Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

This is another article that I ran across and that expresses my view and personal research concening the state of our national economy and the greater problem we all face. This almost suggests a repeat of the conditions during the 1930s.

Please see The Cause of the Great Depression to compare.

Enjoy
Allen Charles

October 25, 2009

Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

The Financo-State

By Paul Craig Roberts

Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.

One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and to advance their private interests.

Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.

Income inequality in the US is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 OECD report, "Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries," [PDF]concludes that the US is the country with the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that since 2000 nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the US.

The OECD finds that in the US the distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the distribution of income.

On October 21, 2009, Business Week reported that a new report from the United Nations Development Program concluded that the US ranked third among states with the worst income inequality. As number one and number two, Hong Kong and Singapore, are both essentially city states, not countries, the US actually has the shame of being the country with the most inequality in the distribution of income.

The stark increase in US income inequality in the 21st century coincides with the offshoring of US jobs, which enriched executives with "performance bonuses" while impoverishing the middle class, and with the rapid rise of unregulated OTC derivatives, which enriched Wall Street and the financial sector at the expense of everyone else.

Millions of Americans have lost their homes and half of their retirement savings while being loaded up with government debt to bail out the banksters who created the derivative crisis.

Frontline's October 21 broadcast, "The Warning," documents how Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt blocked Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from performing her statutory duties and regulating OTC derivatives.

After the worst crisis in US financial history struck, just as Brooksley Born said it would, a disgraced Alan Greenspan was summoned out of retirement to explain to Congress his unequivocal assurances that no regulation of derivatives was necessary. Greenspan had even told Congress that regulation of derivatives would be harmful. A pathetic Greenspan had to admit that the free market ideology on which he had relied turned out to have a flaw.

Greenspan may have bet our country on his free market ideology, but does anyone believe that Rubin and Summers were doing anything other than protecting the enormous fraud-based profits that derivatives were bringing Wall Street? As Brooksley Born stressed, OTC derivatives are a "dark market." There is no transparency. Regulators have no information on them and neither do purchasers.

Even after Long Term Capital Management blew up in 1998 and had to be bailed out, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers stuck to their guns. Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, and a roped-in gullible Arthur Levitt who now regrets that he was the banksters' dupe, succeeded in manipulating a totally ignorant Congress into blocking the CFTC from doing its mandated job. Brooksley Born, prevented by the public's elected representatives from protecting the public, resigned. Wall Street money simply shoved facts and honest regulators aside, guaranteeing government inaction and the financial crisis that hit in 2008 and continues to plague our economy today.

The financial insiders running the Treasury, White House, and Federal Reserve shifted to taxpayers the cost of the catastrophe that they had created. When the crisis hit, Henry Paulson, appointed by President Bush as Rubin's replacement as the Goldman Sachs representative running the US Treasury, hyped fear to obtain from "our" representatives in Congress with no questions asked hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars (TARP money) to bail out Goldman Sachs and the other malefactors of unregulated derivatives.

When Goldman Sachs recently announced that it was paying massive six- and seven-figure bonuses to every employee, public outrage erupted. In defense of banksters, saved with the public's money, paying themselves bonuses in excess of most people's life-time earnings, Lord Griffiths, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said that the public must learn to "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all."[Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses, says Goldman Sachs vice-chairman]

In other words, "Let them eat cake."

According to the UN report cited above, Great Britain has the 7th most unequal income distribution in the world. After the Goldman Sachs bonuses, the British will move up in distinction, perhaps rivalling Israel for the fourth spot in the hierarchy.

Despite the total insanity of unregulated derivatives, the high level of public anger, and Greenspan's confession to Congress, still nothing has been done to regulate derivatives.

One of Rubin's Assistant Treasury Secretaries, Gary Gensler, has replaced Brooksley Born as head of the CFTC. Larry Summers is the head of President Obama's National Economic Council. Former Federal Reserve official Timothy Geithner, a Paulson protege, runs the Obama Treasury. A Goldman Sachs vice president, Adam Storch, has been appointed the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Banksters are still in charge.

Is there another country in which in full public view so few so blatantly use government for the enrichment of private interests, with a coterie of "free market" economists available to justify plunder on the grounds that "the market knows best"?

A narco-state is bad enough. The US surpasses this horror with its financo-state.

As Brooksley Born says, if nothing is done, "it'll happen again."

But nothing can be done. The crooks have the government.

If you enjoyed this author you can read more of his writings here: The Best of Paul Craig Roberts

The Cause of the Great Depression

"When their credit ran out, the game stopped", is claimed for the cause of the great depression. My thoughts are that the World Economy Has Stopped TODAY because of the world wide debt. Please read my Debt Restart plan in an earlier posting .

The Worldwide DEBT is the problem.

"Marriner S. Eccles who served as Franklin D. Roosevelt's Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November, 1934 to February, 1948 gave his view of what caused the Depression in his memoirs, "Beckoning Frontiers" (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951):

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation s economic machinery. Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.

That is what happened to us in the twenties. We sustained high levels of employment in that period with the aid of an exceptional expansion of debt outside of the banking system. This debt was provided by the large growth of business savings as well as savings by individuals, particularly in the upper-income groups where taxes were relatively low. Private debt outside of the banking system increased about fifty per cent. This debt, which was at high interest rates, largely took the form of mortgage debt on housing, office, and hotel structures, consumer installment debt, brokers' loans, and foreign debt. The stimulation to spending by debt-creation of this sort was short-lived and could not be counted on to sustain high levels of employment for long periods of time. Had there been a better distribution of the current income from the national product -- in other words, had there been less savings by business and the higher-income groups and more income in the lower groups -- we should have had far greater stability in our economy. Had the six billion dollars, for instance, that were loaned by corporations and wealthy individuals for stock-market speculation been distributed to the public as lower prices or higher wages and with less profits to the corporations and the well-to-do, it would have prevented or greatly moderated the economic collapse that began at the end of 1929.

The time came when there were no more poker chips to be loaned on credit. Debtors thereupon were forced to curtail their consumption in an effort to create a margin that could be applied to the reduction of outstanding debts. This naturally reduced the demand for goods of all kinds and brought on what seemed to be overproduction, but was in reality underconsumption when judged in terms of the real world instead of the money world. This, in turn, brought about a fall in prices and employment.

Unemployment further decreased the consumption of goods, which further increased unemployment, thus closing the circle in a continuing decline of prices. Earnings began to disappear, requiring economies of all kinds in the wages, salaries, and time of those employed. And thus again the vicious circle of deflation was closed until one third of the entire working population was unemployed, with our national income reduced by fifty per cent, and with the aggregate debt burden greater than ever before, not in dollars, but measured by current values and income that represented the ability to pay. Fixed charges, such as taxes, railroad and other utility rates, insurance and interest charges, clung close to the 1929 level and required such a portion of the national income to meet them that the amount left for consumption of goods was not sufficient to support the population.

This then, was my reading of what brought on the depression."

The Worldwide DEBT is the problem.

The Worldwide DEBT is the problem.

The best solution for the present economic crisis would be a REBOOT or restart of the entire debt system for the ENTIRE WORLD.

1. A data base listing ALL DEBT, government, business and personal needs to be created. The list would need to list the debt and debt holder with a bank that could make an accounting of the debt. Included would be all national debt of all nations, all mortgages car notes and credit cards for individuals. All outstanding bond and other debt for corporations, The idea is to list ALL DEBT of any kind owed.

2. Every government on the planet would need to call a special session of its legislature. Using the same authority that governments have to use or create FIAT CURRENCY the legislatures and Central Banks need to authorize the creation of ACCOUNT CREDIT in an amount equal to all the listed debts in the world.

3. The Various governments and Central Banking Systems then need to make an accounting change equal to the debt in the form of an ACCOUNT CREDIT or CREDIT zeroing out ALL THE DEBT in the entire world, and crediting all debt-holders in the world.

The following day the economy of the entire world would restart and the Stock Markets of the world would react to the new renewed capital in the banking systems, the Capital now available to restart all business and the disposable income to the individual people would restart and grow the retail sectors and the manufacturing sectors of the entire world.

Some have commented that if this was done in a very short time the exact problem would be repeated. My answer to this idea is history does recycle and repeat itself but some do learn and avoid making the same mistake. Europe learned after WWII and has avoided a major repeat for more than sixty years.

The other objection has been the possible inflation that would result would weaken the dollar. My answer to the weakened dollar is it may be a GOOD thing to help our ability to export manufactured products and also make our manufactured products more competitive in our own country. Jobs are needed for our own citizens especially the bottom forty percent.

Allen Charles Report

http://allencharlesreport.blogspot.com/

The Debt Realignment Initiative: A Better Idea than The Bailout

I was gathering my thoughts concerning the Year of Jubilee and how it might relate to today’s problems with the banks and the mortgage crisis and then found this address listed in a comments section at a newspaper site. I believe the writer has proposed a valid and maybe even Biblical method to address this crisis. His plan is sound,simple and should be put in place ASAP. I can not improve on it so I post it here as written by Samuel Margolies.

My one commit and belief is that an idea or revelation is often given by God to one person and then becomes available to all that will accept it, so all of us need to be open to accepting what may at first glance be out side the box of our normal way of thinking.

http://www.thedebtrealignmentinitiative.com/Debt_Realignment.html

Debt Realignment - By Law Done Only Once

Worldwide, we are in an extreme circumstance financially and economically. Debt realignment offers a moral, pragmatic, available means to end the debt that plagues the world and restricts the use of resources and credit. Debt is a burden on people, resources, time, and capital. Deficit spending is sometimes necessary. Events happen, circumstances change, emergencies occur. A country must have full utility of its assets. This is only one reason why a robust economy is so crucial. But when the debt becomes so large, and the only strategy is to look the other way and hope something positive will happen in the future -- and nothing happens, the debt just keeps getting bigger over the years, it needs to be addressed. And with the present financial crises worldwide, it is obvious some means needs to be put in place to end this as quickly as possible and get the world economy back on track. Global debt realignment will enable a better track, however, wider, smoother, more efficient with avenues, venues, and projects we only dream about now, and some we have yet to consider. In each country all projects can be funded, and the global financial meltdown is vanquished at the same time. What is hoped is that once on the other side of debt realignment we learn from the past and do not repeat the same mistakes. This crisis is an opportunity. If it is taken.

Proposal:

It is proposed that an Economic Summit be called among the nations of the world. At this Summit, with agreement among all national executives, legislatures, and central banks that this be done only once, by law, it shall be ordered by all governments that in all ledgers, all balance sheets, all accounts in the computers around the world, and on the books of all central banks and institutions that all debt be transferred as an asset, as a credit, to all creditor's accounts in their respective banks either in real terms, or as a ratio of the present debt, to be determined, to get all on an even playing field as of January 1, 2009. If this is done in present real terms, or as a ratio, this means currencies will have to be realigned also if not doing so would promote inflation. Negotiations and discussions on this obviously will have to take place among the nations. This writing provides the direction, the outline, hopefully the impetus for this to be a reality. The specifics shall be determined by the various experts of different countries, the executive branches, and the central banks at the Summit.

The goal is zero global debt among nations. The Summit should occur before the end of 2008 with the debt realignment event date being in the first part of 2009. The sooner the better. If the Summit can occur quickly the event date actualizing debt realignment can be January 1, 2009. It can be done. It takes vision. It takes courage. It takes effort. It takes leadership. The European Union has also suggested a Summit, but at a Summit there must be a global plan that will work.

The world would welcome a plan that will work. This plan will work.

All creditors receive payment.

All debt of nations will be released and all debtor nations released from their obligations. All holders of national debt will be credited.

No one loses anything but the debt. No one suffers. The creditor nations and international banks get asset capital on their ledgers. The debtor nations lose their debt -- worldwide. This is not debt forgiveness. No one loses. This is the essence of debt realignment.

A new balance sheet in each institution is started with oversight and regulations in place, and with a new awareness of the pitfalls of wanton speculation and poor regulation. Nations are free to prosper. People can advance. Everyone is free to put their house in order. Nations can fully focus and fund the climate challenge, put their people to work, prosper. The world can advance.

Example:

A country owes 200 billion dollars to the World Bank. Authorization is given to the World Bank to put on its books 200 billion in credit, 100%, or a ratio to be determined, derived from the debtor country's debt. Since this is being done worldwide negotiations on this may be necessary, though not mandatory, to also align currencies. The debtor country's debt is transferred as a credit. The debtor country owes no debt. The bank has credit to loan. The country is free from the debt. This can be repeated with every country, the poor and the rich. Countries are free "to promote the general welfare" without the burden of debt.

Example:

America owes over a trillion dollars in Treasury Bills to different countries. It is agreed that the holders of these bills be realigned as a credit in the amount of the debts in the bank where the debt is on the balance sheet as a debit. The executive branch, legislature, and central bank authorizes credit to the Treasury account with the outstanding debt balance as a credit. The Treasury Bills are paid off. Interest payments cease. Resources are freed. Debt is gone. We move on. It is simple. But simplicity is what we need now. We do not need wild loans putting more debt and bondage on people, resources, and countries. What if a country or fund does not want to cash in its notes? The debtor's bank -- not a debtor now -- holds the credits in its account until such time as demand is made or maturity is reached. In any event the governmental debt will equal zero after debt realignment with credits available on the balance sheet.

Precedent:

The ancient Hebrews handled massive debt every 50 years with a "Year of Jubilee," where "all were returned to their possessions." Leviticus XXV, The Old Testament.

Let us not be so sophisticated in our minds to think that there is nothing to learned from this. But this too is different from debt realignment, in that debts are not just forgiven, credits are assigned to the creditors. Debt realignment is the evolved model. With modern technology and banking expertise, it can be done. All we have to do is do it.

To be sure, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the separate Central Banks of the nations around the world will be much more comfortable, as will Wall Street, other markets, individual investors, and workers, if this is accomplished.

If I were calling the shots, I would do debt realignment across the boards, from top to bottom; that is, I would realign the debt of nations, companies, and individuals. That will provide ultimate freedom to individuals, companies, markets, nations, and the world for progress and prosperity. But getting global national debt realignment is difficult enough for most to understand and envision. Since this is an extraordinary circumstance and that debt realignment would be done only one time, it is hoped that our leaders, meeting together in an economic Summit, will go to the farthest.

Copyright 2008. Samuel Margolies. All rights reserved.

I received an email from Samuel.

Dear Mr. Charles:

Thank you for your comments and for your realizations. I heartily endorse your putting the link to my web site on yours. I have contacted world leaders, members of Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury with this idea. But as of yet they do not see what I have been getting at. It is difficult for people who think in complexities and have specializations to go outside their areas of expertise and grasp other ideas, particularly when an idea is a simple one. Humankind seems to want to make everything more complex than it needs to be.

I have made the analogy of what happens when a computer freezes up. We have no recourse but to turn off the power and then back on rebooting the system. Likewise, I believe we have to reboot the financial and economic systems of the world. Whether this occurs as I have forwarded remains to be seen.

I do not know what site you first saw my comment on, but on several I have recommended reading Barbara Tuchman's book, "The March of Folly," where Ms. Tuchman asks the questions of why leaders so often in history have made decisions that were contrary to the best interests of their constituents? This is more common than realized. In no other time was it more important that America choose the correct course. We have many challenges. We must meet each with the best decision. And this is true globally. Why would we choose a course that would lead to difficulties and more toil than is necessary? I do not believe this is deliberate. I believe the people making the decisions simply do not see the options.

I do not know how far reaching your blog is. I do know that the more people who contact our representatives and world leaders the better the chance that acceptance and implementation of debt realignment can become a reality.

Obviously, you, like me, are a believer in God. When I first addressed the issue of our national debt, I was influenced by the "Year of Jubilee." Our systems have evolved from those ancient days and we know a great deal more about many of the variables. But some things are constant.

Our national debt, and the debt of the world's nations, must be solved one day. We will not grow out of it. The debt has become too large. I hope I have made the case for numbers as representations of reality and not the reality itself. If we are to believe that it is God's purpose to make people free, does this not also mean freedom from debt, particularly overriding, overwhelming debt, which we cannot work or grow out of when we consider all the variables worldwide that are present in today's global economy?

But even if one were a strict secularist, if something works, why not use it? First, those making the decisions must see it. For them to see it , it must be shared and presented to them on many fronts. You have opened up another front, another forum for the dissemination of the idea of debt realignment. I really appreciate it. I have been alone for a long time with very little support. I do find it interesting that I do not get criticism though, I get silence. No one says it cannot work. No one. Just silence.

It may be that things will have to get worse before people are open to new ideas. This does not have to be.

There is no reason that humankind globally must go through possibly years of financial upheaval and difficulties when there is an idea that will work, one that will also enable humankind globally to enter a new age of progress.

Again thank you. And if you can get an email off to your representatives, to a media site, to world leaders to at least look at what I advocate, please do so. It would only take one world leader to see that debt realignment can be done and openly espouse it, sharing it, for its possibilities to become a reality.

Thank you and God Bless you in your work.


Respectfully,

Samuel Margolies

A good description of the REASON for the Bank Bailout Fund

I found this comment by Robert Birdwell on this site and believe Robert best describes the real reason behind the so called bailout . I post his comment unchanged as it appeared

http://www.moneymorning.com/2008/10/02/senate_bailout_bill/
Comment by Robert Birdwell on
3 October 2008:
For all of the intellectualizing, a critical point has been missed. From 1970 to 1995, we all had the most powerful tool on earth, Title 18 U.S.C. Section 1964©). The congress was conned into inserting an exception into the law. That supposedly innocuous exception removed the standing of any citizen to sue for any injury as a result of any conduct in the sale or purchase of securities, and gave exclusive standing to sue to the United States. To defeat RICO, all the United States had to do was refuse to prosecute those committing securities fraud. Injured parties were left waiting for prosecutions that never came. Thus, injured citizens had no actual recourse.

1995 was also the very time banks wanted into the securities business in a big way. It was shortly after the 1995 exception that these morphing chimera called derivatives entered the market. Soon, every type of loan, mortgage, car loan, and credit card debt, was bundled and sold as derivatives. Investment Banks and brokerage houses could not get enough debt to package and sell. The fees were huge, and easy to come by.

As derivatives became worth less and less, more and more were packaged and sold. The United States SEC and the DOJ had the exclusive power to oversee, regulate, and prosecute the criminals, since all of these securities trades were done in interstate and foreign commerce, but the SEC and the DOJ were never in the fight and intentionally refused to do so.

The perfect vehicle was the insane notion that the value of your home was going to increase exponentially, forever. Unwitting people were talked into refinancing, or selling, their existing homes and talked into participating in the greatest real estate market in history. It didn’t matter if you made $10 per hour, refinance your home and buy another one you can sell for a huge profit before the payment increases. What could possibly go wrong. You were dealing with real estate and financial experts. Everybody was doing it. It was the smart thing to do and you are not stupid! Besides, all of these people are licensed and regulated by the government!

The people running the investment banks in Europe and Asia were primed to buy into these miracle investments. They invested big.

When these began to sour, it was the foreign banks and investment houses that wanted to find a back door. That back door could only exist if the Americans bought back all of the bad paper. Threats of an economic Armageddon were made. China and others would dump our currency and debt. Sanctions would be imposed. Our economy would be destroyed. Trade would end.

The Bush/Paulson remedy was to hypothecate the future production and wealth of American citizens by creating a gigantic fund - guaranteed by the citizens of the United States - that would be used to buy back the worthless paper being held by foreigners.

$700 billion, $5 trillion, you pick the number. It doesn’t matter. Not one penny will go to help American citizens in the process of losing their homes. Not one penny will go to companies being forced out of business. Not one penny will go to domestic credit. Banks don’t need it. Banks create money out of thin air when you sign a note. Your note creates the money, more notes (federal reserve notes), but you have to pay it back with money already existing that you generate from your work.

Your life, and that of your family, for generations to come, has been pledged, by congress, as security to pay all of this back. Money you didn’t steal, but money you have to pay back.

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, is not what the name implies. Welcome to slavery, indentured servitude.


We can overrule it. And overrule it we must

A better Plan to save Wall Street and the taxpayers" money.

A better plan to stabilize the financial markets is to simply let the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation take over the insolvent companies and form a holding company and reopen as one large institution. Just as when the FDIC takes over smaller banks the same rules should apply here. The new holding company can then operate the new banks keeping the good accounts and spinning the bad ones to a second operating company to work through them eventually restoring some of them and liquidating the rest. If any legitimate debt holders are established then stock could be issued to these legitimate debt holders ( likely bond holders). After a period of time this new company could do a stock offer selling the entire company back into the private sector. Problems solved, seven hundred billion of tax payers money would be saved. The cost of the new company would be returned back to the taxpayers from proceeds of the sell of the stock at the return to the private sector from government operation. The fat cats on Wall Street could be returned to work for the new company but like all reorganizations at a lower cost to the new company allowing it to return to health much faster.

Both Wachovia and Washington Mutual as well as all the community and regional banks that are or become distressed should be included in the new Holding Company thus making a network of bank outlets available to allow loans between banks to be unfrozen and allow the system to do a restart with these outlets being secure and adding the desperately needed stability to the entire banking system. If a bank becomes weak it needs to be added very quickly keeping the system calm.

The changeover could be done over a weekend without any disruption of any kind. Each of the banks taken over would continue to operate under it's present name and corporate structure except that the boards would become advisory only with the final authority being held with the new holding company. Over time most of the banks could be either spun off or several combined under a new corporate configuration and then spun off or sold. The stability of the entire banking system would be the most important goal.

The Federal Reserve System looks at all the deposits at all the banks as one total, so this new bank would not alter the loan patterns from what it would be with if all these various banks that would be part of the new holding company were operating separately. All the bad things being claimed by Mr. Paulson would be avoided with this plan and the best part of this plan are NO TAXPAYER costs beyond the administrative cost of the new bank holding company.

This plan takes a second look at the way the taxpayer’s money is used and avoids benefitting those that caused the problem to begin with. They took unnecessary risk and have lost so the bailout should take the control of the future out of these either corrupt or incompetent executives hands and allow a time out for our banking system to stabilize and get back on track.

The one caveat I have for the new Holding Company, which plans to put these bad debt mortgages in, is that a provision in the restructuring should provide a way for people that are in these mortgages to be able to stay in the home. One idea would be to renegotiate the value of the property back to an equity position with the caveat that they could not sell their home, for eight to ten years or some other appropriate time frame. The reason that I would like to see this put into the terms for use of this agency to stabilize the mortgage market is that if something isn’t done the power structure that will be controlling this new agency will likely sell off these homes at a larger loss than leaving people in the homes or working out something for them. If this doesn’t happen many insiders, the money crowd, Wall Street types you know the folks that got us in this mess to start with will come in and buy these properties up for pennies to the dollar at leaving the homeowner homeless the taxpayer on the hook for the costs and the rest us no better off than we are now. There could be a deed restriction on these homes that required them to pay the proceeds of the write-down out of the home or of the equity of the home as a penalty for moving too fast. The whole idea for this bailout is to stabilize the mortgage market, financial market, and the economy.

The Wall Street BAILOUT and FreeTrade

Just watched a movie called Bordentown. It was about hundreds of Young Mexican women that are raped and murdered in a factory town there. The story was set with an American reporter from a large city newspaper covering the story. When she had finished the story the paper then refused to print the story because of a new NAFTA type deal coming up for Central America and the corporate owners did not want the bad publicity. They said in the movie the wage was $5.00 per day 12 hour day. The newspaper boss reminded the reporter that the news was Freetrade, Globalization and Entertainment. Fits does it not?

When will you Conservatives get it? Bush is not a Conservative he is a NEOCON, "NEW WORLD ORDER" GLOBALIST. The rest of the world defines that as a NEOLIBERAL, which means using the power of government to affect social and political change.

The damage to our nation being done now with this "no strings" bailout of the Wall Street to protect the base of the Republican party from the risk they should have to absorb is just amazing. It is still more amazing the refusal of otherwise conservative folks, to not see through this scam.

These folks paid taxes at a reduced rate (15 percent tops ) because they were supposedly exposed to risk. Now the crony companies are lining up to get these properties at fire sale prices. So here we go taxpayers buy the stuff and bail them out only to sell the same stuff to crony companies to resale at huge profits. Perfect plan for Wall Street bad for the rest of us.

I know I sometimes offend folks that believe themselves to be conservatives yet I believe them to be neocons. I have a hard time with unnecessary wars, trade deals that don’t protect our workers, and the often seemingly stacking of the deck against middle class , working class folks.