Roots, seeds, and why the leaves fell off the tree


As our economy (and the world's), plunges downward, we need to examine the situation from a macro level AND a micro level and from a political perspective as well. The seed of the problem has been cheap money (credit) for 40 years made available to Americans to cope with the difficulties caused by competing with cheap foreign labor. The credit mega-bubble enabled people to live above their means; buy it today... pay later, artificially altering the supply/demand ratios. It made all Presidents look good, because the consumer spending gave us significant and sustained GNP growth. Corporations had growing profits, stock values rose . And Banks ruled the world.

The root of the problem was the "unfettered free market/deregulation political philosophy" fed by corrupt financial industry titans taking control of our government by bribing corrupt politicians, D's and R's, whose votes were for sale. (nothing new here)

The leaves came off the trees because of Darwin's survival of the fittest principle. The Guys at the top who are driven by huge performance bonuses were able to rig the rules of the game, kidnap our government, to follow their insatiable appetite for more 'n more. (Sarbanes Oxley was intended to put some spotlights on guys like Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay, John Scrushy and others.) An argument can be made that Bush wanted a booming housing market to stimulate consumer spending so he could claim that our economic growth was attributable to his tax cuts. He didn't care about risk. Slight of hand, misdirection, now you see it, now you don't

If we successfully avoid a "D" somehow, join me in insisting that we stick with capitalism and free markets, but with a fair and balanced set of regulations. And that we are unrelenting in our DEMANDS that all who violated laws are rooted out and prosecuted.

We can keep this from happening again. We have to!