MORALITY AND THE LAW CLXVIII
By Stephen Ellis
A FOND FAREWELL
Nobody asked me, and that’s the problem…
I’ve been writing this blog for 168 consecutive weeks. When it was published by American On Line (AOL) I had approximately 3,000 readers per week. But, a few months ago, AOL discontinued publishing blogs and I had to open a new site: moralityandthelawakanobodyaskedme.blogspot.com
The trouble is that I no longer have any readers…and it doesn’t make any sense to write a blog every week that nobody reads. So, this will be my final blog called “Morality and the Law”
For those few of you who like the way I write, I am writing another blog called Explaining Life’s Mysteries at “explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com” on my favorite topic, “the paranormal”.
If you really want to know what happens when you die…what UFOs are…what the mystery of “ghosts” or “communicating with the dead” is really about, I suggest you look up my blog and read it. I’ve had a number of paranormal experiences in my life and met a lot of other people who have, too. Every one of us has a one or more déjà vu experiences such as knowing, when the telephone rings, that it’s someone you haven’t seen or heard from in years…or…you have a specific dream or premonition about something happening…and it happens…or you are visited by a dead love interest or a dead family member...or you go someplace for the first time and yet you know you’ve been there before…and lots of other things that add to life’s mysteries.
What I try to do in my blog is explain these things in a very practical and logical way. I’m not a UFO freak or a ghost hunter. I simply look at things that do exist and try and give them rational explanations. In the case of religious “mysteries”, I try to document my explanations with historical records, wherever and whenever they exist.
It should be a very interesting blog to anyone who does not accept the fact that life is merely as we see it and that our scientists have explained everything there is to explain.
Insofar as “Morality and the Law” is concerned, I’ve covered a very tumultuous period of American History. The eight years of incompetence of the Bush Administration, the nomination and election of the first Black President of the United States; the near-demise of corporate giants such as Lehman Brothers, AIG, General Motors, etc.
The task facing Obama when he takes office next month are totally Herculean. I believe he will be a good president…maybe even a great one. Certainly he has amassed the most intelligent Cabinet in the years that I have been alive. How he handles the economy the jobless rate, etc. will be a matter for history to judge. But please…save your criticism of him until he has had a chance to do something. Those attacking him now, before he even takes office, are not good Americans.
Obama is going to need the help of American citizens who are fed-up with the graft and corruption that has become synonymous with American politics and corporate greed.
To anyone and everyone who reads this, I wish you a Very Happy Holiday Season. Have faith. America is strong and will survive the Bush years.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLXVII
By Stephen Ellis
NOBODY LOVES AN AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURER
Nobody asked me, but…
Even with the verbal support of President-Elect Obama…even with a Democratic majority in the Senate...even with the support of Republican President George W. Bush…the United States Senate again displayed the corruption and “I don’t give a damn” attitude towards the citizens of this country. How I wish I could fire some of those Senators on the spot!
The Senate turned down what is the single most important thing the Bush Administration could have accomplished in eight years of inept, sloppy, slipshod leadership of this country. Maybe…just maybe there is still hope for the American Automobile Industry to get sufficient money to follow-through on the turnaround they’ve started. But for the failure of the proposed $15 Billion in loans, we can thank the Republican members of the Senate. I may never vote Republican again!
The Republican members of the Senate voted against the loans stating that that GM, Chrysler and Ford could always file Chapter 11 under the Bankruptcy Code and work their own way out of it. Brilliant!
In the meantime, while going through the legal machinations of the Bankruptcy Court (who might well decide there is no practical reorganization possible) what’s going to happen to the million or so employees of these companies? If the “Big 3” (I use the term loosely) haven’t got the funds to pay their workers before bankruptcy, they sure aren’t going to have the money to pay them after filing bankruptcy. Oh well, what’s another million people without jobs going to mean to our Senate? Obviously, Republicans simply don’t care.
Or maybe they do care: it seems that the most vociferous voices from the Senate opposing the bailout for Detroit are Senators from States that have Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hundai and Mercedes plants in their states. Their Senators do care…but not for this country.
Granted, Detroit has some major problems to overcome, not the least of which is the Automobile Workers’ Union: Unions, for all the good they did in the days when management was virtually enslaving workers, are really a very unnecessary evil today. A simple example:
Last year, Toyota sold 9,700.000 automobiles world-wide…and netted $17 billion in profits. Coincidentally, Detroit manufacturers also sold 9,700,000 cars last year…and lost almost $70 billion. Toyota pays their factory workers (non-union) $35 per hour (not a bad wage). Detroit (strictly union) pays their factory workers a minimum of $70 per hour.
I certainly don’t have a problem with automobile workers getting a better wage…but when it impacts the American economy in a negative fashion, there are some corrections to be made. Union supported wage earners are not the only problem: Executives at Toyota make from $250,000 to $2,000,000 per year. Executives at Gm have an average wage of more than $2,000,000 per year. This, too has to be corrected. Detroit spends billions of dollars per year on experimentation and new ideas. Toyota copies those ideas at pennies on the dollar. This, too has to be corrected.
A word about our banks and insurance companies: These companies were quick to accept bail-out money…but not one of them has done anything to help ease the economic crisis our country is going through. That’s what the bailout money was for. But our inept Treasurer, Henry Paulson, just dished out the money as fast as he could without telling the banks and insurance companies how to use it.
Bank of America received almost $100 Billion. How did they thank this country for their taxpayer money? They fired 35,000 employees!
Citi Bank received almost $100 Billion of the bailout money. How did they thank this country for their taxpayer bailout? They fired 63,000 employees!
One bank even had the blatant audacity to use our taxpayer money bailout to buy a bank in China for $9 Billion. Now that’s really going to help our economy.
AIG is so thoroughly corrupt that they have been spitting in the faces of the American taxpayers since receiving their bailout money.
This entire economic recession can be squarely based on the banks and other financial institutions who packaged and sold mortgage-backed securities. For Paulson to “reward” them as he has done is nothing short of “criminal”.
I don’t know how, but I really hope an Obama administration will put an end to this bold thievery by our banks and insurance companies, and an end to incompetent people who are sitting in Cabinet positions..
As I said, nobody asked me
By Stephen Ellis
NOBODY LOVES AN AUTOMOBILE MANUFACTURER
Nobody asked me, but…
Even with the verbal support of President-Elect Obama…even with a Democratic majority in the Senate...even with the support of Republican President George W. Bush…the United States Senate again displayed the corruption and “I don’t give a damn” attitude towards the citizens of this country. How I wish I could fire some of those Senators on the spot!
The Senate turned down what is the single most important thing the Bush Administration could have accomplished in eight years of inept, sloppy, slipshod leadership of this country. Maybe…just maybe there is still hope for the American Automobile Industry to get sufficient money to follow-through on the turnaround they’ve started. But for the failure of the proposed $15 Billion in loans, we can thank the Republican members of the Senate. I may never vote Republican again!
The Republican members of the Senate voted against the loans stating that that GM, Chrysler and Ford could always file Chapter 11 under the Bankruptcy Code and work their own way out of it. Brilliant!
In the meantime, while going through the legal machinations of the Bankruptcy Court (who might well decide there is no practical reorganization possible) what’s going to happen to the million or so employees of these companies? If the “Big 3” (I use the term loosely) haven’t got the funds to pay their workers before bankruptcy, they sure aren’t going to have the money to pay them after filing bankruptcy. Oh well, what’s another million people without jobs going to mean to our Senate? Obviously, Republicans simply don’t care.
Or maybe they do care: it seems that the most vociferous voices from the Senate opposing the bailout for Detroit are Senators from States that have Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hundai and Mercedes plants in their states. Their Senators do care…but not for this country.
Granted, Detroit has some major problems to overcome, not the least of which is the Automobile Workers’ Union: Unions, for all the good they did in the days when management was virtually enslaving workers, are really a very unnecessary evil today. A simple example:
Last year, Toyota sold 9,700.000 automobiles world-wide…and netted $17 billion in profits. Coincidentally, Detroit manufacturers also sold 9,700,000 cars last year…and lost almost $70 billion. Toyota pays their factory workers (non-union) $35 per hour (not a bad wage). Detroit (strictly union) pays their factory workers a minimum of $70 per hour.
I certainly don’t have a problem with automobile workers getting a better wage…but when it impacts the American economy in a negative fashion, there are some corrections to be made. Union supported wage earners are not the only problem: Executives at Toyota make from $250,000 to $2,000,000 per year. Executives at Gm have an average wage of more than $2,000,000 per year. This, too has to be corrected. Detroit spends billions of dollars per year on experimentation and new ideas. Toyota copies those ideas at pennies on the dollar. This, too has to be corrected.
A word about our banks and insurance companies: These companies were quick to accept bail-out money…but not one of them has done anything to help ease the economic crisis our country is going through. That’s what the bailout money was for. But our inept Treasurer, Henry Paulson, just dished out the money as fast as he could without telling the banks and insurance companies how to use it.
Bank of America received almost $100 Billion. How did they thank this country for their taxpayer money? They fired 35,000 employees!
Citi Bank received almost $100 Billion of the bailout money. How did they thank this country for their taxpayer bailout? They fired 63,000 employees!
One bank even had the blatant audacity to use our taxpayer money bailout to buy a bank in China for $9 Billion. Now that’s really going to help our economy.
AIG is so thoroughly corrupt that they have been spitting in the faces of the American taxpayers since receiving their bailout money.
This entire economic recession can be squarely based on the banks and other financial institutions who packaged and sold mortgage-backed securities. For Paulson to “reward” them as he has done is nothing short of “criminal”.
I don’t know how, but I really hope an Obama administration will put an end to this bold thievery by our banks and insurance companies, and an end to incompetent people who are sitting in Cabinet positions..
As I said, nobody asked me
Monday, December 8, 2008
OUR POOR AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLXVI
By Stephen Ellis
OUR POOR AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
Nobody asked me, but…
It is very doubtful, at this time, if anyone questions the fact that Obama plans to hit the Oval Office running. He has put together an incredibly diverse Cabinet filled with absolutely top qualifiers. In fact, the Obama Cabinet should be able to help this country get itself straightened out. Certainly it is a hundred times higher quality Cabinet than we have had in Washington for the last twenty or thirty years.
As good as this “Super-Cabinet” team is, there are very major problems facing them that need to be addressed quickly:
Let’s look at the facts concerning the automobile industry: This is America’s largest business. It used to control the world’s auto market, but its world control was interrupted by (first) the Japanese Toyota, then other Japanese cars, then the German cars, etc. The problem with the American automobile industry was that it had become stagnant. The cars they were selling were inferior to those being imported. Instead of rising to meet the new challenges, the top execs at Ford, GM and Chrysler wanted “business as usual”. The result was very foreseeable: The Japanese and German car manufacturers passed the American manufacturers and left them in their wake. By the time the American car manufacturers started to rise to meet the competition, American car sales had fallen well below the profitability mark and the U.S. auto industry was “in trouble”.
The U.S. auto manufacturers have (finally) gotten it together and started to make cars as good as…and even better than the imported competition. But they’ve run out of money. It will take years before the public confidence in American made cars starts to return.
So, what do we do?
The U.S. auto industry has come pleading to Congress for loans to give them the chance to rebuild and reestablish themselves as world leaders. Congress has been slow to act, and it’s hard to blame them for acting slowly. The automobile industry has to re-prove themselves. At least 90% of the top executives have to be set free (without golden parachutes) and the people who fought for and finally got the auto industry to start changing and catching-up should be the new leaders…but not with the multi-million dollar salaries and benefits the former executives had.
Most important: Our government has to establish a commission (not politicians, just business people) to oversee how the money is being spent! If the government just grants them the loans without oversight, the money will be flushed down the toilet with the other hundreds of billions the auto industry has wasted.
If you want to know what happens if there is no governmental oversight, just look at our banks. The “brilliant” Henry Paulson (Treasurer of the United States) gave half the $700,000,000,000 bailout money to the banks and the Wall Street firms on the theory that if the banks have a lot of money, it will ease credit and credit will be available to everyone…thus curing the recession. Paulson felt that no oversight was needed.
So what happened? Citi Bank fired 63,000 employees just before Xmas. Bank of America refused to give loans to automobile suppliers and thousands of other companies forcing them into bankruptcy with the loss of hundreds of thousands more jobs.
O.K. The banks got “fat”…but they’re keeping the money to themselves and not using it as it should be used. They’re doing absolutely nothing to help us dig our way out of the recession.
The automobile industry tells us that they don’t want a hand-out, they want “loans”. Interesting that although the banks are 200 billion richer, no bank will offer any auto manufacturer a loan. No Wall Street firm will underwrite any new financing.
Oversight is absolutely essential! Paulson is just too stupid to realize this. Of course the fact that he is a Bush appointee, makes his stupidity understandable.
If the U.S. automobile industry is allowed to collapse, not only will millions of jobs be lost; not only will all the suppliers of auto parts, auto interiors, tires, etc. collapse and be forced into bankruptcy. It is a “sure-bet” to turn our recession into a full-fledged “depression”.
Money has to be loaned to the auto industry…and the use of the funds has to be supervised.
There is still no creative or innovative factor like the American mind anyplace else in the world. The American initiative is still there. It’s going to be in Obama’s hands to give it the opportunity to re-assert itself.
By Stephen Ellis
OUR POOR AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY
Nobody asked me, but…
It is very doubtful, at this time, if anyone questions the fact that Obama plans to hit the Oval Office running. He has put together an incredibly diverse Cabinet filled with absolutely top qualifiers. In fact, the Obama Cabinet should be able to help this country get itself straightened out. Certainly it is a hundred times higher quality Cabinet than we have had in Washington for the last twenty or thirty years.
As good as this “Super-Cabinet” team is, there are very major problems facing them that need to be addressed quickly:
Let’s look at the facts concerning the automobile industry: This is America’s largest business. It used to control the world’s auto market, but its world control was interrupted by (first) the Japanese Toyota, then other Japanese cars, then the German cars, etc. The problem with the American automobile industry was that it had become stagnant. The cars they were selling were inferior to those being imported. Instead of rising to meet the new challenges, the top execs at Ford, GM and Chrysler wanted “business as usual”. The result was very foreseeable: The Japanese and German car manufacturers passed the American manufacturers and left them in their wake. By the time the American car manufacturers started to rise to meet the competition, American car sales had fallen well below the profitability mark and the U.S. auto industry was “in trouble”.
The U.S. auto manufacturers have (finally) gotten it together and started to make cars as good as…and even better than the imported competition. But they’ve run out of money. It will take years before the public confidence in American made cars starts to return.
So, what do we do?
The U.S. auto industry has come pleading to Congress for loans to give them the chance to rebuild and reestablish themselves as world leaders. Congress has been slow to act, and it’s hard to blame them for acting slowly. The automobile industry has to re-prove themselves. At least 90% of the top executives have to be set free (without golden parachutes) and the people who fought for and finally got the auto industry to start changing and catching-up should be the new leaders…but not with the multi-million dollar salaries and benefits the former executives had.
Most important: Our government has to establish a commission (not politicians, just business people) to oversee how the money is being spent! If the government just grants them the loans without oversight, the money will be flushed down the toilet with the other hundreds of billions the auto industry has wasted.
If you want to know what happens if there is no governmental oversight, just look at our banks. The “brilliant” Henry Paulson (Treasurer of the United States) gave half the $700,000,000,000 bailout money to the banks and the Wall Street firms on the theory that if the banks have a lot of money, it will ease credit and credit will be available to everyone…thus curing the recession. Paulson felt that no oversight was needed.
So what happened? Citi Bank fired 63,000 employees just before Xmas. Bank of America refused to give loans to automobile suppliers and thousands of other companies forcing them into bankruptcy with the loss of hundreds of thousands more jobs.
O.K. The banks got “fat”…but they’re keeping the money to themselves and not using it as it should be used. They’re doing absolutely nothing to help us dig our way out of the recession.
The automobile industry tells us that they don’t want a hand-out, they want “loans”. Interesting that although the banks are 200 billion richer, no bank will offer any auto manufacturer a loan. No Wall Street firm will underwrite any new financing.
Oversight is absolutely essential! Paulson is just too stupid to realize this. Of course the fact that he is a Bush appointee, makes his stupidity understandable.
If the U.S. automobile industry is allowed to collapse, not only will millions of jobs be lost; not only will all the suppliers of auto parts, auto interiors, tires, etc. collapse and be forced into bankruptcy. It is a “sure-bet” to turn our recession into a full-fledged “depression”.
Money has to be loaned to the auto industry…and the use of the funds has to be supervised.
There is still no creative or innovative factor like the American mind anyplace else in the world. The American initiative is still there. It’s going to be in Obama’s hands to give it the opportunity to re-assert itself.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Killing in the Name of God
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLXVBy Stephen EllisKILLING IN THE NAME OF GODNobody asked me, but…The recent terrorist attacks in Bombay, India (now called Mumbai) were, in my opinion, a perfect example of the evils of religious beliefs.
Of course, the group behind the India attacks is still, officially, unidentified. This is a little surprising since the attacks had all the earmarks of Al Queda. This is not to suggest that there are not other radical Islamist groups that truly believe that when they get killed, they will be sent to Muhammad’s version of Heaven and be rewarded with twelve virgins to satisfy all their sexual desires and hand feed them grapes.
Don’t laugh! This what millions of radical Islamists believe. This is not written into the Koran, but it is what the radical Islamist Clerics teach their followers.
So, they kill any “infidel” in their way, and they don’t care if they get killed. By the way, an “infidel” is anyone who does not accept Allah as their one God and Muhammad as his only prophet. It is written into the Koran (the Islamic Bible) that all infidels must be exterminated. So, when scholars and other people talk about Islam as a beautiful religion, there is a deep conflict.
This is not to suggest that all followers of Islam are crazed killers. Most Muslims are family people who want their children to grow up and become doctors or lawyers, get married, have children and live at peace with their neighbors. But that’s not what their Bible tells them to do. Their Bible insists they follow every word of it, including bowing down to Mecca six times a day. Many followers of Islam have become educated and don’t take the Koran’s words literally…and sometimes they are punished for it.
The Koran directs that law be construed under Sharia Law…the most barbaric set of laws in the world. i.e. A woman who engages in any sexual relations (not just intercourse) with someone not her husband, shall be buried up to her neck, and stoned to death by her neighbors. This is still enforced in many Islamic nations.
All Bibles contain absurd rules to be followed. i.e. The Jewish Bible (the Old Testament) says that it’s OK to sell your daughter (Exodus 21:7); that anyone who does not observe the Sabbath should be put to death (Exodus 35:2); that anyone who wears glasses to correct a sight defect may not approach the Alter of God (Leviticus 21:20). There is a lot more. Fortunately, most Jews have become educated and live in the real world and not the world of 5,000 years ago. But most Muslims (followers of Islam) have not been educated.
My point is that if you accept the written scriptures of any Bible as being the word of God…you have major problems. Bibles were written by man, not by God.
There is a famous axiom: More people have been killed in the name of God than from all wars combined.
When these radical Muslims attacked the Taj and the Oberoi hotels in Mumbai, they had no purpose…no motive…other than to kill people…of course, in the name of their God. This is the same basic philosophy of Al Queda. Their God justified the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because America is a nation of infidels…and pursuant to the Koran, all infidels must be killed. This is becoming a serious problem because the spread of Islam as a religion is growing. Muslims have just about taken over England with several areas of Great Britain now being controlled by Sharia Law and overriding the Common Law which England gave to the world. Muslims have become a major factor in Europe.
India is a predominantly Hindu population and Islam is a secondary religion… most believers in Islam moved to Pakistan when the two countries were separated in 1957: Pakistan was to be the Islamic State and India the Hindu State.
To me, it’s a shame when any religion breeds hatred for your fellow man rather than love.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Of course, the group behind the India attacks is still, officially, unidentified. This is a little surprising since the attacks had all the earmarks of Al Queda. This is not to suggest that there are not other radical Islamist groups that truly believe that when they get killed, they will be sent to Muhammad’s version of Heaven and be rewarded with twelve virgins to satisfy all their sexual desires and hand feed them grapes.
Don’t laugh! This what millions of radical Islamists believe. This is not written into the Koran, but it is what the radical Islamist Clerics teach their followers.
So, they kill any “infidel” in their way, and they don’t care if they get killed. By the way, an “infidel” is anyone who does not accept Allah as their one God and Muhammad as his only prophet. It is written into the Koran (the Islamic Bible) that all infidels must be exterminated. So, when scholars and other people talk about Islam as a beautiful religion, there is a deep conflict.
This is not to suggest that all followers of Islam are crazed killers. Most Muslims are family people who want their children to grow up and become doctors or lawyers, get married, have children and live at peace with their neighbors. But that’s not what their Bible tells them to do. Their Bible insists they follow every word of it, including bowing down to Mecca six times a day. Many followers of Islam have become educated and don’t take the Koran’s words literally…and sometimes they are punished for it.
The Koran directs that law be construed under Sharia Law…the most barbaric set of laws in the world. i.e. A woman who engages in any sexual relations (not just intercourse) with someone not her husband, shall be buried up to her neck, and stoned to death by her neighbors. This is still enforced in many Islamic nations.
All Bibles contain absurd rules to be followed. i.e. The Jewish Bible (the Old Testament) says that it’s OK to sell your daughter (Exodus 21:7); that anyone who does not observe the Sabbath should be put to death (Exodus 35:2); that anyone who wears glasses to correct a sight defect may not approach the Alter of God (Leviticus 21:20). There is a lot more. Fortunately, most Jews have become educated and live in the real world and not the world of 5,000 years ago. But most Muslims (followers of Islam) have not been educated.
My point is that if you accept the written scriptures of any Bible as being the word of God…you have major problems. Bibles were written by man, not by God.
There is a famous axiom: More people have been killed in the name of God than from all wars combined.
When these radical Muslims attacked the Taj and the Oberoi hotels in Mumbai, they had no purpose…no motive…other than to kill people…of course, in the name of their God. This is the same basic philosophy of Al Queda. Their God justified the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon because America is a nation of infidels…and pursuant to the Koran, all infidels must be killed. This is becoming a serious problem because the spread of Islam as a religion is growing. Muslims have just about taken over England with several areas of Great Britain now being controlled by Sharia Law and overriding the Common Law which England gave to the world. Muslims have become a major factor in Europe.
India is a predominantly Hindu population and Islam is a secondary religion… most believers in Islam moved to Pakistan when the two countries were separated in 1957: Pakistan was to be the Islamic State and India the Hindu State.
To me, it’s a shame when any religion breeds hatred for your fellow man rather than love.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
A MATTER OF CONFIDENCE
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLXIV
By Stephen Ellis
THE ECONOMIC ROLLER COASTER RIDE
Nobody asked me, but…
To a limited extent, you can count me among the people who do not fully understand the economic roller coaster ride we are on. One day the Dow Jones Average is down 500 points, the next day its up 500 points…one day Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he’s going o buy delinquent mortgages from the banks…the next day he says he already spent half of the $700 billion bailout…one day Paulson is flushing the banks with money, the next day major banks like Citi Bank are ready to be taken-over by government regulators…what’s really going on?
If there is one word that can best explain this whole thing, it’s “confidence”. The world has lost “confidence” in the American economy. To a very limited extent, this lack of “confidence” is justified because of the greedy and corrupt top management of many of our long-trusted firms. Frankly, I would love to see some the automobile industry’s top execs, some of Wall Street’s top execs, some of the banking industry’s top execs…rot in jail for what they’ve done to the American economy. More important, I’d really like to see George W. Bush and Dick Cheney rot in jail with them.
The keys to this economic debacle are Bush and Cheney. Bush appointed his Texas cronies to the most important positions in the world…and they proved they were totally incapable of handling the jobs. Rumsfeld was a disaster as Secretary of Defense and got us into the Iraq War. Colin Powell was good Secretary of State, but Bush fired him because Powell wouldn’t do everything Bush told him to do. So, Bush appointed his “yes-girl”, Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State. He appointed an unknowledgeable Ben Bernake to head the Federal Reserve. He appointed a totally incompetent, Henry Paulson, to be the Secretary of the Treasury. Bush appointed unqualified and inept people to head FEMA, the transportation system, the commerce system, national security, etc. And then, as a topping for the cake, Bush and Cheney took away anything that would regulate the economy and gave the greedy and corrupt free reign over absolutely everything.
Is it any wonder that our people have lost “confidence” in America?
It is a lack of “confidence” that is driving the economic roller-coaster. Most companies are showing much lower profits…but they’re still showing profits. Ridiculous as it may sound, the sub-base of our economy is still strong…but people don’t know where it’s headed. Because most companies don’t know what to expect from the economy, they’re playing-it-safe and cutting back the number of employees…thus creating greater unemployment. Greater unemployment means that people have less money to spend, so the economy is falling into a downward spiral.
Under Bush, banks could lend someone else’s money and make a profit. Banks would lend money for mortgages (improving the real estate market), then they would “pool” the mortgages, and sell the "pools" off to investment groups (maintaining a small servicing charge). The banks would get their money back from selling the "pools" of mortgages and were free to do this over and over again. To the banks and to the real estate market, this was great. But then, without regulations, banks started to get greedy and make loans to people who should not have gotten loans. “No money down”, etc.
It took longer than it should have, but investors who bought these pools of mortgages started to face the reality that a lot of them were not making payments. Most of the "no money down" home buyers had nothing to lose by handing their houses back to the bank or allowing them to be foreclosed upon. Many had borrowed second and third mortgages on overpriced homes. The Wall Street firms demanded the banks take the mortgages back. The banks refused and the market to buy pools of mortgages from banks dried-up overnight. This meant that banks were now stuck with a ton of mortgage pools they could not sell off...and would have to lend their own money, and not someone else’s money, for mortgages. So banks tightened up their credit requirements to a ridiculous pointand even legitimate borrowers couldn't afford the down-payment requirements lenders were now demanding. Houses stopped selling and the real estate market started sliding down.
Congress pushed through a $700 billion bailout bill to buy-up the foreclosed on mortgages. The whole idea behind the bailout was to take the bad debt away from the banks and encourage them to start lending on real estate and manufactured goods again. A good idea…but the inept Henry Paulson changed the plan: Now he wants to give cash to the banks and let them use it however they want. Without regulations, of course!
Which reminds me: Paulson had said that fully half of the $700 billion has already been spent. I’d like to know how, why and where it was spent…but Paulson isn’t telling.
And the automobile industry is crying the blues and saying that if the government doesn’t lend them 5 or 10 billion, the US automobile industry will collapse. Maybe, with the incompetence of their top executives, it deserves to collapse! While every car manufacturer in the world was gearing up to build smaller, more economically operating, cars, GM was building and promoting …the Hummer. If any money is loaned to our Big 3 auto makers, it should come with the caveat that all present execs are fired…without golden parachutes…and replaced with younger, innovative thinking.
Besides, what is the “American” automobile industry? The Big 3 are no longer the mainstay of the American automobile industry. Toyota of America builds and sells their cars here and the profits go to the American Toyota Corporation that hires lots of people to build the cars...here! Honda and Nissan do the same. Fifty percent of all Mercedes and BMW cars are built in America by American companies. If the Big 3 fail, their slack will be taken-up by the other car manufacturers. Jobs? Sure, there will be a lot of jobs lost…initially…but in very short order, the other car manufacturers will need to hire every available skilled worker. When money becomes more available, the American romance with the automobile will be reborn.
Will the Obama administration be able to straighten-out our economy? In all probability, yes. Just based on the quality of cabinet members selected so far, I’m guessing that an Obama administration will restore “confidence” in our economy. Just look at how the stock market has reacted to the naming of members of Obama’s Cabinet. Each new announcement has brought about a surge in stock prices. It’s not going to happen overnight, but just watch what a restoration of “confidence” in our economy will bring.
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
THE ECONOMIC ROLLER COASTER RIDE
Nobody asked me, but…
To a limited extent, you can count me among the people who do not fully understand the economic roller coaster ride we are on. One day the Dow Jones Average is down 500 points, the next day its up 500 points…one day Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says he’s going o buy delinquent mortgages from the banks…the next day he says he already spent half of the $700 billion bailout…one day Paulson is flushing the banks with money, the next day major banks like Citi Bank are ready to be taken-over by government regulators…what’s really going on?
If there is one word that can best explain this whole thing, it’s “confidence”. The world has lost “confidence” in the American economy. To a very limited extent, this lack of “confidence” is justified because of the greedy and corrupt top management of many of our long-trusted firms. Frankly, I would love to see some the automobile industry’s top execs, some of Wall Street’s top execs, some of the banking industry’s top execs…rot in jail for what they’ve done to the American economy. More important, I’d really like to see George W. Bush and Dick Cheney rot in jail with them.
The keys to this economic debacle are Bush and Cheney. Bush appointed his Texas cronies to the most important positions in the world…and they proved they were totally incapable of handling the jobs. Rumsfeld was a disaster as Secretary of Defense and got us into the Iraq War. Colin Powell was good Secretary of State, but Bush fired him because Powell wouldn’t do everything Bush told him to do. So, Bush appointed his “yes-girl”, Condoleeza Rice as Secretary of State. He appointed an unknowledgeable Ben Bernake to head the Federal Reserve. He appointed a totally incompetent, Henry Paulson, to be the Secretary of the Treasury. Bush appointed unqualified and inept people to head FEMA, the transportation system, the commerce system, national security, etc. And then, as a topping for the cake, Bush and Cheney took away anything that would regulate the economy and gave the greedy and corrupt free reign over absolutely everything.
Is it any wonder that our people have lost “confidence” in America?
It is a lack of “confidence” that is driving the economic roller-coaster. Most companies are showing much lower profits…but they’re still showing profits. Ridiculous as it may sound, the sub-base of our economy is still strong…but people don’t know where it’s headed. Because most companies don’t know what to expect from the economy, they’re playing-it-safe and cutting back the number of employees…thus creating greater unemployment. Greater unemployment means that people have less money to spend, so the economy is falling into a downward spiral.
Under Bush, banks could lend someone else’s money and make a profit. Banks would lend money for mortgages (improving the real estate market), then they would “pool” the mortgages, and sell the "pools" off to investment groups (maintaining a small servicing charge). The banks would get their money back from selling the "pools" of mortgages and were free to do this over and over again. To the banks and to the real estate market, this was great. But then, without regulations, banks started to get greedy and make loans to people who should not have gotten loans. “No money down”, etc.
It took longer than it should have, but investors who bought these pools of mortgages started to face the reality that a lot of them were not making payments. Most of the "no money down" home buyers had nothing to lose by handing their houses back to the bank or allowing them to be foreclosed upon. Many had borrowed second and third mortgages on overpriced homes. The Wall Street firms demanded the banks take the mortgages back. The banks refused and the market to buy pools of mortgages from banks dried-up overnight. This meant that banks were now stuck with a ton of mortgage pools they could not sell off...and would have to lend their own money, and not someone else’s money, for mortgages. So banks tightened up their credit requirements to a ridiculous pointand even legitimate borrowers couldn't afford the down-payment requirements lenders were now demanding. Houses stopped selling and the real estate market started sliding down.
Congress pushed through a $700 billion bailout bill to buy-up the foreclosed on mortgages. The whole idea behind the bailout was to take the bad debt away from the banks and encourage them to start lending on real estate and manufactured goods again. A good idea…but the inept Henry Paulson changed the plan: Now he wants to give cash to the banks and let them use it however they want. Without regulations, of course!
Which reminds me: Paulson had said that fully half of the $700 billion has already been spent. I’d like to know how, why and where it was spent…but Paulson isn’t telling.
And the automobile industry is crying the blues and saying that if the government doesn’t lend them 5 or 10 billion, the US automobile industry will collapse. Maybe, with the incompetence of their top executives, it deserves to collapse! While every car manufacturer in the world was gearing up to build smaller, more economically operating, cars, GM was building and promoting …the Hummer. If any money is loaned to our Big 3 auto makers, it should come with the caveat that all present execs are fired…without golden parachutes…and replaced with younger, innovative thinking.
Besides, what is the “American” automobile industry? The Big 3 are no longer the mainstay of the American automobile industry. Toyota of America builds and sells their cars here and the profits go to the American Toyota Corporation that hires lots of people to build the cars...here! Honda and Nissan do the same. Fifty percent of all Mercedes and BMW cars are built in America by American companies. If the Big 3 fail, their slack will be taken-up by the other car manufacturers. Jobs? Sure, there will be a lot of jobs lost…initially…but in very short order, the other car manufacturers will need to hire every available skilled worker. When money becomes more available, the American romance with the automobile will be reborn.
Will the Obama administration be able to straighten-out our economy? In all probability, yes. Just based on the quality of cabinet members selected so far, I’m guessing that an Obama administration will restore “confidence” in our economy. Just look at how the stock market has reacted to the naming of members of Obama’s Cabinet. Each new announcement has brought about a surge in stock prices. It’s not going to happen overnight, but just watch what a restoration of “confidence” in our economy will bring.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Monday, November 17, 2008
DEREGULATION
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLXIII
By Stephen Ellis
WHATS WRONG WITH DEREGULATION
Nobody asked me, but…
I doubt very much, no matter who you voted for, that there will be any disagreement as to the following:
1. John McCain has an excellent sense of humor. Those of us who saw him on Jay Leno’s “Tonight” show may wonder if he should be working as a stand-up comic. I don’t mean that in a negative way. His responses to Jay Leno’s questions were genuinely funny. Of course, they were intended to be funny, and it’s a tribute to the man who worked very hard to get elected and lost that he still maintains a a strong sense of humor.
2. Obama is already working very hard getting ready to become the President of the United States. If anyone thought that Obama was going to take a rest and relax after a grueling campaign, they were mistaken. I do not believe, in the seventy six years I’ve been alive, that I have ever seen a President-Elect work so hard at preparing his transition to take office as Barak Obama.
To me, this is a tribute to both candidates. Anyone who believes that either candidate would not have made a better president than George W. Bush, should not be wasting their time reading this blog because facts are meaningless to such people.
We are now engaged in a great economic turmoil. We can, understandably, cast the blame on the greed of some of Wall Street’s profiteers, and upon banks that made a profit center out of making money without lending their own money or upon insurance companies who took their safety reserves and invested them in questionable “derivatives” or to automobile manufacturing giants . More than anything else, we can cast the blame on the word “deregulation”. Personally, I hate regulations that make me do things in a certain way…but the fact is that there are a very high number of people who, if not regulated, have absolutely no conscience: they will rape and pillage everyone’s else’s economy, steal from the retirement accounts of hard-working people, etc.…just to fatten their own pockets. They will lie and artificially inflate the value of their company’s stocks to deceive the public. They make a mockery of the Securities Exchange Commission whose job it is to oversee them. So, as distasteful as it is, regulations are not only important, they are mandatory!
Plunderers like Michael Milkin, Gary Winnick, Lehman Brothers, Enron and Arthur Young always come out on top…while their investors are forced into bankruptcy. Usually, the investors are hard-working people who are trying to assure themselves of a decent retirement. It’s very difficult for someone who’s been on a salary all his/her life to set aside something for their later years after paying for their kids’ education, etc. So, many of these people believed the “hype” and TV ads about investments being secure…about real estate being better than money in the bank…about certified audits really being accurate…and invested their retirement accounts, their IRAs and their 401Ks with the plunderers.
Our Uncle Sam is our “Uncle” and not our “Dad”. The government should not be expected to step in and secure investments made foolishly or greedily. But, if there were strongly enforced regulations in place, the plunderers would not be able to entice unsophisticated investors into extremely sophisticated and risky schemes.
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
WHATS WRONG WITH DEREGULATION
Nobody asked me, but…
I doubt very much, no matter who you voted for, that there will be any disagreement as to the following:
1. John McCain has an excellent sense of humor. Those of us who saw him on Jay Leno’s “Tonight” show may wonder if he should be working as a stand-up comic. I don’t mean that in a negative way. His responses to Jay Leno’s questions were genuinely funny. Of course, they were intended to be funny, and it’s a tribute to the man who worked very hard to get elected and lost that he still maintains a a strong sense of humor.
2. Obama is already working very hard getting ready to become the President of the United States. If anyone thought that Obama was going to take a rest and relax after a grueling campaign, they were mistaken. I do not believe, in the seventy six years I’ve been alive, that I have ever seen a President-Elect work so hard at preparing his transition to take office as Barak Obama.
To me, this is a tribute to both candidates. Anyone who believes that either candidate would not have made a better president than George W. Bush, should not be wasting their time reading this blog because facts are meaningless to such people.
We are now engaged in a great economic turmoil. We can, understandably, cast the blame on the greed of some of Wall Street’s profiteers, and upon banks that made a profit center out of making money without lending their own money or upon insurance companies who took their safety reserves and invested them in questionable “derivatives” or to automobile manufacturing giants . More than anything else, we can cast the blame on the word “deregulation”. Personally, I hate regulations that make me do things in a certain way…but the fact is that there are a very high number of people who, if not regulated, have absolutely no conscience: they will rape and pillage everyone’s else’s economy, steal from the retirement accounts of hard-working people, etc.…just to fatten their own pockets. They will lie and artificially inflate the value of their company’s stocks to deceive the public. They make a mockery of the Securities Exchange Commission whose job it is to oversee them. So, as distasteful as it is, regulations are not only important, they are mandatory!
Plunderers like Michael Milkin, Gary Winnick, Lehman Brothers, Enron and Arthur Young always come out on top…while their investors are forced into bankruptcy. Usually, the investors are hard-working people who are trying to assure themselves of a decent retirement. It’s very difficult for someone who’s been on a salary all his/her life to set aside something for their later years after paying for their kids’ education, etc. So, many of these people believed the “hype” and TV ads about investments being secure…about real estate being better than money in the bank…about certified audits really being accurate…and invested their retirement accounts, their IRAs and their 401Ks with the plunderers.
Our Uncle Sam is our “Uncle” and not our “Dad”. The government should not be expected to step in and secure investments made foolishly or greedily. But, if there were strongly enforced regulations in place, the plunderers would not be able to entice unsophisticated investors into extremely sophisticated and risky schemes.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
MORALITY AND THE LAW CLXII
By Stephen Ellis
NOW IT’S ALL OBAMA’S PROBLEM
Nobody asked me, but…
Now that the election and the electioneering is over for another couple of years, let’s try and understand what really happened:
In my opinion, Obama did not win a “mandate” as almost every newspaper will allege. He did win a significant majority of the popular vote (approximately 5 million) compared to Bush winning a popular majority of 300,000 in 2004 and losing the popular vote by 200,000 to Al Gore in 2000. The electoral votes were no less impressive. But I do not believe that most people voted “for” Obama…I believe they voted “against” eight years of incredible mismanagement of George W. Bush and the lies and deception of Dick Cheney.
Never, in U.S. history has there been such a bad presidency as there has been with Bush. Nixon was more corrupt and Jimmy Carter was more ignorant. But together, Nixon and Carter did not equal the ineptitude of the Bush administration.
It took Bush eight years of gross mismanagement and stupidity to wreck the economy of the United States and the rest of the world. Please don’t expect Obama to restore it to its former glory in one or two years.
Obama could probably gain a lot from using people like me in his administration, but he will never ask me or the thousands of others who just want to help. Yet, the tasks facing him are no less than Herculean:
The first thing that his attention should be drawn to is the enormous loss of jobs in this country. Creation of new jobs should be his first effort. New jobs can be created by building high-speed rail and by conversion of our motor vehicles from petroleum to the far-less-expensive natural gas. This may only be an “interim” step in stopping our reliance on foreign oil, but until there are hydrogen pumps at every gas station across the country, natural gas is the least expensive and most practical “next-step”. Other projects such as nuclear reactors and huge de-salinezation plants could help solve water and power problems forever and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs
Many of the “institutions: that were created in the great Industrial Revolution are now crumbling. The government is going to have to step in with some major money to re-tool and re-think our “Big Three” auto manufacturers. The top management of these companies has to go and be replaced by younger, forward thinking, executives. Companies that have farmed-out hundreds of thousands of jobs to less-expensive nations have to be encouraged to bring those jobs back to America until the unemployment problems here, at home, are solved.
Credit must be loosened, but with specific restraints: Home mortgages should be made available and cheap…but with a minimum requirement of a ten-percent down payment. Automobile loans should have the same type of regulation on them. The “no money down” and no-payments-for-years credit panacea has to be brought back to reality.
Tax breaks given to some of the richest companies in the world have to be stopped immediately. The oil depletion allowance for oil companies keeps almost a hundred billion dollars a year from being taxed must be ended.
I do not believe anything can stop the lobbying system in Washington, but more strict penalties have to be enforced to prevent our elected officials from accepting gifts and other gratuities from lobbying firms and repaying them with pork-barrel spending.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must be brought under fiscal control and ended. Maybe Iraq and Afghanistan will have some problems as a result, but it’s their countries…let them solve the problems and not us. The USA is not the world’s policeman. We would be more helpful to the world stopping mass slaughters in Sudan and Congo than “policing” Iraq.
Wall Street speculators have to stand or fall on their own without government help. Deregulation must be ended in order to save these firms from their own greed. Retirement accounts of individuals, like IRAs and 401Ks should be insured by the FDIC (or an offshoot of the FDIC), the premiums for which must be paid by the Wall Street Firm.
The disgrace of the USA’s medical and drug system should be brought up to the level of the rest of the world where medicine and drugs are available at very low prices. Sure the government will have to subsidize this, but the money the government would save on Bush’s wars would more than cover the subsidy.
There are other problems facing Obama, and the suggestions I’ve made are only “stop-gaps”. As the USA returns to profitability, many of these somewhat socialistic programs can be ended and the USA return to a successful capitalistic system. But right now, the government has to step-in and stop these continuing abuses.
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
NOW IT’S ALL OBAMA’S PROBLEM
Nobody asked me, but…
Now that the election and the electioneering is over for another couple of years, let’s try and understand what really happened:
In my opinion, Obama did not win a “mandate” as almost every newspaper will allege. He did win a significant majority of the popular vote (approximately 5 million) compared to Bush winning a popular majority of 300,000 in 2004 and losing the popular vote by 200,000 to Al Gore in 2000. The electoral votes were no less impressive. But I do not believe that most people voted “for” Obama…I believe they voted “against” eight years of incredible mismanagement of George W. Bush and the lies and deception of Dick Cheney.
Never, in U.S. history has there been such a bad presidency as there has been with Bush. Nixon was more corrupt and Jimmy Carter was more ignorant. But together, Nixon and Carter did not equal the ineptitude of the Bush administration.
It took Bush eight years of gross mismanagement and stupidity to wreck the economy of the United States and the rest of the world. Please don’t expect Obama to restore it to its former glory in one or two years.
Obama could probably gain a lot from using people like me in his administration, but he will never ask me or the thousands of others who just want to help. Yet, the tasks facing him are no less than Herculean:
The first thing that his attention should be drawn to is the enormous loss of jobs in this country. Creation of new jobs should be his first effort. New jobs can be created by building high-speed rail and by conversion of our motor vehicles from petroleum to the far-less-expensive natural gas. This may only be an “interim” step in stopping our reliance on foreign oil, but until there are hydrogen pumps at every gas station across the country, natural gas is the least expensive and most practical “next-step”. Other projects such as nuclear reactors and huge de-salinezation plants could help solve water and power problems forever and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs
Many of the “institutions: that were created in the great Industrial Revolution are now crumbling. The government is going to have to step in with some major money to re-tool and re-think our “Big Three” auto manufacturers. The top management of these companies has to go and be replaced by younger, forward thinking, executives. Companies that have farmed-out hundreds of thousands of jobs to less-expensive nations have to be encouraged to bring those jobs back to America until the unemployment problems here, at home, are solved.
Credit must be loosened, but with specific restraints: Home mortgages should be made available and cheap…but with a minimum requirement of a ten-percent down payment. Automobile loans should have the same type of regulation on them. The “no money down” and no-payments-for-years credit panacea has to be brought back to reality.
Tax breaks given to some of the richest companies in the world have to be stopped immediately. The oil depletion allowance for oil companies keeps almost a hundred billion dollars a year from being taxed must be ended.
I do not believe anything can stop the lobbying system in Washington, but more strict penalties have to be enforced to prevent our elected officials from accepting gifts and other gratuities from lobbying firms and repaying them with pork-barrel spending.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must be brought under fiscal control and ended. Maybe Iraq and Afghanistan will have some problems as a result, but it’s their countries…let them solve the problems and not us. The USA is not the world’s policeman. We would be more helpful to the world stopping mass slaughters in Sudan and Congo than “policing” Iraq.
Wall Street speculators have to stand or fall on their own without government help. Deregulation must be ended in order to save these firms from their own greed. Retirement accounts of individuals, like IRAs and 401Ks should be insured by the FDIC (or an offshoot of the FDIC), the premiums for which must be paid by the Wall Street Firm.
The disgrace of the USA’s medical and drug system should be brought up to the level of the rest of the world where medicine and drugs are available at very low prices. Sure the government will have to subsidize this, but the money the government would save on Bush’s wars would more than cover the subsidy.
There are other problems facing Obama, and the suggestions I’ve made are only “stop-gaps”. As the USA returns to profitability, many of these somewhat socialistic programs can be ended and the USA return to a successful capitalistic system. But right now, the government has to step-in and stop these continuing abuses.
As I said…nobody asked me.
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