Junk Activism

People are really pissed about the economy. Well, of course.  It sort of makes me scratch my head though, because I’m not sure if the people protesting really have any better answers than our silly bureaucrats, bean counters, and politicians making decisions.   I’m also not sure if the people protesting really know what they’re protesting, or why they’re protesting it other than they’re angry about lost jobs and bailouts.

What I think most people are failing to realize though is that one of the key problems is that the government isn’t really in charge of all of these things. Our decision-makers are very reactive.  Sure, we set the regulations that allow the powerful and greedy to find every loophole imaginable to take advantage of. Rule of Law can be a wonderful thing, because policy can always be changed.  But in the end, the government is in the business of taxing and spending money, like we do…except on a much much larger scale….and in spite of what the people want.  (See: Fascism)

It’s really a corporate/banking system we’ve got that’s running this whole mess.  If you want to understand how the U.S. triggered the biggest financial crisis the world has ever seen, you must first know that the United States banking system is the most powerful in the world.  Vastly powerful.  We don’t control the world with our armies (unless they’re not part of our financial system), we control it with the flow of wealth.

So, if you want to get pissed, be angry at the root of the problem.  Maybe some of you remember how Chairmen of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke and his banking buddies were SO, SO worried that the American consumer may lose confidence that they continued to prop up the system, lying to us all last summer that there was “no recession” and that we were in good working order.  Well, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were only a small piece of the pie before the shit it the fan in October 2008.  They could no longer lie because it became obvious that the whole house of over-leveraged assets was beginning to topple over.  Had we taken action when this mess was recognized…YEARS AGO…. and we’re talking about the “smartest” economists in the world, so of course they knew….. my useless opinion is that much of this could probably have been prevented.

You want change in government and the world?  It doesn’t start by shuffling Government around and increasing spending.  It starts by developing solid principles about fiscal responsibility and how to manage things economically.  Making policies that reward growth and savings instead of deficits, over-consumption, and greed.  The Central Banking models  have been at the root of the decision-making that causes every boom and bust cycle that America - and now the world - is seeing.  Then, when things go bad, we turn to the same people who lied to us for advice.  Now their advice is to give them OUR taxpayer dollars (the money you and I slave for) to prop up the system that caused problems they created.  You can’t polish a turd.

Well, maybe next week I’ll have some interesting more “Violent Protests” to follow up on.  Here’s the article about violent anti-globalization and anti-capitalism protests that inspired today’s noodling.