In truth, no lessons are learned unless those responsible are held accountable
At last nights Central Labor Council meeting in New York, the delegate of the Operating Engineers Local 94, the men and women who maintain the technological and environmental machinery in our superstructures, was explaining how badly he felt while running around the city trying to find positions for his displaced workers in the Lehman Brothers building. This one firm going out of business is like stabbing a knife in the hearts of over 25,000 working families in New York.
Likewise, restructuring of the insurance giant AIG, who is the sole insurer on the construction project I am currently on, could potentially grind many construction sites to a dead halt. It’s not very good news for anyone who relies on New York City for employment. So, who’s to blame? I know I’m angry, and you should be too, just consider how much of our tax money is being spent to bail out all of these firms who have, through their predatory lending to anyone who could flip a burger, have wound up creating a new form of socialism, one where the hard working tax paying citizens are now sharing, sharing but with an exception, the only ones who are benefiting from our new socialization, are the ultra-rich, so here’s my favorite article of the day. A day which I felt so bad for all the displaced workers in my city
From the New York Daily News,
Another major crisis, and as usual, there are no suspects
Thursday, September 18th 2008, 1:23 AM
Honda/Getty – Guard at AIG watches for trouble from firm’s new owners – you and me.
The big shots are never to blame.
We fail to prevent the attacks on 9/11, but nobody is held responsible.
We charge into Iraq, heedless of the consequences, and nobody is made to answer for it.
Now, Wall Street implodes and nobody is held accountable.
The people who precipitated the worst financial crisis in memory walk away megarich while the taxpayers are left to cover billions of bad debts.
Once again, the big shots skate and the decent, honest, working people suffer.
The top guys at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and AIG knew they were dealing shaky mortgages.
They also should have known that some of the brokers were hustlers with a predatory eye for those made vulnerable by bad credit, old age or infirmity.
The fact that these mortgages were so chancy was what made them so profitable – and the executives were thinking only of the short-term profit that generates the annual bonus.
So, the same way drug kingpins launder the proceeds of street sales, the Wall Street firms bought up subprime mortgages and turned them into supposedly primo securities.
They then overvalued these laundered mortgages and used them as collateral to leverage their firms beyond all reason.
The immediate result was that top executives such as Lehman CEO Richard Fuld became as wealthy as in their wildest dreams and moved about as the titans they imagined themselves to be.
Never mind that the fabulous profits originated in hustling decent souls such as 86-year-old Simeon Ferguson, a retired chef from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who fell prey to a robbery disguised as a loan while suffering from dementia.
Ferguson ended up with payments that exceeded his income, as did millions of other hustled homeowners.
The individual result was the homeowner faced foreclosure.
The cumulative effect was the laundered debt was deemed “toxic,” which was what it had been all along.
The firms became as hard-pressed as all those hustled homeowners. The government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, then propped up Bear Stearns long enough for it to be sold.
The feds seemed to draw a line and let Lehman go bankrupt. Then came word the government had decided to rescue AIG with $85 billion of our hard-earned money.
In exchange, we get 79.9% of the firm, so I figured a taxpayer would be welcome at the AIG tower on Pine St.
But, when I arrived at the gleaming lobby Wednesday and asked to visit the observation deck, a security guard had a one-word reply.
“No.”
I have been told the deck accords a dramatic view of Ground Zero, where nearly 3,000 innocents were murdered. I now remembered a line from the 9/11 commission report.
“Our aim has not been to assign individual blame,” the preface said. “Our aim has been to provide the fullest possible account … and to identify lessons learned.”
In truth, no lessons are learned unless those responsible are held accountable, be it 9/11 or Iraq or the Wall Street implosion that seems far from over.
Where is the outrage? Please remember, they want us to put one of the only social programs which does benefit the people, social security into the clutches of such scum bags as those who orchestrated the current crisis we are in. Remember that when you get out to the polls, remember that when you think of how we did as Bush told us after 9/11, as Giuliani told us, we spent money buying stuff to heal our country, we did as they asked. How many of us wish we had some of the thousands we tossed away for shit we didn’t need, while they took our young to invade a country in a preemptive strike against a nation who had no ties to the terrorist who attacked my homeland. Remember that as the $550 Billion of our unborn grandchildren’s tax money is spent, remember as our young people come back with an arm or a leg or both blown off. Remember that as we wonder why we gave the airline industries billions in bail outs, while they outsourced our jobs to far away lands, remember how they created more Government, that was supposed to protect us from invaders, while simultaniously encouraging more illegal immigration, remember that as we all have less health coverage, if any at all, as our safety net has shrunken as they took our money to subsidize the biofeul industry which is using our cheap corn poroduct and making the price skyrocket. Remember the poison animal feed that killed our cats and dogs, the Chinese made Heperin that caused our countrymens deaths, the poison toys that have taken over the shelves in the stores, the total and unequivocal removal of our Habeas corpus rights, how they allowed the mega corporations to destroy our way of life. How they gave tax incentives for companies to leave, how they created loopholes for the highest bidders.
Yes they have socialized our country, we pay for all their misdeeds, we pay for those who do not on both sides of the spectrum.
Remember all that as they continually divide us through their flickering box that has only 6 corporate owners , as does their periodicals, they don’t want distention against their plans, they want dissension amongst ourselves. While we worry about words and lipstick, they have terrorized us all. The real terrorists use economics, fear and deception to divide and conquer us all.
We have a chance to change the path we are heading in, even if it’s only 1%, anything is better than more of the same. Get out and vote, show them you give a crap, or settle with the fact that you didn’t do the littlest of your American rights, the rights that our forefathers fought and died for.
Piss on your rules Nurse Ratchet, I ain’t no little kid, I ain’t no little kid. I want something done. I want something done, I want something done!!!!! - Cheswick, after Nurse Ratchet tells him about the rationing of cigarettes, he then gets carried away by a group of orderlies
