Pull The Plug

I have a message from the Grassroots to the leadership in Washington:

You don't have to let it fail

... IT ALREADY HAS ...

you can turn off the life support now.

Perhaps you didn't notice, but the "financial industry" stopped serving the public quite awhile ago and has been solely in the business of stealing whatever wealth this country had and burying it in its own caves for a long damn time.

What we're engaged in here isn't a "bailout" or the shoring up of a necessary financial base for the citizens of the United States. It's a war. It's a war between the majority of US citizens and those who have manipulated our economy for their own greed and are fast leaving the rest of us jobless, homeless and penniless without a backward glance. They may have all the money, but we outnumber the bastards and we're angry. We also have the advantage of being in better shape for this war because we've actually had to work for a living (and cut way back on our food intake) than those fat pasty assholes. And really, we're getting angry enough to do something drastic, fellas. This may be the actual "bipartisanship" the country needs ... EVERYBODY is pissed off, and everybody is pissed off at the same goddamned people.

It doesn't matter how much Monopoly money we print at this point, they've already got all the real wealth ... but they'll be just as happy to take the funny money, too, just for good measure.

This is not rocket science ... or even complicated economics. I have a contract with my company which states that they will pay me "x" in exchange for my doing "y" amount of work. "X" is contingent upon my doing "y" in an ethical and legal manner and upon the company thriving, at least partly due to that work, or my contract is null and void and I will not be collecting "x" ... I will be sitting home on my couch perusing the newspaper for another job. If the economy causes my company to flounder because people cannot afford our services, it's possible that I will not be collecting "x" no matter how well I perform "y" because the company will no longer be able to afford "x" ... and I will be sitting home on my couch perusing the newspaper for another job. If I am caught stealing from my company or rifling through the purses of our customers and stealing their money, I will not be paid "x" ... I will be sitting home on my couch perusing the newspaper for another job. If the whole damn company goes under because no one can afford our services we will not be getting a bailout from anyone ... no one will be paid "x" ... we will all be sitting home on our various couches perusing newspapers for jobs. Our customers will not be perusing their respective newspapers because they will be blind due to their inability to access our services and will be receiving disability "x".

AIG is the current and handiest example of a company whose top executives have broken every one of the "if 'x' then 'y'" rules of business as the majority of Americans understand them. Why are they still collecting "x" (and "x" to the "nth" power) and not sitting on their couches perusing their newspapers looking for other jobs?

And really, here's the news flash for President Obama and the new administration:

AIG is not keeping America afloat. It is sinking the country. The country has become a life support system for a bloated corpse that has done nothing to deserve to be kept alive. The majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. The majority of Americans have credit scores that can't hope to be astronomically high enough to please most lenders in this economy, even though they make ample money to cover a non-usurious mortgage or car payment. The majority of Americans (those who, coincidentally, voted for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN) are not being served by AIG ... or by the public servants we elected. The "change" we were looking for was not the pennies left in the dryer at the laundromat.

Someone will have to prove to me -- and not in convoluted theoretical economics -- how the death of a bloated economic giant could possibly make a nickle's worth of negative difference in the day to day life of the average American.