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October 3, 2008 at 23:52:39
Promoted to Headline (H3) on 10/3/08: by Mary Pitt Page 1 of 1 page(s) |
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As a small voice from the back of the room, I have one question regarding the discovery of the illiquidity of all the huge corporate conglomerates who have taken over the finances of this ostensibly democratic nation -- When is somebody going to jail? Now, I don't profess to truly understand the ins and outs of our financial system and I have absolutely no concept of anything over a million of anything. I think I am in good company as it's safe to assume that the majority of the American people are in the same boat as I. However, those of us with intact brain cells do remember the Enron fiasco when Congressional hearings were held which exposed the various forms of chicanery which had been perpetrated by the corporate moguls and their compliant accountants. It seems they had engaged in what they termed "creative accounting" in order to induce pigeons (pardon me, investors), to continue to trust them with trust funds and other forms of financial donations. We watched with a sense of irony as first one and then another of the perpetrators were marched off to the Federal Country Clubs. (But our money was still gone.) Now we learn that the same sort of underhanded and blatantly dishonest business practices have brought down many of those companies which had been entrusted with the very lifeblood of our capitalist financial and political system. They had created false balance sheets listing the packages of home, auto, small business, and miscellaneous loans which had been issued to patently and obviously poor credit risks at their face value rather than discounting them due to the likelihood that a large percentage of them would default. This created the false image of companies in robust health and highly eligible for consideration by potential investors. The only reason we have heard for this perfidy have to do with the eligibility of corporate officers to draw bonuses, raises, and parachutes with a higher carat of gold content, which only further drained corporate coffers and caused the business foundation to shake still more. Only when the whole house of cards was preparing to come down around the ears of the entire system was this condition uncovered by the oblivious souls who were in the position of guardians of the public good, and who had been blithely watching the stock market go up and up.
We have been told that it is our fault for borrowing or buying things we could not afford. Shame on us for, when searching for a new home with a limited budget, we believed the fast-talking salesperson who told us he had access to creative financing which would allow us to pay the interest only for the first two years, and this would allow us time to get our feet under us before having to start paying on the principle. Or shame on us when we went shopping for a used car to replace the old one that had just gasped its last, and the slick salesman said that, by the same method, we could afford to drive away in this little baby right here. And shame on us when our bank told us that the Adjustable Rate Loan was the newest thing and had many advantages. Double-shame on us that we fell for the easy credit-card approvals that appeared in our mail regularly. Well, now we have to pay for those mistakes, in spades!
Rather than risk the collapse spreading to the international market with the dollar sinking into oblivion, we were told that it would be necessary to obligate the American taxpayers for generations to come for buying out those worthless loans and putting right the condition of these companies. Now, I could be wrong and I readily admit to naïveté in these matters, but I felt it would have been as productive and more fair to the American people if the government were to take the companies into Federal receivership, terminate without severance pay all the people involved in the conspiracy to defraud, and set the firms on the right path before releasing them back to the control of the shareholders.
However, we must assume that Congress knows best and chose to take another path and the American people will have the opportunity to judge their actions in the upcoming election. While the Congresspersons are at home campaigning, perhaps we will be able to ask them to further account for their reasoning and explain their actions. There are many questions that the wage slaves and others who feel disconnected from the nuts and bolts of managing their futures would like answered if answers there be. Among them are:
~~Why, when we lose our jobs or have a medical catastrophe do we not receive any assistance from the government until our resources are so depleted that we qualify for welfare?
~~Why was it necessary to make the bankruptcy court so restrictive that relief is all but unavailable through that action?
And, oh, so many more questions why we, the people, are treated so much less generously than the multi-billion dollar corporations. If we make a simple mistake on our income taxes, the vaunted accountants from the Internal Revenue Service fall upon us like so many fire ants and we pay up or go to jail and they will follow us to the ends of the earth to collect every penny, costing us our jobs or professions and ruining our families forever after. Yet, those who are engaged in such corporate criminality are allowed to float away in their golden parachutes and dwell forever after on the Riviera.
Again, I can only ask -- When is somebody going to jail for this?
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| 6 comments |
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Great question! I'm afraid that the answer is never, but
that could change if more people realize what hundreds of thousands of homeowners already know. Widespread mortgage fraud was committed by the bankers that Bush and his enablers just bailed out. If you want to know more about the bailout bill, what caused the crisis, who really benefits, what the bailout bill will actually do, and the names of the 74 Senators who said, "Let them eat cake!" see Senate Bailout a.k.a. Bank Robbery Bill by Mark Adams (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 312 comments [39 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:05:36 PM  (0+)
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Reply: Thank you for your comment
I have thought and I have written that there must be a better way to handle this mess but, true to form, the Democrats in Congress are so accustomed to panicking like sheep when Bush blows his whistle that nothing else was even considered. The Republicans, afraid for their own re-election already, would only balk but had nothing constructive to substitute for the plan. They all scrambled over each other to rush over the fiscal precipice ahead and we, the people, are left to deal with the aftermath, as usual. However, there is a common pattern here with the Enron affair and jail time for the perps is the only legitimate conclusion. We should demand it. by Mary Pitt (77 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 282 comments [11 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Oct 4, 2008 at 3:26:57 PM (0+)
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If only our justice system were "Reasonable"
If our justice and political systems were "reasonable" there would be a lot of people being walked off to jail and being asked to refund their ill gotten gains. There is a paper trail - who benefited from the the funny money boom of the last several years? Whose wealth increased? It doesn't take much effort to see that the trickle down system has worked fabulously - in REVERSE! It has concentrated wealth in the hands of a few and the rest of us are once again getting the short end! I can think of a few people that should be walked off in shiny handcuffs... Alan Greenspan, on his watch he allowed this bubble to grow beyond common sense... in fact by lowering interest rates he even stoked the fire. Bush and his cronies... Many of our Congress people and Senators, they receive Wall Street Votes - (I mean money) and get direct dial phone numbers and corporate jet transport (and send their concerned constituents form letters 8 weeks after they voice their concerns). They should be required to return every cent they took from any industry tied to this mess - and then resign if as a result they voted in any favorable legislation (guess we would have a whole new "house" of Representatives...) And the shareholders of these large companies should be out the money. Their crooked board of directors paid encouraged these shady lending practices and could not get enough of the green in good times... These crooks participated in shady deals - they took risk - the shareholders should be completely out the value of the stock - that should be an infusion of cash into the institution to offset some of this bad debt. No dividends and take the stock value. They gambled and lost. Not enough money in capital??? - then these companies should be owned by the government. The mortgages should be resold and or reset the mortgages based on the adjusted values of the homes at a reasonable fixed rate. We created the funny money through an expansion of credit - so unwind it. Reduce the mortgages and write down the expansion of the economy. It wasn't real to begin with. Allow some of these people to stay in their homes - review on a case by case basis each home and determine the value and the ability to pay. And we should see a parade of white collar criminals from the top down marched off to prison to spend their days. Seize their assets and return them to the people. But, our justice system is not reasonable. Do you think this justice system will be doing anything to investigate the fraud leading up to this mess? Not a chance... by August Adams (11 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 585 comments [12 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:45:09 PM (0+)
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Reply: Some very good points
Maybe we do understand "the system" a bit better than they would like us to? There are many components that might be involved, like the concept that corporations are individuals and as such have First Amendment protection to "talk with their money" in influencing elctions and legislation. It would seem advisable that some incoming President appoint a standing committee to review all laws and standards in the light of the needs of a democratic government and to recommend steps to restore the right of the people to control their own money and their own lives without the interference of quasi-governmental organizations that were inheard of at the time of the Founding. by Mary Pitt (77 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 282 comments [11 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Saturday, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:55:54 PM (0+)
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Justice
I know it looks like our democracy is dead and that greedy multinationals have complete control of our government but there still is some hope. The Bush regime is about to end and the FBI is investigating financial companies for fraud, some may go to jail. People need to vote corporate Republicans and Democrats out of office. Its sad that Democrats were the ones who helped the Bush regime pass the bailout bill through the house. The bailout bill is just more Republican trickle down economics. Idiots have an economic theory that adheres to the belief that if you cut or eliminate corporate tax, give big socialist subsidies to some businesses and eliminate all regulations and oversight that more high paying jobs will be created. Well this ignorant economic theory has been in use for several years and the results were ever higher executive pay and jobs moved out of the U.S. to slave wage countries. Supporters of the 800 billion dollar government bailout would have been charged with being a member of the communist party had this happened in the 1950's. Or maybe not because un American activities are only committed by labor activists in this corporate dictatorship. The bailout is profoundly baffling because all I have heard for the past 25 years is the dogma of how government needs to just get out of the way and let the private sector and the free markets do their thing. Long speeches about how incompetent and wasteful government is compared to the private sector were the norm. The truth is now out and the private sector is even more wasteful and incompetent than our federal government. I now know why our federal government has performed so poorly the past three decades, its because its actually controlled by the incompetent private sector and their lobbyists. by Gary Denson (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 283 comments) on Sunday, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:42:58 AM (0+)
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Reply: I can only reply with a question
Why is our entire monetary system in the control of private, internationally- owned corporations in the first place? I know that the mere suggestion of "nationalizing" anything will lead to accusations of "communism" but one would think that, since it is a legitimate responsibilty of government to control the national funding mechanism, that mechanism should be vested in the control of our elected officials. by Mary Pitt (77 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 282 comments [11 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Sunday, Oct 5, 2008 at 10:25:23 AM (0+)
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