We Got Angry; Now What? Banker sentiment and social philosophy: If we do not allow people to fail, then there is no incentive to succeed.Banks are too big to fail. Corporate America has mobilized the media and the Republicans to make sure we don't recover from the Depression. They bombard us with lies, as if a racist Herbert Hoover was directing them. They have all the marketing and manipulative tools to take us for saps.

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Banker sentiment and social philosophy: If we do not allow people to fail, then there is no incentive to succeed.

Banks are too big to fail.

Corporate America has mobilized the media and the Republicans to make sure we don't recover from the Depression. They bombard us with lies, as if a racist Herbert Hoover was directing them.

They have all the marketing and manipulative tools to take advantage of our anger. Even now they are persuading us the Depression resulted from our greed and selfishness. Sure, we demanded Collateralized Debt Obligations from the bankers. We insisted the Department of Justice sidetrack Don Rumsfeld's prosecution for torture and rendition.
The right wing smear machine works at full blast to vilify the President and to ridicule his programs. This outfit has been selling the public a false bill of goods for 60 years. Nobody even tries to stop them.

 A banking View of the Crisis

Randy Carver: At this point I think that the more significant impact of the Obama plan will be psychological rather than financial. Loaning/giving money to people who cannot or will not be able to pay it back does not make sense and was the genesis of the crisis to begin with.

If we look at all potential foreclosures as a percentage of the entire housing and real estate market, the economic issue is relatively small. I think that we need to make funds available for credit-worthy people and let the system work itself out. Again, I think Bob is 100% correct that while we do have true economic issues, there seems to be an exaggeration of the magnitude, which may make some of these things self-fulfilling. Moreover, we need to more on the root causes rather than the symptoms. If we do not allow people to fail, then there is no incentive to succeed. Of course that's just my humble opinion.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/16/real-estate-foreclosures-intelligent-investing-obama.html?

Games Obama Plays

Mr. Obama's advisers argued that at least some extent, this was a sentiment they could tap to push through his measures in Congress, including raising taxes on the wealthy. They pointed out that in his speech to Congress, Mr. Obama denounced corporations that "use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet."

"The president has been very clear about this," Mr. Axelrod said. "There is reason for anger, but we also have to solve the problem. We need a functioning credit system. That's our responsibility, and he intends to meet it."

Still, aides acknowledged the risks of a backlash as Mr. Obama tries to signal that he shares American anger but pushes for more bail-out money for banks and Wall Street.

For all his political skills and his capturing of the nation's desire for change in the 2008 election, Mr. Obama, a product of Harvard Law School who calls upscale Hyde Park in Chicago home, has shown little inclination to strike a more populist tone. The danger, aides said, is that if he were to become identified as an advocate for the banks and Wall Street, people could take out their anger on him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/us/politics/16assess.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Sunday night, the bipartisan rage against AIG had reached a boiling point. Monday morning, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo was issuing subpoenas to AIG and Rep. Barney Frank was calling for people to be fired. The populist backlash had reached a level which the Obama administration could not dismiss, and the result was the president promising to use every means available to stop AIG from paying out these bonuses.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/16/national-outrage-forces-o_n_175554.html

How to Stop AIG Bonuses

By William K. Black, Thomas Ferguson, Robert Johnson, and Walker Todd, Huffington Post

Firstly, the US trustees in charge of the firm must immediately instruct the corporate treasurer to make no payments of any bonuses. They also need to order him to issue stop payment orders on any checks that fly out the door at the last minute, as with Merrill Lynch. Then the trustees need to split off the derivatives unit from the rest of the firm and separately incorporate it. This step leaves AIG's other businesses free to operate as usual. If the recipients of the bonuses refuse to waive them, then the derivatives unit should at once be thrown into bankruptcy, terminating all obligations to pay them.

The National Outrage

Nobody can imagine $160 billions to AIG. [I thought they made washing machines, but that company is AEG.]  We became mesmerized.

Somehow, we grasped the $165 millions they planned to pay their woeful executives. It was as if they had knocked us down on the beach, and now were kicking sand in our faces.

So, we got angry.

Now, they are President Obama's bailouts and bonuses. If he fails to clean up the financial sector, the crisis will become Obama's Depression.

f we don't allow banks and governments to fail, there is little incentive to have them succeed.

Authors Bio:
Born a month before Pearl Harbor, I attended world events from an early age. My first words included Mussolini, Patton, Sahara and Patton. At age three I was a regular listener to Lowell Thomas.
My mom was an industrial nurse a member of the AFL/CIO. My dad was a painting contractor. We shopped at the Working Man's Store.
Dad's reading matter was the Old Mole the house organ of the Socialist Workers Party. I played the saxophone and became a young fan of Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Duke Ellington. Naturally, I gravitated to the Civil Rights movement.
After college to avoid the draft, I joined the US Army Reserve. Alas, this came to crowd control, which was a euphemism for busting radical potheads. When I ducked out of this duty, my commander bundled me off to a unit doomed to go to Vietnam. Ironically, my old unit went to Vietnam and the new one stayed home.
I studied economics in graduate school where I watched America go mad with war. Afterwards, I joined the rat race for a decade.
When Ronnie Reagan became President, I took up residence in Israel.
The 11 books listed below describe my adventures in Israel.
The articles reflect additional thoughts that expand on the author's ten volumes Genesis Begins the Millennia. The work begins in 1995 with a fictional account of ordinary Israelis absorbed with everyday events. There are extraordinary happenings the characters gradually recognize as portents of the Messianic Age. Volumes four and five show why the Messiah decided to delay His arrival.
Volumes six through ten [Tradebombers] begin six weeks before the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy. Again, the characters portray ordinary citizen reaction to extraordinary events.