PUBLIC OPTION IS THE ESSENCE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM

Conspiracy capitalism is alive and well. Not wishing to be outdone by the "banksters" who run the country, the health insurance companies have been flexing their muscles in order to maintain the stranglehold they have on their particular piece of the pie.

I first realized that Obama and the Democrats had caved on the public option issue when health insurance stocks went up on a day the stock market was down almost 200 points. After checking the news reports, the reason for their stocks' levitation in the face of gravity was clear. Obama was telling us that the public option was not the "entirety" of health reform, but merely a "sliver." Wrong.

The public option is the essence of health care reform. Without it, the authoritarians will not have to face the world they fear most: "competition."

Since the American people want the public option, it ought to be obvious to anyone with a living brain cell that most of our elected officials are bought, paid for and owned by Corporate America. The health insurance industry has hired six lobbyists for each elected official and is spending between one and two million dollars a day in order to kill health care reform.

And they work with the idiots of the far Right who turn up at presidential events with loaded weapons.

This is the same old Republican strategy of spreading fear among the masses  that has worked so well for them in the past. (There is the "moron factor," after all. You cannot underestimate the American people). The Republicans utilize insane, blatant lies, such as the proponents of health care reform want to "subsidize abortions" and "pull the plug on Grandma." That Americans can swallow this kind of B.S. is pathetic.

Obama's presidency and the direction of the country are all riding on the public option. To continue to try for a bipartisan agreement is a combination of naivety and self destruction. The Republicans are not interested. They are, after all, protecting their benefactors. Obama has to take a page out of Lyndon Johnson's playbook. There was a president who knew how to twist arms in his own party in order to get them aboard difficult legislation.

The rest of Western civilization has universal health care. If the Democrats fail to do what they were elected to do on behalf of the American people and do the bidding of the insurance companies instead, then they will become as irrelevant as the Republicans.

This is the moment. The people must regain consciousness, ceased to be treated as patsies by greedy self-interest corporations and demand representation by those they elected. Let them know that we can pull the plug, too. On them. To do otherwise is to remain the wimpy victims of the authoritarians and their co-conspiratorial friends in Washington.

09/03/2009

THE RECOVERY IS A FRAUD. WHAT'S YOUR PLAN TO PROTECT YOURSELF?

It has now been a year since Lehman failed, and nothing has been done to regulate Wall Street. They were bailed out with taxpayer money. Instead of lending that money to the public, they have used it to gamble in the great stock market casino. In that arena, through “flash trading, (front running individual investors, many of whom are their clients), Wall Street has all the advantages and the public has none. Don’t you feel good about financing the banks’ fraudulent speculation? And always remember, Wall Street produces absolutely nothing other than obscene paper profits for themselves at the people’s expense. Their outrageous bonuses come gift-wrapped from the American taxpayers.

This is just plain criminal activity described by the mainstream financial press as free market capitalism. The fact is the Wall Street Mafia, supported by our elected officials, are nothing more than elite bankers raping the American public. These financial bandits have taken control of the United States. Don’t forget, the conspiracy, the casino, always wins. You are witnessing the biggest bank robbery of all time; only this time the banks are doing the robbing.

There is no way to drain the Federal Reserve’s insane money printing. As the noose of more and more debt continues to tighten, the Federal Reserve has no option but to intensify their money creation in order to prevent a debt collapse and a sickening deflation. But in doing so, the Federal Reserve guarantees inflation and probably hyperinflation. And China knows this and has been diversifying out of the U.S. dollar for a long time. If the truth be known, China has no U.S. dollar problem while the West has an explosive over-the-counter derivative catastrophe it’s trying desperately to cover up. Thus, the center of the financial world is moving quickly to Asia.

The financial condition of the banks continues to worsen. Only their “wink-wink” collusion with the government regulators, which allows the banks to mark up their worthless toxic assets to whatever price they would like to assign to them, has allowed these “institutions” to make believe that all is well. Without this accounting fraud, up to 1000 banks would go under with the FDIC already running out of money.

The so-called recovery is a fraud. While the Government and Wall Street, through their PR firm, the mainstream media, want the American people to believe in their cheerleading that the recession is over, the facts indicate that foreclosures are increasing, housing prices continue to drop, malls are shrinking and even disappearing, unemployment remains on the rise, the consumer is toast and the dollar is doomed. Even more to the point, Americans are running out of unemployment benefits in large numbers. Pension funds are quickly becoming an illusion. Savings are disappearing through desperate usage and through the theft of inflation. Americans are losing their futures. What it all adds up to is that when people have nothing left to lose, they try to get even with the forces that destroyed their lives. No wonder CEO’s have security guards on the same level as the President of the United States, and a plan to escape to a foreign country when the system fails. What’s your plan to protect yourself against the inevitable?

09/27/2009

AMERICANS REMAIN SILENT ON WALL STREET TERROR

You would think we'd be in the midst of the Second American Revolution. The Wall Street terrorists are at it again. Not content with melting down the entire global financial system by greedingly gambling with shareholder money, this time they're screwing all of us by doing the same thing over again with taxpayer money. Take Goldman Sachs --- please!

The revolving door between Goldman and our elected representatives is lubricated with a brand new substance called collusion. One minute you're working for Goldman Sachs, the next finds you in the highest echelons of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Then back you go as a lobbyist for the same infamous Wall Street firm.

When Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs, his company was selling over-the-counter to anyone and everyone in the world while his own traders were going short the same derivatives that Goldman was peddling and knew were worthless. Paulson's reward was to become Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. The man ought to be in jail.

As Treasury Secretary he let Lehman Brothers fail. After all, they were a significant competition to Goldman Sachs. But when Lehman's derivatives started blowing up all over the world, Henry had to bail out all of the big banks, including his own former institution, Goldman Sachs. Then AIG, the insurance company, now better known as a hedge fund, had to be bailed out because its derivatives were even more toxic and had metastasized even more than those of Lehman Brothers, and also because AIG owed Goldman $13 billion. By bailing out AIG, Paulson effectively and surreptitiously did the same for his beloved company.

Now that the banks were "flush" again, thanks to $12 trillion from the taxpayers, whose collective altruism was offered against their will, the banks began the game again. Congress allowed them to revalue their worthless garbage assets to whatever price they would like to fantasize they might be worth. Then the banks upped the leverage back up to 30 to 1, enabling their trading desks to relive the old old days, this time gambling with our money. Not a bad business when you know in advance head GS wins, tails the rest of us lose.

While Americans are losing their jobs, many of them falling through the cracks and living in tents or on the streets, Goldman Sachs are setting aside 18.4 billion dollars in bonuses for its employees ($700,000 per person). It is the largest bonus package in the 140-year history of the firm. How does that make you feel?

The bink banks' earnings are all lies. Their financial condition is as precarious as ever, and another day of reckoning waits in the wings.

Is there another "silent majority" loose in the land? Has laryngitis become the real pandemic? How else to explain why the citizenry will not even speak out, much less take to the streets. Conspiracy capitalism continues to render Americans impotent, comatose and without any representation. Is there anyone out there? Anyone? Anyone?

08/02/2009

ABOLISH THE FEDERAL RESERVE

“I sincerely believe… that banking establishments

are more dangerous than standing armies,
and that the principle of spending money to be paid
by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling
futurity on a large scale.”  Thomas Jefferson

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control

the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation,

the banks and corporations that will grow up around them

(around the banks), will deprive the people of their property

until their children will wake up homeless on the continent

their fathers conquered."   Thomas Jefferson

Having been thus forewarned, the Congress, in the middle of a night in 1913, when no one was looking, gave into the persistent lobbying and self-serving largesse of the banking industry, and created the infamous Federal Reserve. By doing so, our elected officials turned their backs on the Constitution and gave away their duty to mint the coinage of the United States to a cartel of private bankers.

The Federal Reserve, besides being unconstitutional, is totally beholden to its sole constituency, which, of course, is the same banking cartel mentioned above. Their every motivation is to protect, enrich and save the bankers. This is accomplished at the literal expense of the taxpayers (the people).

Since taking over the creation of our money, the central bank has engaged in the immaculate conception of money out of thin air. In so doing, it has managed to single-handedly debase the currency so thoroughly that it has lost 96 percent of its value and is on a fast track to losing its status as the reserve currency of the world. And I don't have to tell you what the "banksters" have done to us all.

With this in mind, I find it inconceivable that when Senator Dick Durbin came right out and told the country that "the bankers own the Congress," the mainstream press took this stunning remark and just plain buried it. We never heard another word about this remarkable admission.

It is clear to me that with our politicians and our media totally "bought" and united in selling us down the river, We, the People, no longer have any representation whatsoever. The Democrats embrace the establishment and, as such, are to the right of center, while the Republicans are so far to the right that they have become irrelevant. A meaningful third party that represents the majority of the American people is now absolutely crucial if we are to reverse our nation's ongoing tailspin.

Would somebody shock the unresponsive electorate into action? Do whatever it takes to get lazy, fat Americans to leave their couches and take to the streets like they do in other countries when their rights have been stolen from them. And while you're at it, tell them to get behind the bill now circulating in Congress to abolish the Federal Reserve.

06/25/2009

WHY CAN'T WE ALL 'MARK TO MODEL'?

Conspiracy capitalism has taken things to a new level. Have you heard of the expression: "marked to market?" Each day our investments are assigned the value that the so-called free market in their infinite wisdom have decided they are worth. (By the way, there are no more free markets. But that's another story).

The banksters and their bought-up political bedfellows have concluded that it would be best if they just did away with the abovementioned marked-to-market accounting and simply allowed the bankers to decide what their toxic assets are worth. This creative accounting maneuver is called "marked to model." If the market values an over-the-counter derivative at ten cents on the dollar, the bank can now raise the worthless piece of paper to fifty cents on the dollar. Thank you very much, says the bank, whose balance sheet has suddenly miraculously improved.

Inspired by the conspirators, (and remember I have no compunction about calling them what they are), I decided to call up my friendly local banker where I have a modest savings account and the two brokerage companies where I have equally unimpressive stock accounts. As you can probably guess by now, I insisted that they mark my accounts to model. My model. When they inquired what my model was, I told them that it was the one that added several zeroes to each of my holdings.

They assured me that they could not fulfill my request. I was shocked. "But the big insolvent banks, who just received trillions of dollars from the American people, are able to decide what the value of their pieces of paper are, why can't I?" I asked with proper indignation. My answer was the same from all three entities. "The banks are just doing what they do best: shifting the trillions in risk from themselves to the taxpayer." I was told not to worry about it. Everything would turn out OK in the end.

I found an old baby tooth of mine and put it under my pillow for the tooth fairy before retiring for the night.

04/07/2009

THERE IS NO SOLUTION TO WALL STREET TERROR

After watching Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke on TV today, it has become quite obvious that they have no idea how to save the financial system. In fact, there is no practical solution to this crisis.

Confidence will return only when the Wall Street terrorists who got us here are behind bars.

02/12/2009

WHITE COLAR CRIME IS A FELONY

There is a rumor going around that some Americans are actually coming out of their long-term hibernation. It has even been suggested that a handful of these formerly comatose citizens are awakening with a certain displeasure.

Apparently, their imploding home values, pension funds, stock accounts and 401Ks are beginning to get on their nerves. And---you better sit down for this one---a few have even connected the dots of the conspiracy that has brought them down to where they find themselves today.

There is a silent anger rising up in this land of ours. It is directed at the politicians who allowed Wall Street to operate without regulation, the Federal Reserve, whose absurdly low interest rates invited everyone to the party, the banker terrorists who leveraged other people's money 30 to 1 in complex unregulated derivatives for which they received obscene fees, the rating agencies who blessed these toxic assets with their AAA approval and the SEC which, though repeatedly warned about what was happening, looked the other way.

The long-sleeping electorate is slowly coming to the delayed conclusion that conspiracy capitalism has been separating them from their money, their dreams, their retirement and their childen's future. As the flow of funds move ever faster from the many to the few, the middle class is being hijacked, outsourced to oblivion.

The other day I actually heard a member of the human species ask the simple question: "Hey, wait a minute, how come no one is in jail?" To which there is no intelligent response. A teen ager, who happens to get caught with an ounce of marijuana in his pocket, goes directly to the slammer. But the banksters, who have destroyed the global financial system, are free to hide out on their yachts, untouched by the legal system.

President Obama and Congress can throw as many trillions of paper dollars at the problem as they can borrow or print, but until white collar crime in this country is treated as a major felony, even as a capital offense, and members of the SEC, who do not carry out their job of enforcement, are considered felons, then the confidence of the American people will not return. And without trust in the system, there can be no substantive economic recovery.

The President may want to take the "high" road and look only "forward," but the country wants a level playing field where no one is above the law.

03/19/2009