NOTE: This is NOT being directed at any specific person or persons in blogland. This is just a generic vent.
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FROM THE NEWS:
The legislation's roller-coaster ride through Congress began at a somber meeting in Pelosi's office in mid-September where Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke frightened senior Democrats and Republicans with their warnings of an impending economic collapse without quick legislative action.
As lawmakers scrambled to draft a bill, they were barraged by angry calls from constituents to reject what many saw as a huge giveaway to the very financial institutions that helped cause the subprime mortgage meltdown at the root of the economic crisis — with nothing to help its ordinary victims.
"Pray for our republic," intoned Representative Marcy Kaptur, a democrat from Ohio, a leading opponent of the measure. "She's being placed in very uncaring and greedy hands."
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Okay, Paulson--the man who STILL fails to formally acknowledge that we're in a recession, and George Bush, the biggest presidental liar in American history, have gotten their way.
Despite the fact that Bush has a long-standing history of un-factual propaganda, a gift for crying wolf and telling us that the sky is falling, and Paulson pretty much ignored the mortgage industries shady lending practices, and, as I said, STILL refuses to say the "R" word, despite these well-established fact, it just boggles me how people LISTENED to these two, and BELIEVE them!
I got news for every single last one of you. What is happening now, was always going to happen. It's been building up to this for the last five to ten years, at the very least...and very probably longer than that, since Regan's era, when he began de-regulating big business and Wall Street started getting a firmer toe-hold in Washington D.C.
This measure will NOT stop the recession. It may slow it down slightly, but not stop it. And, if a major foreign investor (I mean a nation, not a bank or individual) whom we are in debt to as a nation bails on us, if all these bad mortgages we're buying fail to stabilze the housing market, if people panic when they realize that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation only has enough funds to cover a mere fraction of all the nation's bank deposits and there's a run on even a handful of big US banks....we WILL go into meltdown and this "bailout" will prove UTTERLY WORTHLESS.
Some areas of the USA are being hit--and hit hard, but..they were already being hit, over a YEAR AGO.
Here in my region, the economy...is fine. No, really. The paper said today that our local economy has not felt the impact of the credit crunch hardly at all--and many areas of the US can say the same.
It's like, if you're indoors, in a windowless room, and everyone you meet is telling you it's raining...well, you might be inclined to believe them...and it is raining....1000 miles away. Outside your building? It's cloudless and sunny. Hey, these other people probably know what they're talking about--even tho' you don't know any of them personally, and haven't bother to ask any deeper questions, like, "where is it raining, how hard is it raining, is it going to rain all day, etc?" They are yelling "rain," so heck, they must know, right?
I hear a lot of people worrying about people losing their homes and such. Me too. I've BEEN homeless, okay? If I can't relate to that, NO ONE can, for pity's sake! Yeah, I may seem unsympathetic, but that's not true. I don't want to see anyone hurt, but on the other hand, I think millions have been living in a zombie-like state of extreme capitalism. We NEED a check, and balance. It's like WWII, the atomic bomb was horrible and terrifying and the worst thing we've ever done as a nation...yet, if we had not, then WWII may well have extended for two or four or five years, at a cost of far more lives and resources than those two bombs.
I keep comparing the financial crisis to a war...well, it's not so different. Money can destroy a nation as well as any bomb can, believe me.
In the news editorial comments and even on the streets and on the telephone when I talk to people, I'm hearing some Americans casually saying that some people "deserve" to lose their homes, if they were stupid enough to buy into these shady mortgages...just as my sister and other neo-conservatives have said that people heavily in debt for health care costs, "deserve" to have their homes taken from them, if they cannot pay their hospital bills. I've even heard these same rumblings in UK papers, about people there, losing their homes due to the hike in mortgage rates. This sort of opinion is based solely on air and arrogance.
Okay, then, in that vein, all those people out there, who say that, should DESERVE to lose, when the stupidly play the lottery or bet on the footie or the horses, or pull the lever of a fruit machine, yes? YES.
Saying people with bad credit, who got into this, deserve to become homeless, is not right. It is not at all what I was trying to say. I would NEVER wish anyone to lose their home, and anyone who thinks that, doesn't know me AT ALL.
Yes, I may seem like I don't care if we head into a depression. That's not true. I'm just angry that people are freaking out, when this was happening right under their very noses!
I saw this whole thing coming for a long time. In January of 2004, while in Egypt, CNN Europe reported that the dollar was faltering under pressure from the euro. When I got home--NO ONE I spoke to here, even knew what I was talking about! In spring of 2004, I said that this whole pushing of (temporarily) ridiculously low-interest ARM's onto people with bad or poor credit was riding to a fall...NO ONE listened! Last summer when I saw this nation's economy begin to falter, I murmured that I wouldn't be surprised if we were headed into a depression, eventually...people LAUGHED at me!
I've BEEN saying for the past 20 years, that our rise into extreme capitalism was going to lead us to a fall...not one person believed me, only because I'm a dummy and unpopular and fat and ugly and I'm not supposed to fricking actually know anything, right? Oh, and I'm one those nasty little LIBERALS the conservatives fearfully sneer at, as well. Conservatives HATE liberals, 'cos we represent common sense...a scary thing, common sense, makes you see beyond your safe little glass bubble and into reality-land.
Now, truthfully, I'm an idiot about financial stuff and world politics--but over the past several years, I've sort of been watching this slow-motion fall I'm a bit pissed off with all the panic. This really is just like the build-up to the Iraq war...WHY CAN NO ONE SEE THAT???
The big-wigs cry foul and all the little chickens run around thinking the sky's suddenly falling, straight out of the blue!
WHY DON'T SOME OF YOU THINK FOR CHRIST'S SAKE???
We are are nearly bankrupt in this country, right? At least according to Bush-Paulson, so WHY are we giving this man carte blanche to billions and billions of dollars?? This bill has NO oversight! NONE! Paulson can now do whatever the hell he pleases with this money, with no one to answer to. So, if he buys up billions in BAD MORTGAGES, and we lose all those billions of dollars, then...what??? AND, this bill contains NO HELP for American consumers! People are going to lose their homes and jobs, DESPITE this "emergency" measure. The ONLY one's being helped here, are the filthy bastards who got us into this mess in the FIRST PLACE.
Do you not all understand that? Are you ten different kinds of stupid?
I guess you morons who supported this thing, LIKE WITH IRAQ, are going to find this out the hard way, five or ten years down the f'ing road.
