[Jinx102672]

The move was similar to government's seizure on Sept. 7 of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, where the Treasury Department said it was prepared to put up as much as $100 billion over time in each of the companies if needed to keep them from going broke.

So that's $185 billion dollars, out of OUR money, to bail out piss poor management and over extending loans? How is it that they find the money now to bail these jokers out, but never could find the money to support our borders/troops/teachers/law enforcement/build more refineries etc. etc.?

This Country's legislation has a strange set of priorities.

[ChingonStang]

amen

[timeless2]

Time for the CEOs, present and past, to turn their golden parachutes back in for the sake of American enterprise.

Originally Posted by Benjamin J. Stein

Forbes 85th Anniversary
How to Ruin American Enterprise
Benjamin J. Stein, 12.23.02

We're well on our way to squelching what gives this country an edge. What
would it take to kill innovation altogether?
Ben Stein
As a casual observer of what makes this country work and what stops it
cold, I hereby offer a few suggestions on how we can ruin American
competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century. I think the
reader will agree with me that we are already far down the road on many of
them:

1) Allow schools to fall into useless decay. Do not teach civics or history
except to describe America as a hopelessly fascistic, reactionary pit. Do
not expect students to know the basics of mathematics, chemistry and
physics. Working closely with the teachers' unions, make sure that you dumb
down standards so that children who make the most minimal effort still get
by with flying colors. Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's
scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is
confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the
many. Watch America lose its scientific and competitive edge to other
nations that make a comprehensive knowledge base a rule of the society.

2) Encourage the making of laws and rules by trial lawyers and sympathetic
judges, especially through class actions. Bypass the legislative mechanisms
that involve elected representatives and a president. This will stop--or at
least greatly slow down--innovation, as corporations and individuals
hesitate to explore new ideas for fear of getting punished (or regulated to
death) by litigation for any misstep, no matter how slight, in the creation
of new products and services. Make sure that lawsuits against drugmakers
are especially encouraged so that the companies are afraid to develop new
lifesaving drugs, lest they be sued for sums that will bankrupt them. Make
trial lawyers and judges, not scientists, responsible for the flow of new
products and services.

3) Create a culture that blames the other guy for everything and
discourages any form of individual self-restraint or self-control. Promote
litigation to punish tobacco companies on the theory that they compel
innocent people to smoke. Make it second nature for someone who is
overweight to blame the restaurant that served him fries. Encourage a legal
process that can kill a drug company for any mistakes in self-medication.
Make it a general rule that anyone with more money than a plaintiff is
responsible for anything harmful that a plaintiff does. Promulgate the
pitiful joke that Americans are hereby exempt from any responsibility for
their own actions--so long as there are deep pockets around to be rifled.

4) Sneer at hard work and thrift. Encourage the belief that all true wealth
comes from skillful manipulation and cunning, or from sudden, brilliant and
lucky strokes that leave the plodding, ordinary worker and saver in the
dust. Make sure that society's idols are men and women who got rich from
being sexy in public or through gambling or playing tricks, not from hard
work or patience. Make the citizenry permanently envious and bewildered
about where real success comes from.

5) Hold the managers of corporations to extremely lax standards of conduct
and allow them to get off with a slap on the wrist when they betray the
trust of shareholders. This will discourage thrift and investment and
ensure that Americans will have far less capital to work with than other
societies, while simultaneously developing that contempt for law and social
standards that is the hallmark of failing nations. Hold the management of
labor unions to no ethical standards.

6) While you're at it, discourage respect for law in every possible way.
This will dissolve the glue that holds the nation together, and dissuade
any long-term thinking. Societies in which the law can be clearly seen to
apply to some and not to others are doomed to decay, in terms of innovation
and everything else.

7) Encourage a mass culture that spits on intelligence and study and
instead elevates drug use, coolness through sex and violence, and contempt
for school. As children learn to be stupid instead of smart, the national
intelligence base needed for innovation will simply vanish into MTV-land.

8) Mock and belittle the family. Provide financial incentives to people
willing to live an isolated existence, vulnerable and frightened. This
guarantees that men and women of sufficient character to bring about
innovation will be psychologically stifled from an early age.

9) Develop a suicidal immigration policy that keeps out educated,
hardworking men and women from friendly nations and, instead, takes in vast
numbers of angry, uneducated immigrants from nations that hate us. This,
too, leads to the shrinking of our knowledge base and the eventual
disappearance of social cohesion.

10) Enact a tax system that encourages class antagonism and punishes
saving, while rewarding indebtedness, frivolity and consumption. Tax the
fruits of labor many times:

First tax it as income. Then tax it as real or personal property. Then tax
it as capital gains. Then tax it again, at a staggeringly high level, at
death. This way, Americans are taught that only fools save, and that it is
entirely proper for us to have the lowest savings rate in the developed
world. This will deprive us of much-needed capital for new investment, for
innovation and our own personal aspirations. It will compel us to ask
foreigners for ever more capital and allow them to own more of America. It
will also promote an attitude of carelessness about the future and, once
again, encourage disrespect for law.

11) Have a socialized medical system that scrimps on badly needed drugs and
procedures, resorts to only the cheapest practices and discourages drug
companies from developing new drugs by not paying them enough to cover
their costs of experimentation, trial and error.

12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--and be sure
to exclude educated, hardworking men and women--to an equal status with
technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and
politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you
act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with
ethnic fable.

My list need not end here. But I stopped at a dozen because I realized that
this is already, in large measure, the program of so many of our elected
representatives. The debauchery of our tort system is already in place, and
the rest of the agenda is under way.

[Jinx102672]

For the past few years, I have believed that a revolution of sorts is coming. It may not happen in my lifetime or my children's, but it will happen, if this country continues on the path it's on. I also believe our system is not in need of tweaking, but in dire need of an overhaul.

Edit:

High taxes on certain social classes, bad leadership, restrictions of freedoms. Is this not why our forefathers left for the new country and revolted to begin with ??

[GT40XStang9]

And to think, some people [running for POTUS] don't even know what the acronym AIG stands for...

[Jinx102672]

Originally Posted by Joe Biden

WASHINGTON — Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans.

Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: “It’s time to be patriotic … time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.”

Granted it's aimed at those making over $250,000 a year, but they plan on taxing the people even more to bail out these lending companies.