Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Hadn't Alan Greenspan delighted Wall Street gamblers by to a large extent demolishing the value of the U.S. currency?  

Didn't the U.S. dollar used to be the benchmark for all other currencies?

With the stroke of his pen, the former Federal Reserve chairman, that much revered economic guru, the poster boy of Wall Street, the banker's buddy Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates to the lowest in 40 years.

Who benefited?  The answer was Wall Street bankers, home builders and realty giants.

Who lost with this drastic interest decline?  Senior citizens who relied on their trust in the stability of their nation's currency were major losers.  2% returns critically cut seniors' living standards and life style.  The Association for Retired Persons did nothing!

Bush boasted that the U.S. economy was on a roll!  The only thing really on a roll was the U.S. currency presses, which were racing overtime to keep up with the demand for those low interest U.S. dollars.  Some developers thought they had arrived in economic heaven.

Borrowing money was cheaper than anytime in 40 years.  Cheap labor was made possible by soft on immigration policies.  Foreign workers who couldn't find work in their own countries, were understandably happy to earn a better living in the friendly U.S.A.

As for home buyers, there were those kind and thoughtful bankers who conveniently failed to follow the traditional banking regulations demanding good credit, along with future economic ability to repay mortgage loans.  

Following the Wall Street high tech market collapse, investors were noticeably gun shy of trusting Wall Street.  Therefore as Bush the bungler took over residence in the White House under clouds of suspicion he had not legitimately become the White House resident, something had to be swiftly done.

Once the Iraq War was underway and funding was spinning out of control when no weapons of mass destruction were found, something suddenly happened.  The Iraq War was magically transformed into a crusade, born by the Bush Administration to bring democracy and freedom to the entire Middle East.

Patriotic parades were quickly organized.  Flags were proudly flown while coffins were mostly kept off TV of Iraq War dead flying back to the U.S.A.  Many Americans suddenly became get rich quick real estate investors, dwelling on America's two wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Why be bothered with such complex matters as the U.S.A.'s idealistic goals in the far away Middle East?

Why try to figure out why that great Republican presidential icon Ronald Reagan had U.S. service personnel fight and die yesterday to put the repressive Middle East Taliban in power?  

Some claimed it was necessary to place the Taliban in power to guard those valuable pipelines running across Afghanistan to the sea, where oil tankers were waiting.

Now, for a reason never fully explained, other than to complain that the Taliban was not properly guarding those precious oil pipelines, the U.S. was knocking out the Afghan Taliban power, replacing it with the Afghanistan power we had knocked out under Reagan.

As for Iraq, we repeatedly heard that we were bringing democracy and freedom, trying desperately to make democracy and freedom, trying desperately to make people worldwide think the Iraq War was parallel to the Nazi threat of world conquest in World War Two.  

Statistics revealed the Bush Administration's claims about delivering democracy and freedom to Iraqis as downright dishonest and absurd.  Some four and a half million Iraqis have fled their homes with estimates of over 1 million Iraqi civilians deaths with over 4,000 U.S. service personnel dead and 55,000 wounded.

Strangely, Bush and Cheney seemed oblivious of the hell on earth their policies had generated as they would announce that the U.S. was winning the war against terror.  U.S. citizens voted to end the Iraq War.  

The administration displayed gross hypocrisy concerning the democracy being boasted about, costing endless billions of dollars.

The Democratic Party's hypocrisy was displayed all too many members of the Senate and House went along with the funding which has now helped bring the U.S. debt to a rapidly approaching figure of $10 trillion.

What about impeachment?

If an investigation as a prelude to impeachment had revealed that the Iraq War was a fraud from start to finish, where would the trio of Bush, Cheney and Rice be tried?

None of the war debacle seemed to hit the U.S. public as hard as economic woes.  When it was time to face reality, 2 ½ million mortgages were in default, the worst figure since the Great Depression.  CNN on Sunday, March 30 announced that over 20,000 homes were going into foreclosure each week.

The world had watched with horror as the daily death, destruction and debacle in Iraq played out on TV.  Nevertheless, U.S. negotiations continued to have Iraqis sign over long term leases on 63 of Iraq's 80 oil wells, the only big asset Iraq had under Saddam.  

Oil revenue was nationalized under Saddam Hussein and Iraqis were not anxious to sign over this big asset, the majority of which would be for foreign investor profit.  If this could be proven the real reason for beginning the Iraq War in the first place, wouldn't an investigation to see if that was true be interesting?

When banks made loans to people they knew had bad credit, often allowing interest only loans (30% of California mortgage loans were interest only), they simply bundled up these sub prime loans and sold to foreign investors as mortgage securities.  The loan officers took nice bonuses for what was tantamount to outright fraud.

Foreign investors lost $300 to $400 billion in this credit mortgage scam, but there was no need to worry as long as the Fed could churn out billions to cover this horrific economic nightmare then bankers could rest easy.

So what is the Republican solution to this cheating, using U.S. currency as the target to destroy?

First off, the current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke hastily lowered the interest rate repeatedly.  Now savers, investors in the so-called full faith in the dollar, were robbed of a fair return again.

In the March 29, 2008 New York Times, Edmund Andrews wrote:

"The Treasury Department will propose on Monday that Congress give the Federal Reserve broad new authority to oversee financial market stability, in effect allowing it to send SWAT teams into any corner of the industry or any institution that might pose a risk to the overall system.

"The proposal is part of a sweeping blueprint to overhaul the nation's hodgepodge of financial regulatory agencies, which many experts say failed to recognize rampant excesses in mortgage lending until after they set off what is now the worst financial calamity in decades."

How do Democrats feel about this Republican white knight proposal coming to rescue us all?

As Andrews explained:

"Democrats say the proposal does not go far enough to restrict the kinds of practices that caused this financial crisis.  Many of the proposals, like those that would consolidate regulatory agencies have nothing to do with the turmoil in financial markets, and some of the proposals could actually reduce regulation."

There they go again with that favorite Republican mantra "Get the government off our backs."

See where it got us?

To the brink of national bankruptcy!