Economic Forbodings of an Everyman

I've wondered and joked, darkly, for years about our economy, whose manufacturing base was clearly shrinking and being outsourced even as the nation's alleged GNP ballooned upward. I could also see, years ago, that the easy credit was sustaining our hyper-speculative mortgage bubble (and the GOP's highly touted "ownership society"). This took no brains, just open eyes and ears. There was an ever-expanding hollowness to the economy, and the real wonder was that the bubble kept swelling up as long as it did BEFORE it exploded. And it was clear there was an intimate connection between the 360 degree deregulation (of everything from the SEC to the IRS to the EPA to the FDA) and the gigantic United States of Ponzi Schemes which we have become. Greed, cynicism, blindness, inhumanity, and injustice took precedence before moderation, idealism, clear & farsightedness, humanity, and justice. The uncollateralized securities, the uninvestigated Ponzi schemes, the grotesque bonuses awarded to bloodsucking executive failures, the untaxed billions snatched by hedgefund managers, the still-hidden and untaxed profits of offshore holding companies, these are but the objective, outward expression of a subjective, inward, rot.

The financial regulators (even if they ARE given their teeth back) are scarcely smart enough to keep up with whatever the next level of financial "innovation" or subversion will be.

But if there is a WILL to regulate and make just, there will be a way. The will has clearly been absent in the White House and the Congress for many long yars.

In the end, even the most diabolically ingenious cons look like more of the same old shenanigans, and transparent, if only we will open our eyes to see them. And by the way, when will we admit we see all that offshore stuff which is so supposedly hidden?