February 18, 2012
August 25, 2011
February 7, 2011
America’s 17.5-trillion-dollar loss: Time to move Tahrir Square to Wall Street?
I’m really really glad to be leaving for Antarctica in a few days — because America’s undemocratic financial system is really really starting to piss me off. Here in land of the (once-upon-a-time) free and the home of the (used-to-be) brave, America’s elite financiers are making all the rules and raking in all the profits — while the rest of us just shut up and pay. And pay and pay and pay.
Maybe if I spend some time down with the penguins, I’ll be able to cool off.
In a recent article entitled, “Another Crash is Certain,” economist Mike Whitney quotes Nomi Prins, author of “Shadow Banking”. According to Prins, “at the height of federal payouts in July 2009, the government had put up $17.5 trillion to support Wall Street’s pyramid Ponzi system.” http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/mike-whitney/34150/another-crash-is-certain
Is Prins saying that American taxpayers could possibly lose $17.5 trillion dollars to a Wall Street Ponzi scheme? Yeah, duh. You’d better bring on the penguins. Boy am I pissed.
And over in Egypt these days, people are pretty much going nuts in Tahrir Square because Hosni Mubarak had pocketed approximately $70 billion dollars from the money his country has received from American taxpayers. Just 70 billion? That’s not very much — not when you consider that we taxpayers here at home have just gotten hornswaggled into putting up 17.5 trillion dollars to cover Wall Street’s latest pyramid shell game. Yet people in Egypt are royally pissed off by this blatant corruption — while most of us Americans are just sitting around on our hands.
Where’s the outrage here in America? Where are OUR protests! Where is OUR Tahrir Square!
I would love to see every single patriot in America — right-wing or left-wing or both — drop everything he or she is doing right now, run down to the Safeway, 7-Eleven or Piggly Wiggly, stock up on snack food and then surround Wall Street, K Street and the Federal Reserve Board (located at the Eccles Building on Constitution Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets, NW, BTW) and stay there for as long as it takes to get America’s elite financial mountebanks to leave.
I’d love to see millions of us flooding these plazas, eating picnic sandwiches, taking turns using the bathrooms — and demanding justice and OUR money back.
But if I were to actually propose such an obviously patriotic action, would I get in trouble with the FBI for trying to incite a riot? Get my phone tapped? Get put on a no-fly list? Be ridiculed by the mainstream media? Be called a kook?
I would love to propose that it’s time for every red-blooded American patriot who is finally fed up with having his or her paycheck robbed by the Robber Barons month after month — that we all go surround the American Stock Exchange, the Eccles Building and the corner of 14th and K Street, just like the Egyptians did in Tahrir Square.
And I would also propose that we stay in place and don’t move until the American Stock Exchange, all corporate lobbyists and the Federal Reserve Board are completely shut down — eliminated, kaput, put out of “business” forever.
But if I did that, would I be called a terrorist? Or, worse, would I be called a Socialist? Get my home also raided? Be put in jail? Become a pariah? Get audited by the IRS? Lose my Social Security card? Not be allowed to embed in Iraq or Afghanistan ever again? Waterboarded? Be dismissed as some weirdo with bad hair?
If American businesses need capital to keep themselves going, they can always borrow money from a bank or a credit union. Businesses don’t need no freaking stock market in order to save their bacon. Wall Street alone needs the stock market. Only Wall Street itself needs it. Businesses don’t need it. And We-the-People surely do not. Wall Street is nothing more than a casino — and with all its bets hedged in favor of the house.
And don’t even get me started on the Federal Reserve — it’s nothing more than a whitewashed gentrified glorified counterfeiting operation. I know that. You know that. So let’s shut it down. Give us our money back!
And as for K Street? I just threw in that suggestion because the lobbyists there have pissed me off even beyond anything that sweet cute cuddly penguins can do to help. K Street owns our government lock, stock and barrel. Freaking welfare recipients. Get a real job!
But I really should just keep my mouth shut about this. And so should you. Apparently the elite financial establishment of America has us all by the balls.
However. If a few million American patriots take turns surrounding each of these three locations every single day for as long as it takes, Americans might actually start to see some REAL reform for a change, not just the whining platitudes now being paid lip service by the stooges of rich guys — but you didn’t hear all this from me. I’ll be off visiting penguins.
PS: America, however, ain’t Egypt in one more respect. Egyptians finally grew a pair, sure, but Egyptians also aren’t having to deal with the worst blizzard of the century either. Perhaps we should wait until the spring thaw before staging our own Tahrir Square.
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The 2+2 Job Interview
…or, how to get hired in corporate America.
A businessman was interviewing applicants for a corporate position. He devised a simple test to select the most suitable person for the job: he asked each applicant, “What is two plus two?”
The first applicant had an economics degree. He thought for a moment and then said, “This bearish market indicates it could be as low as 2.5 and as high as 5.6, but it depends on what Bernanke says tomorrow and what the EU does with the valuation of the Euro.”
The second interviewee was a former Fox News political pundit. His answer was a confident, “Twenty-two, of course.”
The third job seeker was an ex-Microsoft phone tech. His answer was, “4.0, but you really should upgrade to the new 4.8 version! You can’t even get patches for 4.0 anymore!”
The next person was a former corporate lawyer. She stated that in the case of Malarkey v. Mathematics Professors of America, two and two seemed to be four, but that answer was contingent on any lawsuits that might arise from the inference that that answer was absolute, any subsequent riders that might be attached to the contract, any tort filings or motions currently under review, and any liens that might be imposed on the answer by the IRS. In any event, the lawyer refused to be responsible for her answer while the matter was still being negotiated out of court.
Next was a recently retired Republican politician. He said it depended on whether both twos belonged to a wealthy person or some poor schlub. In the case of a rich man, two plus two equaled “Tax cut”; in the case of the poor wretch, the answer was “Go to hell.”
Then there appeared a former Blue Dog Democrat. He said he would go along with whatever the Republican said while pretending he had a different answer.
An economist from the libertarian Cato Institute then entered. His reply to the question was short and sweet: “Unfettered free market capitalism is always the answer!”
Then a Messiah College graduate came into the office. She responded that two and two was whatever God said it was, unless it was something with which she didn’t agree — then it was socialist and evil.
The next-to-last applicant was a Teabagger. After many minutes of long thought he said, “Could you ask me an easier question?”
The final applicant had previously worked for Enron and Standard and Poor’s. The now rather frustrated businessman asked him, “How much is two plus two?”
The applicant got up from his chair, went over to the door and closed it, then came back and sat down. He leaned across the desk and said in a low voice, “How much do you want it to be?”
He got the job.
2011 RS Janes, rewritten from another joke.
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