Opinion/Editorial
Published 4/2/09

ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS!

                                                                  ROCK
             40,000 parts to make one car. Solid parts to build a solid product. "Like a rock" some automakers would say. The importing and exporting of these products also makes the global economy more solid. Employment in the shipping, manufacturing, and port industry, are built upon this rock. So are the lives of the people that are linked to it. These products are shipped, trucked, and placed on lots. The lots must be developed and maintained. The sales room must be built and maintained. Plumbing, electric, glass, and office supplies are needed. Even the landscaper that mows the lawns is employed by this rock solid product. The towns revenues from the lot, to the electric and water, to the taxes on the phone bill are affected. If ever there was a vehicle for stimulus this is it.

PAPER

The need for a clerical, paper pushing, tax and finance industry, is created by the real products division, of manufacturing, transportation, and real estate. These giants provide the funds and create the need for the public, and the private sector. Without these types of supply and demand industries, none of these other paper services are needed. None of the funding for these paper services would be provided. The loans, credit, interest payments, licensing, taxes, payroll, pension security, housing, sanitation, plumbing, business districts, and banking would not be required at all. The need for their existence is secondary to the solid economy. This paper world of financial services is a direct result of rock solid products. Financial service employment and government service employment only exist because of the demand for manufactured products that are solid and tangible. None of these institutions make money. Their services are only required by those who create money and wealth thru products and their production. This is also true for the Insurance Companies.

SCISSORS

When the financial services sector creates wealth for itself by liquidating, and leveraging, the sweat of the workers, and the value of their products, we have a meltdown. What has happened is that the Service sector has ripped off the Wealth of those it Serves. When we swap their bad notes for our good notes this is counterfeiting. The bail out is laundering thru deficit spending. The pensions, savings, and jobs, of the providers of wealth are being cut. These paper cuts are drawing blood from it's victims, to provide a transfusion, to save the lives of the predators. Taking the scissors to the "sacrosanct contracts" of Social Security, Pensions, Annuities, Health care, Education, and of course Taxpayer equity is a crime that is not defined. Not defining the crime is Treason. Using the scissors of deregulation, and allowing the excess of Stock Options and Deficit Spending by the Private and Public sectors, provides a Vehicle for taking rock solid equity, turning it into liquids, then siphoning it off into their own pockets. Products, labor, and production, are being made liquid and then siphoned off. You can't siphon rock, only liquids.

SOLID, LIQUID, CASH!

We must also realize that the people that benefit from this are now very wealthy and powerful. They are now buying everything at rock bottom prices. What they are buying is safe for two reason. One reason is that we have made the bad banks good for them to buy with the money we have lost. They now have a fortune in ill gotten gains in which to buy the banks "they liquidated" that are now safe from "THEM". I would love to know the list of names of all the people, and firms that worked for the embezzlement division of AIG. I bet we would see a global list of payout's to operatives, with a history of scandals, and multiple private, and public payrolls, dating back as far as Iran Contra and the First Savings and Loan disaster. The same names, the same games, and the same shames.

William J. Wahlsteen