The One Percent:

Poncho, your efforts to stereotype everyone else but yourself is your main problem. You are just as deep in the box as those you rail against. Doesn't solve any problems to find a demon under every rock, nor does it help to cast a vote "against" one of the two primary political parties, for a vote against is as good as a vote for, depending on how the vote is split.

I guess that you are actually a run of the mill libertarian, and probably just love Ron Paul. Or is it worse than that?

 

People don't vote for unemployed conspiracy theorists that live in their parent's basement.

 

Waiting for someone to explain

Why should the top1% (or 5%) want or need a large middle class? They already own and control most of everything worth owning. If I was them I would put us in our place so that we KNOW we are the new industrial serfs.

The only purpose of a robust fiat money economy is to speed the transfer of hard assets from the working class serfs to our owners and the job is almost done. There is NO logical reason for the 1% to want the US economy to recover.

 

And what exactly, pray tell, do you think our government has been doing over the last 2 years with all its work to increase our dependence on government "help"?!?

 

http://peoplesworld.org/occupy-movement-can-win-with-nonviolence/

http://www.peoplesworld.org/what-does-the-u-s-working-class-look-like-these-days/

http://cpusa.org/save-the-nation-tax-corporations-tax-the-rich/

http://cpusa.org/communist-party-heralds-occupy-wall-street-movement/

http://www.cpusa.org/party-program/

 

Running for public office is the opiate of the people.

 

The way I see it (at least from this side of the Pond:smilewinkgrin:

1. The banks got themselves into difficulty in the last decade by gambling with other people's money and by lending to those who could not afford to repay (granted, those borrowers also have some responsibility, but the bankers should have known better).

2. When the banking system fell off the inevitable cliff in 2007-8, taxpayers' (our) money was used to pay for their mistakes and most of the banks were at least part-nationalised.

3. Despite the massive corporate welfare represented by #2, most of the bailed-out banks continued and in some cases continue to perform badly.

4. Despite the taxpayer-funded bailout of #2, banks now refuse and continue to refuse to lend - both to individual...er...taxpayers and to businesses owned by...er...taxpayers.

5. Despite #1 to #4 above, bankers continue to trouser obscene levels of bonuses.

It's against that kind of background that the Tobin Tax (which won't work unfortunately) has been proposed and that also explains the - rightful IMO - anger of the 'Occupy' protests.

 

This is exactly correct with the exception that the banks were forced to lend this money to them by our government. It is the law.

 

Really??! We don't have that kind of law over here (wish we did with the nationalised ones at least!).

 

Considering the law created this mess I would avoid it.

 

The banks should not have been bailed out.

Both parties to any bad loans should have suffered the consequences of their decisions.

If the banks had not been bailed out the dust would probably be well settled on this issue by now.

The strong banks would still be in the lending business and the poorly managed banks would have gone through bankruptcy.

The bad mortgages would have been identified by now and the investor market would have bought them at their real value.

 

Targus, were the banks not forced, by law, to make these loans? Does that not place the responsibility on the idiot government that forced this on the banks?

 

And which administration passed this law?

 

If both the lenders and the people borrowing had stuck with making and accepting true statements then the problem would have been much smaller.

Overstated property values and overstated incomes are largely responsible for the bad loans.