Death to Money Vampires
Posted: Wednesday, February 25, 2009
by Joel Hirschhorn
http://www.delusionaldemocracy.com
Despite attention to the current economic meltdown, including the confidence-building words of President Obama, I keep getting this nagging feeling as I move about in the real world and on the web that many Americans are in a state of denial. I still see the same numbers of peaceful people at the health club where I work out daily, at the concert hall where I go regularly to see world-class artists, at several supermarkets where I shop and at a local mall where I get my discount prescriptions at Target. Bruce Springsteen and other stars are still selling out their concerts, despite outrageously priced tickets.
My point is that there are no visible differences in everyday behavior between now and two years ago. Missing are more visible signs of personal outrage, anger, despair, sadness, horror, anxiety or nervousness. Is this a stiff upper lip phenomenon? Is it courage and faith in the new president and congress? Or is it, as I fear, delusional denial and hope? After all, 40 percent of people think the nation's economy will improve over the next year, far more optimistic than what many economists and government officials say. What is much more striking is the still diving stock market.
Using words like crisis, catastrophe and abyss do not seem to jolt American into a state of mind manifested as mass rebellion. You ask: Rebellion against what? Economic oppression, caused by countless political, government, business and financial entities that failed to protect our financial security and prevent this economic collapse. How about politicians now pumping billions of borrowed dollars into banks and companies that deserve to fail?
Americans were royally screwed, trashed, suckered, taken advantage of, treated as expendable, lied to, robbed and slaughtered financially. The smartest, highest paid and most powerful people in government and the private sector flushed us into the economic toilet we find ourselves swirling in: 300 million turds descending into deeper darkness.
Odds are that we really are at the end of prosperity if not forever, certainly for a very, very long time. Unlike the Great Depression, no world war requiring massive domestic manufacturing will save us. Technological innovation and large new industries are a long way off.
You ask: So, even if all this gloom is appropriate, what are people to do, other than continue to go about their lives as best they can to survive? As to what is missing, here are three things.
Why no loud, mass demands for criminally prosecuting and imprisoning or even executing hundreds if not thousands of white collar villains that greedily raped our nation and economy? Not just those that ran giant fraud machines, like Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, but also the countless Wall Street kingpins, bankers and mortgage brokers that created the housing bubble, and also all the government officials and bureaucrats that never protected us, especially at the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission. I say death to diabolical money vampires that sucked the life out of our economy. First, they deprived the middle class of their fair share of prosperity. Then they killed the economy, after raising economic inequality to the level of a neutron bomb.
Why no widespread disgust and disapproval that the Obama administration has given power to people who were part of the elite system that drove our economy into the crapper? In his cabinet and White House are former Wall Street and financial sector bigwigs, such as the Treasury Secretary (and tax dodger), that should be viewed as guilty failures, not saviors. Why in the world should we have confidence in them when they did nothing to prevent the crisis they are expected to address? While words never fail President Obama, often his actions do.
Where is screaming demands to sharply tax the ill-gotten gains from some 20 years of capitalistic looting that first made millionaires and then billionaires of people whose greed totally exceeded their contributions? The Justice Department says that to escape paying taxes some 50,000 ultra-rich Americans have stashed over $14.8 billion in secret accounts with Swiss banking giant UBS. Surely there is more money stashed in other foreign banks. The nation should be recovering many, many billions of dollars by taxing the living hell out of the Wall Street crowd and huge number of CEOs and other corporate executives. But the new stimulus package will grant households in the top 0.1 percent, the highest income group, an average tax savings of $39,350, according to the Tax Policy Center .
Forget hope. Face reality. Feel the pain. Express your anger. Already, statistics are beginning to show increased criminal activity clearly resulting from the economic doomsday. In a Maryland county outside Washington , DC , for example, commercial robberies since the beginning of this year are up 67 percent over the same period last year. Sales of guns and ammunition have skyrocketed nationwide. What are most Americans waiting for? The time for rebellion and retribution is now. Denial is delusion.
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)Joel hopefully without offending you I think you lost sight of just who has all the money in this country, excluding the upper 5%. I was thinking this just a few days ago as I drove past two upscale restaurants in our town and a movie house that was filled to capacity and I looked at all he cars costing in my estimate $25,000 and up. The price of a dinner for two about $30.00 to $50.00 It is not that people don't have money it is more who has money, as I recently wrote to? The banks have it but they are holding it. You see no one meets the qualifications but for about 20% of Americans and they pay cash. The retired do and they are holding onto as much as they can while still enjoying the finer things they can. That is for now. The retired buy only when required and few finance. They buy that $40,000 dollar car cash. They don't like payments you know at their age. They may have a credit card but pay it off monthly. They will go to shows, the super bowl, ball games and events. Yes and along with the upper middle class who have, that is the rest who make up that 20% of America these days they can still do it albeit much on the arm. The little guy, the average guy, the families all hurting bad. Check out where they eat and shop. Yet if we really open up to truth just who really gives a damn about them? Common Joel, certainly not those that have and certainly not our politicians. So Joel who will pay for this grand social experiment. Those you wrote about. Why, who else has it? Best wishes.
Rebert: Let me try and make my larger point a little differently. In pursuit of delusion Americans have been conditioned to embrace distraction. What amazes me is that despite the quite unique terrible times the nation is in, there is little evidence that ordinary behaviors have yielded to new crisis-oriented behaviors among those that still have relative affluence. Moreover, what is missing is widespread political behaviors. In an odd way, I think the Internet has provided a large opportunity for many people to vent their anger and frustration, and for many more people I still think there is denial about how awful the state of the nation is. I suspect that many more people will literally have to fall off the cliff before there is the kind of public rebellion seen in European nations...Joel, total agreement.
Interesting article Joel. As with a lot of things in the past 10 years, it doesn't seem to me that the whole is moving in one direction, rather it appears to me that the opposite ends of the spectrum are moving apart, making middle ground more scarce.I know people who are more optimistic about the future of America than they have been for a long time. I also know people who are so utterly pessimistic about the future of America that I worry about their mental and physical health. I guess this is called polarization. The truth is that there is at the same time reason for optimism and reason for pessimism.I suspect that most Americans can't even agree on what the issues are, so I don't expect to see too much widespread outrage. There is very deep outrage in some pockets, but it always seems to be equaled by deep outrage in other pockets, for opposing reasons.Even major media outlets are being criticized by both sides: Some saying they aren't reporting a bleak enough outlook for Americans to see the reality of the trouble we're in. Others say the media is making things worse by always reporting bad news. So which is it?Personally I'm seeking the balance. I'm outraged by many of the things I've seen come out of Washington and I'm taking every opportunity to write my congressmen to let them know of my disapproval. I'm also optimistic about the future of America as I see the dialog change from short term profits to a more responsible long-term prosperity.I've read that the U.S. economy for the past 10 years was based on the assumption that consumer spending would grow by 15% per year, even though wage and job growth were less than 3% per year. This was just foolish and we're seeing the painful correction now. What I think this means is that we will never return the overall prosperity we've seen in the past 10 years completely. I think maybe 8-10% unemployment is probably going to be around for a long time, if not worse. Americans will be forced to adjust, so I want to be ahead of the curve by cutting expenses now and saving more of my income.
Thanks Bruce for your wise words. We each come at this national situation with our own background. I am like millions of other older Americans. Once I had financial security for my retirement years, now I have little. I never borrowed other than for a home mortgage; I never took advantage of cheap interest rates; I paid off credit cards immediately. I acted responsibly and generally invested the way all advisors recommended. I got screwed because of the cancerous greed of the rich and powerful. Second, I worked in government for many years and have always been highly cynical because of what I saw as an insider. The government also failed Americans by not protecting through oversight and regulation the financial sector. As I told a friend the other day, I think the economy and nation will recover - EVENTUALLY. But for older people, we may not live long enough to recover and many, many older people are likely to sink into total devastation. And many of our younger people will face terrible times without good job opportunities, no matter what their educational achievements. Do I have a lot of faith and confidence in President Obama? No. I never did. My newest article provides details about this.Thanks for the compliments. I don't have a lot of faith and confidence in President Obama either, but many of his policies certainly appear to be a departure from what we've had to put up with for the past 8 years. This doesn't make them automatically good policies, but they offer some hope.I'm very interested in the generational reasons for differences on perspective on the past and future outlook. It seems that the older a person is, the more pessimistic he or she is about the future of America. And the younger a person is, the more optimistic he or she is. Are the youth in America stupid and naive? Do older American hate the disruption of the status quo? I, personally, am stuck in the middle as a Gen-X'er, the generation which has recently been outed as the "dumbest living generation in America".I have to wonder, is the World really deteriorating, or is this the same generational issues that my grandparents had with their children and grandchildren? It sure seems like the moral and economic issues of today are the worst they've ever been, but my grandparents lived through a time where they thought the same. And their grandparents did too. I guess I'm looking for proof that this time it's different.
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