After what happened with Bear Stearns, you can easy see what the lack of money and poor bookkeeping, along with the Fed having no regulations on how it handles derivatives, comes to. Business magazines and Web sites suggest there's more trouble out there in the investment banks and subprime mortgages. Should we expect our government to bail us out when we get in trouble, particularly after our free enterprise system says just let free enterprise work with no regulations?
With over 6,500 hedge funds, you can imagine the amount of lobbying that takes place in Washington. The only people I've really seen that want to change the system are the 48 Blue Dog Democrats in the House of Representatives, and there are none in the Senate. I reminded Sen. Feingold of this when he was up in Brooklyn for his annual Green County listening session March 17. The Blue Dog Democrats believe you should tax the hedge fund dealers, and so do Sens. Clinton and Obama. I wore a T-shirt made at Heartland Graphics, "TAX HEDGE FUND DEALERS!", that did more good than talking about hedge funds and derivatives the past 15 years. It got on the Web and one site generated over 360 letters. A few days later, the T-shirt story got down to Australia and New Zealand.
I don't believe people are against regulations; it's the investment banks that don't want them, and it got them into trouble. Otherwise, you wouldn't have the FBI first investigating Countrywide and now Bear Stearns, and I believe there are others out there. The last time the Fed had a problem, under Chairman Alan Greenspan, it dropped the CD rates to 1 percent, and there's talk that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke could do the same or even lower, while the interest rates on credit cards have gone up to 20 percent or higher. Which really makes you wonder - was there any accounting involved in this whole mess, or were they just interested in their commissions? And where is Bernanke leading us? According to Business Week, "The Fed announced that it would be willing to lend directly to major Wall Street brokers, which have never before had access to loans from the central bank."
These countries that are loaning us money presently are setting us up for a real fall in our economy. Is it their fault, or ours? Getting lucky won't solve this problem. We must get real, and we're all going to have to work together in the various classes - not separate us. Every bank, along with its management, should use Paygo, what the Blue Dog Democrats believe in, and put less emphasis on promoting credits cards to anyone and everyone. A "Frontline" documentary on Public TV definitely made that very clear.
With over 6,500 hedge funds, you can imagine the amount of lobbying that takes place in Washington. The only people I've really seen that want to change the system are the 48 Blue Dog Democrats in the House of Representatives, and there are none in the Senate. I reminded Sen. Feingold of this when he was up in Brooklyn for his annual Green County listening session March 17. The Blue Dog Democrats believe you should tax the hedge fund dealers, and so do Sens. Clinton and Obama. I wore a T-shirt made at Heartland Graphics, "TAX HEDGE FUND DEALERS!", that did more good than talking about hedge funds and derivatives the past 15 years. It got on the Web and one site generated over 360 letters. A few days later, the T-shirt story got down to Australia and New Zealand.
I don't believe people are against regulations; it's the investment banks that don't want them, and it got them into trouble. Otherwise, you wouldn't have the FBI first investigating Countrywide and now Bear Stearns, and I believe there are others out there. The last time the Fed had a problem, under Chairman Alan Greenspan, it dropped the CD rates to 1 percent, and there's talk that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke could do the same or even lower, while the interest rates on credit cards have gone up to 20 percent or higher. Which really makes you wonder - was there any accounting involved in this whole mess, or were they just interested in their commissions? And where is Bernanke leading us? According to Business Week, "The Fed announced that it would be willing to lend directly to major Wall Street brokers, which have never before had access to loans from the central bank."
These countries that are loaning us money presently are setting us up for a real fall in our economy. Is it their fault, or ours? Getting lucky won't solve this problem. We must get real, and we're all going to have to work together in the various classes - not separate us. Every bank, along with its management, should use Paygo, what the Blue Dog Democrats believe in, and put less emphasis on promoting credits cards to anyone and everyone. A "Frontline" documentary on Public TV definitely made that very clear.
