Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Recently I watched a documentary called "Inside Job" which detailed the collapse of the financial market that led to our current depression. I think it is a film everybody who is concerned about the financial future of this country should watch. Wall Street and the government will not want us to watch it because it shows who really control our country.

As I asked before, why nobody has gone to jail for what happened with subprime loans and derivatives that caused the financial meltdown? Somebody like Angelo Mazzillo, head of Countrywide, used subprime loans to inflate the profits of his company and then when he realized that the whole thing was going to collapsed, sold his stocks before they fell. Now if Martha Stewart can be jailed for getting inside information to sell her stocks in a company she does not own, how is that Mazzillo is not guilty? The film also showed how academics were paid by corporations or foreign government to tell how well the economic conditions of these entities were. For example one economics professor wrote that Iceland was in great shape in an article when he was a consultant for Iceland banks. This was just before Iceland collapsed. And he did not have to disclose his financial ties to Iceland. How is this different situation than a doctor who is paid by a pharmaceutical company have to reveal that relationship when he writes or talks about a drug from that company?

Worse than that above sample is companies like Standard and Poor who rates companies, governments etc. S & P recently wrote that they may have to downgrade the U.S. government in the future. Why should we listen to firms like that when they were paid by investment banks to tout how financially sound these banks are? Just right before Lehman Brothers collapsed, S&P had double AA ratings or them. Bottom line we can trust them. We also cannot trust people like Greenspan who refused to regulate the industry as the government should. If people like him didn't understand the dangers of derivatives, who can?

People on the right accuses Obama being a socialist. I always said that presidents have very little control of the economy and I think he is doing as well if not better than Reagan did after he took over the disaster from Carter. But if I fault Obama, it would be that he really did not change anything from Bush. Bernanke is still here as Fed chairman, Geithner is a protege of Hank Paulson and Larry Summers has been around presidents for many years. They are not socialists and they are not for increasing regulations on Wall Street. It is the same policies that have gone on since Regan deregulated. By the way, that led to the savings and loan debacle which we never learned from. Obama is not a socialist. He just does not have great ideas about economics. But then neither did any of the people I mentioned in this paragraph.

Couple blogs ago I complained about public unions. I stand by that. I will admit that after watching this film which just confirm what I had believed all along, I find the people in the financial sector more despicable than the union people. I can understand somebody making average money trying to get more, even if they buy off politicians to do that. What I don't understand is that people making millions already is trying to rip people off. How much is enough?