THE REASON FOR OUR NATIONAL DEBT

Many people have asked how is it we have racked up 20 Trillion on our national debt? This is a deep and incredibly misunderstood subject. Not all of what I am about to say is the entire cause, but it has been a huge contributor.

The simple answer is WALL STREET and WAR. In order to save this nation after the last financial crisis that occurred in 2008, where 10.6 Trillion was lost by the year 2010. Chairman Ben Bernanke’s choices, although criticized by many in this country was really left with no other choice but to give a bail out.

When Banks sought out ‘Mortgage backed securities’, hereinafter referred to as MBS in order to expand their loan portfolios at decreased risk in harmony with the FDIC, which started around 1994, it was seen as an appropriate vehicle to encourage growth and expand trade. Hence the successful years under the Clinton administration and Alan Greenspan. Little would we know that by the year 2008 this would all end in disaster, owing to one major factor?

As with all things this starts gradually, banks make money MBS’s make money and a necessary stimulus has been implemented. With time this started to become a very successful model to develop and expand the housing industry.

Others on Wall Street saw this as an absolute winner for growth.  Many new investors, saw lucrative returns with companies, like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Chase, Bear Sterns, Lehman Bros. and so on. At the turn of the millennium new MBS companies started, also commonly known as hedge funds.  Herein lay the key factor that started what has been called, the sub prime mortgage. These unregulated financial entities saw an opportunity to loan money at greater risk. With higher interest rates and increasing house prices, where was the down side?   The man in the street saw this as an option to own a home, and for those that had homes, it was now an option to own a second home, for investment purposes. Housing, what could be more solid than a growing market place, where housing with this new found financing was available to be a great investment?

The market place started to kick off in a big way. Construction was growing, people were buying and selling as prices rose, money was being made, by construction companies, home owners, real estate brokers, banks, MBS’s and so on. But with all great schemes there comes a day of reckoning. With the growth of private investment, hedge funds, MBS’s and the like, there seemed to be no end to the potential. Its journey was exponential.

In 2004, the housing expansion started to slow as house prices had reached an all time high! Some houses had doubled and tripled in value. Loans had been easy to get based on having a reasonable credit score, this shadow banking financial community was not regulated like the banks, and Alan Greenspan fought hard against this happening. The result was as the houses had been purchased with no fixed term, or fixed annual percentage rate, known as an APR.  Interest rates started to rise. Now with the new higher interest rates on houses that were much higher than their original price, selling was becoming increasingly difficult. Even what I will call the unregulated financial funders were starting to feel the pinch, they too were being backed by other hedge funds in order to share the risk. It was like a bunch of bookmakers placing and defaulting their risks.

All was well until 2007, when mortgage holders started to default. The complex funding community had so many facets it’s beyond explanation in this blog. The worldwide investments from individuals and corporations had become so complex that no one could see the truly exposed entity, should there be a crisis. Yet the funding community was fraudulently, still selling investments on Wall Street, all believing there would be no end to this ‘Golden Goose’ that laid the egg!

In 2006 Wall Street paid out 23.9 Billion in bonuses to executives!!! Life was good and no one could see and end in sight. Except for the people in high places and a group of smart young men, starting out, from the ‘Ivy league’ Colleges. They in turn bet against their own company in a process know as shorting. So make money on the way up and make it on the way down? I won’t explain shorting here, but in simple terms its buying shares that you believe will go down. Many off shore companies were created for that purpose.

As interest rates grew, mortgage holders fell into default and foreclosure. The collapse seen by the top and the bottom, but not all those in between, became reality. Lehman Brothers were the first to be widely known, amongst other lesser-known entities.

Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were backed by the government. Wall Street knew there would be a bailout! And you know who ended up paying for all this?

YES YOU, not Obama or his administration. The solution? Print more money, keep interest rates low, keep jobs, otherwise the nation was headed for a worse recession than the “GREAT DEPRESSION’, of 1929.

This behavior on Wall Street resulted in only ONE ARREST, a man from Credit Suisse!!!

In addition the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has added another 4 Trillion… is it no wonder we have this debt? So stop blaming the last 8 years, for our country’s debt, and wake up to reality. The politicians could well be asked about Wall Street, and what has been done, that’s for sure. With bonuses still being paid out to executives in vast corporations and financial entities to the tune of millions, one must ask the question who really runs the country behind super pacts and lobbyists?

So Mr. Trump I hope you are up for the task, and you can deliver on all your promises?

  

   

 

THE ELECTION AND THE CHANGE IN OUR POLICAL PARTIES

A fundamental change has now taken place in the political parties of the United States:

Republican Party:  Now under the present direction of the newly President Elect, Donald Trump, this can hardly be called the Republican Party. The dynamics of thought have completely shifted.  To what was traditionally a party of the elitist right wing authority of all that was held to be the very essence of what was truly American politics, upholding all the values of free enterprise, religious values and all that the ruling classes of America stood for. Now it has become a more democratic entity upholding the rights of Americans that feel that the elitist power base has totally betrayed Main Street. Donald Trump has struck a nerve with Americans who feel lost and forgotten in what they believe America was and should be again. By putting a hold on immigration, which should have been dealt with decades ago and wasn’t, and realizing that main stream America was being lost in the process.

 

Abraham Lincoln

This clever tactic of recognizing these fundamental facts, has brought traditional Democrats and Independents to want representation where they have a party that’s going to stand up to congress and its total lack of consideration for jobs, health care, and the well being of WHITE America, over minorities. Over the years the steady influx of immigrants and illegals, has created a division where cheap labor from immigrants at the price of white America has been forgotten, and by the outsourcing of work to the rest of the world at the price of the working people and middle class America.

This has resulted in the unheard ‘Rust Belts’, revolting from all sides to newly coming of age students, with an opportunity to vote, who see no opportunity for there futures in this country. This party should be renamed the Nationalist party of America, the now new NPA? To my mind the Republican Party of old was so fractured, with its myriad of ideals, it didn’t have a hope in hell of being elected.

Democratic Party: By contrast it appears the Democrats who formerly had this nucleus of the electorate, backed by Unions who were the main stay of the party have completely shifted away. You now have Hillary Clinton’s support by Wall Street, vast corporations and super pacts, which have completely shifted to support the America they want. It’s as though the Democratic movement has shifted to what the Republican Party, in part was once?

In addition, you have a Bernie Sanders, who stands for what I believe the majority of people really want, better education for all America in order to bring up the rear to balance out the elitist force that’s driving the country. His only problem is, it is out of total alignment with all the values of enterprise and the very essence of what America has been since its inception.  So the Democratic Party is really not united in its purpose, and had Bernie Sanders been given a greater roll in this election I truly believe the result would have been different.

 

Senator Bernie Sanders (left) Former Democratic Nominee, Hillary Clinton (Right)

Conclusion: There you have the picture, without expressing in depth that both parties wanted reform, but it was a question of who better to bring this about. The electorate has spoken. The situation we have today is not unlike what took place at the turn of the twentieth century. It has all happened before, just in another way. We had the ‘Robber barons’, J.P. Morgan, John D, Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and  Vanderbilt. Between these four people they controlled America. The Sherman Anti Trust laws put an end to that by busting up these monopolies. Capitalism, small business and enterprise have been the very essence and backbone of what America has been and is, but without regulation unbridled greed and corruption can take over. Its is we the people that must stop this, for the divisions that have been created between Wall Street and Main Street have become out of control.

I have touched on a vast subject, that whatever we now face, we must not desert the values of our ‘Founding Fathers’. We must seek ways to create greater integration among all races. When I opened my son’s history book, when he was in elementary school, it clearly stated that, ‘we are a nation of immigrants’, and until that is fully respected, we will not reach that pinnacle of becoming, as we have been, an example to the rest of the world. 

 

"We are a Nation of Immigrants."

On a final note, to give my personal opinion, racism must be faced head on and dealt with. We have a problem that has been avoided for far too long. Arriving here for a short period in 1967 and returning to England in 1972, I was exposed to an extremely hostile environment between Black and White people. Something I had never encountered, growing up in England. The Viet Nam war was also a time for student revolt and the burning of draft cards. I returned to live in America in 1976.

Even under the Carter administration these areas of racial conflict were somehow appeased but not completely.

It has always amazed me how the Jewish people who have had so much opposition for thousands of years, have been tortured, degraded and treated horrifically by Hitler in WW II, yet where ever they settle they learn the language, integrate with the culture, and respectfully keep their own religious beliefs and values among themselves. All races could learn much from what they have endured, and given back to not only this nation but to the world. Benjamin Disraeli a Jew was Queen Victoria’s favorite Prime Minister in England, at a time of extreme elitism and World Empire acclamation. The list of excellence this race of people has given in, music, Hollywood, science, the medical field and finance, has been invaluable. All of us could take a step backwards and remember that the black race too has also much to be proud of in many fields of endeavor. We of the so called white race, should start to recognize that without the many different races that make up this planet, we alone would not have been able to achieve what has been done. So the first is only as good as the last. It’s not about race and the color of our skin it’s about the right person being equally chosen for the endeavor, based upon pragmatic understanding and values. We can no longer base our values on the animalistic part of our being, this has got us to where we are today, but we must now evolve into a new age where the greater spiritual part of our being is brought to the forefront. Without this understanding we will continue to be a backward people who live in a world of conflict and territorial beliefs that still remain apart of our undoing.