Originally Posted by JollyRoger
(Post 2509371)
We had eight years of totally unfettered, corrupt anarcho-capitalism run by a government that serves the very rich, instead of the common peple. Every few decades, we all get scammed by this crap -what they call 'conservatism' is really a form of anarchy, it is a radical view of how markets should operate, as radical as communism, this time it was packaged to us as "neo-conism" - the newest name for anarcho-capitalism. Governments are meant to be referees, to keep the system fair for everyone. The far-right worldview denies this reality and seeks to destroy all government involvement in the market place. Like any game without a referee, the markets eventually collapse under the weight of fraud and thievery. Nothing new, we learn this every few generations or so - anarcho-capitalism, the unregulated market, only makes the rich richer, and destroys everything else.
The collapse of our economy is pretty simple really. George Bush, as head of the executive branch, deregulated the economy, a long time dream of right wing ideologues, by appointing foxes to run every regulatory hen house in government. For eight years, banks and investment houses engaged in reckless schemes, creating insane new investment vehicles that were then rated by the various bond rating agencies as "not insane" while Bush's SEC, headed by Big Foxy Chris Cox, looked the other way. They bundled mortgages by the thousands together, and then sold various side bets on them in the form of derivatives and credit default swaps, and the SEC never batted an eye. The problem was, most of the mortgages were adjustable rate con jobs, and when the ARMS adjusted upward, millions of home owners became upside down in their mortgages, which caused a problem for the owners of the mortgage securities - namely, how the hell did they know exactly what their security was worth ? So they started dumping them. At the same time, the big investment banks, who knew they were selling crap and had been smart enough to buy credit insurance on this pile of $hit, began to call in their insurance policies, leading to the collapse of AIG. Firms that were not as well hedged, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, a number of big investment banks, collapsed next. From there, it was all just a house of cards, as the stock market collapsed and the bail outs began, investors began a mass conversion of assets into cash, and have been sitting on the sidelines ever since.
We have all been the victims of a massive fraud. The aim is to redistribute the wealth. For most of the last century, the largest holder of private wealth in the world was the US middle class. During the Bush years, we watched the wealthy finance a war to guarantee their access to Iraq's oil by saddling this middle class with the cost. We then watched them increase their short-term profits astronomically by screwing working people in this country out of their jobs under the banner of "free trade". We have stood by while they fattened their fortunes by again borrowing a massive amount of money from our grandchildren, which they then distributed amongst themselves as phony "tax cuts" - deficit spending used as a wealth re-distribution mechanism. We stood by as they created an enormous international Ponzi Con out of credit deriavitives backed by shaky mortgages, and then stuck us with the bill.
But the single greatest act that stands as the beginning of our downfall was the utter evil of invading Iraq, and turning our budget surplus into a deficit in the process. As Tom Ricks put it in his forward to the book "Fiasco", the invasion of Iraq will be seen by future historians as the most profligate act in American history. The wages of that sin is what we are earning today. The budget surpluses of a decade, what was essentially our national kid's college fund, was gambled and lost in the sands of Iraq, and then the rest of the family belongings went into the Chinese pawn shop to pay for tax cuts for the richest, and then what was left in the cupboard was pissed away in an attempt to salvage a destroyed economy - an economy destroyed by anarcho-capitalism. We sowed. Now we reap. Blame Obama all you want, history will see the simplicity of it all: the Presidency of George Bush destroyed this country.
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