"The Fine Print", by Michael Schrader

<span style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>"The Fine Print", by Michael Schrader

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<span style='font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'>Whwhat Is the Rust

We Have Only Ourselves To Blame For The Impending Disaster

(Written and posted 25 October 2008)<o:p></o:p>

As much as I hate to say this, I feel I must – Barack Hussein Obama will be the next President of the United States. Although I will not vote for an avowed socialist who wants to “spread the wealth” by raising taxes on the wealthy, there are enough angry people among the electorate who want to see such justice who will. Why are people angry, and what justice do they seek?

People are angry not that the economy has gone into the toilet, but what caused it to go into the toilet – the selfishness and greed of a handful of people. The global economy is run by a very small group of people who run the financial institutions, and it was their greed that caused them to loan out money to people who didn’t deserve it, which resulted in a run-up of stock and real estate prices that caused greater speculation that drove up commodities prices (such as oil) that caused a significant financial burden on those who borrowed all the money that caused them to default on their loans that caused the whole system to collapse due to lack of capital. In short, everyone was living off of other people’s money, and when the loans came due, no one could pay, because no one had any money. While all this leveraging and speculation was going one, the corporate executives plundered their own companies of every bit of cash they could, and when the bills came due, the companies couldn’t pay them, resulting in bankruptcies and closures, resulting in job losses and worthless stock, stock that regular folks like you and I invested in to have for our retirements. Everybody has lost (I know that some of my stock have lost 80 percent of their value), except for the corporate executives who created this whole shell game, who walked away just in time with tens of millions of dollars. Here in Oklahoma we have had two spectacular company failures in the past several years, and in both of them, hundreds of people lost their jobs, countless vendors were stiffed out of millions of dollars of unpaid invoices, and the executives walked away with huge wads of cash and their mansions intact. I know of one person who has been at the helm of three companies that have gone under, and has never lost a dime while his employees scrambled to find other jobs. It screams injustice. It just doesn’t fair that people can plunder their own companies and walk away with millions while their employees and investors walk away with nothing. The outrageousness of this is why the voters will vote overwhelming for the socialist Obama, as the voters want revenge. The voters who have lost everything want to see the government take from those who they feel have wronged them.

While this Robin Hood mentality sure feels good, it is the wrong approach. Once you unleash the power of the government on one group, what will stop the government from going after another group, then another, then another, until the government goes after you, too. Now is the time to remember the lessons of the Nazis. The Nazis were excellent populist demagogues, who rode into power on the strength of the common German who was suffering mightily during the dark year of the Great Depression. It was all the Jews fault, as the Jews were the money lenders and those who ran the financial institutions. The Jews were selfish and greedy and feasting while Christian Germans starved. In fact, the Jews were feasting on innocent Christian children. Demagogues who play the populist class warfare game surely do make us feel better for exacting “justice” against those who we think wronged us. The common German had no issue with Hitler’s confiscation of property from the Jews, because they “deserved” it for being greedy and selfish. Only in retrospect can we truly appreciate the horror the populist demagogue wrought- the wholesale slaughter of six million innocents.

Before we vote next week, we need to do some serious soul searching as to what kind of government we want. Do we want our government to play God, to smite the wicked? Or do we want a government that grants us the freedom to succeed or fail on our own merits? How is the current economic malaise the fault of the common man who faces foreclosure or who has lost his savings thanks to the depreciation of his 401(k)? Did anyone put a gun to the head of that person who took out the mortgage and overextended himself and force him to do it? I don’t think so; it was the allure of getting everything now and not having to invest years of blood, sweat, and tears. Did anyone put a gun to the head of the 401(k) investor and force him to hand over his money to a total stranger? Nope. 401(k)’s are the lazy person’s way to invest, as they don’t require any deep thought, knowledge, or painstaking research. With a 401(k), you just hand over your money to someone else and make them do all the hard work for you.

I, for one, do not want a government that smites the “wicked” (a.k.a. the rich) by seizing their assets and giving them to the stupid and lazy who are poor because they are stupid and lazy. When Senator Obama talks about “sharing the wealth”, that is exactly what he intends to do. And the innocent will suffer, and the country will be worse for it.

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