Who Owns our Government?
by
David Schlecht
In recent posts I’ve gone into some detail onto the problems with our existing financial system. As I’ve pointed out, we will never be able to avoid the bubbles and busts without stringent regulation. The lack of regulation directly led to the great depression of the 30s and is the direct cause of today’s financial problems.
Let’s look at today’s disaster. As posted, earlier, the crux of our current disaster is the derivative market. We have numerous home loans bundled up with other loans and sold like stocks. These bundles are then re-bundled and sold off again. By the time the final sale happens, a buyer may be getting bits and pieces of hundreds of mortgage loans, many in default.
The loans, themselves, aren’t the real problem. The real problem is the banks and investors have trillions of dollars tied up in billions of dollars worth of loans.
Think about that for a moment. The main problem isn’t the mortgages going into default, but those mixed and multiplied derivatives.
The cheap and easy way to fix the problem (for today, anyway) is to make the mortgages good by buying them out and negotiating with the owners for terms that the owners will accept. In fact, we could pay off all the bad mortgages for around 800 billion dollars. Our government could buy up the bad loans and negotiate with the borrowers and spend less than we have given to the banks, so far.
Making the foundation of the bubble good, the derivatives problem goes away. Once the bubble is re-inflated, we can reintroduce the regulations that the Republican Free Market Cult has destroyed and get back on track. This, of course, means getting rid of and possibly outlawing derivatives.
If this makes sense, then you’re probably wondering why our government, in all its wisdom, didn’t already think of this.
Well, they did! In fact, they were trying to buy up the mortgages and do just this but the Republicans and the banks were screaming so loud and putting so much money into lobbying Congress, that OUR GOVERNMENT couldn’t do what we needed them to do. Instead, we’ve put trillions of dollars into the banks, and nothing has been fixed.
The stock market is showing signs of rebound, but once one realizes that the root of the problem isn’t fixed, it becomes obvious that we’re spending trillions of dollars to bolster up the banks but the problem won’t go away. The current Free Market Depression will come back with a vengeance by this Fall. By then, we’ll have trillions less to spend where we really need it.
Now, ask yourself, why do the banks get money but the mortgagees are losing their homes? It’s because we are still allowing lobbyists to control our politicians. The only way to resolve this issue is to refuse to vote for any politician, no matter what party, if they accept business donations. Sorry, but that means no more Republican politicians and good bye to many of the Democrats as well, until they come clean.
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The Corrupt Media
Monday, June 28th, 2010The Corrupt Media
by
David Schlecht
It’s laughable to hear the conservatives decry the liberal media. Oh my gosh, how absolutely upside down. Will a multi-billion dollar industry be interested in advancing issues and ideas that are progressive in nature? Progressive policies generally strive for fairness. Fair taxes, fair benefits, fair opportunities. A monopoly does not want to advance liberal issues.
However, in the past few years, some news outlets have published facts that have a naughty habit of being liberal in nature. BP oil spill is a good example. How awful it must be for a conservative to watch the news and see stories about the devastation in the gulf caused by greed.
A truly unbiased media would be pointing out how unregulated greed caused the mess. It would be pointing out how the REPUBLICAN mantra of smaller government, and no regulations is the direct cause of this disaster.
Yes, a republican will think the media is biased but then they think the world if flat and free markets work so you wouldn’t expect them to understand the cause and effect of their failed policies.
We liberals know how biased the media is. We know that only the bravest of op/ed reporters will dare put this at the feet of the failed republican policies. We know the media is controlled by boards of directors which has many of the same directors that run the industrial military complex. We know those news outlets will never say anything about the harm wrought upon our nation by the ill conceived Bush wars.
But, just knowing these things doesn’t fix them. We need to get the big money out of our media. We need to break up the media. And we need to bring back the requirements that the media is to serve the public interest. Now, there’s a novel idea.
Tags: afghanistan, BP, capitalism, conservative, republican, war
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