Detailed info from the Financial Crisis Report.

I wasn't originally going to post about this topic next, but I just came across some information regarding the Financial Crisis that I think needs to be highlighted and shared with everyone.

The full recent report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: An Anatomy of a Financial Collapse”  is a 650-page indictment that reveals the myriad of ways Wall Street lies, cheats, steals and defrauds on a routine basis.

Financial Crisis Report

Unfortunately, it’s too technical to get widely read. So the following Cliff Notes version comes from Les Leopold.  His text follows:

"This study, broken into four case studies, forms a biblical tale of how toxic mortgages were born, nurtured and spread like the plague throughout the land, making money for the financial philistines every step of the way.  

Comments from a college student.

Michael is currently a Junior at Temple University's Boyer School. He wrote the following comments and suggested to me that they might make a good post on my blog.  He is right, so his comments are below:

It's easier for society as a whole to share the burden than to put it on each person individually. Simple logic actually. Fiscal Conservatism is fundamentally flawed because of the increases in technology paired with the decrease in cost of technology. Because the potential quality of life for each person can increase so quickly and cheaply on the whole, a belief that one cannot progressively create programs for a nation as a whole to enjoy under an umbrella of equality is utterly false. Health care is a good example, i.e. in Canada.

Fox News is The Ministry of Truth for Big Brother. Welcome to the Orwellian world.

Fox News is a dangerous organization; that is, if you care about the objective truth. We are living in the world descibed in George Orwell's book "1984".  Except reality is playing out a little differently than the book.  Instead of the government controlling everything, things are actually reversed.  Fox News is the Ministry of Truth, and large corporations are acting as a collective Big Brother.

Technology is reducing the need for many middle class jobs.

The concept that high technology inventions in computers and machinery create more higher level type jobs has been a working assumption for a long time.  For the most part, it has been true.  But recently, empirical evidence is showing that high technology (in the form of computers applied in various contexts) are actually eliminating many good middle class jobs at an increasing rate, and that the jobs being eliminated are moving up the hierarchical ladder into fairly sophisticated functions that (used to?) require advanced college degrees.

Infrastructure needs: Who will pay?

I decided to create a new thread for this topic, even though it is closely related to some of the other discussions we've had here so far. 

The issue is, our aging infrastructure. What prompted this entry is a short article on the "Smartplanet" website, entitled "Five Percent of American's dams could fail".   It's worth reading here:
Five-percent-of-Americas-dams-could-fail

Where is the money to maintain, let alone rebuild and create anew, our aging infrastructure, which I should point out, was created largely by the Federal Government.

The article in Smartplanet also references a recent article in the New York Times on the topic:
Science: Dams

Data on the disparity in wealth and income.

David Cay Johnston, a tax expert and author of the book "Perfectly Legal", explains how the very top income earners are not only doing far better than everyone else, but are doing so at an increasing rate. Their doing so puts increasing tax burdens on the middle and lower middle classes. I have valuable information from his recent article further down in this post, and I will attempt to explain the ramifications on the rest of us.

Healthcare hypocrites and what to do about it

This conversation started on a friend of mine's Facebook page, based on the initial posting of the following URL:  http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/gop_healthcare_hypocrites/index.html?rc=hlinko_1142110_GOPHealth_lac1


Kevin:    

Either way they would have better than us. If they want ObamaCare...let them be on it as well. Send the same note to Pelosi and Harry Reid...if you want to shove through a government sponsored debacle...partake in it as well. Then let the chips fall where they may.