It stops when those who support the free market stop reflexively vote Republican. It stops when we stop believing the lies our politicians tell us and vote for someone who actually does believe in the free markets (hint: it sure as hell is not John McCain). It stops when we realize that successful tax evasion, while perhaps imprudent, is the simplest and most moral way an individual can fight the government.

Or, as the pessimist in me would argue, it will stop only after it has gotten much, much worse and those who believe in freedom are forced to take up arms against the government. That is the same way it always stops.

Tracy…

I have a question. I’ve heard something that is very alarming. If the tax payers are going to have to bear the burden of these bail outs, where is the money actually coming from now? The news I’ve heard is that the government will simply print it. Is this really the case? Might this be a very, very dangerous situation for everyone. Might our currency be devalued in a way never seen in modern times?

I also see a trend that reminds me of the old runs on banks, but this time it isn’t so much a run on banks, but a run on people rushing to get their money out of the stock market regardless of all the care the media has taken to keep investors from panicking. Isn’t this why the bail out is actually going forward, because to not do it would possibly prompt a collapse of the markets never seen since the, yes, Great Depression? All the incredible expenditures to fund the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and homeland security outlays within our own borders (for the likes of chemical suits and what not that will remain mothballed until they are obsolete) has made the US vulnerable to the very thing that the terrorists hoped to accomplish when they attacked the heart of the financial district? Could the incredible knee jerk reaction of our government after 911 do for the terrorists what the actual attack failed to pull off?

I truly doubt that these problems have gone unnoticed by the people in the know. Seems like there have been a lot of people trying to sit on this bad news, possibly hoping to get the nation past the November elections before the ramifications were openly revealed as they have this past week. I liken it to parents trying to get their children to a service station rest room to avoid the embarrassing situation of having to stop and let junior out by the side of the busy highway to relieve himself. Anyway, our financial wizards couldn’t hold it anymore and they have had to relieve themselves tragically by the side of the road without making it to the closest road side rest or service station.

You can’t tell me that no one knew these financial institutions were not jumping a jig for some time trying to cross their legs until their eyes finally crossed and their eyes bugged out calling a stop to the car, demanding to have relief by the aforementioned side of the highway. Such an incredibly embarrassing situation, not just for the Republicans but the Democrats as well. Both McCain and Obama already accepting large contributions from the likes of AIG. I have to question these contributions from a company that had to know they were deep into a world of major hurt, trying to hold back the panic. Partisanship aside, we are all in this together, and it isn’t good. Jaded I am, and from your tone Tracy, so are you.

The CEOs–who have taken their multi-million dollar salaries—and are going to now get a bail out from the very people who made their salaries possible in the first place. You think a little old fashioned head rolling might be in order? I am not saying that we pull out the guillotine, but maybe McCain isn’t wrong for calling for someone’s job, but why make the FEC chair the scape goat? I have many times railed about the FTC who has sat back and allowed certain billionaires have their way with their product pyramid schemes which have only served to make suckers out of the soap touting neighbors next door. The FTC turned their head to the stink and let the scammers continue their money extraction. Now the FEC is taking the heat for lack of oversight; well, should we have a double standard with the alphabet soup regulators that suck up tax payer dollars but do nothing to protect the common man while allowing the self interests of special interest billionaires be served?

I always wondered why the crowds cheered when they took the head off of the French gal who said “let them eat cake!” Our government has been the puppets of special interests for too long now. The little man has been told to eat cake in so many ways I can’t even begin to tell you in this relatively short comment. The tax payers are going to be eating cake for some time now, if they are lucky enough to even be able to afford it. A pox on both the houses of the Democrats and the Republicans and especially the special interest groups that while going into the proverbial grave were still dishing out cash to politicians.

Back to my question? If the government isn’t going to print all the bail out money, are they going to borrow it from foreign interests then? If so, wouldn’t this be a further selling out of America? It is unfortunate that this has happened with so few days left until the election. Isn’t it hypocritical for the candidates to now shift the blame onto “the alphabet soup” of regulators who have sat on their hands looking the other way while all this situation was escalating. This isn’t a situation that is going to be resolved by an election, because both parties are guilty and need to answer for their inability to stop the graft and influence peddling that has been the norm.

It’s precisely because banks knew their risk was mitigated by the potential of a government bailout that they took outsized risks in search of higher profits. Privatizing profit and socializing risks is in no way a free market.

Mr. Q, because US debt is denominated in it’s own currency, technically it can never default on it’s debt, because it can keep printing more money. However, that’s an inflationary scenario and just as bad as a default, only a different flavor of bad.

While everybody has been talking about the collateralized mortgage instruments that have seen collossal defaults, not many people have thought about other debt instruments based on the American consumer. Credit cards and car finance are all collateralized as well. What’s going to happen to the banks’ balance sheets, already ravaged by bad mortgate paper when people REALLY start missing car payments?

Lee…

Your explanation of how the government can basically borrow the money from people named John Q Public by yes, printing more money, sounds exactly like what this bail out is. I just do not think John Q is going to fully understand the finer details as you expressed them. The government is going to force us to borrow from our self, and Tracy is correct that the situation has gotten so bad that the GW Bush Administration has gone “socialist” in maybe the worst case scenario any President has ever got us, John Q into.

It seems like John Q Bush now has been painted into a corner, having little option but to fall on the socialism sword, something the long trunks have accused the jack asses of wanting to do. Regardless, both of these parties are forced to ride in the same car and take us all down the road socialism road which Tracy so correctly described!

If I can remember correctly, the other instruments you are talking about (consumer finance, credit card and car loans) have been touted and badly oversold as well. For awhile I considered all the junk mail trying to get me to sign up for another credit card to be a potential alternative means to heat my home through the long winter. I could just install a credit card junk mail burner where my current natural gas unit sets now. Also, every time I turned my radio on my ears were bombarded with stupid crazy commercials urging me to drag my wreck of a perfectly good auto down the the car lot and trade it in for a new payment book. You are indeed correct that we can’t view the mortgage industry as being the only sector of greed. All of these “instruments” get bought up by what (I hate to say it) is a “pyramid scheme” of greed that the buyers and speculators of these “instruments” have caused. Now that these “agregators” (rhymes with alligators) of bad debt have had a disruption of their food chain, they are passing their greed inspired losing bet up onto us, John Q, who is the only carrion left for these vultures to dine on! We actually have been the carrion all along and still are. The only thing standing between us, John Q Carrion, and these greedy bankers, now turned turkey buzzard, is our entire government–not the very unfortunate Bush White House, but the other “houses” in Washington as well in this town who have taken special interest money. As a result, the toothless “alphabet soup”supposedly “pit bull” regulators that have been retrained by legislators that have appointed members of the very sectors to oversee the very industry they represent effectively making these regulators not “pit bulls” but mere toy poodle lap dogs for all the Fanny’s, AIGs, and even the group of Amway lead DSA hiding “true” pyramid operators as well.

It was okay when it is the common folk packing up to leave their homes, or the soap touting “stupido” neighbor being shorn like sheep; but when all of a sudden it is the front corporations for the cigar chomping crowd (to include the Devos/Van Andel empire Pooh Bahs of funneling special interest money to protect their world wide American Scam) as well as many other scoundrels, are the ones in trouble. You can be sure these big money players are stuffing their cash in some mattress somewhere. Being on the receiving end of special interests our leaders have let deregulation work in the favor of greed, not in the public interest and protected their own self interest of keeping special interest money coming their way.

I have asked all the candidates during the primary season to speak out and to state their positions on this other huge segment of corruption which is MLM and especially on AMWAY, but not a single party has taken a stand because they took Amway money instead!

Tracy, I know we have sort of bumped heads over little things like which party and candidate should be supported in this election. Notice that I am not making an endorsement for either one at the present moment. Both parties have failed on the issues that you and I have exposed as corrupt while just merely being legal. A do nothing FTC has sat on their hands and allowed the likes of Amway, Usana, Herbalife, and other relatively faceless Direct Selling Association company members to run their mafia like money extracting schemes and scams on the American public with the distributors being the “Stockholm Syndrome-like” victims stupidly supporting their own victimization. It is a time to bring pyramid schemes to an end, whether they be in the public or private sector; whether they are under the FTC or FEC regulative agencies, both of which have sat on the laps licking the faces of the very same cigar chomping people they are supposed to oversee.

The American people have been made the “marks” in this entire bad situation and now the politicians believe we John Q Public have to now be “taken to school” and educated how we are going to bail out the vultures. Instead of us being taken to school, shouldn’t someone be “TAKEN TO THE WOODSHED INSTEAD!”

Sadly, neither of the candidates for president at the moment can truly claim any high ground about the situation. Both having received contributions from the very companies that the public is being forced to bail out. In the worst flip flopping I’ve ever seen, how can anyone brag one minute about being a powerful Washington insider one day and the next day turn on their colleagues and paint them as being the problem. It really just doesn’t work for either John or Barack. Indeed, one candidate has a plan to muck out the stable he had claimed to be a mover and shaker in, while the other candidate basically votes “present” and proposes no plan. STOP THE MADNESS!

It’s a bad situation for the average-Joe citizens who in the end are left to extinguish a flaming bag of feces that our glorious leaders set on our door step, knocking on our foreclosed door and then scamper down the street like teenagers knowing it is our shoe that will stink for many years to come. But fear not citizens because there is still hope; Bruce McCall of the Huffington post claims John McCall said in a tongue in cheek comical parody that “Every American should buy an Amway distributorship, sit back and watch the cash pour in…”

Seems like the money from Amway has indeed poured in to the pockets of our legislators, two of which are current members of this esteemed body. What has this country come to when Amway has become the answer to all our economic woes? Two pyramid schemes of greed stroking their lap dogs the FEC and the FTC. How existential!