LISTEN TO US!

Right now, the rich and powerful are trying to marginalize the group called “Occupy Wall Street.”  They are saying that this mix of blue collar and professional, working and unemployed, fearful and the foreclosed, this group of regular people, don’t have a coherent message, that no one knows what they want.  Well it’s true that they don’t have a public relations rep, or a lobby group but they do have a unifying message.  Their message, and it runs through the whole spectrum of people involved is…are you ready:

WE ARE SICK AND TIRED IF BEING POWERLESS!

Yup, that’s it.  As individuals, they feel they have no voice against injustice.  They are:

POWERLESS to stop being abused by BANKS,

To demand an interest rate that approaches inflation instead of 100 times less than inflation (0.01% last time I looked).

To stop them from using fees as a gotcha profit center.

To demand accountability for their actions and for the use of our bailout money for…what?

POWERLESS to demand that our Government represent us instead of Corporations and whoever can buy their time and attention.

Why can’t we have a choice during an election, we are forced to pick who will do the least damage, the leper with the most fingers and then we are told that we are responsible for his actions.

POWERLESS to control the actions of Corporations.

The corporate person has all the rights that we have but is not held accountable for his actions, his only goal is to maximize profits, and he has a lot more resources to achieve his goals.

POWERLESS to stop the Wall Street and Corporate boards from dismantling and corrupting key institutions for short term gain.

POWERLESS to stop the Health Care Industry and the Insurance Industry from preying upon us at our most vulnerable and blocking every effort to reform them with fear, mistrust, and misinformation.

POWERLESS against a media that is more interested in selling the show, or representing a viewpoint (or an owner), than delivering news and information that could be used for informed decision making.

Here’s a real shocker for you, the Occupy Wall Street crowd and the Tea Party crowd are after the same thing, empowerment.  Unfortunately the Tea Party seems to think the problem is Government and want to remove of it as much as possible.  I believe that the Government is the only one with a stick big enough to represent us against the true enemy of individual and corporate greed and power, unfortunately they appear to be uninterested in representing us.

Savings, America’s Capital Depreciation Fund

Peter Peterson, the founder of the Blackstone group is lamenting the lack of personal savings in the US. He says this is a bigger problem than the current recession. He may be right when he says that since there is no domestic savings, foreign countries holding our debt can hold our economy hostage.
Unfortunately he blames our attitude of “want it now” for out lack of savings. Here he is dead wrong. If you go and open a savings account these days you will find out two things.

1) You will likely pay a fee for having a savings account.

2) The interest rate you receive on your savings will likely be well below inflation.

Bottom line, when you save, YOU LOSE MONEY.

I don’t know about you but I can’t see why the interest rate on savings shouldn’t be some percentage of the loan rate, AND it should always be better than inflation. The banks are jerking us around, charging fees everywhere they can, keeping savings interest rates low, and now using our tax dollars to pay exec salaries and bonuses. Mr. Peterson has a lotta sand to sit in his fancy suit and talk to us about how bad we are for not saving.

Maybe in our little way by not saving we are telling the MARKET that we want change. But why should they change, if we don’t give them enough at the teller window, they’ll get it from our tax bill.

http://money.cnn.com/video/ft/#/video/fortune/2008/12/02/fortune.500.peterson.saving.fortune

Sacrifice

I am, even as I type, listening to Senator Obama speak for the bailout. He made a statement that has been used time and time again when asking the American People to get in line and cooperate. He said, “we will all have to sacrifice.”

Well, news flash for you Mr. Obama, and you Mr. Bush, We have been sacrificing.

I would ask how are you gentlemen are going to sacrifice? Is there any way that YOUR families are going to have to suffer, give up, sacrifice, for the good of our country? OUR families may have to postpone college, lose jobs, hold down multiple jobs, fail.

What will you personally sacrifice, as an example, so we can, in good conscience, sit at our supper tables and tell our children that they have to sacrifice their future, for the good of our country?

Your Economy, My Economy

President Bush warned, “We are in the midst of a serious financial crisis. Our entire economy is in danger.”

I would say to him that YOUR entire economy is in danger, MINE is already in the tank. With sub-inflation rate raises for the last several years, rising health insurance costs, children in colleges with rising costs and reduced student aid, sky high gasoline and heating prices, my world had been in a pinch for quite a while.

Well Mr. President, now that YOUR economy might feel a pinch and the multimillion dollar CEO’s are hurting, well something must be done. Drop everything and bail’em out.

Some kind of health care reform will have to wait.

Maybe we can afford to educate the next generation, this one will have to fend for itself.