Veterans Get Lip Service, Bankers Get Billions & We Get Foreclosures

[girl gone mad]

Veterans Get Lip Service, Bankers Get Billions & We Get Foreclosures
Submitted by Dylan Ratigan
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-veterans-get-lip-service-bankers-get-billions-we-get-foreclosures">Zero Hedge

One thing about doing a http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/">two hour show that heavily covers both the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that you notice on a daily basis the shocking juxtaposition between the lucky Wall Streeters and the unlucky soldiers.

We all know at this point that our banking system is being used as an unregulated bonus-seeking mechanism for bankers, now underwritten by taxpayers with http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/20/bailout-may-cost-237-tril_n_241512.html">$23.7 trillion worth of national wealth.

Bankers lent pretend money to home buyers to award themselves actual money in bonuses -- making home prices balloon and, in the process, bankrupting America's treasury, currency, the states, and many of its citizens.

To simply let the housing market rapidly correct itself (or more likely over-correct) would result in massive societal disruption, possible violence and unnecessary suffering.

So while we slowly attempt to close the taxpayer-funded bank casinos and try to restore the basic rules of investment and lending in our economy, we have difficult decisions to make. Unfortunately, our only choice for a less jarring social transition so far has been to artificially adjust the real prices of our homes via government guarantees to banks (for bad mortgages and losing gambling bets) -- or relatively arbitrary handouts to http://www.businessinsider.com/four-year-old-buys-a-house-with-stimulus-money-2009-10">home buyers.

What did these people do to deserve the handout?

How do you feel about a Wall Street Banker who has been renting an apartment here in New York and this year combined the bonus money he made on bundling new taxpayer-sponsored Fannie Mae CDS with a first-time home buyers tax credit gift from the taxpayers to buy the penthouse in his building?

Meanwhile, we have already been at war for 8 years with no end in sight. World War II was 5 years. We are fighting these wars with the fewest number of soldiers in modern U.S. History. To avoid incorporating a politically unpopular draft, we deploy the same soldiers five or six times with comparatively minuscule breaks in between.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/guest-post-veterans-get-lip-service-bankers-get-billions-we-get-foreclosures">More...

[Autumn]

1. In answer to the question,

"What did these people do to deserve the handout?" They own all of our politicians so they will be well taken care of. Us? Not so much.

[ThomCat]

3. That is what they did to buy it, not what they did to deserve it.

:(

[Autumn]

4. They sure don't deserve to own

them but they bought and paid them for their services. And a good investment it was.

[ThomCat]

2. I think that is a damned good idea.

If people are driven by poverty to join the military, because they have no other real option, at least let them be the ones that get the government handouts. Wall Street millionairess don't need the handouts anyway and don't deserve them because they created this damned disaster.

The only problem I see with this proposal is that it would drive more people into the military as a way of getting help, creating the idea that only those who can serve in the military deserve help. In this case, one delivery method would not work for everyone.

I would love to see this idea implemented, AND one or two other creative ideas to spread the help to others throughout our society who are the poorest and most in need who can't and aren't in the military.

So long as we stop rewarding the millionaires and go back to the core democratic idea of helping those who truly actually need it, please, let's be discuss creative and rewarding ways of doing it. :)

[upi402]

5. First we'd need an opposition party to corporatism gone wild

and then your good ideas have a chance. It seems as long as we have 100% of Republicans against all but the money elites, and most of the Democrats... then we wont see the fairness and options you speak of.

[Dover]

6. Banks selling insurance. They've got every angle covered...

Real estate...insurance...etc. Mega-multi-nationals.
One stop shopping. Just another gift from our purported 'representatives'.
They really do have a stranglehold on this country.
I'm sure they just LOVE the mandatory insurance law.