(08-06-2018 09:06 PM)bullet Wrote: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...dream.html
NY magazine, so a little wordy, but interesting hypothesis that our current divide is due to the 2008 recession.
Being in NY magazine he has to do a little demonizing of Trump and Republicans, but other than that, its a surprisingly frank opinion piece from the left.
I don't agree that the recession caused the end of the belief in the American dream and caused the divisiveness, but its an interesting theory.
He started with a good premise and then instead of dissecting the issues resorted in ideological blame.
The country would have been back in the same broken mess that it was in prior to WWII had it not been for the advent and hype of consumer credit and the GI Bill. The former was the Ponzi scheme and the latter a legitimate attempt to recondition those who won the war into a peacetime economy. From the 50's through the early 60's things were stagnant on the wage and inflation scenes. But then a hamburger was 15 cents, fries a dime and milkshake a quarter.
With JFK assassinated, RFK relieved of being attorney general, the FED which had been in RFK's crosshairs for elimination had an ally in the White House in LBJ. They breached social security for the Great Society Program spending what had been the citizens mandated "savings account" and for the first time started treating it like tax revenues. That's a major variation too frequently not noted. Then to get the GDP kickstarted they ramped up spending for the Viet Nam war which was after all a self serving thing to do since the backers of the FED were predominantly European and American banking enterprises and American Arms Manufacturers made wealthy by the WWII & Korea.
With the country having to pay more and more interest to the FED while the FED backers were enriched with a huge arms build up for Viet Nam, and while the banks exchanged their notes for Silver from the American treasury everything needed to jump start higher interest and inflation was under way. Taking the national debt from 205 million in '63 to into the Billions by the time Nixon left office and into the Trillions through Bush and then Clinton, to the 20 Trillion Obama left us with.
Where this guy goes off the rails is with what happened in 2006-8 leading to the great recession. it was caused by derivative loans fragmented and sold so that nobody could trace the lien holders. But they enhanced everyone's balance sheet so that the banks could gain greater leverage for loans from other banks, which lead to the LIBOR mistrust that locked down the financial system, which caused the default of Lehman Brothers, which led to McCain and Obama making the appeal for the bailout, which cost the taxpayers the covering of the ill advised housing loans, which should have covered those citizens in default, but which didn't because the banks got the payout from the taxpayers and then still foreclosed and resold the properties thereby double dipping and getting even wealthier for their crooked bookkeeping. What's more the taxpayers couldn't cover it all so the Life Insurance and Health Insurance industry covered part of it, but at a cost.
Those insurance companies that helped out feared record losses on policies long held when Boomers hit the die off. Hence they got bailed out of having to pay out with Obama Care (the ACA) which wasn't really an Obama idea, but rather Romney's. That set limits on the amount of services that could be offered past certain ages. And it did set panels to review care that could be offered past those ages, or even prior to those ages if the merits of each circumstance warranted (but in the form of denials of care). They were rightly called death panels as I know personally a woman denied dialysis when after a routine gallbladder procedure MRSA was diagnosed and the hospital mandated palliative care and withheld dialysis due to the mitigating circumstance of the MRSA infection. There was no reason to withhold the dialysis, just sterilize the machine, which her husband a Veterinarian who owned a chain of animal hospitals offered to buy. They were told that if it wasn't available for the poor then it wouldn't be available for him. While he sought legal assistance his wife passed. 72 hours is as long as a patient can usually survive without dialysis.
Had he not lived in a state where the affordable care act had been completely adopted his wife would have still been with us.
So instead of laying the blame at the collusion between our government, crooked protected large banks that back the Federal Reserve, and at the feet of the corporate insurance giants who saw an opportunity to defer payouts indefinitely the author of the OP link chooses to lay it at the feet of DJT who is fighting to end billions in needless overseas giveaway programs, who is trying to extricate us from foreign entanglements that only benefit the Arms Dealers (who back the FED), and who wants to bring jobs back to America rather than utilize unfair labor, wage and business treaties overseas which also benefit the manufacturers who are part of the FED backers.
The enemy is the Federal Reserve System who Bobby Kennedy in '62 had pegged as a cancer on American Governance and the rights of the American citizens. He saw and described back then how the encouragement of national debt would enrich the FED and those who backed it until the point that their lobby money would be too great for the interests of the citizens and nation to be served by our elected government.
What he didn't foresee in '62 was how those conglomerates would buy the media and use that influence to propagandize the American Public so that it was in constant turmoil with each other. Their job has been to for the right to blame the left and the left blame the right all the while supplying the candidates to both parties who support their interests so that the control of the House and Senate was a foregone conclusion.
DJT is not one of them. Reagan wasn't and they insisted that HW Bush be his running mate if he wouldn't use Gerald Ford. Reagan was shot in what was a lousy security detail. Carter wouldn't back them so they made him out to be the fool and thwarted his efforts within his own party. So far they are doing the same to Trump only they are tying to embroil him in endless witch hunts. If that doesn't work and he continues to screw up the overseas aid money that helped to profit the European banks that backed the FED then watch out Donald.
This has been my main frustration with this board. The FED doesn't give a damn about gun rights because the biggest arms suppliers back them. Have gun rights gone away? No. They don't care about abortion. It eradicates what they see as a drain on the social resources. Has abortion law really changed? No. They don't care about women's rights or gay rights, or black lives matter! Why? They see all of them like the middle class hoy p'loy who will stay out of their way as long as they rail against one another. All they care about is raping the finances it takes you to live. That's business as usual and why the divide between the wealthy and the middle class is at levels not seen in North American since the Mexican Pri party oversaw their nations wealth in 5% of the populations hands. Hence the open borders to take the stress off of their activities in Mexico including narcotics trafficking.
DJT is being vilified because he is speaking out against all of it. And because he has had to compete all of his business life against the unfair advantages these clowns have been able to buy at the expense of our elected officials' actual service to us.
The sad part here is that laws passed under W Bush have allowed them to now legally confiscate 401K and 403B programs through annuitizing the accounts. The banks keep the principal which your heirs can't inherit and only your spouse can claim a reduced % of the interest payout to you at your death. The principal remains the property of the bank or holding company at the time of your spouses death and your kids get nada! I know, I've had a 403B annuitized. Happily we have other retirement vehicles that haven't been stolen like IRA's and Roth IRA's, plus a lifetime of frugal living with savings an virtually no debt.
So some of you can still go on believing that you are doing something great by laying into whoever you perceive your opposition to be, but you are wrong. Your Moriarity or Sith Lord is alive and well and it is not people on the left or people on the right as you have been so socially engineered to believe. It is as it always is when you follow the money trail. It is that entity that buys rulings against your property, collects your taxes by loaning to your government, eliminates your rights by buying off your elective representatives, and has encouraged your personal debt limit which they rate through their banking services to control your lives, and then moves your jobs overseas, or causes an economic crisis that cost you your earnings all so they can take your collateral. Your enemy is the Federal Reserve and those who back it and it has been since 1963. And as long as they are in control your wages will remain low and inflation will be used to bankrupt your future.
Now go slap an liberal or conservative or label some group as your problem and you will make your Puppet masters very very happy. Kooky conspiracy theory, or the line of thought that finally helps you make sense of the last 60 years of your life?
That part is up to you to figure out.
So how do we solve it constitutionally and without violence. We sign petitions to get independents on the ballot, we use social media to support our people, and then we kick both mainline parties out of office. Then you have the power to eliminate laws that gave corporate privilege, favored all endeavors of the FED, and demand that our nation go back to U.S. Bank Notes which were the peoples loan to themselves at no interest (and what RFK was prepared to do in '63). Then with budget control and our GDP we can slowly eliminate the debt and restore freedom to all of our people, and with that their American Dream.
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Our current divide due to 2008 recession?
