To quote, you say “We bailed out the banks so we didn’t go into a depression.” This statement would seem to imply that you believe you’re an accomplished economist. The following quote is from the very last sentence of the conclusion of an FDIC/FED Report on the causes of the Great Depression. Apparently, you know more than they.

From the
FDIC Center for Financial Research
Working Paper
No. 2009-06
Bank Failures and the Cost of Systemic Risk

Last sentence of Section VI. Concluding Remarks:

“While government policies may help to mitigate the impact of bank failures on economic growth, some argue ourselves included) that these government policies also encourage moral hazard and additional bank risk-taking. The additional risk may create social costs by distorting resource allocation and partly offset the attenuating effect of government policies the on probability of banking sector distress. On balance, it remains unclear whether modern government banking sector policies should be expected to reduce the costs of systemic risk in the banking sector relative to those that prevailed in the early twentieth century.”

Worse yet, the last time I checked, a Depression is caused by a quick and violent contraction of aggregate money supply withdrawn from circulation, which means it isn’t available for deposit to banks which causes a failure in spread banking. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we haven’t experienced a money supply contraction in the last four years, we’ve instead experienced the world’s most massive increase in money supply due to bank bailouts that the Fed admitted to.

The implied scenario in your statement is backwards.

Meanwhile and notwithstanding, The US Government Accounting Office had admitted that it had found that the US Federal Reserve NYC Branch secretly funded an additional $16 Trillion to foreign owned banks who have some ownership in the US Federal Reserve regional banks. This gargantuan amount of money has to be repatriated to the U.S. causing a guaranteed future massive hyper-inflation…the precise opposite of Keynesian Depression.

The purpose of the bank bail-outs over which you swoon, and which was started by the Bush Administration, was to save JPMorgan, the Fed’s primary T-Bond Dealer, from the failing credit and interest rate swap counterparty risk inherent in the takeover of Bear-Sterns. An impending economic depression had nothing whatsoever to do with the great bank bailout fiasco.

Yet, the subject of your article was the uniformed voter in this state. I think that I’ve just unequivocally shown that your comments have placed you in that group. May I suggest that you stop seeking economics advice from Angela LeFevre!

Right now it appears that we need to stop thinking selfishly and think of the common good. Those homeowners with lost jobs and have underwater mortgages or no health insurance were not necessarily bad or greedy people. It would behoove us to have the federal government help out – no matter what we think. After all home prices keep dropping due to foreclosures waiting and we all lose. We bailed out the banks so we didn’t go into a depression. It is high time to move on and stop punishing behavior that only hurts us all.

AND send a donation to the American Red Cross this week. The tornadoes killed 38 so far and lots more are badly hurt. Go online and help.

Somehow I think the dumbing down of the American public has happened deliberately over the past 40 years – even as issues have gotten more complicated and require voters to carefully examine them. An unquestioning easily manipulated voter is one which serves some cynical elected officials and powerful political/corporate interests – not the common good – whether local, state or national issues.

How else did we get into the Iraq war or the many recent financial crises? Why else would we merrily continue down the path of fossil fuel development and use when we have had 35 years notice that we should be thinking differently? Why else would we keep taking money away from education whether local schools or universites? Do we not understand that a solid universal public education system is what made the US great?

Instead some call the questioners “elitists’ and snobs. We collectively have allowed powerful interests to subvert our common good to their interests.