this theft is 'legal' because the government allowed it.
It is 'theft' because it's morally wrong
(as is the government that allowed it to happen; stealing from the hard-working...blah, blah)
Neither you nor I have time for long explanations of the complex web of business and politics that caused the economic crisis, just be certain that it wasn't an accident. As you'll see below, in 1999, big business lobbied (i.e. financially- coerced) the US congress to repeal/cancel the laws that were made after the last complete financial collapse in the '30s. So, the old rules were good because they controlled the risk to the banks where we save our money and make our home loans. Government took away the rules, because businesses were getting greedy, and like I said, they paid for it [the change in the law, that is].
You can pretty much see that behind the theories, you've got some pretty high profile names who should take the blame, i.e. go to jail! Funnily, some other people who were also to blame for this mess will be shown here to be "trying" to clean it up.
Here's what essentially happened in 1999/2000
The message went out from the US to its bankers
'you have 5 to 10 years to mop up as much legal and illegal money as you can,
and then duck out to the Bahamas before the sh*t hits the fan.'
Oh, and if you can, spread some of the toxic assets around the world
because we hate foreigners
Here's just one front-end fraud, picking on and lying to poor (usually black) people to fraudulently sucker them into bad, illegal, predatory loans that were then sold to the BIG BANKS; the TOXIC Assets the Banks spread around the world like the H1N1 virus. The Big Banks asked for the TAs, my friend, to flip them over into their worldwide toxic fraud:
Ask yourself (and you'll get the answer here) 'which president/sheriff wilfully turned a blind eye to all the funny paper on K street?' [If you've read my column, you know who's to blame on UK-street]
Here's the end to the Friedman/Kissinger/Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush43 Free-market fundamentalism, or that's what we're supposed to believe [I haven't seen any proof]. Note the big Biblical-type statements about rabid capitalism from IBM, AT&T, Bear Stearns and others. Of course, none of them were talking before the crisis:
Here' Rachel Maddow explaining how well the Congress was lobbied (i.e. bribed or blackmailed), and how the economic theories of the stock market, discovered in the 1930s, no longer applied in 1999. Congressman Dorgan of North Dakota ends up looking like a Prophet:
The differences between now and the 1930s:
Back then:
Stock market businesses, and firstly many banks, failed. They were the ones morally at fault anyway. No money; out of business.
NO BAILOUT
After 5 or 6 years of workers' abject poverty, governments found borrowed money and helped re-build the economy. Workers also got a social safety net- welfare, unemployment benefits, etc.
Now:
Most US politicians have been repeating the mantra for 30 years that 'government is the problem.' So, to asuage their own guilt, the government bailed out the very banks that
paid to change the law and
paid to take away government oversight,
and that made billions on their (morally) fraudulent paper [toxic assets]
and destroyed the real economy.
That means that, this time, every American taxpayer (and other countries too-but not rich folk), besides his own economic problems, will end up paying for the damage done by the banks to the banking system. Shortly, the banks will be giving the US government some loans with taxpayer's money and earning their profit, with taxpayer's money.
In other words, 'government is bad unless it's making us rich.'
For them:
CORPORATE WELFARE/SOCIALISM
for you and me:
STRICT CAPITALISM
i.e. we're inputs
'YOU CANNOT GIVE A BAIL-out TO AN IN-put '
Back then: Laws changed to avoid the worst of the ridiculous Ponzi/scam/derivative/hedges every happening again.
Now: Business will not allow the government to oversee their work, because government is "bad" and yet "business is government is business."
So, there's no way out, for us workers, is there?
It's all survival of the fittest. The corporation, is by its nature (and due to lax laws), a survival machine. It tries to make others pay for its mistakes, and corps have now found the method to get others to do just that, through their government. "Gotta help the banks""They're too big to fail." I say, "They're not failing enough if they can still buy politicians."
- Costick67 ( 8^P
readup: "The Corporation" book and documentary film
