T: Is for OUR TAXES!

Why is our government intervening with the companies on Wall Street and using our tax dollars? Do we not get a vote on this? Why when this was escalating did their salaries not decrees? Their bonuses not be stricken? Their over spending not being stopped? This started years ago and has continued and yet nobody seems to see the pattern. When Alan Greenspan was head of the Federal Reserve he did not believe in regulation; when the excesses of the financial system was noted. The tax cut of 2001 was not designed to stimulate the economy but to allow the wealthy to continue accumulating more wealth. The Iraq war has our money diverted abroad. While the housing market has plummeted to zero. America has and is living, on borrowed money and borrowed time. The financial institutions and even more their executives are to blame and yet we are bailing them out. Why?

Consider the following: 1999: Enron: "Attorneys, accountants, brokers (notably Merrill Lynch) and bankers (especially Citibank and JP Morgan Chase) were aware of Enron's bending and then breaking of various laws but were earning so much in fees that they chose to remain at the Enron "trough" side-by-side with Lay, Skilling, Fastow, and other Enron executives."

In 2005, after a 2004 AIG scandal on insurance and mutual funds costing $126 million to the SEC and Justice Department. AIG is again under investigation for accounting fraud. The company already lost over $58 billion worth of market compensation because of the AIG scandal.

In 2007 Regulators were slow to crack down on what became an open secret. The U.S. Attorney's Office and the Securities & Exchange Commission have accused brokers from Lehman Brothers (LEH ), Merrill Lynch (MER ), and Citigroup (C ) of allowing clients to listen in on their internal speaker systems, over which traders announce their desire to move huge blocks of stock. Those clients then allegedly kicked back commissions and cash. A former Merrill broker pled guilty. "Any disclosure of confidential information is a violation of policy," says a Merrill spokesman. "We cooperated with the government." Citigroup and Lehman declined to comment.

Instead of being punished we are bailing them out. They are being rewarded for mismanaging risk and faulty/reckless capital allocation managing risk and allocating capital, which is to improve the efficiency of the economy and they justified it with their generous compensation. This is not the first crisis in our financial system, nor the first time they have come running
to the government for bail-outs. There is a pattern here, one that suggests deep systemic problems. These days, many people are wondering what our government will do to stop the insanity. The government has a role, but it is not to be a business partner or a sugar daddy there to provide a helping hand to the bad business practices of the banking system.

This week has cost taxpayers a total of $400 billion and it is climbing. It has not stopped the stock market from plummeting. The only thing it has stopped is excess spending. We need to stop this insanity and like the people in the film "Network" shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Maybe then we will be heard ALL THE WAY TO ASIA and that is a deafening F.A.C.T.

(financial markets opened tonight in Asia in a downward freefall as a result of lack of confidence in US Markets)