AIG

[sugarpop]

Capitalism is clearly broken, and I have a feeling at the G20 summit coming up, all hell is going to rain down on the priciple because we have not kept it in check, thanks to the greedy assholes at the top. Frankly, I HOPE we have to rethink the way our pay scale works in this country because of all of this. We are not going to be the leaders anymore if we don't. We aren't going to be able to push everyone around anymore. If this happens, we can thank Wall Street for bringing about the demise of capitalism. heh.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Capitalism is clearly broken, and I have a feeling at the G20 summit coming up, all hell is going to rain down on the priciple because we have not kept it in check, thanks to the greedy assholes at the top. Frankly, I HOPE we have to rethink the way our pay scale works in this country because of all of this. We are not going to be the leaders anymore if we don't. We aren't going to be able to push everyone around anymore. If this happens, we can thank Wall Street for bringing about the demise of capitalism. heh.

We were never capitalist to begin with. We are a mixed capitalist-socialist economy and have been for a while.

Capitalist theory is as idealistic as Communism.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

We were never capitalist to begin with. We are a mixed capitalist-socialist economy and have been for a while.

Capitalist theory is as idealistic as Communism.

I know. I just said that because so many people in this country actually still believe it.

Something I heard this morning on Morning Joe that, if true, just boggles the mind. According to him (and I don't know where he got the information) EVERY MORTGAGE IN AMERICA could have been paid off with a cool 12.3 billion dollars. 12.3 BILLION. And now we've spent, what, a couple of trillion? And how much will it end up costing when this is all over? Jesus, if that is true, we have made some very, serious, mistakes. Since the crisis started with mortgages, maybe if we had done that, we could have slowed it enough to deal with it better, and it wouldn't have cost so much. Maybe if just did that now, we could stop having to inject so much money into these other things. How much did we give Fannie and Freddie? A lot more than that. Was it really necessary? Now I am wondering.

Redux, I think we need to stop with the spending on financial markets and start focusing on other things, like infrastructure, green technology and health care. We need a serious investigation into who the players were who were auctioning off our security while they got rich. Those people need to be prosecuted. Apparently, according to some reports I've seen, serious, outright fraud was going on, and so many people just looked the other way because they were making money. Even if those people didn't break the law, they were certainly complicit, and maybe those people should be barred from being in those kinds of jobs in the future. We need very strong regulations put back in place, stronger than what Geitner is calling for I believe, and we need to work out some kind of system where the people overseeing these industries do not have some kind of conflict of interest going on. The relationships between these people is too incestuous. And we need some kind of guidelines about executive pay.

We also need to bring back some of our manufacturing base. It's sickening to me how many people are whining about executives not getting their bonuses and Wagoner being fired and complaining about contracts being broken, but they think it's just fine the unions are having to make concessions and blue collar workers are having their contracts ripped up. The middle class is the backbone of America, but there is a very serious difference in how they being treated, as opposed to executives. Those who shower before work are being treated with kid gloves, when they are the ones responsible for this crisis, while those who shower after work are having their guts ripped out, and they had nothing to do with it. It really is not fair, at all. Our values are so misplaced it's scary.