WHO IS TO BLAME FOR ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, AND HOW TO SURVIVE!

Saturday, at White Rock Lake, in Dallas. I have with me a ferret named “Ricky Ticky”, a dog named “Little black dog” and my dear Shiatsu friend, Latte. Latte has been my favorite dog friend and companion for many years.

On I-30 near Fort Worth, there is a billboard that says: "Say no to 'Bail Out' banks".  A locally owned bank, a sound bank, Worthington National Bank."

The bank has had good response to the advertisement that speaks to the ethical values that point to old fashioned banking, that takes deposits from local customers and makes local loans back to the community. Not a banking system dominated by Wall Street "symbolic money" or by "funny money" and issued documents that have little real tangible value.

The economies that were not so "interconnected" with the Global economy, with Wall Street, when the deep recession began are very strong now. Cities that rely upon local goods and services are doing very well. It is the ones that are so entangled in the giant broad market system of global economics that have created the problems. I was in Lubbock last week, and the economy there is good. "We have cotton, grain, a huge medical industry, a University and several colleges, and we are fine here!" a businessman told me. It seems the further removed business and cities are from the "Global Economy and Wall Street" the better they are doing.

After a week of hearing the clatter and “white noise” blaring out of the political commentators, in New York and in Washington D.C., during the past election, we note that the "right wing" leaders in Texas, are still fighting Obama, even though he has won the election. It is a peaceful relief to listen to the birds in the park at Dallas. The right wing ideologues are so angry, they can’t accept that they lost the election, and have moved “whining” to a new low of negative spin. The left wing still can’t forget “W” and his fallacies, and as I look at our new young president, I just feel glad that there is someone who seems to be competent to handle the job of the President. I am glad that it is not “my job”, although I do wish that we had some economists and businessmen in D.C. with a broad common sense perspective on business and economics. 

But in a way, the job of repairing the damage to our economy belongs to all of us. Our nation is in an economic ditch. In a broader view, the entire world is in a depression. We can either stop fighting on a political level and pull on the rope together, or we can let the "radicals" and ideologues who would rather fight than switch, keep us from working together.

In truth, I don’t think it is “W’s” fault, or any president’s fault. The Office of President, may be the most powerful pulpit in the world, but only a president could truly communicate how powerless even they must feel. Big money, big business, corrupt leaders and people without loyalty to the values of heartland America, those are the two culprits. “Gold makes the rules”, has always been true in history, and kings and presidents tend to follow the gold.

Should we listen to Angry voices?

So, when I hear the angry bigots on the right, belching out ignorant ravings, and the intellectual shots from the left, I want to say: “We are Americans. This is a Christian nation, with a sectarian, democratic government. It is time to stop the fighting and pull together to get the wagon out of the ditch. Otherwise, we will fail as a nation and as a people.”

The pendulum swings. It was with a centrist Clinton administration that brought real economic prospertity. Then we saw it swing to the right with George W. Bush, and his ideas to increase Federal and Military spending to the highest levels of history. The boom of the Clinton years died with “W”, and now we have the bust squeezing all the puff (and all the liquid capital) out of America’s pocketbooks. President Obama, and his team are doing essentially what Bush finally in desperation admitted had to be done, and that was to bail out the nation through quick aid, and slowly end these wars and cut military spending. Bush knew it, but it will take Obama to make it happen. The former President was trying to bail out the ship before it sank.

But the true responsible parties where not Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama. The responsible parties were the Wall Street manipulators, the slick and fast talking financial leaders, the CitiBank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, and Merrill Lynch country club who knew that they had not stopped at "shearing" the lambs of America, they were so greedy that they decided to "skin" them. In the process they killed our economy, creating a recession that will cause pain and suffering for millions of Americans. The true evil of economic recession is the pain and  anguish that it causes families and people. You know people suffer, they divorce, they committ suicide, they die when they cannot afford medical care...because of financial manipulations that cause these deep recessions.

All we can do is to try to hold hands as a nation, and pull together now to save as many as we can.