Though even then, there would be no consensus for a socialist form of citizen led, decentralized government. No, until the public is re-educated as to the true intent and purpose of democratic socialism and its platform, and can be persuaded that exploitation of man by man is unacceptable, they will forever bicker and fight among themselves, as children who fight for a place in the lunch line or over possessions. Seemingly without the skills to reassess, re-strategise, and break away from the malignancy present all around us. Socialism takes a deep commitment and concentration to assess the situation on the ground (objectivism) and rationalize, then actualize the alternatives that will then benefit the real producers of capital (us) and replace the owners of the means of production and pushers of propaganda. It’s time to consider socialism as the correct answer to our dilemma.
Got Real Player?
Two hours of excellent deconstruction of the big financial parasites and how 2008 will see a depression and a transfer of tax burden (bail out) onto the working and what’s left of the middle class. Banks are calling in loans on hedge funds and hedge funds don’t have the money (lost it gambling) so they are selling their assets (any assets) which include stocks. That’s why we see the big drops in the stock market. And the writing off of billions by the banks …large and small. And their stock price declining.
If the Fed keeps lowering interest rates (printing money to save their banking and wall street buddies) we’re screwed and it won’t help. That’s the same as me giving someone more money who is already in deep debt and has no way to repay me. They, the Fed, has screwed things up so bad we’d still be f__ked if they raised interest rates. It’s a liquidity fix one way and a credit tightening the other. But either way credit is cut off due to all the debt.
And all of this due to the subprime and criminal mortgage lending practices of the banks the Fed is supposed to be watching. Greenspan is a crook of magnificent proportion! He should be behind bars!! But it’s a systemic problem of corrupt fascist business model since the Fed took over the management, value and issuing of our currency in 1913. And largely amplified after the 1971 de-coupling of gold from the dollar. Dr Hudson explains how it’s all working to our demise.
This was in August before we see now Kucinich, like Paul, is being kept out of the debates and marginalized by the media. Hudson is Kucinich’s financial adviser. Some of you may not agree with his tax solutions but regardless, this is a scathing indictment of the current globalist capitalist financial/economic system. Deeply corrupt and terminal.
Dr. Michael Hudson on Financial corruption and collapse
Part 1 – Aug 15
Part 2 – Aug 22
Links on this site to the Aug 15 and 22 interviews.
Two memorable things in my life were tied to Columbia Savings. The first was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. I was a recent college graduate working for a large international accounting firm, KPMG Peat Marwick. I remember sitting in a conference room, clad in a conservative business suit, already on hour 5 of an 18-hour workday. These were the days before the Internet; we still relied on the Big 3 to provide us with news. One of the higher ups came into the room, solemn look on his face, and turned on the television. The ten of us sat there and watched hope gone awry….seven lives gone due to an improperly sealed O-ring.
A few years later, the “Feds” came in and took the CEO, the CFO, and several others out of the building in handcuffs. It was a scary sight. These were our friends…our role models. What the hell? What was going on?
The S&L crisis changed the American way of life. Without an extensive legal or financial background, you may not understand how. But, trust me, rules were changed. I worked for the next several years with the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), the branch of the government created to ensure that we would all enjoy a safe financial future. They were a bunch of dumbshits who had absolutely no chance of being hired by Peat Marwick, or any other reputable company. Like so many, the government is a safe haven for idiots who crave authority.
Moving on. Despite the noble efforts of the RTC, the country is facing another financial crisis. As interest rates have gone down over the past several years, a new brand of leech has been unleashed on the unsuspecting public. The mortgage broker. We are in a housing crisis due to the prevalence of SUBPRIME loans. Let me explain. In the past, a family had to meet certain requirements in order to obtain a mortgage. They had to earn enough income, own assets, show that they would be able to meet ongoing financial obligations. Banks and S&Ls had strict underwriting requirements. They extended credit and collected interest in return. Borrowers had to be a PRIME candidates to qualify for a mortgage loan.
Today, the mortgage industry has gone wild. There are zillions of mortgage brokers who can find ANYONE a loan. They shop around for a third tier underwriter who is willing to lend the money. The broker receives a large commission. The underwriter receives an origination fee and various other payments. Neither care if you are in over your head. They will offer you an initial rate of 2 or 3% with adjustable rate mortgage (ARM), and convince you that rates won’t go up much. You can afford it. Buy that bigger house. Once the deal is inked, the lender simply takes the cruddy mortgage portfolio and sells it to the next prick in line, greedy for the soon-to-be usurious interest payments.
For the past two years, mortgage rates have increased. Over a trillion dollars of ARM loans are due to reset in the next 18 months. Homeowners’ adjustable payments have gone from $400/month to $600 to $1500. With no end in sight. Foreclosures are at an all time high. Too bad for the idiots, you say? Well, I would normally agree with you. But let’s hope that you don’t have a house to sell. As the banks divest themselves of the properties they’ve foreclosed on, real estate prices will be driven into the ground. The lenders will have to write off trillions of dollars of bad loans, likely rendering many of them insolvent. Huge investment funds tied to subprime loans will become worthless. Many Americans will lose their homes, their market investments, and their ability to obtain future credit. I’m predicting another bail out that will cost the taxpayers billions.
Meanwhile, my best friend saw the potential in the industry, despite the fact that she knew nothing about mortgage banking, and earned $18,000. Last month.