The media often has a double play on events. They can be both the “Builder and The Wrecking Ball”.
This is not the first time we have seen 6, 7 and 8 children being born at a time from fertility doctors. In the past, the media has served a public purpose when these quadruplets and above were of natural birth. The media attention to them attracts corporate sponsors with help in the form of free products and money.
It is expensive enough to raise just one child. I see reports that the cost of raising these 8 will be over a million a year. True or not, I think we can agree that it is likely to be more than 3 times the income of the average family where both spouses work and would still only have a minimal quality of life.
So lets be blunt about this and just state what’s easily seen.
A woman with six kids, no job and no money embarked on a marketing play using the media (in builder mode) and those that would “help”, to gain personally from all the help that is provided by both the public and public assistance.
The doctor(s) involved are directly responsible morally but not legally. To their defense, there is no pre-requisite to having the ability to raise children as a test to preform fertility procedures. If there was, there would be three times more law suites than doctors currently contend with. That is not to say that any are not justified.
The government can’t make a rule here without stirring-up the Liberals on the Left or the Churches and Religion on the Right. And to add insult to injury, they all agree this is wrong and something needs to be done to prevent it in the future.
No easy answers for anyone.
Now that the media is in “wrecking ball” mode, what about these 8 newborns. They do deserve a decent life as it is not their fault that their mother has brought them into this world in a troubling way that is sure to haunt them for the rest of their life as the media will surely follow their lives from now on.
Those that would tell you, “you can not legislate morality” are wrong. They just do not want to be the ones to do it. It is a political cop-out for politically sensitive issues. It is morally wrong to kill but we have laws for that even though many states find it moot and are involved in it themselves.
Perhaps the states should take the issue up as it is unlikely the Federal Government will.
These are opposing forces that have a magnetic attraction for each other.
There can be no “TRUST” without enforceable “RULES”
I think the statements above are easily understood and can stand on their own very well without disagreement.
First the Big Old Moot News Story On The Banks
History is repeating itself 100 years later, only the names have changed and one key player switched positions.
Before you click the coming link, please know that Morgan Stanly has in our history, been the Saviour of Wall Street more than a few times but was the key big player in banking investments in the Oil Futures Market that helped drive up the cost of energy worldwide, creating a recession and later its own demise of banking failure because of the futures it held in the oil market as the price collapsed. They would not be the only bank involved that actually handled or hoarded “some” of the oil as a commodity not just as a paper promise to be leveraged. It is a liability that should have been weighed on the fractional reserve bank system rules if they still exist.
Please read this wikipedia.com history of “The Bankers Panic Of 1907”
I do not find it amusing that the rules created from that mess were taken off the books in 2003 by our Congress( promoted by lobbyist for the banking industry)
and resulted in the same mess all over again in a very short time. The only thing still standing from the remedies of 1908 is the Federal Reserve.
Now to relate this to what is still happening but with the assistance of your taxpayer dollars.
A method of Hoarding Oil in tankers offshore to make a profit between the difference in spot price and future price of oil known as “CONTANGO”.
Please Read Wikipedia.com definition of “Contango”
Now you can quickly see that if one tanker that can hold 50 million barrels can sit and wait at hardly any cost till a profit can be made around 3 dollars per barrel that the net profit would be $150,000,000 per tanker. Morgan Stanly actually has storage facilities to store more than several tankers on shore plus what ever the tie-up in tankers sitting off shore.
And there is now a shortage of tankers as they all sit off shore holding oil waiting for prices to go up or the contango spread to increase.
Now this still is not to mention how this causes a mis-report of the actual inventory reports that the government and industry use to gage “supply and demand” that has an immediate effect on oil spot and future prices. So the contango spread can be induced by the banks.
Yes the banks are still at it ! And Morgan Stanly owns half of Heidmar Inc., a company that operates oil tankers on behalf of groups of owners, hopes to make money in the bet that the stimulus package will cause an upswing in the consumption and price of oil 2q or 3q of 2009 from States portion of the spending.
Well if they are wrong they will most likely just bid-up future oil contracts as they have for the last 4-5 years. If thats not enough or they do not have enough money to push the oil futures up, the taxpayers will have to come to the rescue again or the bank will crumble with the falling price of oil. Just a repeat event.
As if they have not learned from the same mistakes felt just last year. Well its now your money at risk so why shouldn’t they?
Gee it’s not funny anymore that we the taxpayers don’t get a chance to make anything on the upside, only the downside.
What the hell is up with that? They should be charged with market manipulation with taxpayer dollars. If everything else is legal, that one should “stick”.
It is strictly a Lie when Citigroup’s CEO sat on national TV and told us that they were returning to banking products only. They would not play non-banking product investments again. But here they are doing it again.
I finally found a web post that explains this better than myself but they are calling the current spot/future spread a “SUPER CONTANGO”
More on Money and Lies
The object for Lies is for someone to get at or keep your Money. Lets state some samples just in the case “you don’t get it”.
Our Bank is Solvent but we can’t lend any money.(more profit to be made in non-bank products like futures of oil contracts)
We do not use our investors or depositors money in a hidden way to play markets. (we finance those who do and we may own all or part of them)
The bail-out money was not used to buy other banking companies or pay bonuses to executives.(we had enough money for that but it would break us to pay it)
Congress told us to make loans to those with a lower credit score(but in the process we stopped using the Freddie & Fannie lending standard and make loans to folks that had no provable income and package it with a low variable interest rate that was only initially affordable and sold them to other investment firms and hedge funds).
Naturally, the banks do not say it in a way that is a lie, just a incomplete truth. So are they lying or misleading you for more of your money?
But you can find these lies everyday even when you shop or see advertisements. Here are some samples.
We froze the cost of energy to help you (you did not know the price was going down, so we are holding the price up to make more profits)
100% whole wheat bread (does not mean it is whole grain, if it was whole grain it would say that)
Cranberry Juice – 100% real juice (only has to contain 1% to be cranberry juice so what else is in there…100% juice of some kind)
Pancake Syrup is not Maple Syrup but Corn Syrup. If it had even 1% maple syrup, it could and would be called that.
Of course the above are not lies, just mis-leading information. The same stuff that the cooperate world says to congress and the public when they write this stuff.
Congress does not even have a clue how the economic system works. They have to rely on other folks that at least say they understand it. The experts whose name you may never hear could be just misleading them and us for the money.
Because there are still some rules on the books to prevent much of the lies we don’t see, advertising has to be misleading for which there are hardly any rules that apply here.
The Moot Point here is that when they tell you we have too many rules and red tape that need to be relaxed or we need to re-write the rules. Yes it would be a lie that they are doing it in your interest but they don’t say it that way so its only mis-leading. They (the folks that lobby for it) want easier access to your money and they want to get at it even easier. They know better than you what to do with it to create jobs or whatever it is that you want to hear today.
Creating rules and regulations is no small task. It is not cheap for the government to do nor cheap for Businesses to follow. So in short, they would not have been created but for a need that existed. I site three main reasons that sometimes are inter-related.
1- To stop consumers from being cheated or discriminated against.
2- To protect the company(s) that lobbied for them.
3- To protect the nation against foreign interest.
Personally, I find that the second one has been the most troubling. It has been the result of what you now see by removing the rules from the Banks and Wall Street.
To make matters worse, by not providing enough funding for enforcement over the years, the government has been inept to do anything with the rules that remain on the books. Unless you are blind, you can clearly see this in the risk of our food supplies that have been getting worse not better.
Can you see this getting better anytime soon as the next several years attention and resources will be spent just stabilizing the economy.
I mean to say they are not putting out the fire now but making the fire a manageable disaster. If it all works we will begin the work of clean-up… thats paying the money back…. you don’t really think we will have the ability to pay this back do you? Most likely we will have trouble servicing the interest on the money.
So once again, we will have to fight and spend money and time to replace rules that have been either removed or amended to allow them to be side-stepped by perhaps only a choice few that lobbied for them. These play out the most after laws are passed and and the final wording is made in a sub-committee. This is how many loop-holes are created by use of vague or carefully crafted language. So it will not be enough for you to get laws back on the books but you will have to follow it through until the final wording is made.
The stimulus package does not contain final wording but is only a framework of how much to spend and on what general items. By the time it is worded, it will surely contain much of the pork that was not in there when it started out. So not a lie at the time, just mis-leading. I sure money will be spent for items nobody was asking for. Each Congressman has a beneficiary in their district they want to splash with your money to keep the funds coming for re-election. That would be an unspoken truth. This time the final word will play-out in the states where some, in the absence of a SHOVEL READY PROJECT, are being created with certain benefit as you read this.
I think for the fastest action, the states should pick-up the short term slack. Where the State Governments are unable to act because of corporate influence, the people are going to have to create their own ballot issues to make changes. Ohio was one of many states that capped the interest rate a credit card company could charge at 21%. I am not sure there is a cap now as I have seen some folks statements with as much as 36% not being in arrears… yet. And 18-26% for folks that have credit scores in the mid 700’s is a norm. This is a positive area we can re-regulate for the consumer.
California is notorious for enacting legislation alone but the one big problem for California acting alone is that Corporate America will easily play one state against the other so the one that stands out will lose as it did with energy issues. It must be a concerted effort by many states. That is the democracy we think we still have or is made Moot by Wall Street also.
There is a very traceable money connection of the banking committees in Congress and the banks we are bailing so I tell you this…
You will not get an appropriate change if you do not raise your voice in protest. Let them know you are aware.
Write your Congressman, Write your local papers letter to editor, write your favorite blog, hold a protest sign at your county seat, state house or Washington, DC
If you do not place pressure on the elected officials, you just will have no idea where this will go until it is too late!
This is not to say I have no faith in getting the banking system working again, just who is able to walk away with most of the money in the end is the real issue.
We can be very sure that the Banks have had plenty of time to cook the books before the fed’s come to see them so we really may not have a good provable picture as to what they have been up to.
I won’t win a Nobel Prize in economics for my non-secret formula like the folks had for predicting the market (that was so flawed) but here it is… Money + Greed = Lies
(Rules – Lies) + (Enforcement – Lies) = Trust
Money – Trust = Moot Money
The Wild Fires in Australia sound very familiar to me
I was a bit surprised to hear that they believe they caught an arsonist in the recent fires in Australia. I was expecting to hear an environmentalist claim more evidence of global warming. Good for them !
Well, this is what is said in every recent wild fire in California.
When really it is most likely they were started by a arsonist who could not pay his/her mortgage and a wildfire would be a very nice cover for it.
You only need to wait for the Santa Anna Winds.
Problem is, you can not stop what you start most especially when the conditions are so right, it makes it even more difficult to prove any wrong doing.
It is the perfect crime and it helps the arsonist that someone will blame it on carbon dioxide.
In any case it is quite a shame the loss of life and property. Best wishes to those affected. Shame to be dammed for poor discretion of a few.
So You Don’t want to nationalized Banks,
You may be better off getting a loan with the local loan shark. Oh…
Your credit card interest rate is now 26% (did you read the fine print)
I keep hearing “when confidence returns” or “when trust is restored”. That is not what will get us out of this.
What will, I am ashamed to admit, is what got us into it… GREED !
Yes greed is what got us into this mess any only greed will get us out. When the stingy bankers who keep a tight fist on our taxpayer bail-out dollars think they can safely make a buck, they will lend it. There is a bunch of capitol sitting there waiting for the dust to settle before investment. The quicker you get the dust to settle, the faster it is to see good investment opportunities. The uncertainty of the condition of the banks is holding many things up. It could be that the banks are really taking the taxpayer for a longer harder ride now they have a fresh horse.
.I do not think they will stop until they know there is no more money coming from the taxpayer.
Most of the public does not want to see the banks be nationalized and understanding the reason for the concern, I would not normally want to see this either but
the bailout for the banking industry is not nationalizing, at least yet. At this point the government is just a shareholder in the banks. but if things do not work-out, I have no problem with at least taking all of shareholder value (not bond holders) into public trust. Nobody can agree on what the proper solution is but if the government has a complete look at the books, I’m sure we will get a solution much quicker than not. If things do not work out, we will have no choice but to fully nationalize, and at that point will be wishing we had done it right from the start to get a clean house, or at least one we know where the dirt is.
Once they get these band-aid solutions in place, we will just have to wait and see how they work out.
But while we wait, I can only suggest a re-making of the entire credit standard from the ground up with plenty of rules and regs to follow.
A Wish List to include:
A government made standard (or limits) to credit score and items that affect score.
A interest range for scores in ranges.
A maximum interest rate for any loan and loans in default ( loans in default could only charge higher for amounts in default).
Variable interest rates that are not strictly tied to prime rate should be forbidden (no other variance shall be allowed).
Banks may not invest in non banking products inside or out of the U.S.
With the current crisis in the mend, I don’t think you will see any credit card reform coming from the federal government anytime soon but I think the people in each of the states should start lobbying their own proposals for law. State Ballot issues from the voters are the path to follow here.
The fact that we are not truly nationalizing the banks, at this point may, in the very near future, be very MOOT NEWS to us all !
Obama has first meeting with press and America to re-start economic package.
First time I have seen the new President a bit nervous but understandably so.
I am sure the Republicans do have to at least leave an impression to their conservative supporters that they are doing their job bucking the liberals but with a little added pressure from the President and perhaps now the public, this will be short lived. It is just a political “save of face” just like the Democrats seeded the package with items to be “delt-out” as a compromise.
If this were not the case, I can’t imagine why when I listen to many Republican leaders talking on the Sunday news shows say that they agree with many or most of the spending measures but point out some (one or two) items that are just beyond their morals to consider working out a compromise.
I also do not see any counter proposals on the table as they do not want any more blame for things than they now own.
In looking at this a bit different, one should quickly say “why not just have 3 parts to the bill”.
Part 1 – what you both agree on now.
Part 2 – Items that at least 50% of the Republicans want (that Democrats can live with).
Part 3 – Items the Democrats want (that they can pass with there own majority).
Pass part 1 right away ! Argue the other 2 for a month.
Probably never happen but a good idea if you are promoting reaching across the isle.
In any case, I like the President, want to see something happen even if it is wrong.
I am more interested in rapidly reversing all legislation that opened the door to all this outside investment and banks investing in non-banking products (oil futures and the like) and merger activity.
I can’t think any spending that lowers our consumption of foreign oil is a bad move if, in the process you create a tax-paying job that also creates a product here and now in the U.S.
This package still may only save us from going to a point of “no return” and that is something that we hopefully will never know. There will be no victor but hopefully no failure. Until the world adjusts from over production and the U.S. from corporate corruption, this is how it will be.
It may be Moot but at this point we have only seen the beginning of the results of the hank-panky from the last 15 years.
It does scare me even more to think if the world economy does not stabilize, we may see many more wars that we can not afford at this or any point in history.
Obama has the power to make one of these come true,
But Congress will most likely trump the final outcome…
President Obama is in a unique position as no other President has had in our lifetime.
What is so unique is the fact that he was not part of the political machine on the left, they backed Mrs Clinton, or the political machine on the right, they backed Mr McCain as he was not very keen on them but McCain had learned at this point in his political career, he could not totally ignore them as he had in the past as they hold half the keys, so yes, he sold-out to them in the last 3 or 4 years because the money and control of certain right wing groups and talking heads that seem to have control of much public opinion. Yes the machine on the right is much more organized than the left but I find it most amusing that neither had won the day at least in the Presidency!
So the machines will continue to thrive in the Congress where all legislation starts and most often ends anyway. I for one wonder if the new President will have the BALLS to call them out by name when the normal add-ons to legislation, such things as earmarks and other fine print rewording of intended legislation are concerned. The US Senate still has not dealt with the “earmark issue” in any form of real transparency. Any legislation, no matter how much good its original intent when passed, can turn into a monster that was never intended because most issues are passed in principle and not actual wording. The work of the wording is done in a committee or subcommittee and often has poison pills placed in it not easily recognized at the time. These carefully placed and worded extras benefit one or both political machines like hidden tax loopholes and exemptions for certain corporates and yes earmarks for money for things nobody is really asking for. Once located in the legislation, they can be easily traced in the form of campaign fund contribution of a party or political official. Problem is, not everyone can spot them at first glance. If discovered, this tends to give Presidents or Congressmen who originally asked for the legislation a bad name for the outcome of it even though the final product is not the original intention.
I for one believe if Obama does not call them out by name for this hanky-panky, that the statement to be true is “The End” for all of us as there is not enough money in the world to keep this economy floating as it has for the last 15 years.
Yes, his jobs program to build/rebuild infrastructure is a much better plan than a check in the mail as it generates tax revenue along with needed things unlike those rebate checks that hardly cycled through the economy once before getting back in the hands of the folks who lent it to us in the first place.
Good or bad, all spending bills must start in the House of Representatives so if you wish to see a spectacle, try downloading one of these spending bills when proposed, then after the final wording is done.
Will the Congress waste this borrowed sum…? Its your borrowed money, you, your kids and grandkids will need to repay it so Please watch it closely.
No matter how optimistic looking anyone can paint the picture to get folks spending again,
this time it does require the “real thing”!
It seems to me it said “We The People” not “We the Corporations” or is that really moot?
Nothing says it better than the NBC SNL Skit