You know, I'm in the flying business, I'm not a political commentator.  I've got better, more important things to do, like go flying and earn the money to pay my bills.  But every day I read in books, the papers, see on the news or hear on the radio about one disaster after another, right here in the US of A, in Iraq, Afghanistan, all seemingly beyond our control, but, we're assured, there's "nothing to worry about."  "The surge is working."  And it seems more and more that the federal government is bent on the destruction of the US economy, bankrupting state and local governments while charging us more and more for less and less. 

 

The government's solution:  We'll just borrow our way out.

 

"Nothing to worry about--stay the course."  Right.

 

Like the economy.  We've been teetering on the cusp of a major Depression-like meltdown for almost a year now, slipping into recesion, bailout after bailout, the slope getting steeper and steeper, slipperier and slipperier, the hole deeper and deeper. 

 

"Nothing to worry about.  The economy is sound."  Do you suppose there's any connection between the falling dollar (worth half of what it used to be against the euro when Bush took office) and the huge and rising debt we've taken on to pay for disastrous wars and financial roulette here at home?  Maybe.

 

It's all blamed on unscrupulous, irresponsible folks who took out "sub-prime" loans to buy a house, to achieve the American dream.  Out of more than 300 million of us here in the US, living in more than 100 million houses, about 30,000 that were financed by "sub-prime" loans are in danger of default, mostly because of hidden fees and time bomb interest rate hikes.  How can such a relatively small number of loan defaults, most only potential and completely avoidable, threaten not only the US economy, but the financial health of the whole world?  Those 30,000 loans are trivial, a drop in the bucket.  Why are they such a problem?  For better or worse, people default on loans all the time--what's so different?

 

Why are so many banks--including some of the very biggest in the world, like Citibank--giant mortgage companies (i.e., Countrywide), hedge funds, and stock brokerage companies virtually and actually bankrupt?  And why do we taxpayers have to bail them out?  What caused the fifth largest bank in the US, Bear Stearns, to go "bankrupt" (they weren't really bankrupt, they got crushed by a hedge fund liquidity short squeeze).  Why did JPMorgan Chase get to buy Bear Stearns for $2 per share (using money borrowed from the Fed, namely you and me), when a year ago Bear Stearns stock sold for more than $170?  Oh, I guess, now, they're gonna pay about $10 for it, seems too many stockholders complained about the sweetheart shotgun wedding deal, all brokered by the Fed.  I'd pay $2/share--or even $10--their NYC headquarters building is worth more than that!  If we're gonna pay for it, why don't WE, you and me, get the windfall?  What makes JPMorgan Chase the anointed one?  And besides, isn't the "market" supposed to automatically take care of this stuff?  That's what they keep telling us.  Why do CEO's get a huge bonus while everybody else gets downsized and the company goes broke?

 

Why?  Well, to quote Cheney, "It's our due."  He thinks They deserve to reap the windfall while everyone else pays the bill.  "Taxes are for the little people," says Barbara Bush.

 

I'm not making this up.

 

Are you one of those "irresponsible" folks who took out a "home equity" loan so you could fix up your house, send your kids to college or pay down usurious credit card bills?  Did you borrow money with little or nothing down so you could buy a rental or fixer-upper house hoping to increase your income and simultaneously realize some "safe as houses" capital gains via the never-ending increases in housing prices?  Are your payments going through the roof on your adjustable rate loan?  Have you been "down-sized" or had your job shipped offshore to some virtual slave labor sweatshop in China or the Philippines?  Taken a pay cut (I'm talking to all you airline pilots here)?  Losing your life's savings in your IRA, 401K, mutual fund or other stock market investments? Remember, you can't withdraw that money unless you want to pay a 10% penalty plus deferred taxes--you're trapped!  Has your employer cancelled or reduced your retirement benefits?  Lost your medical insurance or just wonder how you're going to pay for it?  Have your elderly parents been bankrupted by medical bills?  Wonder why the Fed has bailed out Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac and other "banks," but you're struggling to stave off bankruptcy?  Afraid you're going to lose all you've spent your lifetime working for? 

 

Have you noticed that in the burgeoning Light Sport Aircraft market nearly all of the airplanes are coming from our old enemies in Eastern Europe?  Why is Cessna going to build the Skycatcher in China?  Why has Boeing outsourced nearly all of the design and manufacture of the 787 overseas, leaving only final assembly for the US?  Why did Boeing move their headquarters to Chicago, where they have no engineering or manufacturing operation at all?  Why does Boeing want to become a hollow shell financial manipulation corporation, like FEMA ("great job, Brownie")?  Why is the US Air Force buying tankers from Airbus, the hated French?  Why is the national debt out of control?  Why are we being held hostage to the holders of that US debt, namely the Chinese government?  Why do we let the Chinese, in particular, but the Japanese, India and others, too, steal our intellectual property, flood our markets with sweatshop-slave-labor goods while they block importation of practically all US goods in return, thereby bankrupting US companies and taking virtual control over US national economic priorities?  If the per capita US GDP has increased by more than 150% in the last generation (which it has), why are almost all of us making less in real terms than our parents did?  Why can't you afford a house as nice as the one you grew up in?  And why have we pissed away more than $3trillion (and going up) in Iraq?  Why have we so devastated that poor country that almost 20% of all Iraqis are either dead, refugees or displaced?  Doesn't sound like a very smart way to win friends and (positively) influence people to me.  Do you suppose that some day they might want to return the favor?  Why is the hated Taliban gaining strength in Afghanistan and Pakistan? 

 

Are you spending more but getting less?  Have your promised "tax cuts" turned into User Fees?  Have your local and state taxes increased so you could pay--bribe--Wal-Mart, Cabella's or some major league sports franchise to move into your city?  Have the promised jobs and reveneue materialized?  Why do those companies get a free pass on paying taxes?  Some even get to KEEP the taxes they collect!  Here in Washington we get to pay more taxes to keep Boeing "here," though, in fact, they're nowhere and everywhere, working hard to become just another financial services company with a specialty in defense and aerospace.  Boeing, in return, gets a tax CUT.  And now they're just another deal maker, looking for the lowest taxes and the cheapest labor.

 

Are your neighborhood schools, roads and utilities crumbling?  Has it dawned on you that prospects for your kids are even worse?  Can you afford to send them to college?  Will they ever be able to buy a house of their own?  Do any of these things make you uneasy about the future, yours, your family's, the country's and the world's? 

 

The Bush administration and John McCain is proposing to do worse than nothing--more of the deregulation that caused all these problems, followed by taxpayer financed bailouts--that will only prolong--at best--and probably accelerate the long slide into national bankruptcy we're all facing.  I'm not so sure about Hillary or Obama, either, but at least they recognize that something has to be done and that more de-regulation is not the answer, it is the problem. 

 

According to Bush the "economy is sound."  Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.  But down we go.  And when we go down, so does everyone else.  There's no place left to hide.  Worse, our own government has become what we fought against during the Cold War, an out of control "unitary presidency" (meaning Congress and the courts don't count--the President is above the law--really, that's what they've been insisting and acting upon for the last eight years), unlimited domestic surveilance, disappeareds, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition.  And an Attorney General who's not sure waterboarding is torture.

 

Why does one of the richest men in the world, multi-billionaire Warren Buffet--buy his own admission--pay a lower tax rate than his secretary?  Yes, she really does pay a higher rate, and I'm not making this up, I'm taking his word for it.

 

It's called the Race to the Bottom and its been going on ever since the early seventies, gaining real momentum during the eighties and is now almost unstoppable.  "Trickle-down economics" really means "Gusher up" and screw the rest.

 

I'll tell you what its about:  unlimited profits for a few, hindmost for the rest.  Just ask yourself, "who gains from all this?"  Somebody does, a whole lot, but not very many, though the "many," you and me, our children and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, too, get to pay the bill.

 

The banks and hedge funds have to be bailed out because their unregulated, highly leveraged speculation, with your money and mine, resulted in what wasn't supposed to happen:  they ran out of suckers to take the bait and pay the bill.  Because the suckers couldn't bear the burden of more and more debt.  The banks, hedge funds--and the government--all went a bridge too far.  It wasn't those "irresponsible" sub-prime borrowers.  They're chump change, pawns in the game.  It was the banks, playing with your money and mine, the ones we pay our mortgages, car payments and credit card bills to, the ones we deposit our savings in, the Mutual Funds we invest in, big names like Citibank, Washington Mutual, and Merrill Lynch, and the ones that actually hold our mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  They convinced the federal government (that tried to convice the rest of us) that they could regulate themselves, that they didn't need regulation or oversight.  Then they grossly over-leveraged themselves, often making huge loans ("bets") to highly speculative "hedge" funds, requiring as little as 0.3% (you read that right, 300 to 1) equity.  That's equivalent to you or me buying a $300,000 house with a $1,000 down payment and no job--unless you consider gambling a "job."  Talk about "sub-prime!"  Then the hedge funds used those huge loans to make speculative "investments" in things like "commoditized debt obligations" (meaning mortgages and loans of all kinds, paper contracts, some with little or no collateral, but with usurious fees and charges attached, "guaranteeing" high rates of return, which is what made them so "attractive").  Contracts intentionally bundled up in such a way that no one can put a real value on them.  Which is why there is a credit crunch--no one can determine the real value of the collateral used to finance huge loans. So now, since nobody knows whether bank balance sheets are truth or fiction, the other banks refuse to loan any more money, especially not to banks like themselves.  In fact, they can't make any more loans because THEIR collateral is in question, so they can't borrow any more money to loan out, and every bank wants full payment on ALL those loans to all the other banks right NOW.  So the squeeze is on, the cards fall and they ALL go broke.  And we, you and I, pick up the tab.

 

The problem is ALL the banks know that ALL of the other banks have been playing fast and loose, just like them, that one bank's collateral is no better than any other's, that it's all backed by a speculative house of cards.  When one goes down, they all do.  They've ALL been playing the same shell game, unregulated, with your money and mine.  The "plan" just unveiled by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department is mostly just MORE shell games, musical chairs coupled with gutting the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission, turning over regulation to the hapless Fed, the same Fed that lit the fire and then sat on its hands and watched as the barn burned down.  And then strolled in at a leisurely pace to throw a glass of water on the ashes.  Do you want an arsonist in charge of Fire Prevention?

 

Today's absence of regulation looks an awful lot like it did in the late 20's, just before "Black Friday."  It wasn't the stock market crash that caused the Great Depression, it was bank failures--the same thing we face today.

 

How did the national sense of community that came out of the Great Depression and World War II get replaced by rapacious greed and an "every man for himself" mentality?  What happened to national pride and the "Made in USA" seal of quality and value?  Why are those of us who actually produce things held hostage to the gamblers and speculators of the financial markets, whose only products are fine print on incomprehensible contracts?  Why have so many manufacturers decided that its better to become financial services companies than to make things?  Why are we so fascinated by juvenile fantasies of get rich schemes and moronic dreams of becoming the next "American Idol"?  Have we become a bunch of hypnotized, mindless robots in a shrink-wrapped world of idiots?  Has winning the Lottery become the last shot at the American Dream?

 

More de-regulation, more tax cuts for an undeserving few and more debt for the rest of us isn't the solution, it's the problem.  But that's the Bush-McCain plan.  That's what got us into this mess.

 

Why isn't "global markets" synonymous with "fair markets," rising incomes and equality for all?  What happened?  Where's our country?  Where's our government?  Where's our community?  What's happened to our world?