The Breakdown of Capitalism and the fight for Socialism in the United States

I admit that Bush's administration should have done more to wake congress up, the many pleas to rein in Fannie and Freddie over the loan standards that were encouraged were staunchly ignored.

While Bush's administration is to blame, also to blame are the democrats in the House and Senate that removed the laws put into place as a result of the great depression. These laws prevented banks from being investment houses, double dealing against the public. Congress also pushed for home mortgages to those that traditionally wouldn't have qualified. This resulted in the new "improved" mortgage terms, variable interest, NINJA, Liar Loans etc.

This is not a one party or one individual cause. This was created by Congress, both parties, and the blame lays upon the "Ruling Elite". May they all swing.

Capitalism's core weakness is the premise of "Caveat Emptor", let the buyer beware.

Government's responsibility is to properly regulate business and establish standards that can be used by the public to remove doubts as to safety, fitness for use, and open market pricing. Public judgement standards then focus on quality, workmanship and perceived value.

Congress removed regulation, then mandated the creation of a new market--one that the free market would not create--in expanding home ownership. Congress then used taxpayer dollars to fund this false market, and continues to do so with more and more taxpayer dollars, because no one in their right mind would invest in it.

To create the investment community willing to fund these market mutants, Congress not only allowed, they encouraged the creation of exotic loans and investment vehicles. The rise of Credit Default Swaps, CDO's and all the other alpha named vehicles went purposefully unregulated and remain extremely so--in spite of recent "financial overhaul".

Our government operates under the Keynesian Theocracy. This belief system permeates government. Like any Theocracy small doses wouldn't normally cause much harm. However, extremes create Jonestown, beheadings, stonings, etc. We have had seventy odd years of Keynesian Theocracy piling on top of previous piles.

At this point, the world has become hesitant to place further investment in the United States Treasury. The world is beginning the process to replace the dollar as the international unit of trade, and progress will move swiftly. When there are insufficient buyers of the Treasury Notes, they are purchased by the Federal Reserve (using the national credit card to pay the national mortgage) and now there is talk that the Federal Reserve is beginning to eye private 401-k and pension accounts to "offer safer investments".

What many don't realize is that we are truely on the brink of economic and social collapse. A collapse that has been created by terrible governmental policy going back decades.

We have money created by a private bank, back by nothing but paper, sold at interest to us, the taxpayers, and the only thing keeping it going at the moment is sheer faith and public inertia.

Currently, adding the National Debt and the unfunded National Liabilites of Social Security, Prescripition Drugs and Medicare we are in the hole for $111.7 TRILLION dollars. Add on top of that the estimated $130 Trillion of so-called hedge funds, mortgage scams, etc. Then add in the value of all the "toxic assets" that still remain on the banking books in spite of the bull$hit we were told with Bushes bailouts.

Congress has made us serfs. We will be working to pay government and the Federal Reserve as they layer more and more restrictions on the citizens. WE will be regulated to utilize the resources under governmental control at the price/fee/tax decreed by whatever passes as a Congress.

As to government "creating" jobs. Ignoring the fraud, waste and mismanagement inherent in government, if they were to create my job for someone, they would first have to destroy MY JOB. Government creation of jobs is a negative game...more jobs are lost as jobs are "created". And government created jobs are one of two types...growth of government or private, TEMPORARY work. You get a permanent government worker doing my job at a pay rate that is half to two thirds more than what I was making (funded by you the taxpayer) or you get someone working at what government determines is a "fair wage" for a while, then they go back to unemployment.

We are being fed lies from government, from banks, from Wall Street, from media, from education and even worse, we're not provided the other side of the arguments unless we take the individual initiative to read the foreign press, alternative websites, or financial journals.

We have an economy that is pure smoke and mirrors. We have millions of unemployed fellow citizens with no benefits, no home, no credit, no future and they have been model citizens so far. There haven't been raging riots, no roaming scavengers combing neighborhoods, and little, if any, news on their actual plight. We hear limited news about Obamaville's (or for the other side, call them Bushville's) but not any stories on how they are suddenly organized or how day to day life is met (unless you happen to read Al Jazeera which had a pretty good series of articles on it). What we get is American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, talking bobble heads and other crap.

We're in the denial stage of national death.

TiG: Are we screwed?

Unfortunately, we have some very bitter medicine to swallow. "Screwed" has a somewhat pleasant connotation, think along a more violent line.