Part Four: Epilogue

Unfortunately, rate gouging to maintain margins is common practice for finance-based companies. They hold everyone hostage by controlling the money, charging for doing it, and penalizing you past your means if you get behind.

I don’t know, that sounds like extortion without the broken limbs, to me.

And that “new deal at the table” thing sounds like fraud.

Holding my deposit and bouncing a check against it, then charging $35?

Sounds like embezzlement, at least.

Raising interest rates and charging fees at will, pushing a debt to unpayable limits? Isn’t that loansharking?

And yet, Detroit automakers, their sales killed by these factors ruining their client base financially, are assailed for their gall in asking the government for 1/7th of what AIG has already received and blown.

GM and Chrysler make something we use. Many of us like their cars. AIG just charges premiums and bets it all on Wall Street. Which one is useful and which is self-serving? And which is being criticized for needing help while the other gets Pentagon-level funding with no strings attached?

Why not give all of AIG’s dough to Detroit? Tell them to have 50 miles per gallon alternative fuel cars and an average new car price of $10,000 in 7 years. They would do it, I’m sure. Ford would even pony up to the trough to stay up with the rest.

$180 billion is an obscenely huge amount of money. Almost any manufacturing industry on earth, short of military suppliers, could advance exponentially with that kind of funding from the government. Give it to World Health Organization and the whole planet is up to it’s knees in food. Give it to aids or cancer research and we see cures in our lifetimes. Give it to NASA and we’re practically on Mars.

Or, offer it as a refund incentive to mortgage companies that willingly reduce principle and interest to insure that homeowners can make their payments.

If “Mary’s” mortgagor was getting $50-100,000 of that $180 billion in return for adjusting her loan down to $180,000 at 4%/40 years, that would be just fine with people and “Mary” would be just fine, too.

The Fed could have said “Ok, folks – everyone who drops to 4% fixed APR and absorbs principle on upside-down loans and interest from payment arrears can claim those losses from this fund”.

There would be no foreclosure crisis and little complaint from most folks if the ‘bailout’ was based on saving people’s homes and livelihoods by capping interest rates and re-imbursing lenders for the lost principle.

That’s not what the bailout accomplished.

It’s company’s margins and share prices that were restored. Their value at – where? The Wall Street Casino.

It would not be unfair, un-American or communist to suggest a temporary federal hold on interest rates. All lenders and credit companies could be limited to 4 or 5% interest for a specific period of time. That would allow people to catch up and stabilize themselves financially. Then interest rates could start with a clean slate and rise or fall more naturally with the economy as it recovers.

Thus, helping the companies that we live on further reduce the cost of living for everyone by increasing quality and lowering prices. If everyone can afford to live, it’s likelier they can spend, too. If people can work things out to stay on track with their debts and expenses when times get rough, they’ll make it through to the next good time, and be all caught up.

And, when times get bad for the market, it’s those top-level execs and shareholders who own the business, like any small business owner, who owe it to the company to eat the margin if they have to in order to maintain stability.

But this isn’t about stability. This profit margining behemoth is motivated only by immediate gain and has little or no concern about longevity.

What about this current recession/depression does not stem from these financial practices?

We’re talking about a free market economy, right? Capitalism? Supply and demand? Fair market value? Free and fair trade? Is this really the way that’s supposed to work?

Strong-arming us with price hikes, penalties and fees, paying huge salaries and bonuses, and claiming billions in losses as they do it.

Getting their hooks into us with a small legitimate debt, and turning the screw as soon as we mess up.

No, not a scene from the “Sopranos”.

The epitome of organized crime – crime for sheer profit above all else, with no regard for human life or welfare, is not a bunch of mobsters.

It’s the money guys in the black silk ties.

You can see them. There’s a tour.

It’s called the Wall Street Casino.

Open 9:30am-4:00pm ET Monday through Friday.

 
<<–prev   top
 
Return to the beginning – Part One: Genesis