A good friend of mine, up in Michigan, forwarded me this amazing video which breaks down how the credit crisis that is behind the demise of hundreds of thousands of Americans happened. For those of you who did not have a clear grasp of the bullshit we are facing. Here’s a video to help.
It’s 2009 and we are witnessing an entire economy, government, well, more like a country collapse. Iceland’s Prime Minister Geir Haarde resigned today stating that he can no longer lead the coalition. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, the President, is expected to remain in office.
As I understand it, Iceland financial institution which grew exponentially in the past recent years had heavily invested into the US financial market. Now like a bad suburban mortgage but at a national level, Iceland now owes more than six times the country’s output!
Talk about depreciating value!
Here we go again as Americans and the greed that consumes us. We have lost all sense of community and responsibility. What happened to “I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper”?
The phrase “American Dream” which was meant as a source of inspiration so we would become the best nation in this world has been used by greedy fools to take advantage of us and the rest of the world to their own interest! They have turned us into consumer driven zombies and convinced us that our worth can or should only be judged by the material possession we acquire. I am also a victim. To those of you who are not I certainly applaud you.
But what a shame? What a shame, I say. But we’ve only got ourselves to blame.
NY Times reported today that Citi Group just acquired a brand spanking new $50 million corporate jet to add to their fleet of two “old” jets!
This is after Citi received billions from the bail out, fired 10,000 employees as a way of keeping cost down, and hiked up interest rates of many cardholders, including me, due to “tough economic times”.
I feel like slapping myself!
That’s our tax money at work!
Either way the taxpayer is always the one who’s getting fucked!
That should sum it all. I couldn’t find a worst time to be approaching retirement. Despite all these strings of bad news in regards to the Economy, I can’t seem to find the strength to utter the words “I told you so!”.
In my previous post, I argued why I was not for the bail out plan. Let’s look at this way, have you noticed that when kids fall it is when you go rushing towards them all panicked that they cry and when you pretend you didn’t notice they look around, get up, brush it off and resume their running around. To me this is the simplest analogy I could come up with. But how true? You tell me.
I always thought if the financial institution is in need of cash, who better to give it than the American people (that Congress understood as well) but Congress did not seem to understand how to have the tax payers willingly give the money.
Let’s look at it my way:
There are roughly 300 million proud citizens of this country (counting from the most impoverished to the wealthiest). If we had equally divided $700 billion amongst all 300 million Americans, each one will get at LEAST $2,333! (Not $100,000 as I stated earlier. Thanks to Joe Taxpayer for correcting my mistake).
I’m thinking the smart ones will use that money to pay down their debt, mortgage or just invest. Either way, Wall Street would be getting a lot of money. The government would then overtime tax that money and eventually get it back. It would take a long time but the most urgent need would have been addressed. Wall Street would have the cash it desperately needs and Main Street would feel better off feeling less in debt and happy to have invested on themselves (in some ways) rather than being taken advantage of by the Financial Institution.
Now here’s a nice video referred to me by Jeremy Hermanns over at Jeremy Hermans dot Org on Rep. Marcy Kaptur speech at the House of Representatives today. The video speaks for itself and all I can say is the people of her district should be proud to have her in the House. Rep. Marcy Kaptur really understands the issue and she breaks it down to you very efficiently and in simple terms.
I enjoy reading about people making money. I try not to be materialistic … ok “Too” materialistic but it gives me an idea of where I am on the “Dough Scale”. And according to this article … I got some ways to go.
Money might not make happiness, but it surely helps.
Um .. scratch that!
MONEY MAKES HAPPINESS! Then again it’s what you make of it.
