Ran across Scriptoids while obsessively tracking Sitemeter referral log:
For a free market economy, we sure have a lot of visible hands rattling the public coffers. Remember these follies?
• US Federal Reserve and Treasury relief package to Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil during their debt crises (1982-1992)
• $4 billion Federal Reserve, Treasury, and FDIC rescue package for the Continental Illinois Bank (1984)
• $250 billion bailout of hundreds of mismanaged/insolvent Savings and Loans (1989-1992)
• $4 billion bailout of the Bank of New England plus government help in infusing Saudi money into Citibank (1990-1992)
• US Treasury-arranged rescue of the Mexican peso in support of US investors in high-yield Mexican debt (1994-1995)
• Asian currency bailout, in which the US government pressured the International Monetary Fund to rescue East Asian currencies to save American and other lenders (1997)
• Greenspan-arranged bailout of the shaky Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund (1998)
• Y2K Federal Reserve liquidity extravaganza, which helps to inflate the final Nasdaq bubble (1999)
• Federal Reserve interest rates cuts, reaching nearly 50-year lows, to reflate US financial and real estate assets (2001-2005)
The bailouts and rescues are bad enough, but it’s the unabashed and unhinged free market/deregulation boosterism that sends me into a rage. Like nobody knows the game is rigged, and who’s always on the losing side. There are days when I really do feel like mailing in the keys of my citizenship.
Bingo.
Of course, there might not be anybody to open the mail on the other end, given the Senate's decision to abolish the rule of law and ratify Bush's corporate state with the FISA debacle.
Nevertheless, it's a nice gesture. It's the thought that counts.
UPDATE But did I mention we're having hearings on Roger Clemens? No?
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ways to send in the keys:
stop spending money on things that keep the system going. that's what frustrates me, how many people find such a simple non-action to be "impossible." but remember right after 911? when no one was shopping? i read about a lot of panicked suits, they were worried we'd be too scared to keep the engines of the economy going. and everything would come crashing down. quickly.
our rigged system is also addicted to a cycle of money that moves primary thru the consumer. you want to hurt them? stop that. because none of the speculator's games work unless a large majority functions primarily as consumer, and not citizen.
I think that's already happening
Wages have stagnated for most US workers since the 1970s and the credit created by the mortgage/ATM industry is not only tapped out but the bill is due with no way to pay. 70% of the US economy and a huge chunk of the world's is driven by US consumer demand.
It's gonna be a long hard slog over the next decade pulling ourselves out of this economic quagmire. Of course Repubs will spend the next four years blaming the new Democratic president for this predicament. All the more reason to elect the guy who isn't claiming "35 years of experience".