At present the financial life of the United States in ICU. The patient is in critical condition and not expected to recover. It seems that the patient ignored all of the symptoms of a disease that is difficult to cure, in fact, in most cases it is terminal. The disease can be prevented if the patient refrains from greed, lives a regulated life, and heeds the warnings originating from competent authority. The patient can thrive if it has the guidance of a good doctor – leader.
By way of hindsight we can see where a certain patient did not heed good consult from his physicians(Congress). The patient decided that he was going to, against good counsel, expose his body to financial uncertainties (smoking) by giving away the surplus of money that he had been entrusted with by the previous owner of the body.
He reasoned that since he was in excellent health there was no reason to guard judiciously the health of the body. So, he smoked the money of all the people and spread the ashes around to those who needed money least of all. He exhaled and immediately felt the nicotine course though the body.
The body, excited by the introduction of all of this nicotine (money), began to crave more of the same and the patient sought new ways of giving the body what it desired. The body broke other rules of good financial health by introducing new ways of getting nicotine (the money). It decided that it would smoke unfiltered regulations that allowed more nicotine (money) to enter the body and the body began to do other things that were even more exciting than before. It violates good health rule after good health rule in a quest to get even more nicotine. The body stoped going to the physician and eliminated the constraints that would have told the doctor that it was out of control (in deep debt).
A cancer formed in the body in the shape of what one might call a tumor (debt). The cancer multiplied and became great. Cancers in the form of subprime loans, speculations without oversight, and other cancers formed tumors (debt) where there had never been tumors (debt) before. The body knew that something was not right, but reasoned that it could make adjustments by taking over-the-counter medications (prime rate adjustments) others had told him would make things right, but the cancer continued to spread. First his lungs that provided him with air began to have difficulty in distributing the oxygenated money that would feed him.
Of course, the heart (banking system) was next because without the oxygenated blood (cash flow) it could no longer support the (credit) muscles that were needed to make the body move. The body began to slow down; sometimes going days without oxygenated blood (cash flow). It became hard for other parts (businesses) of the body to function. The kidneys (car loans) that cleared toxicants from the body soon stopped doing so because they were laid off. The liver (retail stores) started to slow down because it could not get the support (money) that it needed from the kidneys. The outer extremities (small business) that depended on the heart, the kidneys, and the liver to keep them pure and strong became weak and dysfunctional (out-of-business). The body took to its bed!
Finally, the physician (Congress) was summoned. He arrived with his black (bailout) bag full of goodies to bring a glow back to the pale (economy) looking body. The physician was shocked at the condition of the body, but immediately went to work to save the body. Realizing that he would need the help of others, the physician called for an ambulance in the form of congressional help to perform the necessary operations that would save the body. Congress, after much complaining and hesitation, came to the aid of the body with medications that it thought would save the body. Congress shook its head and said… this does not look good!
The moral of the story is this… are you better now than you were eight years ago? If you think that you are better off than you were, chose John McCain. If you are not better off, chose Barack Obama!
Showing posts with label bankruptcy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bankruptcy. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Fundamentals on Bushonomics…
Well… America’s chickens on Wall Street have come home to roost. Banks are failing, financial institutions are failing, and the real estate industry is in the toilet. How the heck did we get here? What caused this to happen? Who is responsible? Who do we blame?
The President, a few weeks ago, told reporters in what was supposed to be a private – no cameras - discussion that Wall Street is the cause of the problem. To quote him “Ya see Wall Street got drunk…” Really? If we are to believe a person that I think is a habitual liar, then we must blame the regulatory entity that was suppose to oversee Wall Street for the dilemma that we must endure for the next two or three years. That is the case, if you believe the lie. I don’t think that Wall Street is totally to blame for the current financial situation we are experiencing.
Does anyone remember the speech that President Bush made in March of 2001 on the economy? In that speech, the President made a statement that was heard around the world, but especially on Wall Street and the other financial institutions. Big business heard it too! The President said… “We are in a recession…” From that moment on we were in deep you-know-what as consumers. That was the signal for big business to start laying off blue collar workers. United Airlines ‘pink-slipped’ thousands of its people. United Airlines went into bankruptcy and stole the pension fund of its retirees – pension checks went from 2000.00 on average per month to 250.00 - take it, or leave it. Enron went under after the Bush administration refused to prop up their failed policies. Enron failed as a result of the policies that McCain and the Bush administration pushed through Congress.
From the Baltimore Chronicle dated May 28, 2008: "A McCain aide told me that the Arizona senator opposes the farm bill because it “rewards lobbyists” by granting rich farmers lucrative subsidies, although he would support “a reasonable level of assistance and risk management to farmers when they need America's help.”
But the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee also opposes the farm bill because Gramm advised McCain that he should resist its regulatory language on the energy futures market.
Democrats have dubbed that gap in energy futures regulation the “Enron loophole,” but it played a part, too, in the more recent attempt by the Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to corner the national gas market by shifting trades to the unregulated “dark markets” of the Intercontinental Exchange.
The “Enron loophole” also has become part of the debate over the soaring price of oil. Last week, a study sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, concluded that speculative futures markets were partly to blame for the surge in oil prices that have pushed gas at the pump toward $4 a gallon."
McCain has stated that he will keep in place the majority of the initiatives that Bush put in place over the last eight years. To ensure that things remain status quo, he has chosen Phil Gramm to be his ‘economical advisor’. The same Phil Gramm that was Bush’s advisor and helpmate in Congress when the Republicans were pushing through these deregulatory initiatives that started the ball rolling for big business. Even when Phil Gramm called America’s working class ‘a bunch of whiners’, McCain pretended to fire Gramm, but a few weeks later Gramm was back on the job.
Who do I blame? I blame Bush for signing off on faulty legislation, with the advice of Phil Gramm; that created the loopholes that allowed Enron and others like Enron to take advantage of the consumer with disastrous results. I blame a Republican dominated Congress that supported the derailment of our economy. We got here through the greed of a few people who were trusted with the well-being of our economy. This is what can happen every time the everyday guy walking on the street does not pay attention to the inner workings of our economy and how it is regulated. I blame the President and his cronies for allowing this to happen.
The bottom-line, you cannot deregulate anything unless there are built-in checks and balances!
The President, a few weeks ago, told reporters in what was supposed to be a private – no cameras - discussion that Wall Street is the cause of the problem. To quote him “Ya see Wall Street got drunk…” Really? If we are to believe a person that I think is a habitual liar, then we must blame the regulatory entity that was suppose to oversee Wall Street for the dilemma that we must endure for the next two or three years. That is the case, if you believe the lie. I don’t think that Wall Street is totally to blame for the current financial situation we are experiencing.
Does anyone remember the speech that President Bush made in March of 2001 on the economy? In that speech, the President made a statement that was heard around the world, but especially on Wall Street and the other financial institutions. Big business heard it too! The President said… “We are in a recession…” From that moment on we were in deep you-know-what as consumers. That was the signal for big business to start laying off blue collar workers. United Airlines ‘pink-slipped’ thousands of its people. United Airlines went into bankruptcy and stole the pension fund of its retirees – pension checks went from 2000.00 on average per month to 250.00 - take it, or leave it. Enron went under after the Bush administration refused to prop up their failed policies. Enron failed as a result of the policies that McCain and the Bush administration pushed through Congress.
From the Baltimore Chronicle dated May 28, 2008: "A McCain aide told me that the Arizona senator opposes the farm bill because it “rewards lobbyists” by granting rich farmers lucrative subsidies, although he would support “a reasonable level of assistance and risk management to farmers when they need America's help.”
But the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee also opposes the farm bill because Gramm advised McCain that he should resist its regulatory language on the energy futures market.
Democrats have dubbed that gap in energy futures regulation the “Enron loophole,” but it played a part, too, in the more recent attempt by the Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to corner the national gas market by shifting trades to the unregulated “dark markets” of the Intercontinental Exchange.
The “Enron loophole” also has become part of the debate over the soaring price of oil. Last week, a study sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, concluded that speculative futures markets were partly to blame for the surge in oil prices that have pushed gas at the pump toward $4 a gallon."
McCain has stated that he will keep in place the majority of the initiatives that Bush put in place over the last eight years. To ensure that things remain status quo, he has chosen Phil Gramm to be his ‘economical advisor’. The same Phil Gramm that was Bush’s advisor and helpmate in Congress when the Republicans were pushing through these deregulatory initiatives that started the ball rolling for big business. Even when Phil Gramm called America’s working class ‘a bunch of whiners’, McCain pretended to fire Gramm, but a few weeks later Gramm was back on the job.
Who do I blame? I blame Bush for signing off on faulty legislation, with the advice of Phil Gramm; that created the loopholes that allowed Enron and others like Enron to take advantage of the consumer with disastrous results. I blame a Republican dominated Congress that supported the derailment of our economy. We got here through the greed of a few people who were trusted with the well-being of our economy. This is what can happen every time the everyday guy walking on the street does not pay attention to the inner workings of our economy and how it is regulated. I blame the President and his cronies for allowing this to happen.
The bottom-line, you cannot deregulate anything unless there are built-in checks and balances!
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