The Issues, No. 58 - Now's Our Chance

Election Day is next Tuesday, November 4th. It is our chance to let our politicians, particularly those in Washington, know just what we think of the job they have been doing. It's our chance to give all 435 Congressmen, 35 Senators, and the Republican administration their report cards.

For many of us it will be a time when we want them to know we are very disappointed in Congress and what it has done. We have two wars going on, a collapse of the mortgage market, and the resulting collapse of the financial industry all of which Congress is, at least, partially responsible for. So for those of us that feel Congress has let us down, next Tuesday is an opportune time for us to "throw the bums out" and vote for everyone who is challenging an incumbent. Of course, if you are satisfied with what your people in congress have done, you should vote for them.

For many of us it will be the time when we can say we are not happy with the way President Bush and his Republican administration led the country. So we can vote for Barack Obama and throw the Republicans out of the Executive Branch of the government. And, of course, if we are satisfied with what President Bush and his Republican administration has done, we should vote for John McCain.

The most important thing is that next Tuesday we vote. Maybe the most important responsibility we have as American citizens is to vote. It is our one opportunity every time there is an election to let the politicians who are up for election know what we think of their performance and our opportunity to get rid of those that aren't cutting it and replace them with those that might cut it. So, if you pass that opportunity up, you really have no business complaining about what you get. If you vote, at least you'll be able to say, "I tried". So, don't blow it! Get out there next Tuesday and vote.

The Issues, No. 57 - Why Obama Makes Sense

Election day is one week from today and I've been thinking a lot lately about which candidate will be the most effective President. I know I already said I will vote for Obama after the Republicans picked Palin as McCain's running mate, and I meant it. When I said it, however, I wasn't really convinced that Obama would be any more effective than McCain as our President.

My recent thought process tells me that, for a number of reasons, Obama will be more effective. First, with the country generally fed up with the Bush administration and it's Republican policies, I have to believe that, after the election, the majority in both houses of Congress will continue to be Democrat. A Democrat majority in Congress will obviously be more sympathetic to a President from the same party and therefore, change will be easier.

Second, I think Obama is more in tune with every day America. He hasn't been tainted yet by a career in Washington but he knows how it works and he knows what the American people would like to see changed. I think his positions on "pork" and lobbyists are more believable than McCain's only because McCain has been there long enough to do something about those issues and hasn't. So, I think an Obama administration will do more to try and get Washington working for all Americans than would a McCain administration.

There are other reasons too, why I believe Obama will be more effective but the last one I want to talk about is the man. I think Obama may be one of those people who, like JFK, has a magnetic quality about him that by its very nature commands respect and inspires others to rise to higher levels. And I think because of this, and the reasons discussed above, he will be the most effective President. And that's why Obama makes sense!

The Issues, No. 56 - Socialism in America

I find it somewhat amusing that the Republicans are calling Barack Obama a socialist. I think this notion came from his discussion with “Joe the Plumber” where Mr. Obama told Joe something like an increased tax on small businesses that earn over $250K would help to spread the wealth around.

I say, “So what! And who cares!” I doubt if the people who are making the accusation really understand what Mr. Obama was trying to say and/or understand what socialism is. And, if he is socialist in some of his thinking, what’s wrong with that? Weren’t a number of the programs created under FDR to get the country back on its feet during the Great Depression socialistic? Haven’t some of those programs, like our Social Security System, continued to exist as major parts of our economy?

Our country is currently experiencing a severe financial crisis. Our government is spending huge amounts of money to help our failing corporations to get back on their feet and the government, in return, has told some of those corporations it wants a piece of their ownership. That is socialistic because the government will now have some say in what these corporations do and how they do it, but it makes a whole lot of sense for the government to want something in return for its investment. And, don’t forget; the government is the people and so we the people who are spending money to bail these failed companies out are, for a change, going to get something for our investment.

I don’t think it’s so bad to have a socialistic type of approach to solving some of our country’s problems, particularly when the problems are as severe as the current financial crisis. I don’t think it is such a bad idea to increase the taxes of the wealthiest people if it will help the people who are hardest hit by the financial crisis and are struggling to keep their heads above water. And finally, I don’t necessarily think socialism is bad. Great Britain has, at times, had Democratic Socialism as has Germany and those countries have not done so badly, nor have their people. Out of control capitalism, which got us into our financial crisis and Communism which is kind of an extreme branch of socialism, are both less desirable than the socialism we have and are using now to help us recover financially.

What's Going On?

The stock market is taking another plunge today, apparently because of poor quarterly earnings reports from a number of companies, which one would expect in normal circumstances but I'm not sure these are normal circumstances. Because of the financial crisis, the government has put in place, at least huge amounts of money, and even some plans that are already operating, to fix the problem. So, I can't understand what's going on. I guess we just don't trust the government and even though it appears the crisis will be resolved, we still are acting out of irrational fear. Or are we?

This may be a total stretch of the imagination, but is it possible there is some hanky panky going on that is causing the financial crisis to continually worsen? Is the stock market being manipulated by political forces that may, for instance, want to help ensure that the Republicans don't win the presidency after eight years of President Bush and his policies that led to the collapse of the financial markets? Is the mostly liberal media fueling the fear and mistrust that is causing the market to continue to decline, hoping somehow to convince people to blame the financial crisis on the Republicans and vote Democratic?

Whatever it is that is causing the problem just doesn't make any sense. The pieces are in place to correct the problems, including plenty of money. All I can conclude is that something(s) that may be politically motivated or something I just don't understand is continuing to drive the stock market down. It will be very interesting to see what happens after the November 4 elections.

The Issues, No. 55 - Extremism and the 2008 Presidential Race

I'm in Naples, Florida this week visiting my Mom and my sister. Naples is a bastion for mostly wealthy conservative retired business people who have come here principally from the mid-west. So, the area has been, as one would expect, basically Republican in its leanings. Shortly before I arrived, the local newspaper, "The Naples Daily News", announced, much to the chagrin of many of its subscribers, that it was endorsing Barack Obama for president.

Ever since, the newspaper, which prints lots of letters to the editor every day, has been flooded with and has printed a number of particularly venomous letters that express very extreme feelings about Mr. Obama, the Democratic Party, and "The Naples Daily News". People have indicated they are cancelling their subscriptions to the paper, which has betrayed them and our democracy by supporting a socialist who is intent on destroying America. They have talked about Mr. Obama's background and his associations with terrorists and Reverend Wright. In other words, they have totally trashed Mr. Obama and everything he has ever done or everyone he has ever touched or spoken with or listened to. One would think he is the devil who, if given the chance, will destroy us all. I personally find all of this amusing on one hand but frightening on the other.

I can't believe that wealthy, educated, successful American people, or any people in America for that matter, can have such extreme feelings about anything, let alone one of the two candidates for President of the United States. Barack Obama loves the United States just as much as John McCain. He just has a different view about what needs to be fixed and how to fix it. You don't have to like him or the approach he wants to take to fix things, but you are not too bright if you think because he believes differently than John McCain that he is a bad person. And, obviously, the same thing is true for those who think ill of John McCain.

If both candidates believed the same thing and had the same approach to everything, there wouldn't be any point in having two people running for President. And, isn't it a great thing about our democratic society that we can have people disagreeing with one another, at the highest levels of our society, without one of them being shot or sent off to a prison camp somewhere for reeducation? So, come on Naples, Florida, and the rest of you political extremists everywhere,
get over yourselves and recognize that whoever is elected is going to do their best for the country, even if what they do is different from the way you would like to see it done. And, if you still feel so strongly about something, run for political office yourself.

Impatience, Greed, and Fear and the Financial Crisis

Yesterday afternoon as I was sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office, I picked up a March 2008 issue of Forbes magazine. While going through it I came across an article (I can't remember the author) that made a positive case for impatience and greed. Today, before I entered the blogosphere, I found an article, from the New York Times on my computer's home page written by Warren Buffet about when to be greedy and when to be fearful.

In the Forbes article the author said that both impatience and greed are, by themselves, good to the degree that, without them in society, there would be little progress. Impatience to have something better drives innovation and drives us to take actions that might improve our lives. Greed is what drives us to take actions that will benefit us financially. In other words, if we were to simply maintain the status quo we would never see never see any improvements in our lives.

Unfortunately, as we have seen in the recent months, unchecked impatience and greed worked poorly together to cause our current financial crises. People who were impatient to have a better home, took on loans they could not repay and the greed of the lending institutions that made all of those bad loans simply got out of hand and the bottom fell out of the financial market. When that happened, and it's continuing today, fear set in among many investors and they sold their stocks which further depressed the financial markets.

Warren Buffet said today he is now buying stock because he said, "A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors." So, he says he is using other peoples' fears to his advantage because he can now buy stocks at a bargain because fear has driven the prices down. And, he says, "Fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation's many sound companies make no sense. Most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now." So, to Warren Buffet greed, at least in the circumstances he has described, is a good thing.

I think the important thing to be gained here is that controlled impatience and greed are motivators that move us forward and are good for society. Fear, on the other hand, is unhealthy for the fearful, and, in the case of the current financial crisis, has magnified to the point where it is unhealthy for all of us. And I think what Warren Buffet is really telling us is that it's not rational for us to be fearful, that the markets will come back, and that our fear will only contribute to the wealth of others, like him, who will take advantage of it.

The Issues, No. 54 - Tax Breaks for Businesses

Particularly with the current financial crisis, in large part caused by corporate greed, it is difficult for most of us to agree that businesses should be provided with tax breaks. I think we all are afraid that any tax breaks we give, particularly to large corporations, will only benefit the corporate executives whose outrageous salaries and golden parachutes are already way out of sight and out of control.

I personally believe that we, as a nation, need to provide tax breaks for our businesses, primarily because our businesses are our employers and our innovators. As our employers, businesses can afford to hire and pay the wages and salaries of more people if they don't have to pay as much taxes. Innovation leads to new business opportunities that lead to new and more employment opportunities and less taxes, again, could mean a company could spend more money on innovation.

Hopefully, with the combination of the collapse of our economy and the government bailout that will help them get back on their feet again, our corporations will reform many of the current practices that caused the economy to collapse, either through their own efforts or through new government regulation and oversight. Once we have businesses again working responsibly, I believe they should be given tax breaks only because those tax breaks will benefit us all in that they will help tremendously to stimulate our economy.

The Issues, No. 53 - National Health Care

Because my family is currently experiencing it, I believe now, more than ever, that if any part of our medical care needs to be nationalized, it is when a person's medical situation requires institutionalization in a hospital, nursing home, or an assisted living facility, or the person requires around the clock attention by a professional care giver in their home beyond the time and dollar limits established by a private medical insurer or Medicare. These situations are financially catastrophic for most families, including families that may be considered to be upper middle to lower upper class as far as income is concerned.

We all know how expensive it is to stay in the hospital and fortunately, if one has a good health insurance plan, most of the hospital charges are paid for by insurance up to a certain amount. For individuals over 65 who are Medicare subscribers and who have secondary insurance coverage, their medical and rehabilitation charges are essentially covered for 100 days for each separate occurrence. But a person who has a condition that continues beyond the dollar or time limits is subject to having to pay for everything. In the area in which we live, the average rate for a nursing home is about $260 a day. That's $7,800 per month. The average cost for an assisted living facility may be $3,000 to $3,500 less than a nursing home, but who among us has an extra $4,000 to $8,000 available each month to pay for it beyond the normal monthly expenses we already have?

Unless a person is wealthy, after they have expended their life savings, many are forced to go on Medicaid. Medicaid will pay for everything, but only after a person's resources have dwindled to practically nothing. And what happens to the spouse when that happens? It's just not a pretty picture. Long term care insurance, which is a relatively new concept, will help many of us in the future with these expenses but long term care insurance is expensive too and may only cover an individual for two or three years. I would guess that most people who are eligible for long term care insurance are not buying it because of the expense.

So, what are we as a nation going to do? Well, how about if we all bite the bullet and institute a national long term care addition to social security that will provide long term care coverage beyond what private insurance and Medicare currently cover. The unpleasant part to this proposal is that we would increase every person's social security contributions by 1 to 3 percent. Not many of us will like that when everything is fine and it's not needed but I guarantee that when the time comes that it's needed, those affected will very much appreciate that because of it they do not have to exhaust their life savings and become destitute before something like Medicaid takes over for them. And, because of it they will be able to continue to live their normal lives.

The Issues, No. 52 - Congress and the Spending Bills for Fiscal 2009

Congress has had a tough year. It has had to contend with the financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the upcoming elections for 35 Senators, all 435 Congressmen, and the President. Congress was so busy, in fact, that once again it did not pass the Fiscal Year 2009 spending bills for the government on time. Instead it passed a huge continuing resolution that allows government agencies to spend at fiscal year 2008 levels through March of 2009.

The fact that Congress was busy during the recent months probably didn't have as much to do with it not passing the 2009 spending bills as the fact that the Democratic Congress didn't want to fight with President Bush over spending issues during his last months in office. But whether Congress was busy or whether it wanted to avoid confrontation with President Bush doesn't really matter. Maybe the most important thing Congress has to do is to fund the federal agencies and it just can't ever seem to do it on time. Year after year Congress passes continuing resolutions to keep government going because it can't pass the spending bills on time. And every year this situation is disruptive to the government agencies who have to cut back, in many instances, on services they provide to the American people.

I think this behavior is unacceptable and I think the American people should demand that their representatives in Congress take care of their business on time. The example that Congress sets by its failure to carry out its most important function on time is terrible. We and especially our children get the message from it that it's not important to do anything we are supposed to do when we are supposed to do it and that we can just take some token form of action that will just have to do until we feel like getting around to it. Maybe this very type of behavior is a reason why we are in the financial mess that we're in. Maybe if Congress had paid attention to the warning signs when it first got them, the whole financial mess could have been avoided. But undoubtedly there were political reasons why Congress didn't act sooner and the country ends up suffering because of it.

Congress is in desperate need of a wake up call. We can give it to them in the upcoming November elections by not voting for any incumbent Senator or Congressman. We can phone their offices, write them letters, send them email, or show up at their offices and let them know that we want them to do what they are supposed to do and we want them to do it on time. I think it's time we let Congress know that we want them to work together for America, that we don't want them playing partisan politics, and that we don't want them working solely for their own career advancement.

The Issues, No. 51 - Individual Investors

It appears to me that a large number of individual investors are reacting to the current financial crisis with panic and fear and I find that to be quite amazing and even a little depressing. I would like to think that Americans are smarter than to react to swings in the stock market with panic and fear. The American stock market has historically gone up and down and so the current downturn is no more than a natural occurrence that will end shortly and begin once again to rise after the corrections are in place and the panic has abated.

I think, not surprisingly, that the big downturns in the stock market are always caused by out of control greed in one sector of the economy or another. And, I think the correction is always engineered and financed, to some degree, by the government. But the greed, until it eventually causes a downturn, is what all of us individual investors ride on while it lasts. Then, when the downturn comes many of us act as if we had been betrayed by the companies we have invested in, we panic, and sell all of our stock, but probably not until it's value has declined significantly. So, for those that panic and sell, they end up with little or no profit, no shares of stock, and they are a cause for the market to continue to decline. And, when the market again begins to rise, they are the very people, who wait until they are sure the rise is going to last and then buy stock again when the price is high. If they had just left their stock alone when the market started to rise again they already would have the number of shares they had before the fall and would benefit from the rising prices. So, patience, in this case, rather than panic, is definitely a virtue.

I think everyone needs to realize that participation in the stock market is gambling. When we buy stock we are gambling that it's value is going to increase and that we will make some money. And isn't gambling a form of greed? Investment gurus have been advising people forever not to put all of their money into stocks but rather to spread it around. No one should put more into the stock market than they can afford to lose but on the other hand, not too many people who have invested wisely in the stock market have lost a whole lot in the long term. It's the people who are trying to get rich quick and risk too much on individual stocks who end up getting hurt the most. But for most of us small investors, who have money in IRAs or 401Ks that are in mutual funds, fear and panic is not going to help our situations. Patience will prevail and, in the case of the current financial crisis, our accounts will recover eventually. We have to keep in mind that we haven't actually lost or gained anything until we sell.

The Issues, No. 50 - The Stock Market

Our stock market is way out of control and I think that it needs to be altered significantly if we want it to remain a viable and contributing American institution. The current financial crisis and the continuing drop in the market demonstrates that something seriously wrong has been allowed to go on for a long time that is causing severe harm to the country as a whole and to small investors who rely on the market for their retirement incomes and their financial security.

I think what has happened is that the institutional investors who control what happens in the stock market have acted irresponsibly and without regulation or oversight. Institutional investors are in control of huge amounts of stocks. According to WikipediA, "Institutional investors are organizations which pool large sums of money and invest those sums in companies. They include banks, insurance companies, retirement or pension funds, hedge funds and mutual funds. Their role in the economy is to act as highly specialized investors on behalf of others. For instance, an ordinary person will have a pension from his employer. The employer gives that person's pension contributions to a fund. The fund will buy shares in a company, or some other financial product. Funds are useful because they will hold a broad portfolio of investments in many companies. This spreads risk, so if one company fails, it will be only a small part of the whole fund's investment."

Most of the above behavior is good in the ideal but WikipediA goes on to say "Institutional investors will have a lot of influence in the management of corporations because they will be entitled to exercise the voting rights in a company. They can engage in (an) active role in corporate governance. Furthermore, because institutional investors have the freedom to buy and sell shares, they can play a large part in which companies stay solvent, and which go under. Influencing the conduct of listed companies, and providing them with capital are all part of the job of investment management." These are the behaviors that are a scary to me.

I'm not sure that it should be up to institutional investors to determine the fate of a company or meddle in a company's affairs. Sure they represent large numbers of shareholders who are essentially owners of the companies but they are investment managers who represent many stockholders. They are not the stockholders themselves. Their job should be to invest their client's money in stocks that they believe will provide a good return and not manipulate companies or not be a determinant as to whether a company stays solvent or goes under. I believe these to be the kinds of behaviors that have contributed significantly to the current financial crisis.

So when you add to the problems of investment companies' influence in the companies in which they invest, the out of control credit they allowed to happen, the margin buying they allowed, and the outrageous salaries and "golden parachutes" they awarded themselves, it all amounts to the institutional investors investing, and controlling the market, not for their clients, but for themselves. I think our government needs to step in and regulate the institutional investors' power to influence the management of companies in which they invest and to stop the credit practices that have caused the current crisis.

The Issues, No. 49 - Presidential Debates

One thing that struck me about last evening's Presidential Debate, and all of the other presidential debates I have ever seen, is that the debaters don't appear to be very "Presidential". Instead they appear to be petty, vindictive, and downright nasty in their attempts to illustrate how they are different from their opponent. Those are not the qualities I want to see in my President. I want to see a person who is confident, cool, and one who can debate the issues and their solutions without attempting to assassinate the character of their opponent. I want to decide who to vote for based on what issues they believe are important and how they would propose to tackle those issues not on how well they can attack their opponent.

Also in the debates, it is irritating to me that the candidates don't ever quite seem to answer the question that is asked. Instead they go off and expound upon something they want to talk about which often is to offer a defense or rebuttal of something their opponent just accused them of. I think this behavior is somewhat embarrassing and it makes me uncomfortable that a man or woman who is trying to become the President of the United States can't answer a direct question with a direct answer.

Of course they also lead us to believe that when they are elected they can and will do everything they say they will do. Anyone who understands how our government works knows that the President can't just do whatever he wants. The President is the chief executive of the Executive Branch of our government. He basically is charged with running the operating agencies of the government according to the legislation under which they were created and funded. He can't do anything new or different entirely on his own initiative. New and different stuff requires legislation that is first introduced, discussed and debated, and then passed by both houses of Congress and then finally signed by himself before he can do anything.

I guess to sum it all up, I would say that the debates do nothing to help most of us determine who we want to vote for. Instead they show us which candidate is the nastiest and which is the best at not responding to a question. The debates are not only embarrassing and irritating, they are also insulting to me as an American voter. Why do I want to vote for anyone who cannot answer a simple question, and instead responds with a personal attack on his opponent while tooting his own horn about his past record and how he is now going to be the savior of the country. I'm more inclined to conclude that until we find someone who is above the pettiness and the viciousness we see in these debates, our country is in trouble. And as a final note, I have definitely concluded that politicians don't necessarily make good Presidents.

The Issues, No. 48 - Farm Subsidies

For the life of me, I just can't understand farm subsidies. Maybe they made some sense when farms were small and subsidies were used to prevent farmers from giving up their farms in times of drought or other disasters that ruined their crops. Maybe back then we needed to pay the farmers in order to keep farming going so that America would have the food it required.


Today, with the majority of farm products in America produced by the large corporate farms, subsidies don't make much sense. Subsidies appear, more than anything, to be a government attempt to control the business of farming. The government pays farmers to grow crops or not to grow crops and through its control of what is and is not grown controls prices for farm goods and thus prevents the market forces of supply and demand from being the true determinants. So America gets what the government wants it to have and at prices the government wants it pay.

To some degree, it may be good that we don't necessarily have to pay what we might have to pay in a free market situation but I think, in the case of farm subsidies, we are paying more than we think we are because we, the American taxpayers, are paying for the subsidies. And, I suspect there are a whole lot of "farmers" out there getting paid for not farming who are simply living a good life from their subsidies or taking their subsidies and working other jobs to pay for their fancy cars and big houses.

I think farm subsidies need to end, at least as we know them. I don't want our government controlling business in our country. I don't want our government paying anyone to do nothing or paying anyone (other than government employees) to do what the government wants them to do. I think if any aspect of farming needs, or could use a subsidy, it is in agricultural research not agricultural welfare or agricultural bribery.

The Issues, No. 47 - Free College

A friend of mine suggested today, while we were watching a piece on the local TV news about how expensive it is to send a kid to college, that maybe college ought to be free just like our public schools. At first I thought the idea didn't make much sense because the tax payers would end up paying for it. But then, after we talked about it for a couple of minutes, I thought it made a lot of sense.

Our kids already go to public schools, from kindergarten to grade 12, free. Obviously it's not free because we pay for it in our federal and state taxes but it's essentially free and it includes what would be called "tuition and books" in a private school or a college or university. In other words our kids go to public schools and their classes and the books they are required to have are free.

Wouldn't it make sense if we simply extended the free classes (tuition) and free books to college undergraduate and graduate level classes. Colleges and universities would still maintain their entrance level requirements but kids who are accepted by the institution would have their tuition and books payed for by the taxpayers. If they are accepted by an institution away from their home, they, or their parents, would still have to pay for their room and board in either school facilities or in private facilities.

I'm not sure how much more we would have to pay in taxes but I don't think it would be that significant. The major benefit would be that everyone who could get him or herself accepted into college would be able to go. No one would not be able to go because they couldn't afford it. The individuals would obviously benefit because they would be able to earn more after their education and the nation would benefit also because we would have more people with college educations contributing to our society. It just makes a lot of sense to me for us as a society to pay for our children to get as much education as they can without them having to worry about going in debt or not being able to afford to go to school after high school.

The Issues, No. 46 - I Wonder

Although I'm not a fan of the war in Iraq, I am puzzled by the figures our politicians and others bandy about when talking about how much it costs. Lately I've been hearing $10 billion per month and I know that's a lot but I wonder what it actually means.

Here's where I have a problem. If the majority of the forces we have deployed in Iraq are forces that, if we weren't having a war, were stationed at military installations in the U.S. or other places in the world, shouldn't "they" subtract the monthly cost for those units from the $10 billion dollar figure? And doesn't that cost include wages, benefits, food, clothing, housing, tanks, rifles, trucks, jeeps, and all of the other equipment the troops have with them that they would also have with them wherever they are? I'm sure some of the $10 billion is extra because there are extra troops in Iraq beyond the peacetime troop levels and there are extra costs associated with deployments overseas, but to imply that the war in Iraq is costing us $10 billion extra every month is incomprehensible and maybe irresponsible too.

I suspect the $10 billion figure is a figure used, primarily by politicians, the anti-Bush and anti-war media, and other individuals who are opposed to the Iraq war as one justification for ending the war as soon as possible and/or to discredit the Bush administration. I guess that kind of thing is done all the time but I don't particularly like it when our politicians and our media are irresponsibly stretching the truth to further their own interests.

I think the war in Iraq is a serious matter for the men and women who are serving there and for their families and they deserve the truth and the respect of all of us. The truth may have been stretched in order to convince Congress to get us into the Iraq war but let's not compound the situation by stretching the truth to get us out by telling our troops how expensive they are and how their mission there is such a financial burden on the country. That is just plain disrespectful. We need our politicians, whatever party they belong to, and our media to be honest and truthful about what is going on and to show us all, and particularly the men and women of our armed forces, the respect we and they deserve.

The Issues, No. 45 - Two Points That Need to be Repeated

In the last couple of postings I have made the points that greed has led to our current financial crisis and that ignorance has so far kept us from passing bailout legislation to solve the crisis. I think these two points require additional discussion.

The out and out greed of our financial institutions has been the major cause for our financial meltdown. But it's not the only cause. A very large contributing cause has been the out and out greed of the American people who undertook home loans they knew they could not repay and ran their credit card debt up to the point they could not even make the minimum monthly payments. Sure the financial institutions encouraged people to take on the debt, but no one made anybody do it. So, we just can't blame the financial industry without assuming some of the blame ourselves.

When the financial institutions finally collapsed and we had a real crisis, it appears that ignorance set in preventing a measure, at least initially, to solve the problem. People got mad that the financial institutions failed and didn't want to do anything to help them and their grossly overpaid executives recover. What is particularly amazing to me is that the majority of the members in the United States House of Representatives, went along with their angry constituents and voted to defeat the proposed bailout legislation. I guess I can excuse the ignorance and shortsightedness of the American people; they just got mad and maybe didn't have a grasp of the devastating effects no action on the part of Congress would have on us, as individuals, and on our economy as a whole. But I just can't find any excuse whatsoever for Congressmen who are supposed to be our leaders and are elected, at least to some degree, to protect us when something as bad as this crisis occurs.

Our representatives in Congress, especially in times of severe national crises, need to rise above our ignorance and do what is right for the country and forget about the votes and campaign contributions they might lose. They need to step up and tell their constituents when they are wrong and do the right thing even if it may cost them their careers in Congress. We need representatives in Congress who are above our individual anger and ignorance of the issues and who can look at the big picture and take action that is best for us and the country, and not necessarily what's best for them and their political careers.

The Issues, No. 44 - The Financial Crisis and the American People

Yesterday I talked about the irresponsible members of the House of Representatives who voted against the bailout legislation on Monday. Today, after looking at a couple of national polls on the subject and seeing that the majority of Americans who responded to the polls are also against a bailout, I have concluded that, if those people are truly representative of all the American people, we, as a nation, are truly in deep trouble. Of course I could be missing something here, but I don't think so.

It's OK to be mad at the fact that the financial industry, because of greed and mismanagement, caused its own problems. It's OK to be mad at the fact that our government leaders didn't pay more attention to the situation and nip the problem in the bud before it got out of hand. And, it's OK to be extra mad because now you and the rest of the American taxpayers are being asked to bail the industry out. But, it's not OK to not fix the problem just because you are mad and want to punish the bad guys!

As a matter of fact, you may be part of the problem too, if you have run your credit card debt up so far that you can't even make the minimum payments and/or you are in a situation where you can't make your mortgage payment because it escalated as the contract that you signed said it would. Nobody forced you into those situations. You got into them for essentially the same reason the financial industry is in trouble ----- you were greedy and you wanted stuff you really couldn't afford! So now, instead of being all righteous and sanctimonious and blaming others for your problems you need to take responsibility for your own actions and realize that the government bailout is absolutely necessary for our nation's, a good part of the rest of the world's, and your own personal financial well-being.

And for those of you who are opposed to the bailout because you think you are financially sound and don't believe you should be asked to shoulder any of the burden to help a failing industry, I think you better look at the consequences of not doing the bailout. Your 401K that you are relying on for your retirement income may dwindle to nothing. You may not be able to borrow money to buy a new car or fix your roof or send your kid to college or do any number of things you need to do. So, you also need to think beyond your anger and look at what no action here will do to your own financial picture.

For all of us, this entire situation is a terrific example of how we, if only we were smart enough as individuals and would take responsibility for our own actions, could prevent this kind of crisis. We should know when we can't afford something we want and we should be smart enough to not be tempted by our own greed and desire, which in this case, the financial institutions have preyed upon. The situation is also a good example of how our Congress needs to be more vigilant about what's going on in the country and put the brakes on practices that they know are harmful to our society regardless of the possible loss of votes or campaign contributions.