The title of this blog pretty much says it all about my perspective on this. I merely ask, how is it we have a scheme in place which not only allows excessive risk taking but actually encourages it and provides approved methods to do so. The conflict of course is the gamblers are gambling with our money. When their bets don't work out the losses aren't isolated to the gamblers. The losses are absorbed by everyone because there are few, if any, people who aren't subject to the wild economic fluctuations created by the gamblers. And just as in Vegas the house (Wall Street) takes a cut, no matter what the outcome is, with the long term probability of winning quite apparently in question. Innovative financial products is merely a euphemism for risky product offerings to attract more players to the table.

There is a central theme in all of this where everyone is an involuntary player whether they wish to gamble or not. Therein lies the fundamental flaw of the scheme. There are, in theory at least, no legal circumstances that permit such a condition to exist. Yet here we are with that precise condition.

I think it is time for our regulators to examine this and curb the excessive risk taking of short sellers and derivitaves schemes that rely on pie in the sky overtly speculative outcomes. The financial marketplace has become one big floating crap game with the losers being the general public. This is not the road to a stable economy.

How is it that corporate America thinks it is entitled to jerk all of Amercia around by doing everything possible to have the same revenues and profits in a down economy. Instead of sucking it up and settling for a smaller paycheck like everyone else, the norm is to jack prices and retain revenues even though every working family has to do with less.

I saw this morning that now Verizon is getting on board with a metered usage plan for Internet service.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10363801-266.html 

There are a number of problems with this. First, U.S. consumers pay more and get less than many of our conterparts in competing economies. Secondly, this will hurt small businesses. Third, the explosion in net usage driven by content from major carriers is a conflict of interest.

U.S. corporations are bound and determined to see that the U.S. economy is killed deader than a doornail. The single most significant reason costs in this economy are prohibitive for business is because major corporations suck every last nickel out of every customer.

And that isn't all. Obtaining broadband service to business is more costly than residential service. And standard service to businesses generaly has a lesser bandwidth allocation than residential. So business pays a lot more and gets a lot less. And what of the bandwidth and speed of our connections? We lag our competitors in many developed countries badly.

All these are very basic issues that somehow the FCC and congress overlook when they examine this stuff. They are doing the same with healthcare. The true problem is costs are too high because industry margins are ridiculous. Same with credit cards. Banks borrow from the FED at less than 2% and then lend at 15% or 20% or even 30%. Pharma spends more on marketing than they do on product research and then deliver crap products that harm customers.

Corporate America is out of control and congress is along for the ride on their gravy train.

For those of you who know of this movie you will recognize the very certain comaprison to what is occurring in this country right now. The one difference of course is now its not just women that are being deprived of their rights. It is something more like 80% of the population that is under the gun from greedy, power hungry individuals and corporations who could care less they are in essence absolutely dragging this country backward a hundred years.

The parallel this movie draws to today is right on the money when it comes to the way power is being used to deny citizens of their rights. In all my 60 years I have never felt such an overwhelming helplessness in the face of power. The din of public outrage and all the polling puts this right on the shoulders of our elected officials. How can they be so blind deaf and dumb to what they're doing? It leaves me dumbfounded.

Over the weekend a poll was up on Facebook, only briefly but long enough to have over 700 respondents, asking if Obama should be killed. This shit is getting way the fuck out of hand.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10362725-71.html

In todays Washington Post, staff writer Binyamin Applebaum provides us some detail into how the FED ignored the pleas of private citizen groups to regulate abusive mortgage lending practices.

This goes on and on, and yet in spite of the certainty of the allegations and high probability that laws were broken, neither Bush, nor Obama nor congress has seen fit to take action against the criminal enterprise that has so harmed this country.

While on the other end of the spectrum Acorn is falsely attacked and sanctioned by congress without the slightest examination of the facts.

Could this country be more screwed up?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/26/AR2009092602706.html