The U.S. Economy (I need to rant!)

Ok I was going to ignore this post but I cannot help myself I need to say something.

Yes the mortgage crisis happened because people are retarded and don't think ahead. I make a lot more money then most of my friends and they were going out and buying houses that cost a lot more than mine, and driving nicer cars than me. When I would hint around at how they could afford it they would say... "Ohh its no big deal eventually I'll sell the house for a big profit and pay off everything". When I said eventually home prices will decline I got the argument that they never would "especially not in FL".

Most refund checks will go overseas. GWB should have just sent the refund checks to Japan and China and skip the middle man. (To prevent this see "weak dollar" below)

Our dollar falling is a good thing in the long run. Does anyone remember when the Japanese started moving auto production into this country on a large scale? The last time the dollar fell (GB Sr. was in). I remember for a while the dollar was bouncing like a pogo stick and the Japanese were going crazy complaining about it. They decided to move lower cost vehicles to the US so they could compete price wise. If you notice only the more expensive brands are built it Japan (like Lexus, and the Prius) since they can justify the higher prices when the dollar drops.
Meaning: If a Lexus goes up a few thousand no big deal, if a Camry were to go up a few thousand they would be in trouble.
Overall foreign companies start bringing manufacturing back into this country when the dollar gets weak. If you look at the WS business news now, you see a few foreign companies a week are moving production here that would not have otherwise.

I go between supporting the 2 wars to hating them. I understand why GWB ordered it. I bet some of the stuff the government found in Afgan. scared the hell out of the higher ups in washington. Back when they started planning the attack against us Clinton was in office. He was the most pacifist president we've had in a while (which was good). But the point is the bad guys planned to kill our people because we had McDonalds in Saudia Arabia, etc.... Wth?? I'm sure GWB thought getting Iraq to become democratic would have a huge positive impact in the middle east. It's not working out to good but.... I believe it probably has prevented some attacks. And the people that say well they hate us more now because of the war.... please they hated us for McDonalds at least now they have a reason to hate us. They would hate us no matter what we did. As far as the wars cost. Remember how much the trade center attacks effected our economy? Well how much of an impact to our economy would a nuclear device going off in NYC have? I bet it would cost a lot more than the wars have cost.

All that said, we won't really know if the wars were helpful until years from now. Its too soon to tell right now. Maybe they will have a positive impact down the road.

Also another good thing that no one talks about. Remember after 9/11 the government rounded up all the guys they thought had terrorist ties and shipped them to GB? Well a couple months after that 2 bags filled with explosives were found in 2 different states. One in a bus locker when the locker informed the station it had not been opened in 30 days and the other in an alley that a bum found. Well I can't help but to think those explosives were going to be used by suicide bombers. When those guys were rounded up and shipped out, the explosives sat around until someone found them.

 

Rant noted. I agree. On the question whether the war is being funded by borrowing money or "printing" it, I believe it's mostly borrowing. Anyway, money is created these days more by creating credit than by printing presses. Most "money" is electronic, not paper. It's only cash that's printed.

But your basic point is correct: By spending money it does not have, the government is flushing the national economy down the figurative toilet.

 

Ahh Conroy, easily convinced, I think you forgot Reagan, he sent a bunch of Marines to die in Lebanon, then sent a few shells into the hills of Beruit to prove how powerful the US was, and don't do that again, I think a few scorpions were hurt. The start of Hezzbollah came out of that. The last time we got involved in Afghanistan, we set up the Taliban and Al Qaeda, seems that every time we get into wars we should have no part of, we get shafted in the end, I wonder what Iraq will eventually bring.

 

My guess, some very oil-rich Islamic fundamentalist states that hate the US.

 

Most of the people seem to think in terms of countries, us vs them.
they seem to buy the crap that is presented in media, crap that is there to brainwash us, dumb us down, makes us bunch of good robots repeating what we are programmed with.

people think that Bush is bad, they do not get that some presidents are wearing velvet gloves on iron fists, some wear no gloves (Bush). We should beware of both kinds! Have we checked Bill Clinton's dead body trail?
Lots of dead bodies... do a search on Clinton crimes

typically, there are no good and bad presidents (minus a few dead ones who did not follow instructions), although some presidents may appear to be better, because, at the end they all serve the system, the Matrix of control and power if you will, or if you want a more ancient allegory -- we are just chained prisoners in "Plato's cave looking at the shadows on the walls of the cave thinking that what we are presented is real and those manipulators are projecting the shadows for us.

I can go on really deep into this, as i spent years reserching how power structure works, and weapons that they use, from media and behavioral sciences to drugging out and psychotronic weaponry that a few people even have a clue about.

rest assured, plans for global conquest are made long time ago, and now we are beginning to see the fulfillment of the plans and more clearly than ever!

[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]H.G. Wells, has detailed that WWIII will start from an event that occurs in Basra. He wrote that in his book "The Shape of Things To Come." [/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]"…the plan for the 'Modern World-State' would succeed in its third attempt (WWIII) and would come out of something that would occur in Basra, Iraq."[/FONT]

now, think about that one, as he wrote that book in 1933!
yes, he worked for them, just like Bushes and Clintons and rest are working now.

If something is happening to the people, like they are loosing their homes -- it is SUPPOSE to be happening, and it will be happening until the moment people wake up and start using their own heads, which i do not see even as a good possibility.
yes, people are that dumbed down, unfortunately

Bush is allowed to "bankrupt the country" so that dollar can be destroyed and Amero introduced.
Read "Millenium, winners and losers" by Jack Attali. He is painting the most likely scenario for North American Union (Canada, U.S, and Mexico)
and he also mentions "hordes of illegals" but he also elaborated on jobless Americans looking for jobs abroad, as refugees.

Yes, he is another major player in global conspiracy, just like Gorbachev, Reagan, Thatcher, Blair and rest were. Just like Kissinger, Brzezinski and all other policy shapers are still. They are all working for the global system, no countries, no borders, they just played/ are playing their part of the script.
they could not care less about democracy, nor do they care about you and me.
as a matter of fact -- we are "useless eaters" as Kissinger would say.
they are all internationalists serving the international system.
Call them whatewer you want -- they all work for superstate.
OK?

so, rest assured that Bush is doing his job really well -- destroying America,
and him and his oil/pharma buddies will keep doing it until U.S. is destroyed.
His payback for destroying you and me is that he will go in history as a bad guy, who raped us financially by putting us in a financial hole that we cannot get out from and for his efforts he will be allowed to keep some of the loot. If necessary -- he can be terminated, after all his S & B name was "temporary"

but hey, it is all part of the plan.... although many of the robot radicals like to say "that must be one of those conspiracy theories"

oh well....

Paddy Chayefsky who wrote this script for Network knew (decades ago) how system really works, so here is it, a true to life script that reflects the situation that we are in:


Valhalla, Mr. Beale, please sit

down --

JENSEN

You have meddled with the primal

forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I

won't have it, is that clear?! You

think you have merely stopped a

business deal -- that is not the

case! The Arabs have taken billions

of dollars out of this country, and

now they must put it back. It is

ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is

ecological balance! You are an old

man who thinks in terms of nations

and peoples. There are no nations!

There are no peoples! There are no

Russians. There are no Arabs!

There are no third worlds! There is

no West! There is only one holistic

system of systems, one vast and

immane, interwoven, interacting,

multi-variate, multi-national

dominion of dollars! petro-dollars,

electro-dollars, multi-dollars!,

Reichmarks, rubles, rin, pounds and

shekels! It is the international

system of currency that determines

the totality of life on this planet!

That is the natural order of things

today! That is the atomic,

subatomic and galactic structure of

things today! And you have meddled

with the primal forces of nature,

and you will atone! Am I getting

through to you, Mr. Beale?

(pause)

You get up on your little twenty-

one inch screen, and howl about

America and democracy. There is no

America. There is no democracy.

There is only IBM and ITT and A T

and T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide

and Exxon. Those are the nations of

the world today. What do you think

the Russians talk about in their

councils of state -- Karl Marx?

They pull out their linear

programming charts, statistical

decision theories and minimax

solutions and compute the price-cost

probabilities of their transactions

and investments just like we do. We

no longer live in a world of nations

and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The

world is a college of corporations,

inexorably deter- mined by the

immutable by-laws of business. The

world is a business, Mr. Beale! It

has been since man crawled out of

the slime, and our children, Mr.

Beale, will live to see that perfect

world in which there is no war and

famine, oppression and brutality --

one vast and ecumenical holding

company, for whom all men will work

to serve a common profit, in which

all men will hold a share of stock,

all necessities provided, all

anxieties tranquilized, all boredom

amused. And I have chosen you to

preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.



HOWARD

(humble whisper)

Why me?



JENSEN

Because you're on television, dummy.

Sixty million people watch you

every night of the week, Monday

through Friday.



He stares at

JENSEN spotted on the podium, transfixed.



HOWARD

I have seen the face of God!



In b.g., up on the podium, JENSEN considers this

curious statement for a moment.



JENSEN

You just might be right, Mr. Beale.



NARRATOR

That evening, Howard Beale went

on the air to preach the corporate

cosmology of Arthur Jensen.





153. INT. NETWORK NEWS CONTROL ROOM



The CREW at their various control panels. Business

as usual. If anything, EVERYBODY in the control room

appears a little more bored. On the SHOW MONITOR,

HOWARD BEALE stands in his stained-glass-filtered

spotlight, but, rather than his old enraged self, he

seems sad, resigned, weary --



HOWARD (ON MONITOR)

(sad, resigned, weary)

Last night, I got up here and asked

you people to stand up and fight for

your heritage, and you did and it

was beautiful. Six million

telegrams were received at the White

House. The Arab takeover of C.C.

and A. has been stopped. The people

spoke, the people won. It was a

radiant eruption of democracy. But

I think that was it, fellers. That

sort of thing isn't likely to happen

again. Because, in the bottom of

all our terrified souls, we all know

that democracy is a dying giant, a

sick, sick dying, decaying political

concept, writhing in its final pain.

I don't mean the United States is

finished as a world power. The

United States is the most powerful,

the richest, the most advanced

country in the world, light-years

ahead of any other country. And I

don't mean the Communists are going

to take over the world. The

Communists are deader than we are.

What's finished is the idea that

this great country is dedicated to

the freedom and flourishing of every

individual in it. It's the

individual that's finished. It's

the single, solitary human being

who's finished. It's every single

one of you out there who's finished.

Because this is no longer a nation

of independent individuals. This is

a nation of two hundred odd million

transistorized, deodorized,

whiter- than-white, steel-belted

bodies, totally unnecessary as human

beings and as replaceable as piston

rods --



NARRATOR

It was a perfectly admissible

argument that Howard Beale advanced

in the days that followed; it was,

however, also a very tedious and

depressing one. By the end of

the first week in June --



-- the Howard Beale show had dropped

one point in the ratings, and its

trend of shares dipped under forty-

eight for the first time since last

November --



MAX moves into the living room as DIANA's VOICE erupts

shrilly from the bedroom --



DIANA (O.S.)

-- You're his goddam agent, Lew!,

I'm counting on you to talk some

sense into the lunatic!




N E T W O R K





Screenplay

by

Paddy Chayefsky





Revised - January 14, 1976

 

Another thread takes a turn towards Fred's House of Politics.

Tom

 

Geeze, Zeeman drank the Koolaid. :loco:

 

You guys shouldn't just leave that stuff lying around where anyone can get at it.

Wildkow

 

Yes we are stupid. But are the people who are giving(loaning?) the money to us stupider?

China: Here's a couple of trillion dollars, spend it on whatever you want, pay us back whenever you want.

US: No problem(wink wink).

 

Didn't Reagan also start the flood of deregulation that has eventually landed us where we are?

 

Champagne tastes on Beer Budgets, that is what is driving the economy down. I also think that the high cost of energy is just something most people turned a blind eye to in the early part of this decade never wanted to face the realities and now many are facing reality firsthand. It's sort of hard to spend money for "luxuries" when the average SUV / Pickup Truck family spends over $500 a month for gasoline (300 miles a week both vehicles). How many of those families do you think use their credit card to buy that gas?

 

that's what drove the economy UP when the champagne was all obtained on easy credit.
a giant reality check finally getting cleared is what's driving the economy DOWN.

 

And in the end, they own all our productive industry and take all the profit back to China, except for the part the Saudis own, which goes to the oil sheiks who finance bin Laden.

They don't care that they'll never get the principle back. What they want is the constant income from the interest we owe them. And since we can never pay back the principle, we pay the interest forever.

Except that I'm not as pessimistic as some: A 180-degree shift on foreign and economic policy could pay back those loans over the next ten or twenty years.

 

No, China is not that stupid. I'm sure they have in mind being able to shut us up when we whine about human rights or tainted dog food by waiving our markers in front of our nose.

 

Paying back the principal. That's funny. Have they come up with a new 10,000 amortized loan repayment plan that I haven't heard about?

It's like a credit card company and irresponsible credit card holder relationship. Yeah, the credit card user pays big time interest, but eventually, they default. So shall we. Then who's going to be the sucka.

Granted, we'll probably lose our pole position as the world's hegemony, but except for a few people, I think most people here are tired of maintaining that title. I'm good for being the next new zealand on the platform of world politics.

 

Tainted dog food. Isn't that redundant?

 

How about we call it, 'lied to by real estate agents who sold people a bunch of houses that were falsely inflated in value, while pocketing the gross profits from this, while all the time knowing that these people should not be buying homes in the first place crisis'

Well, it does not roll off the tongue as well, but it's closer to the truth.

Taking advantage of people who don't know better, by greedy real estate people, and the lenders they lined up also, to help facilitate this rape, that is why this problem is here now.

Oh, so you are one those people; a real estate agent.

Let me ask you then: Back in pre Hurricane Wilma days, did you ever sell a house to some one who you knew could not afford it, but you arraigned for the financing, as in, you lead them to a lender that pencil whipped a sub prime loan through, then sat back and told those folks, 'don't worry, real estate is a great deal; it will always make you money; in a few years you will sell this for double'; are you one of those agents? I bet you are one.

I heard from so many people, pre 2005, that said that the market would keep going up, and up...a house I bought, for $315k in 2005, now has been on the market since JULY 2007, and I just got a offer today, for $165k. Since I had to move to Dallas, and now, own a house in Dallas, I can't afford to keep two mortgages; I am going to have to short sale this house in South Florida. Why? Because I can't get the mortgage of $245 that I owe on it. Not only will I lose the more then $75k I put into that house, I will now have a hit to my credit, all because I followed the rules, and believed shady real estate agents, who have lied and lied to me all along.

Heck, when I put that house on the market, I was told that I would get it sold in less then 90 days. Then when that past, this same RE/MAX agent kept telling me that it would sell in 'less then 30 days' and so on. He assured me that I could go to Dallas, buy a house here, and not to worry, my house there would sell before the ink dried on my contract here. I believed him. I trusted he would not lie to me.

I was a fool. And I can understand, how so many people got sold the same line of bull crap that I got sold, and now look at them. I bet most people being foreclosed on did not have a clue that they even had a ARM .

Don't tell me it's always the borrowers fault. I would hazard a guess most were lied to by shady agents, and shady lenders. And someone is picking up all these properties at a hell of a profit, and will sit on them, to the market re adjusts, and then they will make out like bandits.

 

Yet, taxpayers seem to feel there is no problem with public education providing a Dom Perignon education on a Pepsi budget.

 

I'm an advocate for mandatory personal finance education in High School (as well as mandatory coursework in Economics). It is obvious our schools are not preparing people for life and many of people are not educating themselves and as a result are making not just poor - but disastrous financial decisions.

And sure, one can blame "greedy" realtors, brokers, etc. -- but how many of the buyers (and now holders of these loans) had dollar signs flashing in their minds when they signed the contracts. Any prospective buyer who applied a minimal amount of brain cells to the situation would have realized that double digit gains in real estate could not be sustained indefinitely - particularly when wages are rising in the low single digits.

And to not do the due diligence to understand how the ARMs work? As Warren Buffet says, "never invest in something you don't understand".

I feel for the people that are hurting, but why should prudent people now be required to pay for the ignorance and/or speculative excess of others?