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March 5, 2008

I Hate Cooked Bananas in My Veins

By Paul Rye

Ben Bernanke has the solution to the banks' banking crisis. If some people cannot pay their home loans, then change the "amount-owed" number on their loan to a smaller number, and voila! Problem solved. Oh, he hasn't got around to mentioning how yet, but he will eventually. Mark my words, Government WILL find a way to tax YOU to cover the bankers' losses.

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The latest injection of Fed Chief Ben Bernanke’s half-baked Banana Republic ideas, administered directly into the veins of American thought by Associated Press suggests that in order to prevent more home foreclosures banks should just write down the principle for people whose mortgages are “under water”.   Of course, those who had the good sense to not take on a ridiculous level of debt will not get spit.

Very few will notice that if loan principle can simply be forgiven, then there was never any real capital involved in the loans to begin with, just credit created with a wave of the banker’s magic wand.  We live in an age of true financial smoke and mirrors.

“Tom Loonan, vice president of the State Bank of Easton in Minnesota, suggested that debt relief for some who got in over their heads may anger others, who took out mortgages that they could afford. "There's going to be some animosity," he said.”   

In other words, those who worked their asses off to get in a position to actually afford to buy a ticket to the housing game are likely to get pissed that they must continue to pay full ticket price while others who  could not or would not work so hard or be so conscientious will receive free tickets, all this in order not to not disturb the banker's monetary Circus Maximus.

 

This “debt forgiveness” will not be done with the intent to do what is even marginally fair.  To do what would be marginally fair, the banks would need to write down everyone’s: mortgage principle, farm loan principle, car loan principle, horse loan principle, and lawn-mower loan principle.

 

To do what would be truly fair would also include increasing everyone's savings to reflect the losses people have suffered due to: the implementation of an income tax for no other reason than to secure a permanent source of income to pay the interest on the national debt, the increases in income taxes due to indexing they have suffered due to Fed-induced monetary inflation since 1913, and the loss of purchasing power of their savings, also due to inflation.  Of course, that would require re-writing the monetary laws and re-structuring the banking system.

 

What Bernanke proposes is not “debt forgiveness” in the interest of fairness, because of longstanding private bank parasitism of society or private bank/industry collusion.  He proposes “selective debt forgiveness” in the spirit of giving up the bare minimum necessary to save the private banks collective asses from insolvency and unwelcome public attention, due to a problem of their own making.

 

As long as the system works in the favor of Wall Street and its clients at the expense of the individual investor, the bankers will not do what is fair.  They will do whatever it takes to keep the lid on the pot (monetary system) and prevent people from investigating how the stove (banking system) works, and they will do it until the very day the pot explodes.



Authors Bio:

Merchant marine experience on ocean research and oil exploration vessels in my youth. Ex-mechanical engineer, oil exploration equipment industry, commercial and military aerospace industries, SCUBA diving and respiratory protective breathing apparatus industries. Sport skin diver, spear fisher, scuba diver, fisherman, boat owner, football player, tennis player, husband, father, math teacher. Ex-Republican, not a fan of the Democratic Party either. Not very impressed with the reasoning ability of Progressives either, who seem gullible and incapable of envisioning the negative consequences of trying to create Utopia by law, but have a soft spot for them anyway because their heart is often in the right place. Long time interests include: political philosophy, ethics, economics, banking and monetary systems, criminology, the Second Amendment and gun control.


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