Day: October 13, 2010

Banksters Own US, We Just Live Here

The investment banks didn’t mind buying up loans they knew were bad, because they considered themselves to be in the moving business rather than the storage business. They weren’t going to hold on to the loans: they were just going to package them up and sell them on to some buy-side sucker.

In fact, the banks had an incentive to buy loans they knew were bad. Because when the loans proved to be bad, the banks could go back to the originator and get a discount on the amount of money they were paying for the pool. And the less money they paid for the pool, the more profit they could make when they turned it into mortgage bonds and sold it off to investors.

Oh, and they withheld this information from the people and organizations they sold these products to.

I guess we’d better get together a blue ribbon commission. What, you think anyone will face trial over this? You think anyone will go to jail over this? You think any bank that sold these products will even have to pony up their own money to cover losses they created?

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you need to reassess just what country it is you live in and just who is in charge. Because it isn’t who you think.

Banksters Own US, We Just Live Here

To the Ring Fence!

… these potential savings can be realized if we are willing to make an honest examination of the cost, benefit, and rationale of the extensive U.S. military commitment overseas, which in large part remains a legacy of policy decisions made in the immediate aftermath of World War II and during the Cold War. Years after the Soviet threat has disappeared, we continue to provide European and Asian nations with military protection through our nuclear umbrella and the troops stationed in our overseas military bases. Given the relative wealth of these countries, we should examine the extent of this burden that we continue to shoulder on our own dime.

All I have to say about this is: Finally.

Naturally, the Serious People advocating harsh austerity are already heading to the barricades to put a stop to even a discussion about scaling back the Pentagon’s baseline, non-war funding to some remotely rational fraction of the national budget. Rest assured our potential GOP majority feels exactly the same way insofar as they even think about policy decisions such as these. They know who butters their bread, and it certainly isn’t the people standing in the bread lines.

To the Ring Fence!