As a testament to just how clueless and out of touch with reality Congress is, we saw two bills dealt with in June that were directly related to the energy crisis that is becoming more and more apparent to most Americans. The house and Senate fired off both barrels. In the senior body, Republican senators made sure a Democratic proposal to tax windfall profits being made by the oil companies was defeated. Chalk up another victory for the Republicans, who have presided over the greatest US economic decline since the depression. The bill needed 60 votes to move forward, and got 51 nay votes, the Republicans in lock-step and probably Lieberman, a Democrat in name only, so the profits of Big Oil remain safe and secure.

The Republican argument, if you happened to catch any of it on CSPAN, was basically that there were much better options, like drilling in ANWR and in the continental shelf regions that are presently off limits to the Oil companies. This is a strategy echoed by conservative news pundits like Kudlow, who stated his new mantra is now: “Drill, Drill Drill!” The oil giants have been slavering to lock down contracts on these areas, now protected for environmental reasons. The Democrats countered by saying that we simply cannot drill our way out of this problem. It is now necessary to begin funding alternatives in a big way, using the windfall profits tax for research into energy systems like wind, solar, hydrogen, clean coal, etc. And the facts are that 80% of the existing leases already open to further oil exploration have yet to see any drilling operations by the oil companies. What are they waiting for, the signing of the new, no-bid contracts that will usher in the return of the major oil companies to Iraq? The petroleum industry is making a grab for all it can get before Bush and Cheney leave office.

The Toronto Star called it right in a recent article: “The ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally has emerged. Four major western oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total are about to sign U.S.-brokered no-bid contracts to begin exploiting Iraq's oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when the nationalized Iraq's oil industry. The U.S.-installed Baghdad regime is welcoming them back. Iraq is getting back the same oil companies that used to exploit it when it was a British colony.” For more on this read this brief little History Lesson. The ugly truth is history, not something just dawning on us. The US and UK have tag teamed the region for decades, trying to restore the lucrative and strategic oil contracts they lost there. The reasons for the war have been transparent from the first.

Then we see another interesting statistic: refinery capacity, choked to only 89% of normal at the moment, remains hobbled because the industry has not brought any new plants on line for years. Why? Oil tankers were reportedly sitting off Manhattan, 40 and 50 at a time waiting for a price-perfect time to dock. So… with 80% of existing drilling leases in the US undeveloped, no new refineries, tankers sitting idle, we have a nice energy bottleneck, apparently self-created by the oil companies, that has helped push the price of gasoline over $4, and well on its way to $5 per gallon by summer’s end. While convenient to blame “speculators,” it has also pushed oil company profits to all time highs. Imagine that! But the Republicans closed ranks again, knowing they had enough votes to protect those profits and prevent the Democratic sponsored bill from going through. They know where their bread is buttered.

It’s nothing new. Under their unenlightened leadership we have seen the Republicans support the agendas and interests of large corporations, banks, insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and of course the petroleum industry, time and time again. They gave us the new “bankruptcy reform act” which basically served to prevent people from filing and protected banks and credit card companies, just before the housing bubble crash. How clever of them. Then they put the assault guns back on the streets by failing to renew the ban on those weapons. How stupid of them. Each and every attempt to tax the wealthy and give relief to the middle class has been blocked by the Republicans, the party who masquerades behind a thin veneer of family values and pretends to love America so much. Republicans use the word “tax” like a flail to excoriate their opponents. They are always talking about “tax breaks,” but the reality is that all their relief is targeted to corporations, and America’s landed and wealthy top 10%. The Average person has seen their tax burden increase in the last eight years under a Republican dominated government. Today’s outcome was no surprise.

Meanwhile, in the House, Amtrak came begging for funding again and was rewarded with a budget extension of just $14 Billion dollars for the next five years. That translates into less than $3 billion per year for the struggling rail service that will be so desperately needed in the years ahead as petroleum prices continue to skyrocket.  HR 6003, while seeming a good thing on the surface, was really a demonstration of just how deluded Congress is. Even a small rail tunnel or line extension project on the state level would typically cost something like $7 Billion. The budget the House handed Amtrak will barely keep the rail service solvent, and provide virtually nothing for much needed expansion of services. James Kunstler has it so right when he says we already own a rail system that would make the Bulgarians blush.

An article in the Columbus Dispatch recently summed up our aging railroads this way: “The nation's 140,000 -mile network of rails devoted to carrying everything from cars to grain by freight is already groaning under the strain of congestion, with trains forced to stand aside for hours because of one-track rail lines. And it's probably going to get worse…A new U.S. Chamber of Commerce report warns demand for freight trains is expected to double in the next 25 years. The damage to the U.S. economy could climb to billions of dollars. Higher shipping costs would raise prices for everything from lumber to grain. One analyst said the rail crunch could add thousands of dollars to the price of a car.”

The recent floods in Iowa and the heartland have seen trains paralyzed, as there are simply not enough alternate routes around flooded areas to keep freight moving on the rails. While gasoline and diesel were pushed up and up, we sat idly by and allowed our rail system to wither away to a bare minimum. Even so hobbled, trains are still many, many times more efficient than diesel trucks for hauling freight over long distance. If we had a network of high speed corridors, augmented by fast light rail for our metro areas, we could save billions in fuel costs and reduce congestion on our roads, not to mention the wallets of those who can now barely afford to fill up their gas tank. But none of this seemed to register on the House. They had the right idea, but the scale of funding allocated was a bare fraction of what will be required. It’s as if they just don’t see that dramatic changes are coming to our way of life if we stay on this course. The myopic nature of this bill, failing to see the essential importance of re-invigorating our rail transport system, even in the face of intense energy pressure, is astounding.

So the Senate says “carry on” to the large oil conglomerates, and the House throws a few table scraps to the rail service, while Congress ponies up ten times that for the next six months of the Bush-Cheney Iraq war—a bill for a cool $156 billion moving to the floor in late June. That’s more than the entire “stimulus package” allocated to bring relief to taxpayers this year—and it pays for just the next six months of the war in Iraq, a war that has brought us nothing whatsoever, and made all our lives so much more stressed.

Congress just doesn’t get it, which is why they are the only branch of government with even a lower approval rating than Bush’s “unitary executive branch.” They toss around ideas like a gas tax holiday to “ease” the pressure building at the pump, forgetting that, if enacted for the summer, it will be a hard September when all that tax money gets added back into the price of gasoline again. Americans will have had a break for their vacation driving, possibly the last real breather in gasoline prices they can hope to expect—a final summer of carefree driving that we will all look back on with nostalgia within another few years. But come September, reality bites yet again. Does anyone have any doubt that, as Bush and Cheney and Israel continue to rattle their swords at Iran, the price per barrel will be going up a tad more this summer ? Gas tax holiday indeed. Nothing like pretending all is well, as the energy crisis unfolds. Pander to voters with band-aid proposals, misallocate dwindling money resources, forget the rail lines, protect Big Oil. This was Congress in a nutshell in June of 2008 as the nation continued its inevitable downward slide into oblivion . I’m surprised we aren’t also seeing another spate of Republican inspired debates over the American Flag, the Pledge of Allegiance, or other wedge issue hot buttons involving patriotism.

Meanwhile, the forces pressuring the lives of Americans are gathering strength overseas. In France, Spain, the UK, protests over the rising cost of fuel have clogged freeways, sparking clashes with riot police, resulting in deaths. These things are simply not reported on our media, as CNN and the rest are too preoccupied with the ping-pong battle of words between Obama and McCain while the Republicans desperately try to get some traction in the election campaign. McCain’s only real hope will be to discredit Obama, so look for a lot of mud slinging, and the typical media obsession with who said what.  So far the election coverage has been about who has the most radical preacher, who’s naïve, who is taking public funding or not. That’s what all the news show pundits have focused most of their astute “analysis” on. Clueless.

If you’ve been listening to the sickening chorus of Republican commentators recently as they try to taint Obama, you will see what their current “strategy” involves. In the last week Obama has been called naive, reckless, foolish, inexperienced, unprepared to face terrorism…as if terrorism was our number one threat these days. Compared to the pressure of rising energy costs, environmental changes, the disastrous speculation by the banks that gave us the housing boom and bust, terrorism doesn’t even merit discussion! The housing crisis, for example, has harmed more Americans at the family level than 500 Osama Bin Ladins in all their scheming malice. There is simply no comparison. The empty houses, gutted and foreclosed neighborhoods, displaced families, lost equity, ruined lives, are the equivalent of a strategic carpet bombing of the American economy—all delivered under the faithful terrorist hunting watch of Bush, Cheney and the Republican party. Terrorism? Hogwash.

So Republicans will try to paint Obama as immature and unfit for the presidency…as if anything the Republicans have done in the last eight years has been responsible, wise, prudent, or in any way beneficial to this nation. The calamity that is only now just beginning to work its way through the American economy is the sole product of all those wizened and experienced old men in their business suits, with a big red “R” after their name. They’ve put their nay vote to a hundred Democratic proposals aimed at providing health care, child care, education, a bill of rights to protect Americans from predatory lenders and credit card companies, tax relief for the little guy, and any number of others. What have they done for you lately, all these wise and experience Republican senators and congressmen? While they have padded the corporate coffers, laid on the tax breaks for the wealthy, pumped endless dollars into a pathetic war that has given us nothing, most Americans have remained deaf, dumb and mute, unaware of what is really happening. Clueless until the cost of these misguided policies began to hit them in the pocketbook.

And what has been happening? Wealth has been melting away like ice in the Mojave. The housing market has already sustained greater price erosion than the Great Depression, and it’s going to get worse. Auto sales are stalling. Large institutional banks like the Bank of England, Morgan Stanley and others are making ominous threats about an imminent crash in the stock and equity markets. Riots have been breaking out across the globe over food and fuel costs. Blights in Africa and the recent flooding here have damaged a significant percentage of this year’s expected food production. Rice shipments in Asia now have armed escort. Japan has opened up the equivalent of its “strategic rice reserve” to try and ease prices. Internet rumors are spreading that it is now just a question of months before “the system,” as  we have known it, comes under intense pressures that could precipitate a collapse scenario. It has only just begun. with foreclosures breaking depression era numbers, banks failing, unemployment rising, gasoline being rationed and hoarded, food costs spiraling up, Americans are simply not ready for the things that are about to play out. We have been clueless for far too long.

Now let’s fast forward a bit to November, 2008. The election is over. So is the gas tax holiday if it passed. If Bush hasn’t already attacked Iran, he now has less than 90 days to let the bombs fly. Some analysts say that if Obama is the winner, Bush is almost certain to strike Iran before he slinks away, just as Saddam torched the Kuwaiti oil rigs as his vaunted Republican Guards tried to scurry north on what soon became the “highway to hell.” A Bush attack on Iran after an Obama victory would be criminal, and should be prosecuted as such before Bush settles into his golf cart years. If McCain manages to win however, Bush defers the problem to him.

So imagine the sweetness of an Obama win quickly followed by Shock and Awe II, the sequel, staring George Bush, Dick Cheney, and a host of Israeli and neo-con TV commentators cheered on by Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, and all their friends at Fox News, as they try to sell the hard line of yet another war to a war-weary American public. Would they dare? Think gas prices are high now? What a wonderful parting gift Bush and Cheney would make to America with that little maneuver. The country would be demanding their heads!

Even if Bush doesn’t strike Iran, Americans in states where winter is a reality are now looking at heating oil and natural gas costs that will balloon quietly over the summer to unprecedented heights. The utility bills will be so heavy this year they will have to be delivered parcel post. Many are still trying to recover from last winter’s high heating costs, and the N.Y. Times recently reported that millions are behind in their utility bills and about to have their service shut off. And with an economy that has been struggling to stay alive, the big heating and electricity bills will break the last resources of struggling American consumers. Forget what the stock market does. Most people don’t own a lick of stock. Just look for a dismal Christmas sales season, with discounts starting around Halloween to try and lure shoppers into the malls….malls they have to get in a car and drive to at $5/gallon, $6/gallon.

We are now entering a time of crisis that will finally awaken the clueless, from the news staffs of the major papers and TV stations, to the Average Joes at home re-heating a frozen dinner as they watch and read. The period from September of 08 through March of 09 will be a time when reality bites, and the true scope of the crisis we are facing becomes apparent, no matter who wins the election. God help the next president of the United States. He will soon be fighting to maintain the common good, buttress up civil authority, and literally keep the peace in our distressed metropolitan areas.  It will not just be a news event, something we watch like the endless coverage of 9/11. The crisis playing out in the streets of the world is clearly reflected in the budgets of the average American household these days.  This time it will be personal. They won’t have to know about fuel protests in Spain to get the message that, as Dylan said, “something is happening here…”

Let’s take a look. Suppose you make $50,000 and take home about $3000/month after all taxes. Even a modest mortgage or housing rental payment is $1200 to $1600. Your grocery bill for a family of four is now about $600/month. Just getting to work is costing you about $50/ week for a measly 10 gallons of gas, (another $200 per month), now the utility bills come in at $500 a month to heat and light your home, not to mention the electricity. If you are lucky enough to have health insurance, it costs you about $300/ month. Then there are those credit cards bills that roll in each month,  Visa, Discover, MasterCard, American Express and a couple of department store charge cards, all with high balances that just keep creeping up and up.

Here’s the math…

Housing: $1400.
Food: $600.
Winter Utilities: $500.
Insurance: $300
Gasoline: $200.
Credit Cards: $600+
Cell phone? Internet? Cable TV?

Oops… This adds up to at least $3600 or more each month, and that is a shortfall of at least $600 for a typical salaried person earning $50,000 per year—the very same $600 you used to have available to pay your credit cards. Now it goes to food, fuel and utility bills. Congress sent you a month’s relief with their “stimulus package.” It bought you a month’s groceries, if it finally arrived. There are no more home equity lines of credit to bail you out. Now what? The excess goes on the plastic, that’s what. You start charging your food bills, playing the balance transfer game with the credit cards to free up a little extra cash. As each month goes by , the balance on your accounts gets higher.

The revolving debt carried by Americans is staggering, and the banks are starting to get very edgy about it. Credit lines are being decapitated, and the NY Times recently reported: “Banks that issue cards like Visa and MasterCard, as well as the American Express Company, are cutting the limits for customers who have run up big debts, live in areas that have been hit hard by the housing crisis or work for themselves in troubled industries. The reductions come as consumers, squeezed by a slack economy, a weak housing market and rising unemployment, are falling behind on monthly credit card payments in growing numbers.”

People have become accustomed to regular credit line increases, and have come to think of the open credit line above their balance as money in the bank. But credit is debt, and this strange illusion of thinking that debt is money has plagued the nation for decades. Many people run their business entirely on bank loans, not real earned dollars produced by the business itself, which typically operates in the red. When those credit lines dry up, they will realize they are effectively bankrupt, that they have been bankrupt for years, yet living in denial; living by spending someone else’s money, living with the illusion that debt itself was money. Now the banks are trimming the fat, reducing credit lines, upping minimum payments. In an odd twist, a recent lawsuit against a credit card company revealed another interesting thing: the banks monitor what you buy, and certain kinds of purchases are being associated with higher risk individuals, negatively affecting a person’s credit “score.”

AlterNet reported: “The FTC suit against Atlanta-based CompuCredit for allegedly ‘deceptive’ marketing practices offers a rare look inside the opaque business of credit scoring. It reveals a mechanism that consumer advocates and politicians have long suspected exists—one in which purchasing behavior, not just payment history, matters…The FTC claims that CompuCredit monitored spending and cut credit lines if consumers used their cards at certain places. Among them: tire and retreading shops, massage parlors, bars, billiard halls, and marriage counseling offices.”

Sounds a bit like an actuarial study done by an insurance company, doesn’t it? Re-tread your tires and it may mean you drive recklessly and are more likely to have an accident. See a marriage counselor and it may mean divorce, with all the proven financial hardship, is now a possibility. Visit bars, massage parlors, billiard halls and it may cast a dark light on your character in general, at least according to the creditor. Can you imagine the effect of using a credit card to pay for your anti-depression medication? See why all these computer driven systems matter so much when they monitor our web browsing habits, buying habits, even what books we buy, what food we eat?

Privacy died with the emergence of the central processing unit and high volume data storage devices. The system will collect and sift and analyze your profile until it has their number. You will be branded with this number, which is basically a score showing how well you abide with the existing rules of the game, and how much of a risk you are. No matter what you say, the “system” will believe the numerical dog tag they have hung around your neck while they were busy saddling you with debt. Your FICO score will actually go down if you refuse to take on more credit and accumulate debt!  In effect, you must play the game or you will be punished.

The Times article rightly concludes that: “Such moves can cause a consumer’s credit score to drop, forcing the person to pay higher interest rates and making it harder to obtain new loans.” The banks punish people for the equivalent of bad behavior—not just sub-prime borrowers drowning their sorrow in a mug of beer, but increasingly middle and upper-middle class customers, people who may have good jobs, a solid education, and outstanding character. In fact, people in this category are increasingly seeing their credit scores fall below 680, the line that separates “prime” from “sub-prime.” If they don’t play the debt game, and play by the rules, they will be punished. FICO down, interest rates up, and the debtor is now locked in to that debt service for 20 or 30 years, perhaps longer. The banks band together to reinforce one another’s edicts with a practice known as “universal default.” That means if you are late on one account, your interest will be hiked on all your accounts, even those in good standing. Sub-prime will quickly translate into sub-human as far as the system is concerned. You will simply no longer matter.

Now the whole system is collapsing in on itself. My prediction that these FICO scores will erode all throughout 2008 and eventually become meaningless is well underway, until most borrowers become “sub-prime.” The banks do not realize the full scope of the credit crisis they created. They are clueless. As they punish consumers, reduce credit lines, foreclose on home loans, they will only make the problem worse—a deflationary scenario in the extreme.

Deflation is the contraction of money supply and credit, and this was what caused the real damage in the Great Depression, not the falling stocks; not inflation. The reflexive financial horsewhips used by the banks, lower FICO scores, higher interest rates, denial of credit, foreclosure, will become the problem. These actions by the banks will destroy the economy at its most fundamental level—the middle class that purchases 70% of all products sold in the US each year. So go ahead, decapitate that credit line and home equity loan, you will soon have the credit card mailed back to you in pieces. Go ahead and foreclose, dear banker, you will soon own an empty, depreciating hunk of bricks and boards that will further deteriorate with lack of maintenance. The “home” may very well be a mold-ridden, copper-gutted mess in a matter a just a few months, with a nice swimming pool full of algae and mosquito larvae. Think the struggling borrower is having trouble selling it now? Soon it can be all yours.

Some banks are beginning to see this more clearly. Mish Shedlock, an intrepid financial blogger with keen insight and a wealth of  knowledge, recently posted an article illustrating how banks have begun to turn a blind eye towards mortgage payment delinquencies. They continue to send out a notice of delinquency each month, but do not move forward into foreclosure. Why? First off, a delinquency is not as serious a hit to the banks asset column as a foreclosure, or worse, an REO. Secondly, as long as the home buyer remains in the property it is likely to be maintained and protected. Yes, the buyer can still send that “jingle mail” returning the keys and simply walking away, but there they are, living in their home with all that extra money available that used to go to their mortgage. In some cases, just a few months relief to the borrower is all it takes to help them get back on their feet. Often times the borrower distress that led to the delinquency was something unexpected, like a  health problem, death in the family or a job layoff. A little breathing space, without immediate foreclosure, can have a positive effect for all. Many borrowers will stay put instead of walking, and then try to get back to their regular payment schedule once they have recovered. I’m amazed banks do not have as many ways to protect and support their borrowers as they seem to have to punish them—just astounded.

Wiser banking heads are starting to realize this. You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. Giving the borrower the break they need to get back to financial health is the smartest thing a banker could do. So banks that find a way to work with distressed borrowers, extend grace periods, lower payments, reduce interest rates, accept partial payments, help borrowers improve their credit standing or facilitate a fresh start, could find they have much more success than those that pursue collection vigorously, move to foreclosure, and slash at FICO scores.

The customer, the borrower, is the person who makes the whole thing possible for the banking business. As this situation plays out, with banks tightening credit, it will shrink the pool of borrowers, and buyers, and the cycle will just feed on itself. Banks need to get a clue. They must consider the borrower base they have as their greatest asset, for without the customer making those payments, we see all too clearly  what happens. The wise course—help the borrower, by any means possible! People, at heart, want to do well, live up to their promises, succeed and better themselves. What they do not want is to be duped by teaser rates, soaked by fees, taken advantage of by interest traps posing as loans, to have terms and conditions of contracts hidden away in tiny text, then changed on the whim of the lender, to have their accounts packaged off and sold to the highest bidding investor, and all  new terms imposed on them without their agreement. They do not want to be tricked, hoodwinked, politely robbed, or have arbitration schemes forced on them with arbiters that all have their fees paid by the banks.

Treat people this way, and you have set up an adversarial relationship that is fundamentally doomed to fail. Bank advertising is so slick and crafted. It sells debt to borrowers for an exorbitant price in interest, in effect, a contract for debt servitude posing as a convenience to the debtor. Just read the credit card offers that flood your mailbox each week. All the talk is about features, services, convenience, power, flexibility, status, and how you are being rewarded by these wonderful financial institutions. That’s the delightful, blooming rose of the credit business, but you reach for it at your own peril. The thorns will be hidden away, beneath those colorful pedals, in 6 point type. Wise and compassionate bankers could make all the difference in how this crisis continues to play out. Good and fair men, forsaking profit in the interest of truly providing a service to the people of this country at a time of dire need, would be a boon, and a saving grace just now. The banking industry needs massive reform, from the Fed on down.

If the banks pursue business as usual, with thoughtless and selfish lending policies and reflexive punishing of borrowers, they will almost assure a grass roots debt rebellion in this country. In many ways this is already underway. Just as people have walked away from their badly depreciated homes, they will simply stop paying on their credit cards once they get maxed out and become nothing more than big monthly bills. When the bank decapitates a credit line the customer literally has no use for the card any longer. As long as there was some open balance, a new teaser offer to transfer at a lower interest rate, some way for the customer to juggle their payments and make ends meet, the game could go on. Now the stark reality of the emerging economic depression is forcing banks to tighten the noose. Their actions will only serve to push pressured cardholders to the breaking point and assure default. Like the housing crisis, this will also be a disaster created entirely by the banks. How clueless could they be?

Banks should not stop lending, or extending credit to people, but they should do so responsibly, fairly and with a realization that their actions affect the general wellbeing of our society on the most fundamental level. Why should any interest rate ever exceed 10% on a loan, to any person, for any reason, particularly a lower income person? Sure it is highly profitable to charge 30% interest on a revolving charge account, with a double billing cycle, well padded with over limit and late payment fees. Usury was once a crime. Now it is basically considered a “best business practice” by our financial institutions, a license to steal.  The average “poor” person, branded with a low FICO score, ends up paying millions of extra interest dollars in their lifetime. The wealthy, those who least need the forbearance, get the very best rates and pay far less to borrow someone else’s money when they choose to. The banks call this basic inequity “risk based pricing.” They give lower rates to folks who they are more certain to pay them back. It sounds logical, but the poorer man might have been able to pay them back as well, if not for the 30% interest he was burdened with, and the lock step punishment of “universal default.” The little guy might have been able to manage his debt, if not for the fact that everything he bought at 6.9% interest suddenly skyrocketed to 29.9%--retroactive to all his past purchases. These are just two of the flails banks have used to punish, and break, typical credit card users. This is a system literally designed to fail and end in the violence of rebellion. Hasn’t history taught us anything about what happens in societies that become top-heavy with inequity and lop-sided distribution of wealth and privilege? Just ask the Romanovs.

Our own private hell.

Americans have lived in the first circles of Dante’s Hell for a very long time. They have been in a kind of limbo, distracted by entertainment and pleasure fulfillment, assuaging their desires with consumption and TV. So many of us have lived in the next few circles: the lustful, the gluttonous, the avaricious. To be sure, this thoughtless consumption, using someone else’s money, has been half of the problem. But let’s look further down the trough.

Usurers occupy a deeper level, the 7th circle of Dante’s Hell. And when you think of our current financial crisis, realize we would not be here if not for the people who run the game, many in Dante’s 8th circle: the  panderers, seducers, flatterers, hypocrites and thieves, the perpetrators of fraud, the falsifiers of metals, persons, coins and words. What a description of what’s been happening in the stock and commodity markets, the shadowy traffic in “securities ,” CDOs, SIVs, derivatives, the phony option ARM and interest only “gotcha” mortgages that are collapsing under the weight of all that greed.

The banks will get the message in the end, they are starting to see the result of their unfair practices, as people start walking away from their debt—and people without prospects and hope stop spending, and that is the next evolution of this crisis. When people stop spending, businesses and banks both fail. People get hungry, and the difference between civility and chaos in this country is just a week’s worth of food. Utility companies seem to be joining in as well, punishing people who fall behind on payments by shutting off their electricity and heat. This works well as a collection inducement under normal circumstances, but not in real hard times. Watch what happens to the “crime” rate this winter when people lose power and heat.  End of story.

Welcome to the second great depression, all delivered to you courtesy of George Bush, Dick Cheney, the Republican Party and a financial system based on greed for profit instead of service and fairness. It’s amazing how much damage has been done to the nation in the last eight years. And I will be absolutely flabbergasted if the Republicans pull even 40% of the votes in the November election. How clueless could that 40% be?

Political strategists and commentators, Tim Russert sadly no longer among them, say this election may be one of Republican “stay the course” vs Democratic “time for a change.” Time for a change? Ya think? Well, that’s the nice way of saying it. The actual political slogan that would best describe the importance of this election is this: Throw the bastards out!  So the question is this when you go to the booth in November: how clueless are you?
 
 - John Schettler - July, 2008

Readers may be interested to follow the progression of this economic crisis in these articles as well: Fannie & Freddie, Stormfront, USSA, Panic
 

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