And Paul Volcker chuckled

This morning I watched a snippet of an interview with him. He was asked how he felt about Obama's economic plan naming a part of it "The Volcker Rule". He then went on a bit about how he upped interest rates to 20+ percent to "help" the economy..and then he chuckled a bit.

Really, Paul?

You thought that whole thing was "chuckle-worthy"?

Let's all go back a bit, shall we?

Those were the days my friend, we hoped they would never soon end. At that particular time, Baby Boomers were just starting their "grown-up" lives.

Buy a house?...20% down and double digit interest
Buy a car?....more double digit interest

That interest was still deductible, BUT only if you itemized, and without a house payment it did not make sense for most to itemize.

Have lots of money in the bank?...Yay YOU!

The people who had lots of money already really loved those high interest rates, but the "newly-arrived" grownups had nothing much in "the game" except to be the ones paying the high interest, so the people ahead of them could enrich themselves further. True, those were usually the "bosses" who provided the jobs, so at least there was a little benefit.

The moneyed classes who reaped the benefits of those high interest rates already HAD their homes (probably purchased for $1.00 down VA loans). They had a head-start, and as they entered the "retirement stages" of their lives, they also had pensions they could count on, all the while watching their children & grandchildren scratching through the chaff, looking for an occasional errant seed.

Ordinary (not quite really middle class) people have always been "bled".

We don't matter. It's why we went from citizen to consumer, when we are referred to at all these days.

Our financial well-being has always been of little regard to the powerful ones.

It's no accident that while interest rates were horrendously high , and costs (for those who did buy homes & cars at those rates) ratcheted ever-upward, credit cards came to be the gap-filler. They "replaced" reasonable interest rates coupled with increased wages. Cut down wages and raise interest rates and you have the perfect storm to permanently saddle millions of people with untenable debt for decades.

Interest rates did finally come down., but the damage was done.

Credit cards had become a "way of life"...being permanently in debt had become acceptable

Fast forward, and you'll see we are still being "bled". Most have no pensions. What money some managed to put away during past times were routinely "appropriated" in various bank/savings & loan/stock swindles. 401-k's were supposed to be the "solution", but they pretty much became what many of us suspected they would be all along..a multi-decade "untouchable" (by the participant) slush fund to be gambled with, and then gutted as we came close (as a group) to collecting on them.

Social security was "extra" funded to PREPAY retirement for the largest generation, but of course it was left unprotected from the sticky-fingered legislature who used it like their own personal piggy bank, as they set out to obscure all the money they wasted for decades.

The ironic part is that for those of us who lived frugally and did manage to save some money, we now have the worst of both worlds. What money we have, collects very little interest, our homes are not worth selling, even if we need to sell, real inflation (what we pay every time we shop) is as high as it ever was (even though new accounting methods pretend it is not), and social security is still under attack and is constantly in danger of being "pared down". No one in government ever mentions REPAYING all the money from it they have skimmed off for decades.

How do they "repay"? By admitting that the rich ones who have been over-benefitting for a very long time, need to REPAY now. When a welfare recipient/social security recipient gets a check that is overly large, they have to REPAY it. The ones who have been bleeding the economy dry , at the expense of the rest of us, need to REPAY.

They only need to keep convincing enough of us every few years to keep them in office..That's all that matters.

Paul Volcker chuckled, and I suspect there a a lot of chucklers in DC as they watch us all struggle. They know we will never wriggle out of the restraints they have had us in for decades.
A chuckle here, a sly smile there, and maybe even a wink..and no human kindness or fair-play to be found most times. The predatory classes and the legislators they buy, are relentless and will chuckle at their exploits. Out here in "Reality-Land", we see more weeping than chuckling.







an interesting website to check out
http://elegant-technology.com/ETsix.html