Coffee, Tea or Me--the Individual

There is growing excitement about the coffee party--a party that stands for taking back the United States government for the people and away from special interests and corporations. It is another add-on to what I believe will be a cycle of anti-establishment behavior in the country in the years to come (only, this time, maybe we can do without the hippie, smug idealism).

I haven't been to a coffee or tea party, but I was at a birthday party last night, and we discussed politics, history and current events--I know, I'm old and this is my kind of party.

Someone said that nothing ever comes out of an anti-establishment movement, but I tend to disagree with that. The 1960's brought change in the form of civil rights and greater freedoms for race, gender and sexuality--only to see repression return to the mainstream when the baby boomers got older. Of course, the baby boomers are the largest demographic group in the U.S. so anything mainstream for them is always the way to go, whether marching on Washington or making as much money and buying as many things as humanly possible.

Only, the baby boomers forgot to take into account that they are also susceptible to human nature, and baby-boomer politicians sold themselves out because not only did they have an arrogance about them that their needs come before all others, but a "la-la-la-live for today" attitude--which still resembles mainstream in this country.

As much as I hated Ronald Reagan for increasing U.S. debt to increase spending, consumer spending increasing by excessive-minded baby-boomers, the phrase "Just Say No" to make everything all right with our children and selling arms to the enemy, the most irritating thing was a false reality that our country was prosperous when it was heading into a recession and the first bubble-to-bust in what would become a series of bubble bursts every decade.

I thought would this mania would end in 1992 when Bill Clinton came to office.

But, with a Republican Congress entering in 1994, Clinton simply became a Republican in Democrat's clothing and it was under his administration that Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, which allowed banks and investment banks to merge as one entity.

This Great Depression II might have happened anyway if Glass-Steagall was not repealed (Glass-Steagall was made into law after The Great Depression to basically prevent overinvestment in banking products, such as mortgages), but I think Glass-Steagall's repeal set the stage for 2008's economic credit crisis. So, that was Clinton's fault because it was under his watch--whether he was "forced" into it with the threat of impeachment or not, it was on his watch.

Of course, Larry "I won't listen to anything about derivatives" Summers was under Clinton and is back NOW under the Obama Administration along with other Wall Street affiliates Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke.

So, despite, GW Bush's massive overspending and deregulation of...well...every corporation and industry around the world, that same corporate philosophy of "greed is good" and let's get every consumer to spend until they have nothing left and a huge bubble pops, is still around.

Which leads me to a post on The Coffee Party Website. Call it a post or a rant, but here it is:

In the end, when it comes to corporate greed, the best way to destroy it is to not feed into it. The unemployed people have no choice on how they spend; the employed but fiscally conservative will only live within their means and start saving--which many are doing; and the foolish will take on more debt and spend on items they just don't need.

A couple questions: How do retail sales go up in an economy with nearly 20 percent unemployed, disaffected or part-time workers looking for full-time jobs? It doesn't. Numbers get revised way down for January so the headlines can show that retail numbers went up in February.

Consumer sentiment is down--way down.

How do banks get nearly 0 percent interest in taxpayer money and lend 30 percent on credit cards to consumers? How did unsophisticated borrowers get 0 percent, interest-only mortgages that bank CEOs knew would eventually destroy the mortgage industry and, with Glass-Steagall repealed, take down the global economy? How do these insolvent banks remain solvent when they brought the global economy to its knees?

Answer--a dying philosophy for consumers to take on debt and spend, spend, spend on material goods to prop up the entire world's global economy. Does that really make us "number one" in this world?

The Federal government is now our economy. It feeds banks (who retain the money until they're self-sufficient), it backs mortgages with FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans (at an unsustainable volume as the Fed buys mortgage-backed securities). In all, it puts the country in trillions of dollars of debt.

Now, how are we really "number one" in this world if we're more in debt than any other country. Answer--we print money. The Federal Reserve prints it--sells Treasury bonds to foreign countries that hold a promissory note, hoping we can pay since we're the United States.

That's all well and good, as long as the world keeps believing that printed dollar has any value behind it. Well, of course it does, because we're USA--the economic standard. Just look at us--our infrastructure, our educational system, our healthcare and our people, driving with their fancy Toyotas, watching their big-screen TVs unless they are walking away from their houses.

One way to get the message heard is to stop spending, start saving and opening up to reality--and I don't mean reality TV. We the people and the federal government didn't live within our means, we fostered this behavior around the world and we're paying a non-monetary price for that right now.

This is the message--there are no Republicans, Democrats or Independents for that matter. There are multinational corporations living and breathing on the printed dollar, which may soon have little value in the entire scheme of things.

If one day, a ratings agency said the United States' sovereign debt was less than AAA--the highest rating--and more like BBB (because we're trillions of dollars in debt with money based on bonds we'll never be able to pay back), then goodnight. The value of the dollar is completely worthless. That said, however, the Euro will go first, as well as the Yen and all the other currency. China and Japan hold the most U.S. debt, and they know the U.S. can't pay them back. But, they need the U.S. as much as the U.S. needs their money.

How does this madness end? We stop spending money we don't have.

Although, at this point, I don't think we have much choice in the matter, anyway.

So, we've seen the enemy and it's corporate and federal government greed, working hand-in-hand, as well as greed within ourselves by feeling entitled to luxuries we don't necessarily deserve. Living within our means is really the only choice, knowing that risk can be bring reward but it can have negative consequences as well.

Now, bringing about corporate change is nearly impossible because money rules--it rules the justice system, the political system (obviously), the media and our own health. We can protest for ideologies and blog until tomorrow on arguments about which party is right or wrong, but we should never condemn the dollar itself. Right? No way.

Well, the time has finally come to examine everyone's life--each individual--against a ruling class based on monetary wealth. It is time for the majority--the soon-to-be-lost middle class--to realize that their individual lives are far more important that monetary gains by the small, but highly wealthy elite.

These elite are not part of a political party--they're part of a minority club that rules, fails and then rules again. In the club, failure does not exist because CEOs (and politicians) are entitled to succeed. Why not? They have money...they can fail most of their lives with one success thrown in for good measure. Look at George W. Bush.

That is, until these CEOs need to lay off thousands or more people because of their own indiscrepancies. Maybe it's a politician responsible for sending men and women to die because of their own political causes and not in defense of a nation.

That's the club and, if you're a member, you win whether your constituency wins or loses.

No thanks. I believe in fairness and, if you take a risk and fail, you lose. If you risk and win, you succeed. And that everyone should succeed or fail based on their own merit--based on the established set of rules and guidelines. At least, that's how I was treated growing up.

Maybe it's that, or maybe it's just that old Groucho Marx saying, "I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member."

That's because groups get things done. Clubs are for members only.