Time to March on Washington

Many months into the disastrous financial crisis, I am still waiting for the people of the US to get really mad at their representatives in Congress who share a great deal of the blame for this mess. What started with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act as a way to help some low income families to buy a home soon got blown totally out of shape by members of Congress through several Administrations. It morphed to where it could help almost anybody with a pulse to buy a home whether they were financially qualified or not. No down, low down, interest only, adjustable loans were made assuming that the value of the real estate purchased would only increase in value.

The financial industry spent tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions and lobbying efforts the late 90s to get the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Deregulation Bill past by a large majority of both Parties, and was signed into law by President Clinton. This bill, with little or no oversight, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guaranteeing the questionable loans, set the stage for the financial crash we are all living through. Yes, there were many greedy people in the financial industry who took advantage of the situation, but the enablers of this mess were to be found in Washington DC, in the halls of Congress. Hearings in 2004, that might have prevented, or at least softened the financial blow, went nowhere.

Taxpayers are now being forced to foot the bill to the tune of Trillions of dollars to try and fix Congress’s mistakes. If you have been paying attention to the news, you probably have heard that the first $350,000,000,000 that was used to “bail-out” the financial industry, hasn’t accomplished much and much of it hasn’t been used by these financial institutions for the purposes put forward by our wonderful government. As usually, our government’s cure for every problem is to throw more and more TAXPAYER money at the problem, and if the taxpayers don’t have enough, they get it from foreign governments who now hold more than $3,000,000,000,000+ of our government debt. Our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren will be paying for this mess for years. So what do the voters do in 2008 but reelect many of the same people who were complicit in creating this disaster.

Credit card companies, Chase and Citicorp, who have received billions in "bail-out" funds, are now asking their card holder to pay a much higher interest rate on their charges to help pay for their bad debt which they created due to their extremely bad mortgage decisions over the past years. If I was a Chase of Citicorp cardholder, I'd cancel my cards.

As I said, I am still waiting for the US taxpayers to show some anger. Thousands laid off every day, unemployment at 9%, foreclosures continuing, profits down, the stock market and IRA values down 40+%, businesses closing, home values continuing to fall, and millions of hard working taxpayers seriously hurt financially. Instead the taxpayers are sitting there, counting on many of the same people who created this mess, to fix it with more and more of OUR tax money. I guess the taxpayers deserve what they get.

Almost every day I see or read something in the news about the financial crisis that makes my blood boil. I have called, written, and e-mailed my elected “representatives” (?) in DC almost every day. Maybe if they heard from more of the taxpayers they might (?) actually step up to their responsibility to protect, preserve, and defend the people of the United States against all enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC.

People…. Get mad,,,,,, get angry,,,, get involved!!! They survival of this country may depend on citizen action to regain control of our out-of-control government!!!! I'm not counting on President Obama to solve our problems. He was the third highest recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the last 10 years behind Chris Dodd(D) and John Kerry(D), and he was only in the senate for 4 years. Fannie and Freddie have received many billions of dollars of "bail-out" money and are wanting/needing more.

Anybody want to join me for a "Million Taxpayer March" on Washington???   (No, wait.  Us taxpayers have to go to work every day.  We can't just go and march on Washington ... like the libs.)