Dec 10, 2024
Dec 10, 2024
Woodrow Wilson, who was elected on the promise to keep America out of WW1, deliberately followed a policy of sending American non-military ships, sailors and passengers into the war zone. They were naturally sunk by the Germans. Wilson generated this caucus belli to engulf the US into a costly war with casualties in the hundreds of thousands to ensure the British debt payment to American financiers. If the British had lost, the loan debt would be uncollectible and would have to be written off. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used a similar ruse to involve the US in WW2. He supplied Britain with arms, ammunition, military hardware and supplies and denied the Japanese petroleum and scrap metal that they needed, compelling them in their delusions of grandeur to match European colonies, to attack America. FDR had also promised to keep the US out of war but like most elected officials, he lied. The current president and vice president lied repeatedly to take us to war in Iraq, likely to cost three trillion dollars by the estimate of Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. In addition Bush Jr.'s stupidity has cost the US and the world an extra three trillion dollars in higher oil prices over five years.
With these facts, it is absurd to pretend that a candidate for the presidency or vice presidency needs any experience. A brain damaged monkey would have handled the US presidency better than the current incumbent. It would have the same speech capability as the current duo, but would have been unable to give a direct comprehensible order to start the conflict despite a rubber stamping zombie Congress that functions on the sole principle of abdicating responsibility. So even if one calls a candidate a pit bull or a pig with lipstick, it should be taken as a well deserved compliment and not a put down. The fact that a candidate for the vice presidency has not heard of the current president's policy of preemptive war to intimidate other nations for an imagined threat or any other lie, and to use nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear nation or to prevent any nation on earth to equal or surpass America's military might (that's the Bush Doctrine publicly promulgated in 2002) is no barrier to running, as long as she is willing to go to war with Russia, the only comparable nuclear power for the sake of Georgia, Iran or Ukraine. Why the candidate masquerading on the Democratic ticket under the slogan of change, with his warmonger windbag vice presidential running mate has threatened Iran with similar measures to ensure the support of the AIPAC lobby and funding from rich donors.
Obama, while denying acceptance of PAC funds, has received large amounts of money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives and had initially appointed one of them the chief vetter of his vice presidential choice, until it was discovered that the executive had obtained sweetheart loans at below market interest rates through connections. McCain has received even more money from Freddie and Fannie executives (Jackie Calmes article in the NYTimes) and his top campaign officials are lobbyists for Fannie, Freddie and even foreign agents of the country of Georgia. He has the audacity to call himself a straight talking maverick. He is nothing but an unprincipled opportunist who dumped his decent first wife and would take money and do anything for anybody to become the president. His lying TV ads reveal his true character as Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times. He is an older chip of the same blockheads Bush, Cheney and Rice who publicly stated that in the twenty-first century civilized nations don't attack other nations. The senile bunch, Who I suspect advanced not on merit but by by affirmative, alumni or money connections, either forgot that the US attacked Iraq and Afghanistan in the same century or believe that the US is not a civilized nation.
Reagan used the Iranian hostage crisis to defeat the inept Carter. He used smooth talk to escape any consequences of his unlawful trade of arms with enemy Iran, in the Iran Contra fiasco for which two his cronies were convicted. It was a repeat of Nixon's criminal conduct without any adverse effects. Unprincipled and probably equally involved Bush Sr., his successor then pardoned them. Reagan repeatedly appealed to the electorate to think if they were better off after the Carter presidency and vote accordingly. Without being repeatedly reminded, the American public is incapable of any such thought. Reagan then appointed his cronies who were corporate lobbyists or executives as regulatory heads of Federal agencies as foxes to guard the chicken coop. He eviscerated labor unions by firing the air traffic controllers and deregulated the savings and loan institutions to make wild gambling bets with federally insured deposits, leading to the 200+ billion dollar debacle which taxpayers had to foot. It enriched Neil Bush, the brother of the current president and involved McCain in an ethics scandal called 'Keating Five' for lobbying by senators in return for campaign contributions.
Bill Clinton who gained the presidency with Labor support betrayed them and the nation by passing NAFTA that continued the impoverishment and de-industrialization of America. He, like Reagan allowed Wall Street and the Banks to make imprudent loans to Mexico, whose president and his family were involved in dealing drugs and monetary embezzlement and used taxpayer funds to make his financiers whole at the behest of their Trojan horse Robert Rubin, who was the mole of Wall Street and Banks just as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is in the current administration. Hilary Clinton opposed the bankruptcy bill modification as the first lady and spoke up for a Palestinian state, but made a hundred and eighty degree turnaround when she ran for the Senate from New York.
Bush Jr., the retarded was fed some idea about promoting home ownership by his backers and parroted it often enough to start the housing crisis. The mortgage brokers, mortgage finance subsidiaries, banks, investment banks and rating agencies colluded in approving liar loans without documentation or due diligence from a duped non-affording populace sold on the idea of ever rising home prices and dreams of quick riches. This toxic waste like the proverbial Love Canal was allowed to seep into the balance sheets of foreign banks flush with dollars from a burgeoning trade deficit which they recycled to balance the current account deficit by returning it to the US. Low treasury interest rates made it tempting to buy Fannie and Freddie bonds and other mortgage backed securities with slightly higher interest rates. Pension funds, hedge funds, insurance companies and individuals succumbed to the same temptation. The falling home prices stopped the music and exploded the package being passed around. Banks, investment banks, brokerages took the first hits and like the proverbial iceberg there is still more of this debt to be written off, beneath the surface.
The reported 500 billion dollar writeoffs led to a credit and liquidity crisis and forced de-leveraging by the players through a single narrow exit with other doors closing. Once again the planted financial Benedict Arnolds sounding like Nathan Hale opened up the public spigots to rescue their partners in sin, whose greed for commissions and bonuses of fifty to hundred billion dollars (5 to 10% skimmed off from a trillion dollar subprime and alt-A mortgage pool that they sanctioned, securitized and sold to gullible fools by sanitizing them through the rating agencies, Fannie and Freddie). This embalming fluid injected in the live body of the nation will not stop its deleterious effects till the nation becomes a corpse. It is seeping into prime mortgages, asset backed securities, automobile loans and credit card debt securities and will lead to debacles of the FDIC and Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. The profligate deficits, round the clock dollar printing presses, Helicopter Ben dropping money from the sky while accepting the toxic waste on to Fed's balance sheet, off budget liabilities, are driving the nation to bankruptcy, wrecking the economy, increasing unemployment and inflation, as the automobile manufacturers, airlines, FDIC and PGBC all line up for tens of billions of handouts which the average Americans and future generations will have to repay.
Thirty-five billion were spent to rescue Bear Stearns, 250 billion or more will be spent to rescue Fannie and Freddie, 50 billion for the automobile companies, who knows how much for Lehman, Merrill, AIG, Citibank etc.If the American public had knowledge instead of ignorance and could think without losing attention, they would have voted for either Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich in the primaries (depending on being on the right or left) and now would vote for independent or third party candidates instead of Republicans, who for ten years did nothing to rein in the GSEs while they controlled both the house and senate or Democrats, who promised to stop the Iraq war but will not cut off funding. Both parties divvied up the nearly 200 million dollars that the GSEs spent on lobbying to muddy their balance sheets to earn millions in remuneration for their irresponsible executives without a modicum of decency or integrity, just like their colleagues at the banks, mortgage brokers, rating agencies, federal regulators and elected officials. I guess it is foolish of me to expect scum-bags to behave honestly and decently. As they say in another language, if my aunt had a mustache and cojones, she wouldn't be an aunt, but an uncle. As Diogenes and Plato tried and failed in search of an honest guardian, it is futile to look for an honest politician!
14-Sep-2008
More by : Gaurang Bhatt, MD