A Rant: The Bank Bailout/AIG/Economy

At this point, I'm just waiting for hyper-inflation.

The way I understand this, it seems like the Masters of the Universe took over our government and tore the laws to pieces. President Obama went on Leno and told us the "dirty little secret" that "most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal". How is that possible? Because the uber-rich paid to put their guys in office, their moles changed all the rules for their friends, the enriched made huge fortunes but eventually took so much that the rest of us noticed, and since they paid themselves with our government, we now have have to pay back their debts. They keep their huge houses and salaries, of course. It's the rest of us who will suffer.

We seem to be in a civil war in this country that most of us can't yet put our finger on, but the headline Firms Giving out Bailout Money to Politicians as Campaign Donations seems to explain it all.

We know we're pissed that our 401K's are disappearing. We know it sucks that our tips don't go as far. We know it sucks that we can't afford vacations. We know it sucks that everything is getting more expensive.

But are we mad at Bernie Madoff? Are we mad at AIG? Are we mad at Tim Geithner? Are we mad at Hank Paulson? Are we mad at Goldman Sachs?

What about Citibank? What about Bank of America? What about Wells Fargo?

What about George W. Bush? Or Ronald Reagan? Or Bill Clinton? or Alan Greenspan?

Are we mad at those people? A little, but each individual person or company is just part of a bigger problem. It's the thing that connects these people and companies that we really need to focus on. In my mind, they are connected by being super-rich, upper-level management, and committed to the redistribution of wealth towards themselves. The rest of us are not in their circle of friends.

George W. Bush warned us that he was going to run the country like a business. It was the truth. That's exactly what he did. Our government is now a big company that works for other companies. Profit, not people, is its purpose. Now the people who own the banks, who own the Wall Street firms, who own the oil industry, who own the military-industrial corporations... those guys effectively control our Congress and Executive. Now they own us. That's why all we can do is watch while our bank accounts are getting raped. They've got us tied to a chair.

We need to take our government back.

It's not going to happen though. Not fast enough to prevent whatever kind of economic collapse is on its way. We don't get new people in Congress for almost 2 years and only Jon Stewart has come close to articulating the existance of the new Civil War on the almighty television. It's really tough to fight a war if most of your side doesn't understand that they're in it. After all, it's American Idol season! And Twilight is out on dvd! Life's still good.

The rich bastards in charge are using their power to print up money at a crazy fast rate and using it to refill their own accounts. I'm no economist but I do understand basic supply and demand. If you create a lot of pieces of paper, each of those papers becomes worth a little less. Those papers, unfortuantely, are dollars. Eventually, we're going to need more of them to buy us our bread.

My next step is to invest in euros, Aussie dollars, and yuan. The dollar is going down. That's as far into the future as I can see.