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“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life will have to be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with probability for each according to capacity or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too a lot of of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be capable to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, no matter of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” –Historian and writer James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book Epic of America. Mr. Adams penned these words in the midst of the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in our history. It is timely to reflect on these words, as it appears that the American Dream is slipping further out of reach for most Americans. If the dream of a better life for our future generations is lost, it will genuinely mark a turning point for our great Republic. The reason the American Dream is slipping away is due to the actions of politicians running our government and bureaucrats running the Federal Reserve. Those with capacity who have earned a better life through their hard work, intelligence and integrity must be attaining a higher position in the social order. Instead, our government is rewarding those Americans who have taken unwarranted risks, made brainless decisions, and willingly chose the course of exuberant debt to climb the social ladder. As the politicians scurry to “save” capitalism through the use of communist measures, more Americans are getting disheartened. The definition of communism according to Webster’s is: A system in which goods are owned in mutual and are available to all as needed. George Bush, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke have decisive to seize cash from the immense majority of Americans who lived within their means, applied debt sparingly, and worked hard to get ahead, and give it to the most appalling failures in our society. They have shoveled billions to banks that operated their businesses like gambling parlors. They have shoveled hundreds of millions to persons who purchased houses with no cash down, interest only mortgages and fraudulent loan applications. They are now rewarding automakers who made the faulty vehicles, remunerate 30,000 workers per year to not work, and have only been capable to “sell” cars by giving them away with 0% financing to anybody who could sign on the dotted line. These acts fit the definition of communism. We are now more communist than China. Now, mercantile developers are attempting to pony up to the taxpayer trough. These egotists used vast amounts of short term debt to overpay for malls, office towers, hotels and apartment complexes. The rental income could never cover the interest expense on the debt. The only way they could perchance make cash was if the next moron developer was ridiculous sufficient to overpay for the same assets. The market was flying high as the MBA geniuses on Wall Street were capable to work their magic by slicing this debt into tranches, getting it ranked as investment grade paper by criminally negligent Moody’s and S&P, and reselling it to gullible investors allround the world. The jig is up. According to the Wall Street Journal, $530 billion of debt will come due in the next three years, with $160 billion due in 2009. Of course, in the America of today, your bad business conclusions of yesterday that enriched executives like Steve Roth of Vornado Realty and who received accolades from the business press are cast aside. Just use the “Too Big to Fail” pardon and all is well. The American taxpayer will come to the rescue. The American taxpayer gets screwed no matter what we do. As Americans do the right thing and cut their spending, retailers, malls, and hotels will lose cash and developers are already asking for bailouts. Our communist government will take the cash from the innocent taxpayers and give it to the rich negligent developers. Home-builders are lobbying for a $22,000 credit for new home purchases. It surely makes sense to give hope or courage to new homes to be built when there are 2.5 million vacant houses and an 11 month supply of existent homes for sale. I await the future bailout demands of Rolex retailers, Porsche dealers, and caviar makers. My parents believed that they could provide a better, richer and fuller life for their three children. They worked hard, sacrificed for their kids, deferred their gratification, saved, put us through Catholic school and put us through college. Hard working blue collar middle class parents from South Philly were capable to advance their children upward in the American social structure through their determined efforts. I have severe doubts when it comes to whether my three boys will live a better life than myself. I’m sure that my grandchildren will not live a better life than myself. My parents wisely comprehended that shiny new cars and high wages were not what determined who achieved the American Dream. My Dad toiled for 42 years as a truck driver for ARCO, purchased employed cars his whole life, and never earned more than $32,000 in a year. My parents purchased a three bedroom row home in Delaware County in 1955 and methodically salaried it off over 30 years. They never borrowed versus the house. We didn’t eat out three times per week. We didn’t go on exotic vacations. Two weeks at the Jersey shore was just fine. My parents had high school degrees, but were capable to provide the prospect for myself, brother and sister to get college degrees and take the next step up in the American social order. The American Dream was not founded upon wealth and materialism. It revolves around achieving a better life based on the merits of your intelligence, hard work and contribution to the community of all Americans. There is a moral aspect to the American Dream that has been lost over time. James Truslow Adams addressed it in an essay he wrote in 1929: There are evidently two educations. One will have to instruct us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these ought to never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is. For most of us it is necessary that we ought to make a living…In the complicatednesses of innovative life and with our increased accumulation of knowledge, it doubtless helps mainly to compress some years of experience into far less years by studying for a peculiar trace or profession in an institution; but that fact must not blind us to another-namely, that in so doing we are learning a trade or a profession, but are not getting a liberal education as humane beings. The crux of the problem is that Americans, with a strong sense of morality and caring regarding what is right and wrong, are no longer steering the American ship. Thomas Jefferson declared that Americans had the right to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. The government’s obligation is to protect the life and liberty of it is people. Representative Ron Paul bluntly speaks the truth with regards to our government: The obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people. Our current scheme of incentives is inconsistent with the equivalent rights of others. I was taught the divergence among right and defective by my parents. The pursuit of pleasure by Americans is where the American Dream has gone off the track. The pursuit of exuberant wealth, power, influence, luxuriousness automobiles, McMansions, and electronic appliances has substituted for pleasure in the world we live in today. Whatever means necessary to achieve this bastardized American Dream (Nightmare?) has been the mantra of the “Me Generation”. Every disgraced CEO of the last year was share of the Baby Boom generation. Parents, schools, corporations, media and government have taught Americans how to make a living, but have done a horrific occupation in instructing Americans how to live. The government and Federal Reserve have encouraged the warped American Dream through the use of insane tax, fiscal, and interest rate policies. Federal Reserve Fraud Thomas Jefferson, a wise man by most accounts, thought central banks were not a very good idea. If the American persons ever grant private banks to control the issue of their currency, basi by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the persons of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power must be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it decently belongs. The progressed theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the world with blood, and crushed it is inhabitants beneath burdens ever accumulating. We did not heed Mr. Jefferson’s prudent advice. The result for the American persons has been persistent inflation that has destroyed the purchasing power of the US dollar. It takes $1.00 to buy what cost 5 cents in 1914, a 95% loss of purchasing power since the creation of the Federal Reserve. Most of this loss in purchasing power has occurred since 1971. “Tricky Dick” Nixon took the country off the gold ordinary in 1971 and uncorked the bottle and let the inflation genie out. The unchecked issuance of debt by our government, facilitated by Federal Reserve policies since 1971, has brought our outstanding country to the brink of financial disaster. The establishment that caused the problem, did not see this crisis looming, and has perfectly failed in stemming the damage, is now taking actions wholly outside of it is mandate, while telling the public they have the answers. They have duped the American public for 85 years through the insidious use of inflation, and now they are attempting to dupe the world into keeping their Ponzi system going for a while longer. The Federal Reserve was developed in 1913 with the dual aim of maximizing employment and sustaining stables prices. New York Senator Elihu Root, in voting versus the creation of a Federal Reserve, saw a vision of our bleak future: Little by little, business is enlarged with easy money. With the exhaustless reservoir of the Government of the United States furnishing easy money, the sales increase, the businesses enlarge, more new endeavors are started, the spirit of the optimisti feeling that all is going to turn out well pervades the community. Bankers are not free from it. They are human. The members of the Federal Reserve board will not be free of it. They are human….Everyone is making money. Everyone is growing rich. It goes up and up, the margin amidst costs and sales continually growing littler as a result of the operation of inevitable laws, until in the long run an individual whose judgment was bad, someone whose capacity for business was small, breaks; and as he falls he hits the next brick in the row, and then another, and then another, and down comes the whole structure. The conception of forming this central bank was to stop bank panics from happening. So far, they are 0 for 2. They were in charge in 1929 for the duration of the biggest bank panic in history. Their activenesses in the 1930′s exacerbated and prolonged the Depression. Alan Greenspan and the Fed are the chief cause of the current disaster. The absurdly low interest rates of the early 2000′s and the finish lack of oversight of bank lending exercises caused the biggest debt bubble in history. During September and October, the country experienced an electronic bank run. Americans rightfully lost trust in all financial originations and started out withdrawing their money. The Federal Reserve has done the only thing it knows how to do. Print money. It has doubled it is remainder sheet to $2.3 trillion. The Federal Reserve is a privately controlled establishment that is fundamentally under the direction of the greatest banks in the country. Whose best interests do you think it is looking out for? Zero interest rates inflict punishment on senior citizen savers in order to save reckless borrowers. The only competent Federal Reserve Chairman in the last 40 years, Paul Volcker, had this to say in regards to the actions of Ben Bernanke in the last year. The Federal Reserve has judged it necessary to take activenesses that extend to the very edge of it is lawful and implied powers, transcending in the procedure sure long-embedded central banking principles and practices. What appears to be in substance a direct transfer of mortgage and mortgage-backed securities of questionable pedigree from an investment bank to the Federal Reserve seems to test the time-honored central bank mantra in time of crisis: lend freely at high rates versus good collateral; test it to the point of no return. Since these words were spoken by Mr. Volcker, the Federal Reserve has gone way beyond their rightful and implied powers. Look at it is remainder sheet as of last week. It has more than doubled it is remainder sheet in the last few months. As you may see they have been busy making loans to financial foundations allround the world. These loans are being made with your money. The Federal Reserve is supposed to be protecting the humans of the United States. Transparency is necessary for financial schemes and democracies to function. Instead, Ben Bernanke is withholding which banks have borrowed from the Federal Reserve and what collateral was put up for the loans. They have lent out over $2 trillion of your cash with no accountability to the American taxpayer. Bloomberg News has sued the Federal Reserve to obtain this selective information underneath the Freedom of Information Act. They are covering up their activenesses because they know that the collateral they have accepted is worthless. These are criminal activenesses with the aim to deceive the American public. The government and Federal Reserve work for “We the People”, not vice versa. Thank You Sir, May I Have Another Last week the Federal Reserve decreased it is discount rate to .25%, the lowest in history. They likewise declared they would use any means necessary to re-inflate our bubble economy. Deflation is not a bad thing for most Americans. Cheaper gas is nice, for less feed is nice, for less cars are nice, and flat screen TVs are nice. For people and countries without debt, deflation is just fine. That does not describe U.S. buyers or the U.S. government. Deflation when you are a country that has $10.6 trillion in debt will annihilate the debtor. Therefore, Mr. Bernanke has chosen to try and inflate us out of this mess. As an expert on the Great Depression, Ben believes that fiscal and monetary elaboration will save the country. There is one significant difference. When the crisis hit the U.S. in1929, total U.S. debt as a part of GDP was in regards to 200% and we were a net exporter nation. We enter this crisis with total U.S. debt exceeding 350% of GDP and we have a trade deficit of $700 billion. The Federal Reserve and Obama administration are regarding to add trillions of debt when we already have record amounts of debt. The brilliant James Grant sums up the dilemma: If the Fed is going to give rise to boatloads of depreciating, non-yielding dollar bills, who will absorb them? Who will finance the Obama administration’s looming titanic fiscal deficits? Who will finance America’s annual surplus of consumption over production (after 25 more or less continuous years, closely a national trait)? Inflation is a kind of governmentally sanctioned white-collar crime. Every crime needs a dupe. Now that the Fed has declared it is plan to deceive, where will it find it is victims? Today’s policy manufacturers allow, there are risks to “creating” a trillion or so of new currency each few months, but that is tomorrow’s worry. On today’s agenda is a deflationary abyss. Foreigners have been buyers of 70% of our newly issued debt in the last few years. Does Ben Bernanke in truth believe that foreigners will be more than willing to receive 2% interest for 10 years on bonds while we are printing trillions of new dollars? The all out assault on deflation will work. It will work so well that it will lead to a crash in the US dollar as foreigners get started to shun the debased currency. A hyperinflationary bust ala Argentina and the Weimer Republic is in our future. There is one thing for sure. Whatever happens will take the Fed by surprise. They didn’t see the credit crisis coming and will not see the inflation tsunami before it washes over us. Economist Irwin Kellner knows this will not end well. “While nearly no one is raising prices in today’s downhearted economy, all this liquidity will soon become an accident looking for a place to happen.” The last 85 years of permitting our currency to be manipulated by a private bank has been a series of crisis, failure, and mismanagement. Ron Paul without doubt or question articulates why the Federal Reserve has helped ruin the American Dream and needs to be abolished: Abolishing the Federal Reserve will concede Congress to reassert it is constitutional authority over monetary policy. Though the Federal Reserve policy harms the intermediate American, it gains those in a position to take vantage of the cycles in monetary policy. The main beneficiaries are those who receive access to artificially inflated cash and/or credit before the inflationary effects of the policy affect the entire economy. Federal Reserve policies likewise gain huge spending politicians who use the inflated currency formulated by the Fed to hide the true costs of the welfare-warfare state. It is time for Congress to put the interests of the American humans in front of the special interests and their own appetite for big government. Government in Action We’ve formulated a behemoth government agency called Homeland Security at a cost of $50.5 billion per year, employing 203,000 persons as our response to the 9/11 tragedy. How much would it have cost to have installed a $39.99 Wal-Mart deadbolt lock on each cockpit cabin door of each plane in the world before 9/11? There are approximately 20,000 mercantile airplanes in the world. The cost would have been $800,000 and 9/11 would have been averted. Based on the government’s outstanding record of fiscal management ($1,200 toilet seats), we could effortlessly assume that it would cost $1,000 per cockpit door, rather than $39.99. In that case, the bill would have been $20 million. For a $20 million investment we would have fended off 3,000 deaths at the WTC, 4,500 deaths of American soldiers, 30,000 wounded American soldiers, innumerable thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths, $850 billion of taxpayer funds expended on the War on Terror, and the $50 billion per year we spend on a vast government bureaucracy that is not making our lives safer or better in any way. Our government had the power, the funds, and the capacity to install a simple deadbolt lock. They did not. Government fails because it is corrupt, incompetent, mismanaged, and self serving. We are with regards to to experience the biggest government outlay in the history of our glorious Republic. President elect Obama and his team of economic masterminds are preparing to borrow and spend the country back to prosperity. Mr. Obama wants to formulate 3 million new jobs in 2009. Considering that there are only 1.5 million humans unemployed in the construction field, it is uncertain how he will apply all of the cashiers, burger flippers, and Wall Street paper shufflers in the infrastructure build out of our country. The Obama plan to spend $1 trillion to stimulate our economy has the 17,000 lobbyists in Washington DC swarming like voracious locusts over a field of crops. It will be the biggest pig roast in the history of our country. These lobbyists will apply the $3 billion per year they spend (bribe) to “influence” policymakers like there is no tomorrow. “The ever-increasing cost of the yet-to-be-seen stimulus is like chum in the water for lobbyists circling to snap up some taxpayer cash for their clients,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group. Examples of the kind of stimulus we may look forward to, according to the LA Times, are as follows: Rather than rebuilding highways, a nonprofitmaking group called Reconnecting America wants the government to focus on a “21st century national transportation system” of mass transit and walking and bike paths. The National Assn. of Railroad Passengers is pushing for $10 billion for intercity passenger rail projects. The business community is seeking a series of tax breaks that it says will foster growth and return cash to the federal Treasury. It favors, amidst other things, a tax rebate to middle-class taxpayers, a sizable reduction in the corporate capital gains tax and a sharp reduction in the tax rate on net income that firms in the United States get from alien subsidiaries. The housing industry wants all buyers to receive a tax credit for a home buy and to have the government subsidize mortgage rates through a “buy-down” program letting down borrowing costs. The National Retail Federation proposes that sales tax holidays be kept for the duration of March, July and October 2009, each lasting 10 days. The cost of this program would be $20 billion. The National Automobile Dealers Assn. is seeking a tax break furthering more humans to buy cars and a “cash for clunkers” program that helps persons trade in older vehicles for new, more fuel-efficient ones. “The catfish industry is on the verge of collapse,” said Marty Fuller of the Catfish Farmers of America, citing high feed prices and an increase of imports. About 6,000 jobs are at stake, for the most part in economically lowspirited areas in states such as Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Officials are talking with regards to seeking $50 million in aid as a stimulus. Now that I recognise the catfish industry is safe I may sleep better at night knowing the $1 trillion won’t be wasted on anything frivolous. You may be sure that the more outrageous projects are not even being discussed openly. They will slide through on page 895 of the coming bill. Every congressman, except Ron Paul, will be purchased off with goodies for their district. Everybody Knows That the Captain Lied Poet and singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen captures the current mood of the country in his song Everybody Knows. The financial and political game is rigged versus the good guys. The poor will stay poor and the rich will get richer. The captain is your political leaders, fat cat CEOs, and investment professionals. The American ship of state is leaking. Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody knows that the boat is leaking I’m now convinced that the only qualification to be a CEO of a U.S. company is to have guts. How else could you explain John Thain’s demand that he receive a $10 million bonus from Merrill Lynch (MER) after leading that honored firm to losses of $24.4 billion in the former four quarters? Steve Roth, the CEO of Vornado Realty (VNO0, raked in $71.8 million last year in compensation. His company has ridden the wave of cheap debt for the last eight years. He brilliantly doubled the debt of his company from $6.2 billion in 2005 to $12.9 billion in 2007. The firm’s leverage symmetry exploded from 54% to 68%. He did deals that didn’t make sense from a cash flow standpoint. His business plan was based on the more outstanding fool theory. Now, he is the more outstanding fool. His stock price has plummeted 46%. No bank is more than willing to lend a mercantile developer a dime. The mercantile development Ponzi scheme will collapse next year. But, not too worry. Steve and his fellow incompetent gamblers want the U.S. taxpayer to bail them out. In the America of today, the taxpayer will again be screwed and the rich ruling elite will retain their place in the social order. The government has chosen to make you the more outstanding fool. Thomas Friedman in a recent NYT article in the right way assesses the corrupt financial system we are stuck with: I have no sympathy for Madoff. But the fact is his alleged Ponzi system was only somewhat more outrageous than the ‘legal’ system that Wall Street was running, fueled by cheap credit, low standards and high greed. What do you call giving a worker who makes only $14,000 a year a nothing-down and nothing-to-pay-for-two-years mortgage to buy a $750,000 home, and then bundling that mortgage with 100 others into bonds, which Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s rate AAA, and then merchandising them to banks and pension funds the world over? That is what our financial industry was doing. If that isn’t a pyramid scheme, what is? The dice are loaded and the fight is fixed. Those who played by the rules, lived within their means, went to work each day, didn’t flip condos, or use home equity to lease a Mercedes, will compensate for those who lied, cheated, and cut corners. This is how the American Dream has turned into the American Nightmare. American Dream Redux – Patriots Needed Below is an email I received this week from a lady named Cindy with regards to my last article in regards to Bernie Madoff: Mr. Quinn…I just finished reading your article and could not agree with you more…Possibly a word of counsel will ease my pain…I am a single mother with 3 children, 23, 19, 16….I am 52, self made, and worked my entire life to achieve a comfortable level of success for my family…For years I ran side by side accounts with Paine Webber, Merrill Lynch and Bernie Madoff. Amazingly, I met an associate of Madoff’s at a Church in Fort Lauderdale and entrusted him with $10,000 16 yrs ago….Nothing posh…Simply good…..In the last 5 yrs Madoff out performed all, so naturally I moved my accounts and fed my Madoff feeder…Now, $1.7M later I am destitute…I will begin fore-closure on 3 of my investment properties and loose [sic] my indispensable home for I may no longer afford it….Why must a little guy like me have to suffer the aftermaths of an SEC over site…OHHH…I’m sorry, we will do better next time??? Why is it OK for Madoff to sit in his $10M apartment out on bail, observing TV and playing on the Internet?…Why is it OK for him to afford the most powerful former SEC attorneys now in private exercise that will delay his trial for 3-5 yrs…How may our government grant this to happen…How is Ok to bail out Wall St with $700B while I stress out and cry like a baby over my loss…. How is it OK for Obama to be spending Christmas in Hawaii with his family staying at a $30M mansion, while my sickly mother flies from NC to Fort Lauderdale to hold and ease her daughter….How is it OK that we have no Xmas tree or gifts this year?…How is it OK that my and my children’s trust in mankind has been shattered…. I suppose we will survive, but how we don’t know…. The evil perpetrated by Bernie Madoff and his kind on Wall Street have disillusioned the American public and have driven another stake into the heart of the American Dream. The greed, untrue promises and fraudulent systems by investment pros and bank CEOs has shattered the dreams of millions. The immoral imagination of tremendous wages, immense power, and elite social status has driven some to cheat the innocent. As my father crosses the threshold into the final stages of his ultimately losing ten year battle with Alzheimer’s disease, I can’t help but contrast the compassion, care, empathy and love that my Dad has experienced from nurses, doctors, aides, and ambulance drivers, with the coldness, selfishness, materialism, egotism and narcissism exhibited by Wall Street scam artists, power hungry politicians, and pompous government bureaucrats. Dedicated caring nurses are salaried a few thousand dollars per year. Criminally incompetent bank CEOs are salaried hundreds of millions per year. Who gains society more? I’m convinced that the majority of Americans are decent humane beings. They want a richer and fuller life, with a rightful chance for advancement. The last 25 years of materialistic psychosis was a temporary deviation on the road towards the American Dream. If the authorities would let capitalism run it is course and concede the painful deleveraging that is needed, we could get back on course. If it takes a depression to accomplish this required deleveraging, so be it. We’ve pulled through depressions before. It is time to protest the Federal Reserve criminality and government abuse of power. Ron Paul’s call for new patriots must be our rallying cry to reclaim the American Dream: The primary American patriots were those humans brave sufficient to protest with strength the oppressive power of King George. I receive the definition of patriotism as that venture to protest oppressive state power. The true loyal is motivated by a sense of obligation and out of self-interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to protest government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obeisance to the state. Many persons are looking for an easy answer to the tyranny that is being enforced upon us by the oligopoly of government, corporations, and media. There is no easy answer. The primary patriots was struggling for 14 years to free themselves from British tyranny. Failure meant the hangman’s noose. Our politicians, corporate CEOs, and media pundits will provide comforting “solutions” that have been crafted by PR maggots. Their crafted talking points are lies. They have no idea what they are doing. The only question is whether rational alter will come when the existent system collapses underneath the weight of it is lies, or we take back the country through grassroots attempts and spreading the truth through the internet. Most helpful customer reviews 0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. |
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