1. Because those in power are so isolated from the rest of us and so indebted to big business, lobbyists and the wealthy, our way of life as we know it is rapidly fading and so is the American Dream ---- now almost unreachable for most young Americans. I am not smart enough to know all the reasons for what is happening to our economy, especially its financial and credit markets, but I would like to think that I am smart enough to know that one reason is because we don’t care enough to find out; we allow ourselves to be greatly influenced by partisan politics, religious beliefs and ethnic prejudices, all of which further impair good judgment. As a result we elect incompetent people to govern us and we trust an economic model that not only encourages greed but in fact protects it.
2. Before George W. Bush was elected President, all we knew about him was that he was the Governor of Texas and the son of a former President. Not long after we learned that he is an arrogant, incompetent and deceiving man who has screw up time after time and in the process done great harm to our democracy through the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act and his macho kind of diplomacy.
3. How Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, ever got to be the CEO of Goldman Sachs, an icon of capitalism, is puzzling to me. Yet, this former Wall Street CEO is in charge of fixing the excesses of Wall Street and as such he developed a rescue plan that has nothing to do with Adam Smith’s brand of capitalism. Surrounded by former Goldman Sachs executives at the Treasury Department, this man has clear conflicts of interest and should resign.
4. Considering that the current banking, financial and economic crisis started under the watch of Allan Greenspan, the former FED Chairman has much explaining to do to the American people.
5. In John McCain we have a possible President that is embarrassingly ignorant on all matters related to the economy, the country’s main problem. Except when talking about his days as a hero of the Vietnam War, this man can’t express a single thought without reading a script (probably written by someone else). Most important, he couldn’t have shown poorer judgment than in the selection of his running mate.
6. Sarah Palin is a nice woman and probably a great hockey mom as well, but to suggest that this woman is ready to handle the job of President of the United States is a cruel joke and truly an insult to all thinking Americans. In fact, if Senator McCain showed poor judgment in selecting her, Sarah Palin showed equal poor judgment in accepting.
7. This presidential campaign is not only the dirtiest in history, but much of the dislike for Senator Obama is racially inspired. Senator Obama is certainly pretty young and thus lacks experience. But he is, however, intellectually superior to Senator McCain and has a better vision for the future of our country.
8. The harsh reality is that we are not only in an environment of deep financial crisis, but also a huge crisis of insolvency, confidence and trust. A large numbers of our better known banks, insurance companies, and commercial and industrial concerns are on the brink of collapse. Trillions of dollars in assets are in danger in a sea of all kinds of problems. It is a kind of economic cancer that can’t be saved with a bail out package full of holes. The fair thing in a free market economy is that the losses of businesses should go to the owners (shareholders) and not to the taxpayers. The government shouldn’t have intervened to protect greed, mismanagement and corruption.
9. I doubt that things will improve much unless we have a competent men and women in the White House and in the Congress. We need new rules and regulations that will discourage the kind of behavior that has place the American economy in trauma care.
HZ
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