America’s core industrial base is being gutted by thieves on Wall Street.‚ Detroit is turning into a ghost town while big bankers on Wall Street who paid themselves billions of dollars in bonuses receive trillions more in government bailouts.‚ Unemployment is skyrocketing and blue collar Americans are getting shafted by the fat cats.‚ No one is watching out for our factory workers as they get robbed blind.
Ordinary Americans are having their homes foreclosed on, losing their jobs and are facing enormous health care costs.‚ Only the rich few with powerful lobbyists are getting government assistance… and they sure as heck don’t need it.‚ These guys who made tens of millions of dollars in annual bonuses over the last decade while placing enormous risk on the banking system are getting trillions of dollars in blue-collar workers tax dollars.‚ The government bailouts are replenishing fat cat bankers capital so they can stay on top while the rest of us go hungry. Honest Americans in Detroit are getting shut down while city slickers in New York City laugh.
People like Dan from Bristol, Tennessee are having to take the brunt of the economic blows.‚ Dan used to work as a big machine repairman for an American factory until greedy executives outsourced his job to Brazil.‚ After he was laid off, Dan was unable to make the payments on his mortgage.‚ Dan’s bank foreclosed on his families home and since his mortgage was underwater Dan now owes over $45,000 in debt.‚ Dan is an ordinary fellow who never ran up a credit card debt, but just didn’t understand the complex adjustable-rate mortgage a sleazy lender sold him.‚ After Dan was foreclosed on, his wife Susan and their four children were forced to move several hundred miles away to Ohio while Dan lives in his pickup truck looking for work.‚ Now Dan hasn’t seen his family in close to six months and is growing increasingly desperate.
Contrast Dan with Merrill Lynch’s former CEO John Thain.‚ John Thain drove Merrill Lynch into the ground by not properly managing his bank’s risk and foolishly spending his investors money on redecorating his personal office for over a million dollars.‚ Thain even spent $1,400 on his office trash can!‚ That same $1,400 would have more than covered Dan’s families monthly mortgage payment, but the fat cats don’t care about the common man.‚ Dan lost his job helping to maintain America’s manufacturing and now he’s flat broke, but when Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain got fired, he received a $9,000,000 golden parachute.‚ That $9 million would go an awfully long way to help thousands of families like Dan’s get back on their feet.
Why are poor working class men like Dan losing their homes and their families while Wall Street millionaires get trillions more in tax dollars?
Here are three reasons why:
1) The guys on Wall Street & the managers of major corporations work much, much harder than Dan.
2) They are highly educated (they could probably do Dan’s job, but I doubt he could do theirs).
3) They take on pressure and risk that Dan (from??? somewhere in the South) probably couldn’t dream of.
4) Lets face it they create more economic value than Dan or any of us ever could, even in light of the current fiasco.
Here is my interpretation of your rant:
Dan is more deserving of a bail out because a) he is stupid (doesn’t understand an adjustable rate mortgage- but does have three kids in school (oh shit!), and b) he is a “victim” of outsourcing (which subsequently happens to create mad benefits for all of his fellow American consumers).
My response:
Dan certainly appears to have mal luck with some things, but most of his problems are arguably the result of poor planning on his part. We should all be thankful that we have the RIGHT to plan our own destiny (unlike people in many countries) – it’s too bad that some people suck at planning.
The sad thing, is the effect this will likely have on Dan’s children- instead of pursing white collar jobs they will likely work in an auto factory, just like dad, and attend union meetings religiously.
Bored,
I found your comment to be interesting, but somewhat misinformed. You state: “Lets face it they create more economic value than Dan or any of us ever could, even in light of the current fiasco.” However, these fat cats DESTROYED massive amounts of value by taking on enormous risks without regard for consequences. I know I could have done a better job and I bet even Dan could have as well.
Outsourcing is costing loyal American citizens their jobs left and right. How would you like it if you lost your job to some guy overseas who works twice as hard for 1/10th the wage you do? The greedy ultra-wealthy are trying kill the middle class and the working men and women of this country.
Instead of being a stickler for idealism, I suggest you dig deep into your heart to find kindness and mercy for Dan and his family. Your family may be safe from economic harm, but vast swaths of Americans are suffering right now and it will only get worse unless we put caps on executive salaries and heavily regulate greedy bankers.
Move to Sweden, sissy.
Such anger… I suggest you pray for God’s calming peace.
Much of the “reinvestment” of various loan forms carried out by some of the larger banks that has now led to their failure amounts to attempts at gambling.
I don’t doubt that someone who under normal circumstances was able to properly balance risk and value like Dan could have done a better job than the idiots who ended up costing him his job.
If you and I could borrow money at 0 Interest…perhaps we could turn a profit. If we could know that someone was going to bail our butt out on bad debt we could move along. Two things that have crushed Detroit unions and greed. If the average person managed money like Wallstreet… prisons would be over crowded. If people would not have bought homes that they could not afford…they would not be losing those homes. Creative financing will ultimately be the demise of us all.
If people would stop giving money to banks they would not have the leverage they have. Unions don’t care their membership keeps declining but they have leverage in Washington and money. Their membership has been ignored for almost 20 years.
We should be real proud of the damge we have done but worst of all what we have allowed to happen. Collectively we are still a great force…but we have allowed liars, thieves and cheats to be our voice so what is it that we expect?
No one should be homeless. If you took what it costs to elect all the crooks the past five years nationally…there would be no homeless and no people without health care. We keep playing the same record and want the lyrics to change.