The Existentialist Cowboy: wall street corruption

Showing posts with label wall street corruption. Show all posts

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Bush Proves Karl Marx Right About 'Capitalism'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Unfairly, a bailout price tag of some 700 billion dollars will be picked up by the American middle and poorer classes. None of those actually bearing the brunt of this transfer of wealth will benefit from it directly. The beneficiaries are those among some one percent of the nation who own about 99 percent of its total wealth.

According to US wealth distribution data compiled by 'The State of Working America', 'Wealth distribution in the U.S. is extremely concentrated at the top --even more so than income.'

These statistics, on the other hand, only hint at the L-Curve phenomenon because the top 1% isn't scrutinized in sufficient detail. Still, compare the net worth of the top half of the top 1% with the bottom half of the top 1%! If you add them together and proportion them out, 3/4 of the wealth in the top 1% is actually in the top 0.5%.
--US Wealth Distribution Data

Only a tiny group of Americans --Bush's 'base' --will benefit from the bailout directly.

The top and bottom halves of the top 0.5% would undoubtedly show even greater disparity if the data were presented with enough resolution. Note that nothing on this page even mentions billionaires. The largest fortunes are in the $100-billion range. The statistics on billionaires are diluted by lumping them in with mere millionaires. --op cit,

I have a better idea. Let's plot US wealth on a curve. Pro-rate the bailout. Let those getting the bigger share on the back-end bear the burden proportionally gong in. It is absurd to expect someone earning only $40,000 per year to cough up the same amount of money as, say, Bill Gates. I'm told Bill has given most of his money away. But, as he was once the richest man in the world, he is as good an example as anyone. Anyone whose 'net worth' is some $60 billion dollars should be expected to pay proportionally or between 10 and 15 percent of the total bailout.

Inequality in the US

So skewed to the top is wealth in America that anyone not earning millions almost falls off the bottom end of the chart. Is it fair to ask folk earning miniscule amounts to pay sums equal to those paid by billionaires?

This is a crisis foisted upon this nation by a tiny elite and their toadies in Washington. They should accept and bear the responsibility for the bailout. Instead, those who created this crisis expect to be rewarded for their incompetence and greed. Let the 'wizards' of Wall Street cough it up. Let each pay according to his ability. Bush, meanwhile, will be remembered as the right wing idiot who despite himself proved Karl Marx to have been absolutely correct.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!
--Karl Marx

The following is a follow up at: Reds in the Bed

"One of the ironies about this financial crisis is that it makes action on poverty look utterly achievable. It would cost $5bn (£2.7bn) to save six million children's lives."World leaders could find 140 times that amount for the banking system in a week. How can they tell us that action for the poorest is too expensive?"--Guardian,UK, Thursday September 25 2008 [quoted in Reds in the Bed ]

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Bush sticks you with the bill

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the conduct of his war crimes, capital crimes and naked aggression, Bush ran up the largest debt and deficit in US history! The Iraq war to date is estimated to have cost you over $3 trillion --'financed' in the short term with phony-baloney "'GOP" money.

Now that the bill has come due, Bush blackmails the American people with an offer you dare not refuse; do it Bush's way or face a 'crisis'. Bush expects you to foot the bill for his bail out and that of his crooked Wall St insiders. Bush must be surprised that the crash has happened before he could make good his get-away to Paraguay!

We got to this point because the US government has been hijacked by Wall Street. For years, the US government has borrowed money from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York --a private bank, not a government agency. Federal Reserve Notes are not backed up by anything. To finance its profligacy and incompetence, the government --GOP regimes primarily --simply cover all current expenses with Federal Reserve Notes.

The FED literally creates money which is loaned to the government at interest.

The private Federal Reserve owners don’t have a trillion dollars to lend the Government, nor do they need it. All they do is create it, via a bookkeeping entry, and write a check to the U.S. Government as the loan in exchange for the U.S. Bonds. The U.S. Government banks at the Federal Reserve Bank so cashing this check is very easy.
--FDRS

No hard currency is exchanged. Government agents are never seen walking out of the FED offices --under armed guard --carrying bullion, coins, or, indeed, anything of real value. The Fed makes an 'entry' in the books! The government makes an entry in its books!

Here's how the 'bail out' scheme will work: US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson will set up a Federal agency to buy up $trillions$ in bad debt --debt for which you are stuck because just enough people supported Bush to make the election 'steal-able'. The bankers who conspired with Bush get off scot free and laugh all the way back to the bank.

John McCain, meanwhile, expects you to entrust these same Wall Street crooks with the good money that you have already paid into the Social Security trust fund. Had McCain's plan already been effected, every retiree in the US would now be left penniless and destitute! That scenario could still happen, if the GOP should get away with stealing the election for John McCain.

George W. Bush has warned that the 'entire US economy' is in crisis. Specifically, the US faces a long-term recession if the government does not act! The problem is Bush's prescription: another bailout, another handout, another reward for the Wall Street insiders whose greed and incompetence created the crisis. It's the GOP way: just keep on doing whatever it is that makes you sick!

"I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business," Bush said. "Under normal circumstances, I would have followed this course. But these are not normal circumstances."
--Bush, moving his lips

When the GOP uses the terms 'crisis' and 'money' in the same sentence --hold onto to your wallet. This time you are required to pay the blackmailers some $700 billion, while bending over.

Like Reagan earlier, the Bush administration has looted the US Treasury and again, like Reagan, wiping out the American middle class. Instead of bailing Bush out, we should be frog marching Bush --in chains --out of the White House. For too long the apparatus of government has been hijacked by thieves, perverts, and mass murderers. For too long the US government has been exploited as the enforcement arm by which a crooked, corporate establishment rules America. The proper word for this is 'fascism'. For some time now, the government of the US must be properly described a fascist dictatorship!

The GOP expects you to reward them in that amount for their crookery, their greed, their wars of naked aggression, torture and atrocity. They expect to be 'paid' for having robbed you. They expect to be returned to office for having been crooks, liars and failures.

The profligate GOP ran the nation on charge cards, maxed them out, consolidated and maxed out again and again! The GOP expects you to pick up the TAB while Bush beats a hasty retreat to South America without leaving a forwarding address. Your response should be: screw you!! We should follow up with criminal charges against the GOP leadership.

Bush claims the market was not functioning properly. At this point, I am confused! Hasn't the GOP repeatedly told us about the utter infallibility of 'free markets'. Or was that just another lie used to get your money? What happened to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'? Or did they mean 'invisible hand job"?

More financial distress could lead more banks to fail, the stock market to drop further, businesses to close, job losses and home values to drop, Bush said.
"And, ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession," Bush said. "Fellow citizens, we must not let this happen."
--Bush warns of serious risks to U.S. economy

Bush cites a ''widespread loss of confidence" and warns that major financial sectors will simply shut down. I think Ebeneezer has something to say about that.

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
--Ebeneezer Scrooge, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

I really hate it when someone demands I make a life or death decision while holding a gun to my head. I hate it when that happens.

I would guess that this has to be one of the biggest peacetime transfers of power from Congress to the Administration in history. (Anyone know?). Certainly one of the most concise.
The Treasury Secretary can buy broadly defined assets, on any terms he wants, he can hire anyone he wants to do it and can appoint private sector companies as financial deputies of the US government. And he can write whatever regulation he thinks are needed.
...
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
--Adam Davidson, NPR, Re: the so-called bailout bill

I have a better plan. It consists of rounding up every GOP idiot who supported the war against Iraq because it was thought that the theft of Iraqi oil would lower the price of oil and thus the price they pay to fill up their SUVs! Give these idiots the bill! Let them cough up that money as best they can. Bush was their hero. Let them bail his sorry ass out! Busk a queue! Sell greeting cards door to door!

Published Articles

Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

McCain Lies About Social Security

Calling 'Social Security' an 'absolute disgrace', John McCain wants to force you to turn over a portion of your hard earned wages and salaries to Wall Street insiders! When Wall Street is crooked and ailing, Dr. John McCain's prescription: 'Just keep on doing whatever makes you sick'. McCain's campaign could not have picked a worse time to invent and exploit a phony crisis. Can you say 'idiot'?

At a time when Wall Street is proven to be sick, crooked, bloated, corrupt, and voracious, McCain proposes to force young workers to trust Wall Street with their money. Meanwhile, Wall Street will be bailed out --at your expense --and no one bothered to ask your opinion! It's the most draconian legislation since George Bush declared himself a dictator and declared the Constitution 'just a goddamned piece of paper!

Like the rest of the GOP, John McCain uses the Orwellian terms 'privatize', 'privately managed accounts', etc to describe what amounts to the dismantling of Social Security --the ONLY government program that works.

McCain calls Social Security 'an absolute disgrace!' It is --in fact --the government's only unqualified success. His plan to force younger workers to trust Wall Street with their savings will be another AIG disaster --but McCain will give workers no choice. It is literally 'your money and your life!'

Would you patronize a doctor if he told you: "just keep on doing whatever it is that makes you sick!" Meanwhile, Dr. John tells you in effect: "let's just keep on sending your money up to Wall Street! They need it more than you do!"

The annual report of the Social Security system's trustees reveals a system in pretty good financial shape. In fact, it would take only modest injections of money to maintain that system's current benefit levels for at least the next 75 years. Other reports, however, appear to portray a system in deep financial trouble. For example, a 2002 Treasury study, described on Tuesday in The New York Times, claims that Social Security and Medicare are $44 trillion in the red. What's the truth?
--New York Times

Social Security is in even better condition than the Times have described. According to the Treasury study --there is NO Social Security crisis.

Here's a hint: while even right-wing politicians insist in public that they want to save Social Security, the ideologues shaping their views are itching for an excuse to dismantle the system. So you have to read alarming reports generated by people who work at ideologically driven institutions -- a list that now, alas, includes the U.S. Treasury -- with great care.
First, two words -- ''and Medicare'' -- make a huge difference. According to the Treasury study, only 16 percent of that $44 trillion shortfall comes from Social Security. Second, the supposed shortfall in both programs comes mainly from projections about the distant future; 62 percent of the combined shortfall comes after 2077. .
--PAUL KRUGMAN, Social Security Scares

What McCain will not tell you is that the source of the 'crisis' is the shortfall caused by Bush's tax cuts --not Social Security. Krugman reminds that Social Security --"unlike the rest of the federal government" --actually runs a surplus! The GOP has always coveted the 'surplus'. The GOP has always schemed to get its mitts on it. The downside of this success is that GOP leeches have fought a war of naked aggression with looted Social Security revenues.

Another problem is Bush's tax cut. It benefits only the very, very wealthy. Unless you are among Bush's 'base', in fact, an elite of just one percent of the nation, you are screwed. The lingering effects of Bush/GOP incompetence will continue to be the source of real problems and real crises. That will continue to be the case until GOP crooks and liars are shown the door, hanged for mass murder, or hauled before the ICC at the Hague.

McCain's record on this issue is full of lies and distortions based on the GOPs disingenuous philosophy of 'laissez faire' --deregulation and weakened consumer protections. McCain calls his proposed theft of Social Security --'reform' and wrote an article in which he praised banking deregulation and promised the same for the health insurance industry. [What has either industry done for you lately?] Is McCain senile or just out of touch?Is he aware that the people of the US are now 'bailing out' the Wall Street fat cats? Nevermind! Just keep on doing whatever makes you sick!

In the meantime, send McCain a message! Bombard his hide out..uh...headquarters. Tell him in all caps:

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH SOCIAL SECURITY BUT THE GREEDY BASTARDS ON WALL STREET AND IN WASHINGTON!

STOP LYING ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY!

STOP TRYING TO MANUFACTURE A CRISIS!

STOP DEMAGOGUING THIS ISSUE!

KEEP YOUR MITTS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!

You might also remind the fuzzy cheeked idiots in your congressman's office that Paul Krugman was right and prophetic when he said that the biggest risk facing Social Security was and remains 'political'. McCain's demoguogery is proof of it. As Krugman asked "Will those who hate the system use scare tactics and fuzzy math to bring it down?" Of course they will! It's the GOP way!

This just in: John McCain says that war critics should be thrown out of the country.