A Nightmare on Wall Street

With debate in the punditocracy swirling around Barack Obama's recent comments about "spreading the wealth around," I'm surprised the conservatives are pushing the message so hard. In light of the great unwinding of these horrid Credit Default Swaps, and the prospect of general malaise for at least several quarters, if not for several years and beyond, what makes them think that the Great Unwashed are going to respond favorably to dire warnings against the folly of favoring the richest and most powerful in society?

Given that the masses are going to suffer no matter what, it follows that ordinary people have finally woken up and want the wealthy to suffer some serious humiliation (at the very least). And, perhaps the election of a black man to the nation's top job will be seriously humiliating. In a game of perceptions, even if the elite don't actually lose that much in a physical sense, the mere appearance of such can still have a strong -- and possibly desirable -- effect. Perhaps they are strategic enough to accept this, given that money and power seem to all that matters to them anyway; hence my first posting in the 'Conspiracy' category.

But is a new world order finally upon us? Remember back to the revelation that both Bush and Kerry were both Bonesmen during their time at Yale. Even though the mainstream media tells us that conspiracies surrounding this were well overblown, and rather than thinking about the secret society itself, I prefer to consider the class implications. From that I concluded that it doesn't matter if we elect a Democrat or a Republican; they are two sides of the same coin. If we choose a Republican, the resulting national policy forces America to spend beyond her means internationally. If we choose a Democrat, America will spend beyond her means domestically.

But either way, America already is, and will continue to be, forced to spend beyond her means. Once enough of this has been done, her independence will be crushed by the weight of her debt obligations, forcing her back into the hands of international money and the ICC. When I discuss this idea with people, I'm usually branded as some sort of wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. Obviously, it is not easy to grasp the concept of historical momentum and the raw inertia of compounding power and economic will.

International financiers have been funding kings, governments, and hedging both sides in war for many centuries. Perhaps now, at last, America has outlived her usefulness as a force for unilateralism, and will no longer be permitted to continue in this mode. Or, maybe it will take another stretch of "enlightened" Democratic leadership in the Executive in order to drive the final nail into Lady Liberty's gilded coffin. Given the unhealthy lifestyles we lead, which is something for which we all share the blame, true socialized medicine could turn out to be much more expensive than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

On one hand I blame the selfish, indulgent Baby Boomers who took the hard work and sacrifice of their depression-era parents and leveraged it into a catastrophe that will take generations to repay, and with that done, our great-great-grandchildren will end up living in a world so radically different our times will be recalled with disgust and disdain.

Not being an economist or financial engineer, one thing I can't understand is why can't the world market simply cancel all Credit Default Swaps, thereby declaring them all Null and Void? Who else invested in them besides hedge funds and the super-rich? We keep hearing how the whole world could never come up with the $550+ trillion needed to cover these obligations. So why not simply nullify them all?

It makes sense to me that the global rich, who created the derivatives market and excluded the middle class from the upside, should take the primary haircut. All this talk about the need for "capital formation" seems irrelevant considering that's precisely what's been happening since President Bush took office. They have the capital to take the haircut, and taking it should be lesson to them. We all have to learn from our mistakes and we, from a class point of view, rarely get to pawn them off on others. The current trickle down system is more than bothersome; it's insulting. The fluid trickling down is warm, yellow, and contains a goodly portion of ammonia.

My opinion is that once the problem becomes complex enough that the actual solution defies common sense, we as a society have reached the point where the rich simply MUST share an equal sense of burden along with everyone else. All this talk about the need to protect the wealthy falls on deaf ears when WE are struggling, and THEY are not. THEY, quite simply, are not struggling, not in any real terms.
It is, in polite terms, a slap in the face and boot to the teeth for the Evil Rich to claim that issues affecting the corporate board memberships, long-term vision, grasp on true power, or historical legacy somehow compare to the inability of a hard-working family to put food on the table.

Alex Jones notwithstanding: while we may indeed be slaves to the global elite, my message to them is this: if you let things get bad enough by insisting on having it both ways because you are so ENTITLED, you won't even be able to trust your own security guards and wait staff. They will suddenly start looking you squarely in the eye, approach from the left when you are right-handed, and prepare to butter their bread on the other side...

Not that it matters, anyway.