The Group Goes Public!?!?!?

Sorry...wasn't logged in for the above comment...it was me, I admit it.

I meant to imply that home inspections are in the tank....for now.  It's just a really bad down cycle, in which we all have to find other means of putting groceries in the freezer...like squirrel hunting.  Right now, down here, it's frog season.  I used to have a gig, but dang if I can find it now, and I can't afford to invest in another one.  So, I've been catching catfish and bass out of the ponds.  I've been thinking about investing in some goats.  There's some cudzu on the back side of the place that wants to get invasive, and I can hang and gut a goat just as easy as I can a deer.  BTW, goat is really good done up on the smoker.  Butcher the young ones.  Feed them on corn, or set them loose in the honeysuckle patch for two or three weeks before they meet their fate.  That has absolutely nothing to do with marketing, but it may save some of us from starving, a fate that is especially odious to me.

Dale, I'm beginning to suspect that you are almost too good for your own good!

Well, this is getting so interesting that I had to take a little time away from pleasing all those underwriters to comment.

David, you mentioned that every depression came under the leadership of the Republicans.  That's altogether true in modern times, but the Ol' Histry Teecher remembers one caused by the actions of the most popular Democrat of all time--Andrew Jackson.  He had already left office by the time the proverbial poo-poo hit the fan, but the Panic of 1837 was caused by his internal policies, and his subsequent reaction to the ill effects of those policies--specifically, the Species Circular.  More on that in a moment, but first the setup.

As many of you know, Andrew Jackson was a particularly hard-driving and hard-headed man, and when he singled you out as an enemie, personal or political, you were pretty much doomed.  He was probably personally responsible for the fact that Henry Clay never became president because Clay backstabbed him in the Electoral College in 1824, swinging his support to the hated opponent.

From his personal experience in building his own estate and income, Jackson came to loath first the Hamiltonian "hard money" policies, and later the manifestation of those policies, the National Bank.  When he finally became president, he vowed to destroy the bank.  Its president, Nicholas Biddle, was a powerful man in his own right, and stood firmly against Jackson.  Jackson's remedy was to simply, by executive decree, stop depositing government funds into the bank and transferring those funds to state "Pet Banks" more favorable to his philosophy.  With much less leverage over monetary policies, the National Bank was left powerless to affect the actions of banks in general.  Banks were allowed to issue their own currency, and were not required to back up such currency with specie...gold and silver hard coinage.  A wild period of speculation in government land ensued.  There was plenty of this government land available, since Jackson was busy kicking all the Indians east of the Mississippi off their lands, and offering it for sale at the rate of $1.25 per acre.  The catch was that at least one section (640 acres) had to be purchased, and you had to bring real money to the table.  Under Jackson, it was acceptable buy land with a loan from a state bank, which, essentially, would simply print up enough of its own currency for the borrower to cover the cost of the land.  These borrowers (speculators) would then sub-divide the land into small portions and sell at a profit to Yoeman farmers.  This speculation led to wild inflation of land prices, and a lot of people got rich before the bubble burst.  Simply put, land got too expensive, the speculators couldn't move it, loans became due, speculators couldn't pay, and the banks could neither move the land nor back up the value.

Realizing his horrendous mistake at last, Jackson tried to save face and the markets by issueing the "Specie Circular", which stated that all government land sales or loans for such now had to be paid for with hard currency.  Many banks, having been in the habit of printing their own currency willy-nilly, couldn't back up their holdings, and thus went belly-up, further complicating the whole mess.  Jackson went out of office before the full impact of all this, and thus his popularity with the Masses was preserved for eternity.  Fortunately for America, we still had far more resources in land and minerals to exploit than we had people to exploit them, the Second National Bank was established, and congress got a hold on financial matters.

Shifting to today and issues that affect us right now....David H., I am in pretty much full agreement with you.  Bush and the Neocons have royally screwed up a lot of things.  But there are a couple of underlying elements here which have affected our current situation. 

One is the National Security apparatus.  Since WWII, a complicated and, in my view, erroneous philosophy has taken firm root, the basic premise of which is that what is good for American Multinational corporations is good for America in general.  That basic philosophy has been applied around the world in a kind of economic imperialism, the likes of which the world has never seen.  We have exercised our economic muscle to affect everything from which crops will be grown in Africa to agreements between Big Oil, government, and oil producing nations NOT to establish their own refining capabilities...thus preserving with government help this lucative market for domestic oil companies.  We have used the World Bank, the Diplomatic Corps, and any other "peaceful" means to acheive these ends, all at taxpayer expense.  This amounts to a practically free service to the Multinationals.  When "peaceful" arm twisting methods have failed, we send in the Marines, as we did in Equador in the fifties when that country attempted to nationalize non-producing acreage owned by the United Fruit Company.  Never mind that United was to be paid fair market value.  If that country were allowed to develop its own land and resources by empowering its own masses with the hope of land ownership, why, United Fruit might lose its grip on labor costs down there, and its chummy relationship with the already-existing landed elite might be jeapordized.  So, we sent in the Marines to toss the nasty Socialists out of power.

Need we wonder why we are so hated in Latin America?

Another prime example is the overthrow of the Iranian government by a coup engineered by the CIA in 1954, and establishing the Shah in power.  He was much more willing to go along with the wishes of the Big Oil execs.

Eisenhower was wise enough to see all this coming.  By the time he became president, this grand cabal involving the National Security apparatus, Big Oil, Mulitnationals, and the Military Industrial Complex had been pretty much firmly established during the Truman administration, and DDW realized his own, or any other president's, inability to get a handle on these folks.  He thought it was important enough to the future of this country that he made his famous address to the public late in his second term.

This apparatus, I need not remind anyone, is alive and well.  It is entrenched.  It is extremely resistant to change, and thus can be described as "conservative."  It is dependent upon having a defined enemy that must be confronted.  We spend vast fortunes fighting these enemies, more often than not the creation of our own "National Security" policies, while our internal infrastructure is in danger of crumbling, and small businessmen such as ourselves scramble for the means to pay for that next tank of gas.  We have used up just about every bit of political capitol in the world at large, all at the expense and downright neglect of many of our own internal social and economic needs.

This needs to change, and quickly.  Forget Conservatism.  Foget Liberalism.  Think survival.  We must shift our focus and public resources away from the Generals and begin thinking in terms of subsidizing research and development of alternative energies, Green housing, etc.  The current philosophy of the Neocons, which basically involves maintaining the status quo and seaching for new sources of the same old, same old, fossil fuels, just will not do.  These folks are hopelessly mired in a mindset that simply will not allow them to think outside of their own cramped, musty, rotten, stinky box, and they must go.  As much as I admire John McCain as a man of courage and conviction, I can see nothing but more of the same with him as President.

Let's give ourselves the opportunity to do something different, something better, something which will benefit us all.  Let's subsidize and develop hydrogen fuel technologies.  If we're going to subsidize big business, let's subsidize something that will benefit us all.  Ethanol in the long run won't serve our needs, and the current effort, i.e., turning corn into ethanol fuel additives, has only resulted in higher prices for eggs, meat and milk, since millions of acres have been shifted to the production of non-food grade varieties of corn.  Let's subsidize the development of solar energy technologies.

Want some muscle in the international oil markets?  Diminish the need and desire for it, and see how quickly prices adjust.

Whether he's able to pull if off or not, Obama does at least give some great lip service to many of the above mentioned issues.  The fight won't be easy, but avoiding the fight courts national disaster.  Leaving the current bunch of greedy, self-interested, exploitive, narrow-minded, pig-headed bureaucrats, politicians and multinational executives in control is unacceptable.

It is time to consider bold alternatives.  Let's throw the rascals out, while we still have to power to do so.  We certainly can't do any worse.

Dale, aside from the Federal Government, the oil companies are the only entities with the financial muscle to invest in alternative energies research.  Their answer to the present problem is to drill for new oil.  While that may protect their precious profits, it won't do anything to solve our energy problems or protect our environment.  On the other hand, windfall profits taxes won't solve anything either...it just may buy a few votes for the Democrats in the coming election to be able to say they tried to put the whammy on the Big Oil Boys.  A better answer would be to offer tax incentives to Big Oil to develop alternative energies.  That way, they stay in control (in their minds), and get a leg up on the new markets which will inevitably develop.  And we get a cleaner environment.  It won't be cheap for us in either case, those days are unfortunately over.  What's wrong with the present tax structure where Big Oil is concerned is to continue to reward them with tax incentives to maintain the status quo...which, it should be clear to all, isn't cutting it.

Carl...the situation you described is happening in local government everywhere....instead of just outright increasing your property taxes, they are justifying new fees, which amount to the same thing, in order to make local government solvent.  Raising taxes at the local level is always considered most odious, mainly because there is a mayor or alderman or local county supervisor that almost everybody can stop and bitch at.  So, they mask it by creating new fees or raising existing ones.  It cuts down on the bitching overall, because fees only affect those using that particular service.

Me, I'm going to start up a new franchise.  Since it looks like we're about to be booted back into the horse-and-buggy days, I'm going to start a chain of livery stables/motels, complete with hay and oats and a continental breakfast for the new class of traveling businessmen.  There will even be a recycling center for your horse's poop, where we'll have worm beds to turn it all into rich compost for sale at the local yard and garden outlet.  Since we'll all be growing our own beans again, I thought this would be a good value-added aspect to the business, and a nifty "green" move as well.  Good for PR, you know?

If any of you guys would like to invest in that, let me know.