The Financial Stability Plan

9 Comments

1. Spiritcoach:

   Seems to me that it would be better to amend ERISA and allow public (e.g., state) pension funds to invest in small businesses in their states. That would make it more likely that the beneficiaries would have jobs (because, in trickle-up economics, if businesses are successful and employing local workers, there are more taxes paid and thus more funding for the salaries of state workers). Small business equity, with proper controls (due diligence) is a helluva better investment than banks (at least the ones that need the money because of toxic assets) and opaque hedge funds that invest in instruments nobody understands (and that threaten to bring down the global financial system to the extent it isn’t already brought down.

   I agree with others that this plan is too debt-centered, but I also believe there needs to be easing of credit to small businesses. I’m not sure SBA loans is the way to achieve that, though. I would like to see healthy local banks, out of a sense of patriotism (much like the guy at the bank in North Carolina in the Washington Post story) advertise their efforts to assist local small businesses using creative strategies to engender confidence as a way of attracting more deposits away from the likes of Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. In the end, the only thing that will end this crisis is a restoration of confidence about the future in the middle class. That’s a local thing, requiring local strategies and solutions.

2. New York Times: Congressman seeks to shore up banks with pension funds February 10, 2009

   A Proposal to Shore Up Banks With Pension Funds By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
   http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/business/economy/10pension.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=proposal%20to%20shore%20up%20banks&st=cse

   I’m wondering if this is a shot across the bow or testing of the waters. Likely a congressman’s idea to Take the IRA’s into a government supervision program may have been.

3. A successful Bank

   A good bank. It’s nice to hear about them.

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/10/AR2009021003583.html?wpisrc=newsletter

4. I would like to add to Matthew’s comments.

   The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high, and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him; he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.” Deut. 28:44-45

   Similar to “Tapeworm economics” is the Ouroborus. The serpent eating it’s own tail.

   http://www.crystalinks.com/ouroboros.html

   Scroll down a bit and there is a dragon eating it’s tail on the back of the Pope’s coin.

   http://biblelight.net/dragon.htm

   The alliance?

   http://sovereignsentience.blogspot.com/2008/12/trinity-of-global-empire.html

5. In response to a colleague that sent me Robert Reich’s editorial on the plan, I responded:

   Ah, yes! Americans need more debt. We do not need the law. We do not need honest government. We do not need income. We do not need suppressed energy and health care technology to become accessible. We do not need transparency.

   We need to be able to borrow more money so that we can continue to fund the existence and lifestyles of the lawless, the dishonest, the rich and the suppressors of technology!

6. Dear Catherine, after reading the first paragraph of the “fact sheet,” it is clear that the new administration intends not to address the actual problems that lead us to where we are, but somehow to “move forward” (without regard for the past) and embrace them, enfold them, almost lovingly and adoringly, to the effect that we actually continue to move wealth upwards. In other words, they seem, Sisyphus like, to insist that MORE credit is the answer, that INCREASING growth and demand is the answer, that consuming more is the answer… ignoring the obvious and terrible fact that these are the very ideas and their attendant actions that have created the current crisis. Credit is the PROBLEM, not the solution. Wealth moving upwardly is the problem, not the solution. We were, before this, increasingly in debt to the banks, which is what caused the problem. Instead of actually diminishing that debt, our new Administration wants to continue the process of augmenting it. This is what they call “growth,” and it is what they refer to as a healthy economy: that is, a healthy economy is one in which credit is easy to get and not too costly. Debt by any other name smells as rotten and leads relentlessly to the continuing disintegration of value in life. Debt is the “Chinese water torture” of democracy destruction.

7. The Lord of Lords says: “the Lamb shall overcome them”. Lord Acton in his time, seemed to tiptoe around the authorities who give the banks their power of legal tender but not without prompting and tempting the common man to fight against them. Sure do love what your doing Catherine, exposing their tricks so that we can see them.

8. “If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.” Exodus 22:25
   “Take no usury of him, or increase…thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury.” Leviticus 25:36-37
   “Unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: That the Lord they God bless thee.” Deuteronomy 23:20
   “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” Proverbs 22.7
   “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high, and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him; he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.” Deut. 28:44-45
   The Bible

   “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”
   Aesop (620–560 B.C.)
   The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
   Plato (427-347 B.C.)

9. Catherine – I hope you will soon follow up with a comment on what might be the long-term effects of this newly disclosed “fix-up without repairing” financial rescue (for whom?) plan.
   As a new-comer to this site, I am looking forward to it!

Comments are closed.