Now Bush Wants Amnesty For Wall Street Robber Barons
By Dave Gibson (09/26/08)
Bush and current GOP Presidential nominee John McCain told us that in order to secure the border and keep the economy strong, it was necessary for Congress to pass so-called “comprehensive immigration reform,” which of course we all know as the Amnesty Bill. However, the American people did not fall for it and let the Congress know that if they voted for that legislation that they would be looking for work come January.
President Bush now tells us that we must fork-over the stately sum of $700 billion to those who run Wall Street, or the ramifications will have disastrous effects on all of us. Instead of allowing these people who have raided pension funds, written millions of bad loans, and run centuries’ old companies into the ground to suffer the logical consequences of their behavior, the taxpayers are now being asked (or forced) to keep the party going for the robber barons.
If you or I start a company and it fails for any reason, whether you had a bad business plan, or I did not work hard enough, or perhaps we performed fraudulent business practices, we simply fail and we lose our money. Also, if we did commit fraud, we stand a good chance of going to prison. Why should it be any different when that failed business is run by multi-millionaires who donate obscene sums of money to our elected representatives?…I may have just answered my own question!
The mortgage industry lobbied Congress to allow lenders to extend home loans to people with poor credit and low incomes. Laws were changed and the so-called “sub-prime” market was created. Millions of these loans were accepted by people who wanted houses they could not possibly afford. Of course, because these folks were high credit risks, they were given high interest rates. Record numbers of foreclosures is the result of such a doomed practice.
The banks which extended theses “sub-prime” loans were making enormous profits due to the exorbitant interest rates, and the new homeowner lived in a house which they could never afford during reasonable times. However, the inevitable happens and has been happening in record numbers. The bank gets stuck with an empty house they do not want, and the foreclosed-upon homeowner now has a much worse credit rating from which they are unlikely to recover.
A sad story indeed, but one which was begun by two willing parties who should have and probably did know better.
Contrary to President Bush’s assessment of our current situation, the “sub-prime” debacle is only a small part of why our financial industry is failing (I noticed he failed to mention that laws have been changed by Congress and the current administration which now allow private corporations to manipulate pension funds, without fear of prosecution.).
With President Bush and the Federal Reserve churning out U.S. dollars with all the thought given to making confetti, we are actually living through a period of hyper inflation with no end in sight. That may be why the federal reserve recently stopped publishing the M3 figures which shows the actual amount of U.S. dollars being held worldwide.
Because our currency was taken off of the gold standard decades ago, the dollar is only worth what we say it is. With a National Debt at $9.5 trillion and growing at an alarming rate, our currency is becoming increasingly worthless. If we give Wall Street another $700 billion dollars, combined with the more than $6 trillion in liability which our government already accepted with the take-over of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, we are quite possibly looking at a National Debt of $16.5 trillion in the very near future. That is nearly doubling our debt in a matter of months.
To put it in simple terms, it already takes about four dollars to buy a gallon of gas, five dollars to buy a gallon of milk, and $5,836 a year to send a child to a public university. Once we borrow more money and the Federal reserve prints it up, that further inflated money supply will translate into much higher prices. You could easily be spending eight dollars for that gallon of gas, ten dollars for that gallon of milk, and $11,672 a year to send your child to college. In short, the American consumer cannot afford this bailout.
Corporate America has been betraying the American public for several years. It is this nation’s corporations which is largely behind illegal immigration and the refusal of the federal government to put a stop to it. While it is true that many of those who enter this country illegally only come here seeking work, it is also true that illegal immigration takes jobs away from Americans and suppresses wages for all workers.
The number of American companies which now outsource jobs to foreign countries, is staggering. The effect of closing factories and call centers in this country and opening new ones in Third World countries, where in Mexico for instance the average minimum wage is about $4.50 a day, is also staggering to American working-class families (Ford Motor Co. now operates several factories in Mexico which once sat in this country.).
Many of the companies which are now in trouble and have come with out-stretched hands to the American taxpayers, have outsourced scores of jobs, resulting in massive layoffs for American workers.
The following American companies is but a small sampling of those exposed in CNN’s “Exporting America,“ for outsourcing a large portion of jobs once held by U.S. workers to foreign countries:
-A.G. Edwards
-AIG
-American Express
-AOL
-AT&T
-Bank of America
-Bank One
-Bear Stearns
-Citigroup
-Countrywide
-Continental Airlines
-Delta Airlines
-Fidelity Investments
-Ford Motor Corporation
-General Motors
-Halliburton
-The Hartford Financial Services Group
-JP Morgan Chase
-Lehman Brothers
-Merril Lynch
-Morgan Stanley
-Raytheon
-Procter&Gamble
-Sallie Mae
-Samsonite
-Target
-Tyco
-USAA
-Washington Mutual
The corporate culture of greed which in many ways, has been dictating public policy has already had a disastrous effect on this nation, while the CEO’s have garnered obscene bonuses.
Take the example of Sun Microsystems, that company‘s CEO Jonathan Schwartz received
$21.8 million in total compensation (salary, bonuses, stocks) over the last two years. Over those same two years, he has cut 6,500 jobs. He has increased Sun’s bottom line in the easiest way possible, by simply eliminating a large portion of the payroll and increasing the workload on the remaining employees. For his greed, he has been handsomely rewarded and those laid-off will have to survive on unemployment benefits until they find other work.
The story of Sun Microsystems has become a far too typical one today.
President Bush along with quite possible the most corrupt Congress in U.S. history, has already mortgaged not only our children's future but that of our grand-children's as well. Now they want to assure that the next three or four generations will deal with the consequences of a crushing federal debt, as well as a worthless currency.
The next time you hear Bush preaching about morality, write a letter to the White House and ask him...Is it morally right to spend future generations into bankruptcy?
There should be no amnesty for Wall Street robber barons who think nothing of laying-off American workers and replacing them with what amounts to slave labor. Nor should their be any amnesty for brokerage houses which now gamble and take undue risks with pension funds. Nor should their be any amnesty for mortgage lenders which write loans with no possible hope of being paid-off, or even maintained.
Please join me in writing your Congressman and Senators and remind them that there is an election in a little over 40 days, and tell them if they vote for this measure…just like many Americans, they will find themselves out of work very soon!
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