What's going in is this--the Bush administration and Wall Street haven't yet totally looted the Treasury yet and time is running out. Keep in mind that the Treasury includes essentially all taxable assets and future income of all Americans for as long as we put up with this shit. And Congress is either so stupid or has its ass so thoroughly greased up and benumbed that it won't do one fucking thing to stop this insanity.This is what revolutions are made from.
Meanwhile, the view from Germany is this:
In a speech before parliament on Thursday, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück said the effects of the financial markets crisis would be felt in economies and labor markets worldwide for years to come. "The world will never be the same as it was before the crisis," the Social Democrat said, adding," the US will lose its status as the superpower of the global financial system."In other words, however badly they are hurt by our incompetence and greed, they are not following us down the rat hole to socialization of financial idiocy.
He blamed the current crisis partly on Wall Street's "blind drive for double-digit profits" and massive bonuses for executives and bankers.
Our country is being gang raped by capitalism and its Washington enablers. It's got to stop, and I'm afraid that the November election isn't going to change a god-damned thing.
There is hope, however, that some kind of awakening could be occurring. Seventy percent of Americans aren't buying the repeated mantra that "immediate action is essential to prevent a catastrophe." When a salesperson starts pushing you with time constraints, it's always time to walk away from the table. Don't support Henry Paulson's twaddle or his lackey Bush's repetition, or McCain or Obama's complicity. This is a robbery, pure and simple. Fuck Wall Street.
Olaf's solution: tax all income over $250,000 (and that's fucking generous) at 100%. Tax second homes at 200%. Tax third homes at 1000%. No, wait--confiscate them. Tax all pleasure boats over 22 feet long at 100%. Tax all cut diamonds valued over $10,000 at 100%. And so on.
You get the idea. Everyone is entitled to a livable income and personal property essential to a comfortable life within reasonable limits of the mean. But no one should be entitled to outrageous possession at the expense of so many without health care, without child care, without income security, without adequate housing. And NO ONE is entitled to incomes 500 times the wage of the lowest worker in their firm NO FUCKING ONE ON EARTH!
5 comments:
Olaf for President!!!
Having a debate party tomorrow (I mean if there is a debate, if that douche McCain shows up). Wish the gang was all together again to yell at the tv...
cb
Hi CB! I miss you all so much--the smartest, most attractive people ever gathered together in one space.
The Europeans are relishing this opportunity to take away financial control of the US now that it is clear that the "free market" is a rigged system. Very interesting perspectives here.
Oh yes--and if nominated, I will run, and if elected, I will put some motherfuckers in jail! (They know exactly who they are, too.)
No, Olaf...
Fuck your socialist ideology. Absolutely NO INCENTIVE to work hard or to come up with new ideas if the nanny state takes everything over 250K. No growth or re-investment for new or small business under your brilliant plan. Why would anyone invest at all? I could just sit on my fat arse and collect my entitlements. I am no economist, but your ideas are fucking moronic. Our fucking government can't manage an evacuation, but somehow your advocating giving the government all the money and power to distribute. Yeah, sounds like a good plan....sure it will work.
And by the way, this collapse started long ago with Jimmy Carter and the Community Reinvestment Act. Then came the Clintons and pushed it further.
No question that corporate greed fueled this, but it was completely enabled by politicians of all stripes since the 70's.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260
Nice tirade though.
C.
The people who have the best ideas and the incentive for implementing them are typically driven by the implicit value of the ideas and the accumulation of wealth is secondary. People who are driven primarily by wealth tend toward labor that has no intrinsic value--moving money around, "adding value" by various dubious activities (like creating derivatives, or debt swaps), and exploiting the massively inequitable distribution of information.
My "socialist" ideas are a temporary fix for the current financial crisis (if there really is one) and aims to charge the people who have benefited the most from the last 5, 10, 20, 50 years of avarice, exploitation, and irresponsibility. If the bankers and swindlers need a bailout, let their fucking friends finance it, and keep the public's money out of it. There's enough wealth tied up in useless or excessive shit that belongs to the rich to easily grease the wheels of Wall Street.
In fact, if John McCain wants to set a dandy example, why doesn't he get his rich wife Cindy to sell off one of their seven (or is it eight?) houses and help their banker buddies out? Why not address the richest 2% of Americans to sacrifice something to the cause? After all, as we are always told when they need warm bodies to send off to slaughter, "To whom much is given, much is expected."
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