the business of America used to be business. We produced stuff and got paid for it.

for the last several years, the business of America changed from producing stuff to just moving money around. All the skyscrapers and sports arenas are built by banks and insurance companies. now we are consistently bailing them out. where is the end? the game is over, and it's time to settle up. America gambled and lost. all those now worthless 401ks that were supposed to be retirement savings, were really just another high risk gamble. yet, there are still people living among us who are collecting millions of dollars from us in their last payoffs. did i ramble, or does anyone else feel as screwen as i do today?

exposed, unraveling, impotent, worthless

I would be amazed at any American who believed this credit bubble appeared out of a vacuum.

You left out the important part about how the banks and corporations got rich.

And other financial instruments? They made their money selling credit.

Compare it to the medical field. This year it's don't drink wine and take hormones to prevent heart disease. Is it the fault of the "consumer" if they listened to the experts?

Same thing with credit cards and mortgages. The financiers created the market from the top down. It's their fault, 100% of it. They created an unsustainable economy which many of us at the bottom have recognized as unsustainable for years.

that they deserve two threads.

I have much stronger feelings about the medical issues than the "derivative" issue, which affects peoples lives but in ways they don't even know.

The medical issue is much closer to my heart, and that is a matter of people knowing better but doing the wrong thing anyway.

In a way, it is like overusing a credit card.

and ten years later it turns out to be wrong - and maybe you should have been more worried about high fructose corn syrup than eggs - then why would you blame those people for being sick?

This is the economy the financiers created. They created 40% of the population who doesn't make enough to pay their bills and have to rely on govt services to subsist. It's the economy Wall Street and DC created. They created the credit requirements that allowed the mortgage limits to shift from 25% of income to 33% and sometimes more. They created the ARM and no interest loan and sold it to people without informing them of any other alternative. They created the construction boom so homes would be built and Republicans would say what a wonderful economy they had built. Obama alluded to it today. All the numbers from the last many years have been phony, nothing there when you pull back the curtain. Wall Street wanted it this way and have been marketing it as the American Dream since at least the 80s. I absolutely refuse to blame people who have only had the choice to never have anything because their personal income is barely enough to pay bills - or use the credit that the "investor class" has been shoving on them.

America was supposed to be the Investor Class to the global manufacturing market.

The investors fucked up.

And people still want to blame it on the service class who did nothing but serve the Investor Class for decades.

forgot one thing; Americans without jobs can't consume.....anything. The choice is simple; become a third world defunct nation or start an American worker's revolution and install a government that gets it!

Ross Perot was right about NAFTA , and I thought he was crazy. Henry Ford (I am no fan of the man) understood that a product without a market was worthless, so he paid his employees enough to buy the Ford products they built.

:hi: