Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Blood and Feathers

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is after the our friends over at JP Morgan Chase for rigging wholesale electricity prices to the tune of $73m. You thought that activity went away with the collapse of Enron? These crooks will steal anything that isn’t nailed down, well okay, they will pry up the nails too. They aren’t the only people the FERC has been going after, Obama was delayed in appointing people by Republicans in the Senate, but things are finally starting to happen.

The FERC has been going after other “banks” (that’s a questionable term) for stealing hundreds of millions by illegal trading schemes. And, this is only the low hanging fruit. More complex schemes, and strategies that were de-criminalized by Reagan, and his successors, have cost us billions if not trillions.

There is an ongoing slaughter of executives over at Barclay’s bank as regulators begin to take them down for rigging the interest rate back in 2008. It is alleged that they systematically conspired with other banks to under report to regulators the interest they were paying and receiving on loans to other banks. This reporting sets the LIBOR (London Inter Bank Overnight Rate), this interest rate affects virtually all financial transitions.

This one conspiracy is being blamed for causing the banking collapse in 2008 that cost trillions of dollars. Everything from home mortgages, to hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives collapsed during this banking meltdown. Their defense is that central bankers approved of what they were doing. It’s probably true that they did. It’s still a crime, but that’s what big banking is all about.

We are supporting the 0.01% of the population who do nothing useful at the cost of billions of dollars, but they also destroy what they can’t steal. They are really just a pirate operation, steal it or sink it.

These super wealthy already have more money than they can spend, their real goal is to make sure that pesky middle class can’t challenge them for power. To do that they are committed to relieving the middle class of every dime of wealth, and of all political power. A rigged financial system, rigged voting machines, rigged “news” media, rigged educational system, you get the idea.

Literally, you can go through your entire life without ever hearing actual truth, or ever being treated fairly in a transaction. This sounds like the ravings of a paranoid mad man, but it isn’t that hard to check into it. It doesn’t occur to most people to look, or they just don’t really want to know. People on the right just assume that they are all foxes in the hen house, really most of them are really just fat chickens. We’re getting to the point where all the blood and feathers are hard to ignore.

That being said, you need to avoid cynicism as a solution. Assuming every Republican is lying when his lips move will serve you well 99.99999% of the time. Doing the same with Democrats suggests that you have some form of PTSD. I’ll concede that most Democratic politicians aren’t good for much, but an actual reform movement is required. Democrats compose the only viable movement in town, and you know what? They can be controlled by the majority. That is, by an “informed” majority. That’s your responsibility, to learn, and to spread the truth. The hard, complicated stuff, not just the easy cynical opinions that make you feel good.  www.prairie2.com


Dave said...

While it's not everywhere in the United States, there are many places you can get your hands on books for children. You don't even have to hand over money to use them. Just bring them back after a time.

It's called a library. Please pronounce the "R" in the middle so you sound like an idiot.

Read to your children. Read some more. Start when they're tiny infants and keep going until they would rather read themselves. That might happen when they're 9 or 37.

Why you ask??

Read-to babies are reader-children and readers are learners. They may even be more interested than the average bear in knowing things.

"Knowers" are better thinkers and better bullshit detectors. We will be needing a lot of those to unseat the thieves we have in power now.