Dear America

Dear America,

We do not owe anything to the mortgage bankers on Wall Street. Repeat after me-- We do not owe anything to the mortgage bankers on Wall Street. We, as Americans, have done nothing wrong, and we do not have to pay a $700 billion fine to the Wall Street investment banks to keep ourselves out of hot water.

Paulsen's bailout is a bald, undisguised end-game gambit by the Bush administration to send the Wall Street royal class a final parting gift. George W. Bush gave half a trillion in tax cuts to the "moneyed class" in the first year of his administration, and is now about to give another three quarters of a trillion to buy out the bad paper-- toxic assets they're calling it now, which the banks financed the economic bubble with-- in the last two months of his presidency. And everyone in Congress-- both houses, and both sides of the aisle-- are so star struck by the "royalty" traipsing through the marble halls, they can only gasp and sputter and finally go along with the deal. Even the normally erudite Barak Obama has been left speechless by the majesty of being invited to attend the star chambers of vast power and even vaster wealth to discuss this niggling little-- err, I mean deeply troubling issue.

Folks, this is revolting and it's dangerous, and it's not inevitable. Paulsen, and Bernanke to a lesser extent, were appointed to "deliver the news" to Washington that the sky is going to fall if we don't give Wall Street wheeler-dealers 3/4 of a trillion dollars this week! These are bankers-- the kind who can look you straight in the eye while they re-possess your iron lung. Vile, ugly, greedy, self-serving men who have in their lifetimes amassed extraordinary wealth, for themselves and for their companies (Paulsen was the chairman of Goldman, Sachs before he became Treasury Secretary, and took home a half-billion dollars from that job). Everyone is falling over themselves to say "let's negotiate this." It's like negotiating with a mugger! These guys don't blink. But someone in Washington has to speak out.

Because now, American business persons, you are going to find yourselves competing with the government to make a buck, because they're (we're) going to own, or subsidize, the largest and most crooked insurance companies, finance companies, banks, and brokerage houses in the country. We have no representatives in either house of Congress, or anyone on either side of the aisle who will tell the bankers to take their toxic assets and salvage or write them down themselves. It's disgusting, and I hope it leads to an even bigger house-cleaning than the last election. I feel helpless and frustrated and I have lost all trust in anyone in Washington. They're star struck by the billionaires. Please someone, please speak up!