700 Billion Dollar Bail Out Plan Does Anyone Care?

[armchairpilot]

I am convinced that the same skilled crooks that gamed the system to it's ruin have already figured out how to game the bailout to their advantage.

Remember that $12 billion in cash that "disappeared" in Baghdad? Watch $100 billion disappear now....

[AlohaSteven]

"Geeze it is really not as complicated as it seems! Just get rid of the Rothschild and we would be able to take care of ourselves!"

"I am strongly in favor of going back and hanging those who got us here, from each party."

Well, taking that approach there is going to be a long line standing at that gallows and I think, ultimately, each of us would have a turn stepping up on the trap-door and being fitted with a jute necktie.

Except for the children and innocently childlike among us, we adults are not totally powerless victims in this mess. We have participated quite thoroughly in all sorts of ways. How? From using fiat currency to how we vote on election day to staying potted in front of TV sets chuckling on cue with the sitcom laugh track instead of bothering to educate ourselves [just 47 minutes, folks, and a better education on the topic than years of business classes would deliver: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...2583451279 ], feeling outrage, and then marching in the streets, boycotting, and doing whatever it proactively takes to end CEO's making hundreds of times the average employee's salary, corporations having the same --if not more-- legal rights as citizens, corporations grabbing public resources (from water, mineral, timber, fishing, and grazing rights to airwaves and bandwidth) and then selling them back to us and/or using the land, water, and air as a free open sewer for waste disposal, and using our taxed wealth to fund a demonstrably corrupt military-industrial complex which keeps this insanity growing like a malignant cancer.

$700 billion? What matters more is that around 54% of every tax dollar goes to support the military.

Certainly the greedy and incompetent CEOs and venal politicians who were glad to captain the helm while we served as crew should not be rewarded for running our economic ship of state onto the rocks, but we could have spoken up, taken control, and changed leadership (...and, therefore, course) at any time. Example: instead of Dennis Kucinich on the progressive left and Ron Paul on the conservative right (both of whom are a huge threat to the corporate/military status quo) we collectively allowed a media blackout and marginalization of them both even while blind testing nationwide showed most Americans felt much more closely either as Kucinich or Paul do than as the corporately-backed options now eligible for office say they stand on the same issues. What does this have to do with Hawaii? This is an example (with names I can actually use here) to suggest that Big Island voters in general and Puna voters in particular would benefit from close scrutiny of the candidates for local office: on both the progressive and conservative ends of the spectrum who will work best toward achieving a genuine transformation of the current system?

Time after time in the past when a revolution has happened, from France to Russia to Spain/Italy/Germany to Cuba to China to Korea to Nicaragua to Rwanda to you name the place, a whole lot of folks have been hanged, beaten to death, and burned alive in the streets. It is happening right now in many places in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa particularly, even as we write and read these words.

All of these folks were motivated by economic theory run amok, and dead wrong: Chairman Mao thought getting rid of landlords and intellectuals would be a good move, Stalin thought getting rid of millions of kulaks would be an improvement for forced collectivization, Hitler thought if only the Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, and disabled were eliminated it would be such an improvement for regaining control of the banking system, and the examples go on and on. This matters to Hawaii in general and to Puna in specific because if the day ever comes when there is such a crash that we are on our own out in the middle of the planet's largest ocean and with no oil, are we going to follow that same pattern? The name of a dictator is just a sanitary label for the reality of mobs of former neighbors going out and brutalizing other neighbors, grabbing their property, and hanging them.

In Indonesia after WWII the Dutch (who between the German occupation and Allied bombing could themselves barely stand up again) tried to reassert colonial mastery of the East Indies archipelago. The USA threatened to with-hold the aide of the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe from the Netherlands unless the Dutch gave up claim to colonial mastery of Indonesia. The Dutch caved, withdrew, and the Indonesians promptly dispossessed of their property and eliminated (in many cases, killed) the educated and experienced class of bureaucrats, merchants, and other "collusionists and collaborators" who had served as middle management under the Dutch and then later the Japanese. In consequence, for decades Indonesia was incapable of locating it's butt with both hands because they had killed off and dispossessed exactly those literate, well-trained, and experienced workers most needed for making progress. If push ever comes to shove in Hawaii then it will be most shortsighted and counterproductive to hang the bankers, CEOs, and their ilk. Scapegoating them will solve nothing while potentially making matters even worse down the road.

We are all responsible for this mess we are in, even though few of us have enjoyed such benefits from the flawed system as that bunch. Our kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids will not care who was the damnable banker and who was the damnable bank depositor, only what sort of solution we came up with. I am sure the folks on Easter Island were not thinking about who --several generations or more back-- was to blame for their situation when Roggeveen sailed up in 1722; they were too busy hunting each other for food and hiding in lava tubes. There are viable Hawaiian solutions for preserving the environment and quality of life on the Big Island and neighboring islands no matter what happens in future if we are not lazy and do not cast blame elsewhere but rather work to educate ourselves and pull together on solving local challenges great and small alike.



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"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Pres. John Adams, Scholar and Statesman


"There's a scientific reason to be concerned and there's a scientific reason to push for action. But there's no scientific reason to despair."

NASA climate analyst Gavin Schmidt

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[Bullwinkle]

On pain of this subject being way off topic.... but I cant let it go.... I am a very analytical person and have been listening / reading for the real nuts and bolts facts from our leaders and political pundits.

All I hear is fear mongering, doublespeak, conjecture, and econobable (to coin a word) all to cover up the crimes (loan fraud) and mis management

How are we to gain an opinion without the facts? No one seems to have a clue, nor the courtesy to inform the citizenry. The fact banks haven't released (and haven't been forced to release) as to how much and whom is holding all this toxic paper worries me. Until they do I do not feel obligated to have an opinion, much less cough up the cash

I have been all cash for the last three years seeing this coming, preparing to get under the radar .... and I'm not in Washington privy to Paulson et all. Seems to me this is a last ditch 700 billion grab as they know the economy is done.

indict the bast...s, this is a result of a crime not a meltdown.

[DickWilson]

I go back to what I said. There's plenty of time to play the blame game. I want to see small businesses able to get credit. Sure they can reapply at local banks for credit, and by the time they're approved and get the funds, it will be to late. Many small business owner we woed by the large banks to open credit lines with them that have now dried up. They don't have time to wait for this punch and judy show being put on in DC to come up with the so called perfect plan. They and we need help now. After that we go back and prosecute those we can. I have no desire to see a depression to teach anyone a lesson.

dick wilson

[Bullwinkle]

Credit based economies fail Dick, that is what is happening now. Its the model thats the problem INHO. I think we wont see a solution until we move away from a credit based economy in favor of a savers based economy... We just cant keep on borrowing, the credit system is imploding and will continue to so, no matter how big the bail out. We cant borrow our way out of this one.

Spur savings rates, (how about capital gains tax rates on savings for starters) not more borrowing if they want to get liquidity back in the system, no more voodoo economics please, as the chickens have come home to roost.

[Bob Orts]

Has anyone actually READ what this Bailout/Rescue Plan will actually be doing? Or put more bluntly, explain how is it specifically going to help? Not just it will open up credit, but HOW!

[DickWilson]

That's all well and good to say, Lets suppose you have your savings in municipal bonds, cd's, treasury notes. Now what would this savers economy have you do with the money. withdraw it and deposit it in a savings account in a local bank, that may fail, at 0% interest since we are not going to make loans, to businesses or individual. Or perhaps gold? There has never been a civilization that did not loan money, just aint possible. Is our country over extended yes, course spending billions a week to prosecute a useless war doesn't help, but I don't see doing nothing as a viable option. I'm not interested in seeing my economic theroy proven right or wrong, I just want the guy on the street to be able to make a living. And on a selfish level, to have my 401K not fail. And yes I have read the proposal. Not all 400 pages, but the nuts and bolts.

dick wilson

[Jon]

ummm... usless war... any bombs going off around here...

300 million people in the USA, not everyone thinks like you.


Transplanted Texan
"I am here to chew bubble gum and kick some *** ... and I'm all out of bubble gum"

[DickWilson]

So, what is this war costing us billions accomplishing. Besides shoring up a government that can't stand on its own. Sure not dropping the price of gas on BI, or anywhere else. Feel free to E-Mail me if you want to take this off this post so Rob doesn't delete it for not being Hawaii enough.

dick wilson

[JWFITZ]

Yes, Bob, I've read it, and you're right. It will do nothing whatsoever. It doesn't address any of the core issues in the slightest, if anything it makes the whole situation worse by allowing banks to keep hiding from scrutiny the actual value of those "undeclared off balance sheet assets."

It may buy a little time, until the election or there abouts.

Be prepared for much higher taxes, inflation, and a stagnant economy for years to come. If you do anything real for a living, like grow food, work with your hands, cut hair, or elsewise, and deal in cash, it should be a boom time for you. If you play in the credit world and make your living from derivatives and instruments, you're going to take a bath for years to come. BUT, the result is that money tied up in speculative ventures creating no jobs at all will be forced to invest in real activity--and in the long term on a local scale this is likely to be helpful in the lives of most people.

You've seen the end of a system.