Walter Starcke: What am I missing?
Blacknight, you are completely correct about the mortgage crisis. It's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that enabled the "sub-prime" mortgages to be given to everyone and anyone without proper financial qualifications. It was a free for all. A friend of mine is a mortgage broker and he was getting people that made basically no money, mortgages for $800,000 homes, with no resistance from any banks. Why? Because the law required the banks to approve mortgages for low income people. This guy made a killing, but now all that is done and he is doing Robert Wagner reverse mortgages for people over 65, which is protected by the govt (no other mortgages are). It's not some overpaid rich guy that
made this happen, although they did harm tothe system in other ways. It all relates and everyone is responsible, from the borrowers who went over the head, the brokers who made the deals, to the govt who forced it on the banks and the politicians who ignored the warning signs.
Uh-oh, it's going to be capitalism vs. socialism for the 487,000th time. The US will never change to socialism overnight or at all for that matter. I think the process alone would be more destructive than people believe our current system is. Let's say the govt actually takes over health care and puts the health care insurance industry out of business. Well, millions of people who actually work in the health care industry will be jobless. I think the best people could expect is more government socialist programs like medicare becoming more robust.
I might despise the greedy rich people as much as anyone, but taxing the rich
more isn't the answer. It's not like have-nots will get some extra cash in their pockets. I think this whole redistribution of wealth idea is a bit overrated. Some wealthy people do give more to charity to help the poor than many socialist countries.
Another point to look at, China had to adapt to a free market economic system and are now one of the fastest growing economies. The U.S. is indebted to China and both countries, while still rivals, are economically interdependent on each other.
Let's face it, there are always pros and cons when it comes to these economic philosophies.
All I'm saying is that big money controls the government.
I totally agree that this is the problem with the U.S. and it must change. They should have nothing to do with each other aside from the normal rules and regulations the corporations must abide by. Ahh, but it's all a big clusterfuck. The next thing will be 'green' policies that will put some industries out of business, make the unemployment rate go higher. Put more more citizens on unemployment and feeding off the govt. Maybe that is the goal of the current admin after all.