I am not a bank, but If I rip you off will you give me some Bailout money?

With dollars mounting, like Trekkies as the hours wear on at a comic-con, my student debt weighs on my chest like a boulder on an alleged Salem witch.  Every single month I fore-go simple pleasures of life, to which I had previously grown accustomed, in lieu of paying my student debt ahead of time.  I do not scheme of clever ways to chop up my law school investment, a decidedly poor decision in retrospect, and re-sell the chunks to unsuspecting retirees as a 'hot' derivative investment.  Nor did I treat my education with frivolity.  I worked diligently and, when all was said and done, graduated with a 'good' GPA.  Mind you, I did not accumulate an 'excellent' GPA, but nor did I attain an 'average' GPA.  So what the hell bubba?  "Sorry son, the market just isn't good right now" and "We'd love to hire you, but there simply isn't space now," are tired and uncreative responses at best and serve, like an amuse bouche to a habitual overeater, to cause more aggravation than comfort. 

Now, you may be thinking...this little asshole has had every opportunity and is part of this 'new' generation that can't deal with criticism, shutters at red marks on his 'wittle' papers, and needs constant self-esteem boosters.  Well, I assure you, I am one of these crybabies.  Furthermore, if you have the testicular fortitude to pass judgment so quickly, YOU are probably 'the asshole' in addition to being an ignorant jerk.  I am not skulking around my parent's basement, playing whatever the newest version of HALO may be, stoned, and lamenting the lack of opportunities out there.  I was out of the house at 17, and working and paying for school at 19. 

So, to all of those bitter and aging baby boomers writing articles chock full of blanket statements misdirected at all, not just the deserving members of my generation, I have to tell you, get with the program.  These statements are particularly frustrating to those of us busting our asses, daily, to achieve a better life and repair the damages we’ve inherited.  Or worse yet, to those of you speaking derogatorily and directly to my face about how much worse you had it than we did, and how your parents had to walk to school, up hill, both ways, in the snow, do your research.  Every generation has burdens to bare, and there are those of us, yes, we still exist, that go out and work hard, and then come home and work more.  Just because we didn't have to cross the Atlantic and defeat the evil Hunnic Hordes it certainly does not mean we're a bunch of lazy dullards. 

True, we didn't have to rally as a Nation, donating our bicycles and school bells in the interest of smelting for more tanks, but keep in mind, we also didn't load our food full of carcinogenic chemicals in the interest of science (including the introduction of ‘formula’ as a sub-par source of nutrition for babies as a replacement rather than an alternative), drive super-sized, gas guzzling vehicles around for fun, and create a sub-urban sprawl that contributes to grid-lock, road-rage, global warming, the decrease of community and convivial living, and a host of other ecological, physical, and psychic degradation.  My apologies for the digression, but how the hell are we supposed to get along with the world if we can't contain the urge to bitch about successive generations, your offspring, and the problems they inherit and according to many, seem to exacerbate?

So, let's get back to the original issue at hand, shall we?  Yes, that is correct, big business and government are the two biggest perpetrators of thievery and deception.  Don't go getting all soft on me now either, because Government and Business ARE apparently, have either shit where their brains should be or think that we do, you know it, I know it, and they know it.  Of course, they know it.  How can you operate, in the wide expanse of the public eye, with impunity, after conducting your business as a thief?  Perhaps we should ask Dick Cheney, the biggest and most amoral asshole of them all.  This man was the previous CEO and Chairman of the Board at Halliburton and continues to act as shareholder in Halliburton, and the Halliburton subsidiary KBR.  What do you think his honest response would be, if asked about his active participation in war profiteering and his continued perpetration in businesses that contribute to the degradation of our ecology, military, and society?  I would suspect it would go a little something like this...

"Well bubba, I make more money from war-profiteering than I ever did from oil, and an obscene amount more than from government.  Keep in mind however, that by serving in a multitude of capacities for the U.S. Government under Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, then under his son, W., my ability to schmooze and ingratiate myself with law makers, lobbyists, energy executives, mercenaries and even fucking Saudi princes, has proved more lucrative than a real human heart could even handle, that is why I got this little machine to pump cold fucking blood through my blackened, copper veins.  Fuck yes, I am the man." 

Well, without getting into a string of citations and any greater detail as to the evil that men are capable of and, in fact, do against their own fellow humans, I suppose we should discuss the act of ‘doing business.’  Moreover, we should ask how someone as brazen as Cheney and creatures of his ilk, have been able to and will with certainty continue to pretend to dupe, a Country of millions that should be smart enough to prevent this.

First, Goldman Sachs, Chase, AIG, Bernie Maddoff and every other god damn financial institution that sanctions, and until recently, overtly encouraged the pilfering of profits from millions of unsuspecting investors are those that are ‘doing business.’  I say until recently, but little has actually changed for the better since our Country has succumbed to this Depression, despite so-called reformatory legislation and public outrage (both which seem uncoordinated and ineffective).  While many families have lost their homes (some of which should never have been mortgaged in the first place, particularly those second and third homes) it would seem that most financial institutions are simply now conducting themselves as irresponsibly as ever, yet just less conspicuously and offensively with our money. 

For an example of this irresponsible conduct, we needn’t look farther than the credit cards in your wallet or the mortgagee of your house (A mortgagee is the person that loans money, if you didn’t know, I didn’t always).  If you have a Chase card or a Chase mortgage, you bank with an entity that was provided with $25 Billion (with a ‘B’) of ‘Bailout’ money in October 2008.   What did Jamie Dimon, CEO of Chase, do with all of that sweet capital?  Well, such a benevolent and kind man surely must have patriotically and dutifully loaned out government provided money in the form of personal loans and mortgages, at a decent rate, to thousands of homeowners.  Such a policy would create a fervently loyal base of future capital by way of families that would continue to bank with Chase for generations, choosing the institution because Chase came through for them in their darkest time of need.  Right?  Fuck no!  Chase took that money to recoup from their purchase of Washington Mutual merely a month prior.  Treasury Secretary Paulson in his infinite wisdom essentially gave Chase a quarter of a trillion dollars in liquidity to do just that.  Here is little timeline that will blow your mind and demonstrate how quickly the Business and Government can make something happen when they want to, not like reducing or eliminating homelessness, improving education, or curing cancer, but just making mo’ money.  Keep in mind the criminal term for this is collusion after the fact.

January 2004- Chase purchases Bank One. Then Bank One CEO Jamie Dimon agrees to play second fiddle to William Harrison, in the interim, but not forever.  I only mention this little blip on the time line to demonstrate the absurdity of the now well-established maxim ‘too big to fail.’  The Securities and Exchange Commission was founded to combat the very idea of ‘too big to fail,’ yet did nothing to prevent further consolidation of an industry whose very existence has mutated to screw any non-institutional investor, i.e., anything but the rich.  Nice!

September 25, 2008 – Chase purchases Washington Mutual (just after WaMu’s merger with Bear Sterns), well into the swing of the Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis and just five business days before Congress passes the ‘Bailout.’  If you think that Chase was unaware that this bill was about to be passed into law then you are a naïve dumb ass.  They pay lobbyists to do make ‘things’ like this happen and were ‘banking’ on it.  Wink! Wink!

October 3, 2008- Congress passes the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.  You and I know this as the Bailout and like you and I, that this was even considered as an option let alone put into practice infuriates any person who isn’t in banking, rich, non-lobotomized, and/or any combination of the three.  Pundits argue, ad-nauseum, two positions.  The Republicans argue that 800 Billion was too much, Democrats, not enough.  I argue that if we had distributed this to the middle class, we would have spent it on big ticket items and houses, that we could afford, or pay off our mortgages and kept our economy afloat.  I don’t have a whole helluva lot of support, save common sense, but neither do many of the talking heads that add their two cents on this issue.  Hell, think about Frank Mankaiewicz, McGovern’s Aide on the campaign trail in ’72, where he described Dr. Thompson’s account as “the most accurate, and least factual, account of the campaign.”  A pissed off rant from the soul of an everyman sometimes has more credence than all of the sanctioned bullshit purveyed by the alleged experts.  I guess that is my point here.

Anyway, while I agree that there is no such thing as a victimless crime, in this case, as most other circumstances, everyone is a little guilty.  Investors need to recognize that they need to educate themselves and/or hire account managers they know and trust and/or shut the fuck up when they lose their nest egg.  Yes, this is unfair, but as I have heard it over and over, from my elders, they can hear it from me now.  Life is not fair.  Jews and Catholics and Gays and Gypsies were gassed.   Nagasaki and Hiroshima incinerated.  Kerrigan got her leg whacked, ending her Olympic Dreams.  Maddoff stole your money.  I owe a shit ton for a high-end doctorate in a field that I cannot secure employment in.  They keep making Sex and The City drivel.  Shit happens!  It always has happened, and always will happen.  If you are still breathing when your dream ends, you still have to get up and go to work.   

Furthermore, in many cases, the financial peons (meaning the professional institutional investors, not small time individual investors myself and you) in this game, the everyday traders, analysts, brokers, and managers are, while complicit and guilty as hell, generally ignorant of the broader ramifications of their actions.  Or so they would have us believe.  Like a loyal soldier, these men and women do what is asked of them.  They conduct their business in a haze of self-imposed ignorance, because they get paid to.  This environment of plausible deniability is perhaps the most egregious offense against the American people. Most of these traders get paid a lot more than you or I (and conduct themselves more inappropriately as well), and in the rare chance that these people are savvy enough to catch aberrations in the data or notice that somebody, somewhere, is getting fucked by their credit-swap derivatives and mortgage swaps, they don’t say a thing because they don’t want to sell their Mercedes or have to do without that 40” Toshiba flat screen mounted in their bathroom, because taking a shit without CNN would mean they’d have to go back to monitoring tickers on their blackberry, and that simply will not do. 

This current economic disaster is the stuff of nightmares.  I find all of our behavior abhorrent and further discussion of the matter, at this point, sickens me.  Here is my suggestion, and it may not be the best, but it is what I am going to do.  I am going to get rid of all of the ‘stuff’ that I have.  ‘Stuff’ that I should have never wasted money on in the first place.  I don’t want it, I don’t need it, it reminds me of the fallibility and uselessness of the excess that got us all into this mess in the first place, and I want it gone.  What I can’t sell for money, money to save in an effort to eventually found a business and/or secure employment that I actually care about, I will leave in my alley for hoarders, the needy, or scrappers.  The knick-knacks in my house serve as constant reminders of a time when I should have saved, but spent, and that makes me embarrassed and sad, so why keep them. 

In our house, we have reduced our consumption to nearly nothing, save for food and music and camera gear, the things that we care deeply about or actually need to survive.  We fix our clothing and reuse almost everything that comes into our house.  The most important thing that we have done, and what I am most proud of, is our absolute dissolution of any non-essential debt (if you can call student loans non-essential, I am not so sure anymore).  We owe nothing on our credit cards and have only a house note, a car note, and student loans.  While the student loans are significant, we revel in the fact that we are aggressively repaying them.  Hot damn boy, now it is a game to us. 

So, while I am angered to no end, particularly at the Government (both the Republican and Democratic clowns, though the religious right puts a deeper shiver in my bones) and Big Business for taking this Bailout, I am just going to stop giving them money.  They don’t need my money and I don’t need to buy garbage on credit for no good goddamn reason.  I don’t need a bigger house or a Mercedes or Armani pants.  That is all bullshit.  What I really need are my good friends and family, a nice bottle of wine, great music, a solid community, wholesome foods, a bicycle to ride, and expanding personal, and communal, knowledge.  Most of those things are free or relatively inexpensive or eventually pay for themselves.  Furthermore, if I don’t have the cash to buy ‘stuff,’ I don’t.  I won’t extend a line of credit to buy something I want, not need. 

While I recognize that I may be better off the some, it is important that we all have the ability to cut out some waste in some aspect of our lives.  If you want to show your disgust with Government and Big Business, hit em’ where it hurts the most.  Don’t give them any money and vote for Libertarians, Greens, and Independents.  Those alternative parties might not have the first idea about what the hell they are doing, but it is abundantly clear that incumbents either don’t know what the hell they are doing, or don’t give a shit if we know they are screwing us.  Cut up all of your credit cards except the one with the lowest rate for use in only dire emergencies.  That is the real revolution and a real solution to this depression.  Be creative, not consumptive and stop wasting time and money on garbage.