Government Intervention

Saved the banks and big business from Depression...

Causing a Depression among the average person.

We are now into the fourth year since the real estate bubble crashed in 2007 causing the Federal government to intervene and "save" the financial institutions that were "too big to fail." The result has been that the major banks and financial institutions and Wall Street are not feeling the effects of the damage they originally caused but the average person is. Unemployment is still too high, the inflation caused by the printing of money and government debt are causing hardship in the general population but not among those in the financial world. The end result is not that the taxpayer is going to be overly burdened but that our government is technically insolvent and could quite possibly go bankrupt.

The scandal of this is that so far they have gotten away with it. It is my belief that the bad news is this will lead to the decline of our currency and an inevitable market crash. The good news is it will cause us as a people to do something to rid ourselves of the political and business class that colluded to put us in this position. We have been hijacked by the very people we entrusted with our government by electing people not acting in our best interests. This specifically applies to the Federal government, meaning the Congress and the President of the United States. It is useless to argue whether it "was Bush's fault" or "Obama is killing our country." The fact is that this started decades ago, exacerbated by the second Clinton term, during both of Bush's terms and continued by Obama. One could argue to go back further but our current condition is the result of efforts since the '92-'93 recession in Clinton's term.

We are here now and we must restore ourselves.

Regardless of how we got here, we are here now and it is up to us, the American people as engaged citizens and voters, to resolve the situation. This will not be easy as people entrenched in power neither give up easily and have the resources to fight back in ways too evil to consider in this discussion. The real truth is we are more likely to suffer an economic collapse before we can reasonably and responsibly resolve the situation by political means. How this will play out cannot be said for certain but the people responsible for getting us here are not going to stop until there is economic fallout of epic proportions that will end in the repudiation of debt.

The bottom line is that most Americans are in stressful economic conditions while the perpetrators are not feeling the effects of what they've done since they solved their immediate problem by colluding to keep printing money until it is worthless. It will take one economic domino for the rest of it to fall and when it does they will feel the effects. That is when we need to be concerned with their reaction and intentions.

We still have a chance to restore our country to "we the people."

In the mean time the best that the average forgotten man can do is maintain the best they can and remain as optimistic as possible and above all be prepared to fight back. What fighting back means is an open question but I do not believe with our history, form of government and the US Constitution, that means the government will be allowed or even be able to turn on it's own people. What it does mean is that, "we the people," must take back our government and control over our elected officials. That may sound implausible, corny or absurd to some people but to many of us it does not. One thing Americans have inherent in their character is once a movement starts going in a direction it cannot be stopped.

I still believe that it is not beyond the abilities of the citizenry to restore our country to reasonable values and the core beliefs of what America is about and return to what was intended by the Founding Fathers in the US Constitution. One thing is certain, divisiveness among the people will grow before resolution, but at a certain point the reasonable natural American character will rise above and return our country back to its core values. I don't believe this is false assumption, just as the country was in turmoil after the Civil War and during the turbulence of the nineteen-sixties, in the long term decent American people prevail and the challenge of differences and come together to overcome indecent leadership that has failed us.

Economic, Social and Geopolitical

We're in for a long, hot summer...

The forgotten man is preparing to say and do something though.

Those of the boomer generation who complain of "political correctness" in the rewriting of textbooks and education curriculum ought to study history themselves. We were also sold in schools a whitewashed history that was written to suit the purposes of the mood of the country facilitated by government, educational institutions and the private sector.

One of the biggest lies goes something like this: There was a stock market crash one day in 1929 and President Hoover was oblivious to it and did little about the economic condition the country was in. There was an election in 1932 and Franklin Roosevelt won and saved the country from the Great Depression by instituting work programs, allowing unions to bargain fairly for a fair wage and created Social Security and things got better. Except that it is all a big distortion of truth.

In fact almost everything FDR did made the Depression worse and created the "Depression Within A Depression" that caused another stock market crash in 1937 and what actually ended the Great Depression was the US entering WWII in 1941. There had been a brief respite for some people due to WPA, CCC, RA, TVA and other projects but when the work was done, those people were out of a job and angry enough about it that they went on strike. In other words they went on strike against a temporary welfare program. (This should remind people of the "99ers" demanding unemployment extensions.) Not only that, since FDR had the Wagner Act passed liberalizing union organization, people began striking against employers, inside their very place of employment by having 'sit ins.' (This should remind people of public employees, school teachers in particular, ranting in New Jersey and rallying in Wisconsin that they should be immune to the economic crisis, occurring today.)

What Roosevelt's war against business caused companies, since they had no idea what Roosevelt, the Fed, the Treasury and Congress over-regulating and arguing over taxation and budget restraint would do next, they hoarded cash and did not reinvest in the economy to create new industry, new business and real jobs. They also had passed retroactive tax laws, with the Justice Department then pursuing people and companies for doing what was perfectly legal at the time they did them, with criminal charges for acts that had been made illegal after the fact.

Does any of this sound familiar to what has been happening in recent years? It should. The Political Class would have you distracted by the big bonuses (that is not a good thing) corporate executives are getting, frightening you the government is going to shut down (maybe not a bad thing) and anything that will keep the mainstream media busy.

In Muncie, Indiana a newspaper editorialized in 1936:

"Who is the forgotten man in Muncie? I know him as intimately as my own undershirt. He is the fellow that is trying to get along without public relief...In the meantime the taxpayers go on supporting many that would not work if they had jobs." (excerpt from Amity Schlaes "The Forgotten Man")

The contagion had already spread from Wall Street prior to the 1937 crash to Main Street, just as this current economic crisis has.

Much like the respite from 1934-1936 during the Depression that things were getting a slightly better, we have experienced a similar respite from 2009-2010. The stock market has reached ridiculously inflationary highs that have nowhere to go but down. Meanwhile Main Street is still experiencing high unemployment, highly leveraged consumers, a financial institution and mortgage/foreclosure crisis with attendant real estate deflation, alongside consumer product inflation, higher gas and food prices being the prime examples. Additionally national and international problems are entering into the picture, affecting the average person. The Middle East problems will not be resolved quickly or easily, affecting our oil supply, our national and state governments are technically insolvent and for all practical purposes most of the European Union countries are bankrupt. A currency crisis looms of epic proportions, so complex even the experts really don't have solutions to offer for it.

The stage is set for stagflation as bad as, if not worse than the 1970s. Obama can do a fake out to becoming a centrist, but for all his trying he's not fooling the average person who still recognizes him for what he is, a collectivist. His regulatory policies are harming business and not helping consumers. The Republicans can bellow all they want and the tea party coalition can rant but most people have figured out they are in collusion and their tune hasn't really changed. We're in for a long hot summer of an economic Double Dip quake of high magnitude on the Richter Scale. A real good shaker and the powers that think they are in control will have no idea what to do about it.

The average person, the modern day "forgotten man" isn't without backbone and not finished yet. He (and she) are quietly standing by, saying little at the moment, my bet though is that will not be the case by the end of the year. Much like Bill Wilson, founder of AA and Dale Carnegie, founder of self improvement courses, started the mutual and self help movements during the Great Depression, many Americans are already following similar paths. They recognize government intervention and dependence has had little results of value to them. They still have faith in individual effort, being achievement oriented and believe in the American ideal of a strong work ethic and people pulling themselves out of difficult situation. They've figured out that the whitewashed history that has been sold is just as much a lie as collectivist politically correct revisionism is. Government and politics can do little for them.

Look out for a revival of the real American hero who still believes in the American Dream by no later than early 2012. Decide what you want to be and go do it.