^ the working class is NOT out of control: They should be, but they’re fully under control.  Evidence no bodies “in the streets”.  If everybody knows about the repeal of the Glass - Steagal Act they might be.  Read my post above and follow the link.  I also advocate all of your “Stops”.

Maybe the best thing to do, and perhaps the Great Irony, would be to put the cash aside for heat, lights and food and everyone:

STOP PAYING YOUR MORTGAGE
STOP PAYING YOUR CREDIT CARDS
STOP SHOPPING
TAKE A VACATION FROM WORK

until CONGRESS agrees to do THE PEOPLES’ WILL in this country.

How long would it take to get back our government?

Some smart person out there tell me how an “out-of-control-working-class” can be forced to heel.

^ can you say Glass - Steagal?  Can you say Bill Clinton?  What do they have to do with each other?  The answer is fantastic (as in incredible).  In light of whats going on, this financial disaster got major steam from Clinton.  Here’s a link to a very good FrontLine article explaining The Glass - Steagal Act and it’s repeal and subsquent ramifications.  IMO, a must read.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/wallstre et/weill/demise.html

^ article by Chan Akya, who writes for The Asia Times.  ATimes is one of my favorite reads.  The interesting thing is; he wrote this on friday last week.  Chan Akya is a smart guy.  He had nailed the coming calamity even naming Bear-Sterns as one of many possibilities.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JC15Dj02.html

Let us all take our stimulus monies and MARCH and PROTEST in D.C. until we are either dead or we change this country back to what it should be!!!

I admittedly read stuff from this website somewhat more cautiously than I might others, just because of the Alex Jones association. (some of his stuff is highly questionable…like the NAFTA Superhighway that John McCain believes exists).

But, other things are obviously in line with a reality that has simply been kept behind the curtain for years now.

And, the fact that ordinary Americans have been financing the sliver of elite who control all of the money, is not much of a secret.

Anyway, I thought I’d pass this along.

Leading Economic Writer: Financial Meltdown A “Gigantic Fraud”

Says Americans “duped” by “serpent-tongued” elite

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, March 17, 2008

A leading economic journalist has described the current financial crisis as a “gigantic fraud”, the fallout of a deliberate and preconceived profit agenda to enslave the middle classes in a debt bubble.

The economics editor of the London Guardian, Larry Elliott, has hit out at the global financial elite in a refreshing piece that marks a rare shift away from the establishment hackery we are used to from the corporate media.

In an article titled America was conned - who will pay? Elliot writes:

Indeed, it is somewhat surprising that there is not already rioting in the streets, given the gigantic fraud perpetrated by the financial elite at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Business, of course, needs consumers to carry on spending in order to make money, so a way had to be found to persuade households to do their patriotic duty. The method chosen was simple. Whip up a colossal housing bubble, convince consumers that it makes sense to borrow money against the rising value of their homes to supplement their meagre real wage growth and watch the profits roll in.

As they did - for a while. Now it’s payback time and the mood could get very ugly. Americans, to put it bluntly, have been conned. They have been duped by a bunch of serpent-tongued hucksters who packed up the wagon and made it across the county line before a lynch mob could be formed.

More at the link
http://www.infowars.net/articles/march2008/170308Fraud.htm

**Finance Giant Goes for Peanuts ?!?

Hardly peanuts, when you consider the cost of this, silent, plunder is simply being passed along to the public as a tax.

A secured loan, guaranteed by the full backing of the FDIC, means just that; guaranteed not to fail and secured by American wallets, pocket-books and purses.

What’s in your wallet? Now you see it, now you don’t!

This is the most blatant fishie business the Bushies have pulled off to date and I’m certain that the congress et. al will just ignore the whole thing. The corporate boys at the helm of this country have demonstrated again that government is not the same as business and that they are not particularly good at either.

I will anxiously wait to see what happens to the “senior management” in these companies who should be stripped of their assets and put in jail for a year or two. My guess is that no one will be held accountable except the American Taxpayer- nothing new here.

In a deflationary “black hole” from which the USA will never recover.....

The IMF has been tipping “a disorderly unwinding” of global financial markets for the last two years, Maani.... and no-one has listened!

Doug:

Over 15 years ago I was (only half-jokingly) telling people to start stocking up on Kruggerands and other gold and precious metals, becuase there would come a time when paper money would be worthless, the dollar would completely tank, the global economy would be in the toilet, and gold etc. would become the currency for day-to-day transactions.

Here we are, with the dollar in recession (and possible depression), oil at $110/bbl and still increasing (and over $4 per gallon at the station), gold at $1,000 per troy ounce (the first time in history) with no end in sight, and the global economy rapidly getting uglier and uglier as the various crises spread.

True, we are not quite at bottom yet, and hopefully will not get that far (though things are looking increasingly grim).  But this is one of those times when I truly hate to say, I told you so.

Peace.

Too bad we don’t know where this is all going to end up. 

I bet one thing, though.  I can’t be good for the working class.

Look folks, just charge this off to “the price you have to pay to live in this great country.”

A couple trillion here, a few billion there, a few more bucks at the grocery store and at the gas pump and to the gascompany/oil man/electric co. 

The thirty billion to J.P.?  That’ll trickle down in due time. 

It’s St. Patty’s day.  Grab a stout or two and forget it!  You could be rich and worried sick about your investment portfolio.

Rush to convert your US$ to war bonds, Maani...... Daddy Warbucks said - for WW3!!!

The last time the United States issued war bonds was during World War II, when full employment collided with rationing, and war bonds were seen as a way to remove money from circulation as well as reduce inflation.

Living in the United States with a median income during World War II meant earning about $2,000 a year. Despite the war’s hardships, 134 million Americans were asked to purchase war bonds to help fund the war. Stamps also could be purchased, starting at 10 cents each, to save toward the bond.... http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1682.html

If I win the lottery, I think I’m going to buy an investment bank, since they’re so cheap these days!

LOL.

It will happen whenver they choose, Expat. All it needs is a shift in understanding from exploitative to co-operative.

Can you imagine that ever happening? By the time global warming/climate change takes over, it will be rather late.

Expat,

We don’t have any goods to move anywhere. (well, maybe Aegrus does, but I doubt it).

No, we’re all stuck, for the same reasons that I think you’ve already mentioned, and I know it isn’t a laughing matter.

It IS destroying the planet. I just have to wonder if there’s any possible way (at this point) for America TO get a grip on it’s fiscal responsibility.

It’s like you said...they can print money on triple shifts for the next year, or a hundred, and there’s nothing to back it up. We can’t EAT that oil Cheney is stealing.

^ to Thailand.  The dollar has lost 25% here.  What is required is; America needs to get a grip on its fiscal responsibility.  It needs to get away from its criminal form of capitalism.  This export from America (Thomas Friedman’s economic philosophy) is destroying the planet.  While I appreciate the spirit of your comment:  This is really not a joking matter.  We really are destroying the planet with this capatilistic economic shit!

Only $2.00 a share and with the added bonus that the government, “our” government is guaranteeing the hundreds of billion of debts- (in finance language read assets).  Another example of this government transmuting taxes into corporate profits.  Just like the subsidies given to the new WalMart or condo’s.

The article and comments here on Regan Democrats give plenty of background and history.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080313_reagan_de mocrats/

Easy come, easy go!
Ugly come, ugly go!

Don’t you just love this government of ours? Saving the institutions who decided it was a good idea to hit up poor people for money they don’t have and encouraging risky investment opportunities amongst the most vulnerable. When it blows up int their face, though, it’s not their fault. Those people they convinced to put their life savings on the line took advantage of the big corporate institution! It’s their fault for not having money Bear Sterns could easily see they didn’t have before!

Gotta love it all. Thank you Bush administration. Thank you corporate fascism. You’re so concerned with your money abroad, stock portfolios and encouraging globalism that you have sacrificed Americans on your altar of greed. Hell knows we deserve it, right? Entitlement? BAH! The American people didn’t earn it like you did, eh? These Americans are all fat and happy with too much money and too cheap of goods. Gotta strangle their wallets a bit to make sure you’re getting your fair share, right? Heck, if they can’t afford to feed themselves, that’s not your problem. You can just move your goods to Thailand, India and China now.