Thursday, October 15, 2009

Assume The Position

Yesterday’s New York Times ran these three headlines side by side. JPMorgan Chase Reports Strong 3rd Quarter Profit of $3.6 Billion Federal Pay Czar Tries Again to Trim A.I.G. Bonuses Still On The Job, But Making Half As Much
When this melt-down began last October, I commented at the time, “Those bastards know exactly what they’re doing. They have raped their companies dry, stashed their cash in off-shore banks, and the government is going to bail them out.” Sure enough, that’s exactly what’s happened. It happened during the Great Depression and every major recession since, but I particularly remember the Savings and Loan debacle of the 80’s, where the money grubbers, such as George W. Bush, drained the S&L’s dry and let them default so that the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) would have to bail out individual depositors at 40 cents on the dollar. I watched, and it became clear, as corporate raiders were allowed hostile take-over of sound corporations and subsequently allowed to raid the employees’ pension benefit funds as “assets” that could be used against debts, that the money grubbers would soon destroy everything honest Americans had worked for generations to build. There is no more clear example of this than American Harvester Corporation. American Harvester was one of the most respected companies and brands on earth. Naive and unaware, they allowed hostile investors on Wall Street to capture a majority of the stock. The investors immediately began dismembering the corporation. They sold off the assets and left the employee pension fund to cover the liabilities, which bankrupted the fund. (Something made legal during the Reagan presidency.) Entire families were devastated. In some cases, three generations were devastated. The son lost his job. The father lost his job and his pension. The grandfather lost his pension. They lost everything they had worked their entire lives for and now live in a community where, with collapse of the major employer, there are basically no other economic opportunities. These are the people who wave the flag, who believe the lies and dogma. It isn’t their fault. They are good family types. The kind who believe that people are basically good, because they and everyone they know are basically good. They are simple people who only want to pull their share of the load and trust that their leaders will fulfill their promises. You had better understand and believe… this is a class war! It always has been. From feudal times when we were all slaves to a king, through the industrial revolution when we were all chattel to an industrial baron, to the present day where the money grubbers are doing everything they can to strip us of any chance of financial security, this is US against THEM. If you are one of those families with incomes in the $200,000 a year range, YOU are on the front line. You are not one of them. Not even close. You are the buffer between them and the unwashed masses and you are totally vulnerable and expendable. But YOU are the major roadblock to dealing with them, because you have been duped into believing you are one of them and somehow superior to your less-fortunate neighbor. You better wake up people, or assume the position, because it's here.

10 comments:

  1. The foreclosures and job losses just won't quit, the Wall Street banks are making money, but the toxic assets are still there, and growing. We are being stripped bare by Wall Street and the laws that were written just for them.

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  2. Gordon Gekko and Blue Star Airlines - the only difference being that this time it's real.

    As for AIG getting anything close to a bonus, that's beyond ridiculous. Talk about rewarding patent wrongs....

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  3. I completely agree with you and every day I pick up a paper I get fuming mad. Have you seen the new Michael Moore documentary "Capitalism - A Love Story"? You should see it. It talks about this very thing and more.

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  4. Pretty much everything that is wrong with the economy right now can be traced back to Reagan. And to think, people want to put his face on money.

    With inflation as bad as it is, we might need to start printing larger and larger denominations, like millions of even billions. We could put Reagan's face on the front and Bush's ranch on the back, considering we already associate them with billion dollar bills.

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  5. Holte... glad to hear from you, thanks for stopping by. Ditto on everything. The SOBs own the government but what's new? That's the way it's always been but it sure seems worse now.

    Matthew... Blue Star.. great example of rip-off capitalism.

    Peach... I'm with you. The reason I stray into humorous posts so much is to keep from having a stroke.

    Ginx... Kindred spirit. God forbid, Reagans mug on anything other than a mug. Maybe a urinal would be OK.

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  6. It's ok to bitch about it Mr. C. I do quite a bit of bitching about them too. We need solutions though not just complaints.

    You sort of hit on their (the financial manipulators of Goldman-sachs et al) battle tactic which is turn us against us, divide us and they continue unfettered to wring out them with assets left.

    But, and I am not sure this is a good plan or not, I advocate removing as much capital from the market as possible. People with stock trading accounts liquefy them now and turn them to cash while cash still has meaning.

    Put the redeemed cash in secured straight savings account or at most a ten to twelve month CD insured by the FDIC. Despite what they tell you in the bank do not keep more than 90k in any one account because the $250,000 FDIC limit, while recently extended is still temporary.

    Quit using credit and most importantly purchase nothing that does not pertain to food, clothing or shelter. If you use credit and the company starts charging you fees because you carry no balance then close the account. If you are upside down on your unsecured debt file for chapter 7 bankruptcy and let the credit card issuer eat the money owed, chances are you have already paid them more than the original principle debt in interest rates.

    In short fight back using all legal means while there are still some to use.

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  7. This "downturn" ain't done yet. The benchmark stocks, all thirty of them are playing around the $10,000 mark right now which indicates some return of some of the losses for the individual but them that stay in the game are going to get raped again when the worlds governments pull out the props which are holding the markets up right now.

    I think about the middle of 2010 there will be no more government capital to hold them and those smaller financial institutions being propped right now will collapse and then comes another round of domino effect with the huge to big to fail (may ass) banks gobbling up the good assets and pawning the bad back to you the taxpayer.

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  8. The only assets that are "real" are, real estate, manufacturing, and agriculture. Everything else is just paper, especially so-called "information" which isn't even paper. It should be a top national priority to rebuild our manufacturing base, decentralize agriculture and aim the whole thing towards rebuilding internal markets. We can, and should, be more isolationist. We have gone too far too fast towards multi-national, world markets. Multi-national conglomerates answer to no one and are a huge threat to all our freedoms.

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  9. Mr. C...ever hear of GATT? The General agreement on Trade and Tariffs was instituted right after WWII as a method of preventing war over resources and wealth from happening again.

    The evolutionary result of GATT is the WTO and the IMF. I bring this up because it has been a world wide governmental push to make the economy global since 1947. Remember when China was always extended Most Favored Nation trade status...that was all a lead up to their joining the WTO. They instituted an acceptable form of capitalism and joined the WTO which now cover 98% of the worlds population.

    It was always in the plan to give manufacturing to the developing world and for the industrialized nations to control the service sector (finance, insurance etc), the current economic is a result of that thinking.

    Our wealth was supposed to be free market based with consumerism driving it. Good plan on paper which never takes into account the human factor of greed.

    Keep enough jobs for the middle class to allow us to purchase the goods made from somewhere else educate our population in the sciences and financial sectors and all will be well because what we would manufacture was science and technology that could be licensed to others for manufacture.

    Except in all the models no one took into account the recurring artificial bubbles that have been used by the wealthy to build then cash in profit that collapses the market. This is what happens in every cycle and has always been this way since companies became corporate owned.

    Now though there are no more new middle class jobs and we are still shedding 2 million each month.

    Perilous times ahead sir.

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  10. Well put Mark. It seems in that scenerio the only choices are to continue with the present model of super multi-national corporations or turn each country into it's own corporation, i.e. Japan, Inc. so as to foster competition and balance. Fat chance of either scheme working out to benefit you and me.

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