FedUpUSA

Archive for October 9th, 2011

The 99%.

So, what Dylan is saying is:  STOP THE LOOTING & START PROSECUTING!

This is what we have been saying here at FedUpUSA since early 2008.

This is our single focus.

This is our single demand.

Everything else is secondary.

This demand is not partisan.  It is not discriminatory.  It is universal.  It is a return to the rule of law; that all laws are applied EQUALLY to everyone.

The question is:  Do YOU have the guts to give up whatever ‘preference’ for which these corrupt laws may have given you benefit, stand up and say: NO MORE?  No one person is more ‘special’ than another.  No one company is more ‘special’ than another.  This means YOU in government and this means YOU Wall Street.  If I can’t lie on my check book balance, then you cannot lie on your balance sheet.   If I can’t ‘buy’ my Member of Congress, then YOU can’t either.  If I fail, taxpayers don’t bail me out and you should not be bailed out either.  If I commit fraud, I got to jail and if you commit fraud, you go to jail too – no matter WHO you are or what your profession or stature.  There should be no 1% exempt from laws merely because they can purchase preferrential treatment, while the rest of the 99% of are systematically looted. Oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, banks, energy companies – they all pay our government to have laws written to favor their profitability, while destroying our economy, outsourcing our jobs and enriching themselves on the backs of American citizens.  This is NOT capitalism; IT IS FASCISM and THIS MUST STOP!

We are either a  nation of laws applied equally to all or we are not.

You would think we could put aside ideological differences to find common ground on this one issue.  If we do not, the collapse of our financial system and our government will not be discriminatory.  It will not care if you are rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight.  It will destroy the conservative business man, the liberal union worker and the child in kindergarten – all equally.  Will you choose to find common ground or will you choose destruction?

Choose wisely.  Your country’s future is in your hands.

The 1%.

It’s simply, really.

I want a candidate with two positions:

• STOP THE LOOTING AND START PROSECUTING.  No, we cannot “move on.”  Those who committed frauds of various sorts need to go to prison and those who do so in the future need to go join them. Period.
• The Constitution is a written document of enumerated powers and limited government.  That which is not explicitly permitted in that document is forbidden the Federal Government.

That’s it.  Two conditions.

Who is it?

Another one comes to the light…

We as a society must stop pretending. Most of us think that we still have money in the bank to protect, so we go along with the game of extend and pretend. For some of us, the game has already ended. The rapacious zero interest rate policy that I call Bernankecide has already robbed millions of savers of their life savings. This is the reality that has yet to hit home for many Americans who are content to wallow in the status quo. Unfortunately, the longer it takes for them to wake up, the worse their, and our, fate will be.

It is not just “money to protect.”  It is also unpayable political promises, most-particularly the concept of unlimited health care spending for seniors.  The tab for this is somewhere around $50 – 70 trillion dollars.  We do not have it, we cannot acquire it, and thus it will not be paid.  This is not subject to any sort of honest debate.

My mother and millions of other senior citizens are among the victims of the game that policy makers and those who empower them are playing. Their life savings are gone because Bernankecide, the financial genocide of the elderly, forced them to spend their principal. Now the government is indirectly confiscating 8% of my income because I must support my mother. That percentage is likely to grow as her health deteriorates.

Or worse, take “more risk.”  This of course means you might earn a return, but you might also make a loss.  The former is ok, the latter ruinous.  Neither should be happening but both are, and we the people are to blame.  We vote for people who promise us ponies, whether we can fund them or not.  But we also demand “cheap” credit which inherently means we will subsidize losses, since nobody in private business will intentionally lend at a loss.

Millions of other boomers are in the same boat. They are forced to pay this immoral hidden tax because Ben Bernanke decided that the innocent must pay for the sins of the guilty. While Bernanke’s ZIRP goes on allowing the banksters to continue to collect their fat bonuses, it steals the savings of millions of Americans, eliminates their disposable income, and cuts the spending power of millions of others who must now support those rendered destitute. The guilty benefit, and the innocent are punished.

Bernanke knows that, yet he continues to side with the criminal bankers in support of the financial genocide of the super elderly, and their children, the baby boomers who must increasingly support them.

Yep.  Those who did the right thing are being destroyed.  I see it daily around me, and yet I also see rampant consumerism still running amok.  The drunks are still boozing it up; we the people continue to play the “aspirational consumption” game even though we cannot cash the checks we write.  Then, when the chickens come home to roost, we watch as the banksters get bailed out and continue on their way, and we refuse to rise, in no small part because if we do the credit cards will be cut off and we refuse to accept that just as a drug habit requires both a pusher and an abuser for the drugs to get consumed, credit abuse requires both a borrower and lender.

Among the OWS protesters are those calling for forgiveness of student loans. They may be acting in their own self interest, but it is a just cause, and must be a part of the cleansing of the system. The student loan thing is a long running racket that preys on the inexperience of children and young people just starting out in life.

Here I disagree.  Students should be able to go bankrupt, not have loans forgiven.  There must be a consequence for both borrower and lender.  Being stupid must come with consequences.  The only way one learns is via the reward and pain system – you are rewarded for doing smart things, and suffer pain for doing dumb ones.  Bankruptcy is pain.  It’s not intractable pain, but it’s pain – it cuts off or severely raises the price of credit for some time.

The student loans are the tip of the iceberg. Bankers have made and sold trillions of dollars worth of loans that they knew, or should have known, could not be repaid. That’s fraud. It must be prosecuted. Today, central bankers and governments are refunding those loans, knowing that a substantial portion of them cannot be repaid. Worse, they are buying them above par because of today’s fake low interest rates. Then they guarantee them by obligating us and future generations to repay them. This is criminal.

Yes it is.  And the stooges such as Obama, Geithner and the rest (including Congress) are the reason it’s happening.  Were any of these people raise their hand and say “no more damnit!” it would end tomorrow.

Read the rest folks.  It’s worth it.  Lee points out what I’ve been saying for a long time: We are quickly coming to the end of the line for this process to be carried out and remedied via reformation – that is, peaceful, lawful means. 

The other possibilities are all ugly, and they’re approaching – quickly.

How investment banks turned housing and student loans into a toxic and financial disaster – Middle class largest asset coopted by banking sector to raid and speculate on.  Financial sector nearly 30 percent of all corporate profits in U.S.  In the 1950s it was under 10 percent.

Most Americans pull their net worth from their investment in good old housing.  It is the biggest purchase most will ever make.  And because of this, after the Great Depression, housing was a boring yet stable investment class.  It had to be.  This is the cornerstone of wealth for most Americans.  Banks used to do their due diligence by verifying income and typically having a say in their local communities.  All that changed starting in the 1980s.  The first foray into banking corruption in housing came with the S&L Crisis.  Thrifts largely gave out money with unsustainable interest rate schemes and when the market imploded, the taxpayers had to step in to bail out the banks.  Yet during the process, many Wall Street financial firms made out like bandits on junk bonds and other “financial innovation” which was nothing more than sugarcoated robbery.  Then in the late 1990s the depression era Glass-Steagall act was repealed and all bets were off.  In a debt based system, housing was the largest debt class for Americans and investment banks decided to turn it into one giant casino.  This financialization of our country is at the core of the disappearing middle class.  Financial firms are largely wards of the state and operate to suck out rents from the productive economy.

The burden of housing and investment banks speculation

By far, the largest debt American households carry is with mortgage debt:

This is one of the most troubling charts since it shows how household debt since the 1950s has become a larger and larger part of our economy.  In fact, at the peak in this crisis household debt nearly equaled our annual GDP.  It isn’t too far from this point either today.  The biggest part of this debt is made up by mortgages.  Over 76 percent of household debt, some $13+ trillion, is made up of mortgages.  And with homes sinking in value we now have 25 percent of households with mortgages holding onto underwater mortgages.  The biggest factor here is that banks that serve with a fiduciary responsibility largely ignored all parts of their mission to rip off the public.  This came at a taxpayer cost of trillions of dollars that have been paid out by the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.  The middle class is still paying for it today in a multitude of ways.

Inequality rises because of broken financial system

Wealth inequality in the U.S. is now at the levels last experienced during the 1920s:

The top 5 percent in the U.S. control 63 percent of all wealth.  Keep in mind that the vast majority of Americans, those with an actual positive net worth, derive their wealth from housing.  Most of those in the financial sector derive their wealth and income from financial speculation.  They even pay 15 percent on their investment income which is what they live off of.  When was the last time your tax rate was 15 percent?  Just think about the hedge fund managers that made billions of dollars betting on Americans losing their homes and winning on this bet.  How in the world does this add any value to the system?  This is nothing more than socialized gambling and a vampire sucking the life out of the real economy.

Read the rest at My Budget 360

What the hell do we have here?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Slovakia has yet to approve the expansion of the euro backstop fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), because your Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party is blocking the reform. If a majority of Slovak parliamentarians don’t support the EFSF expansion, it could ultimately mean the end of the common currency.

Sulik: The opposite is actually the case. The greatest threat to the euro is the bailout fund itself.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How so?

Sulik: It’s an attempt to use fresh debt to solve the debt crisis. That will never work.

TRUTH!  Out of a politician!  Yet note carefully folks: NOT ONE of those running for President here, in the United States, has said this.  NOT ONE has said that we must cut the federal government budget to the point of balance – actual balance, not via gimmicks.  That’s a 43% cut, incidentally.

You cannot fix a debt problem with more debt, and any sort of “refinancing” is simply more debt.  You must either pay it down or default it.

But it gets better…

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which ground rules should we be following?

Sulik: We have to observe three points: First, we have to strictly adhere to the existing rules, such as not being liable for others’ debts, just as it’s spelled out in Article 125 of the Lisbon Treaty. Second, we have to let Greece go bankrupt and have the banks involved in the debt-restructuring. The creditors will have to relinquish 50 to perhaps 70 percent of their claims. So far, the agreements on that have been a joke. Third, we have to be adamant about cost-cutting and manage budgets in a responsible way.

Heh, how about here in the US?  Why can’t we hear this from the people here?

Those homeowners who can’t pay must go under.  Those municipalities that took on debt via bond issues to pave roads or build bridges that exceed their ability to pay both interest and principal via tax collection must default.  Those students who borrowed money to go to school but can’t find a job that pays enough to cover the debt and their living expenses must (be permitted to) go bankrupt.  Those political promises made that cannot be funded must be repudiated.

And just as importantly, those banks that lent money to any of the above who can’t pay must suffer the loss, thereby causing the cost of credit to rise to the point that it fairly reflects the risk of default.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, banks could run into significant problems should they be forced to write down billions in sovereign bond holdings.

Sulik: So what? They took on too much risk. That one might go broke as a consequence of bad decisions is just part of the market economy. Of course, states have to protect the savings of their populations. But that’s much cheaper than bailing banks out. And that, in turn, is much cheaper than bailing entire states out.

Exactly.  But Sulik is incorrect in his last point: You can’t bail yourself out – it is like trying to lift a bucket by the handle while standing in it.  Any such attempt will fail.

The sooner we quit deluding ourselves the better, and the irony that a Slovakian politician is the first one I’ve heard speak truth on this matter, rather than a candidate for President of the United States, is telling.