When Criminal Becomes Legal.

When Criminal Becomes Legal.

Since John Brown, former member of the British Parliament began contributing to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review opinion page I've become an avid reader.  His thinking has influenced mine.  And I've integrated some of the his ideas with my understanding of this imposed financail crisis.

In a recent conversation I made the statement that this is a real crisis based on imaginary causes.  This peaked some ire, and gave me the opportunity I sought to explain my understanding of recent events.  Basically I made the case that yes, loose credit and debt laden Americans are responsible for the unwillingness to address inherent problems in our economy (your 70% GDP/consumption stat).  And yes, the government did drive the economy into a ditch with financially illiterate rules and regulations that created the subprime crisis and the debasement of the dollar.  I'd add that the citizenry's entitlement mentality is a corollary with these factors creating an unsustainable Social Security Scheme, the potential for further disasters in Health Care and a Welfare State that is creating a permanent underclass of dependant wards of the state.

 

Significantly it is the cooperation of government and industry lining the pockets of those barons of Wall Street and others that encouraged the bubbles of the Internet, Investing, Housing and Commodities.  Now I am not opposed to capitalism benefiting those with capital - however the imaginary, over-leveraged, high-margin OPM (other peoples money) had doped those in positions of power.  Bernie Maddoff is not entirely an aberration but an exemplar of the times even a symptom of a greater disease.  It is this disease of criminally irresponsible plutocratic capitalism that has metastasized.  The house of cards is crumbling while Bush and Obama offer the same solutions - Bailouts and Stimulus.  Now the risk of failures has been mitigated and the justice of the market pardoned.  Instead the burden of failure being on those who took the risks it is being foisted upon the masses - that crucial and useful middle class of capitalism.  We will carry the weight of the debts of this country for generations, if not until the global economy's utter ruin.  This is criminal in the highest order, yet none of these crimes will be prosecuted because the mafia is making the rules.  The foxes are guarding the hen house.

 

Therefore I ask what do we do when the criminal become legal? 

Am I wrong? 

Don't we have a major foundational problem that goes much deeper that the $INDU?