Sir; I'd buy you a beer; but I'm not going to take any thing from you. It is difficult to be in a position of having helped to build this country, and to be drawing a pension, and on the point of seeing this country fail, of going against bailouts. Let me ask you... Since we all pay interest as well as living off interest; why are we concerned? If they wiped out our debt, most of us would be in better shape even if they wiped out our interests and our pensions. Surely, we want the government to do something. Too late for that. Will government bankrupt itself to save a system that has already bankrupted America? It already has..... Where is the sense in that? Do we fear for international markets? What is the argument for a national government if all economies are international? If they itch and we scratch, or if we sneeze and they catch a cold; isn't it time for us all to have a world government, with rights, with laws and obligations? What would be the point of an international government if it does no better than our own at guarding our rights? Look at what our government has already done for capital. Two wars, Korea, and Vietnam were ideological wars fought for capital and profit against a system that was always hand to mouth, and bare bones. How many lives and public billions did those wars for capital cost this society? And, let me ask... Who benefits from usury? There is one good reason for the high price of real estate, and it is, that property is a bank of wealth. Its value is not the view, or the use; but as speculation; because it no longer supports the country. On top of that high price is high interest, and I have paid mine, and I pay yet. What do you think I owe these Shylocks; because they first deny the government due taxes, and then demand that taxes support them. So, where is the ultimate good resulting from this interest, which has always been subsidized? The government does not tax the interest I pay for my home, so it denies revenue to make the rich richer.. Does that encourage lower interest, or higher interest? Again, it encourages speculation in that I may pay more for the property in the hopes of getting more later; and, pay higher interest knowing that I do so with tax free income. But, it is a shell game, and an international one at that, because clearly these financiers were in the business of selling America over seas. So, that is where our interest money is going; from where it will never return. Look at how much we all pay to make a class of parasites into billionaires. If a family farmer, if there are any left, pays interest, it adds to the cost of his product, or runs him out of business. We cannot add to the cost of our labor only because we pay interest, and while we may make ends meet, we often have to pay interest for emergencies, or luxuries. What if the interest we must pay forces us to take any wages we are offered? Is that a social good? The fact is that none of us can earn enough to gain ground, and we resort to credit to have some life while we toil on toward death, again, because the government actively depresses wages for the benefit of capital. It is certain, that while people have equity that they must hock it to have credit, and must have credit to suppliment short wages. ...Try to get the whole picture, Mr. Shields. This is the wealth of the nation, not only being sold abroad, but being leveraged out of every pocket, and every hide. We work for this thing, to pay greatly for something we recieve but little of, and how long has the government shown fiscal responsibility in regard to the needs of the infrastructure, or of the populations; only to reveal now that they had plenty of money. How often are we supposed to work for the same dime? We feed the banks with our lives, our sweat, and our labor; and feed the government with our taxes, that we pay, and property does not pay, and when the banks have glutted themselves, and will no longer bet on being able to squeeze more wealth out of us, then the government gives them more and more money. It is our free money, given by the government, that they have used to bleed us to begin with. It is their relentless quest for profits that has sent our factories and capital abroad, and has made long term, intelligent investment in our future, and in human capital unlikely; and it has made life hell for millions of workers. Why should we give them our dime? We should put them all on trial for treason. They are felons to a man. I don't care if it is legal, because it is immoral, and unamerican. We cannot possibly have a nation so long as one class feeds upon another, and uses interests as a device to deny rights, and to reduce the population to slavery. My life is my interest, but I have paid far more than I will ever recieve, and now the government will devalue all I recieve to a pitance. I want it to fall. We can never sort out those who can be reclaimed from those incapable of any moral virtue if they are allowed to continue to hide behind each other, making a market of America and feeding off our lives. If capital is so great, let it support the government that protects it. It will not, and cannot. It will break the government, and has already done so.. And history shows that bankruptcy is the harbinger of revolution. Let us see what this one heralds....Thanks...Sweeney

I have a simple request: can anyone give me a list of the "good old boys"? These people must have names. They should be held accountable for the runaway spending in Washington, the excess of personal debt, and all the other disorders that McCain-Palin are promising to correct. It would be good to know who to vote against, sue and burn in effigy. Ps, my local papers do not carry you, the only way I hear your viewes is on TV. Thanks, Eric Fontenot.

Re: eric fontenot; Sir, if any of those joes are pointing the finger some place else, just disregard it. This isn't sympathy for the devil either. I don't care who killed the Kennedys. But we were all happy when the economy was making everything possible for us, and now that we have been turned into a hollow country with the rights and the capital sucked out of our marrow, we want to find the guilty party. Shet; we never cared who had to die or what species had to go extinct for the party to carry on, so why should we ask now who turned out the lights? Here is all you need to know, the government is like the economy, money is like sports, slavery is like employment. All these things are forms of relationship. It is not money that makes people rich unless people in their relationships give money value. Without that relationship, money devalues the paper it is printed on. Some times the forms we create feed on the relationship. The money we value is some ones excuse to cause us pain and hardship, so we should find a new relationship and take the value out of money. It is the country that must live for the economy to have meaning, and these people, to have their economy are trashing the country. But, again, it is all a form of relationship. Jefferson had it right. We don't want to change forms. Some times we must change forms to save our lives. That is where we are. Forget about capital. Save yourself because that ship is sunk. Thanks...Sweeney

Finally, the "Age of Reagan" and the Son of Reagan, also known as George W. Bush has been proven to be the hollow fraud that it was. Your Republican pollster knew of what he said. In the anger of executives getting spectacular golden parachutes for failing miserably, let us not forget that there are thousands, if not more of regular office workers, clerks, receptionists, IT people in the lower middle class income level who deserved better. I happen to know a few of them with AIG who should not be flipping burgers or asking if you want fries or a soda with your order. They are the ones who deserve the bailout.

Hope you're right, Mark. As always, you are indefatigably positive, without having to live in fantasy to manage it. I'm less positive than you, and hope to God I'm wrong. To get ourselves out of this mess, and it's a far cry from just economic, we are going to need to draw upon reason. You do a great job of describing the tortured relationship between reason and fantasy in the schizophrenic American psyche, and we really are at a crossroads now.

We simply can't afford any more people at the helm who wish to profit by hawking superstition and make believe to an all too gullible citizenry who will buy just about anything put before them for sale.

Re: Masako...Sir, The way through this mess is through it once and for all. You can't fix broken down crap like this economy one nut at a time. You have to throw all those bums out. Look at these economists throwing money down a rat hole and won't help John Q. one little bit; even with his own money. Where is the economy in their economy? They have reached the breaking point in this country of too many people doing nothing productive, and living off too few doing something productive for not enough wages. There is no saving it, and the best you can expect is to put off the utter misery for another day. The problem is not that Wall Street does not have enough billions. The problem is that we don't have any way to make the payments, and inflating the currency by printing unsupported Billions is not going to make that fact less true. Do You say the fundamentals of the economy are strong? You need every body working, shipping to every market, with capital invested instead of spent and tied up in losses; and we do not have that here. The best way to make things go, is to give it all to the people. They will spend it gone before lunch, and half of it can go to china, and the other half can go to Wall Street, and that will get us till tomorrow. The U.S. economy is a dead horse. Washinton has got to get off it long enough to bury it.... Thanks....Sweeney

Re: ronaldcowin... Sir; When George Bush said after his last election that he had plenty of capital, and he was going to spend it; it should have been a clue, a lttle clue, that this grown up punk of a chief executive knew nothing of the economy that had made him rich. Capital is invested, and spending it is like eating the seed corn. And we have been living off the seed corn, because more than in any age, it is the capital investments of past generations that have been liquified by ready cash, printed by the government, and given gratis to the rich. Their wealth is our poverty. The income differential is them getting more property as we lose property. Are they glutted? Have they spent all their capital on our capital so they can afford no more? What have we to leave to future generations but worn out everything, rusted infrastucture, neglected this and that, and memories of the family farm? This age has been like the discovery of America to the Spanish and English. It is like negro slaves, coal and and brown sugar all rolled into one. It is like the Black Death in Europe, that liberated so much capital it feuled the Renessance. Capital can grow, but slowly. It has taken but a few generation to reduce the citizens of America to the status of beggars, because the government has turned our own money into capital with which the rich could break us. And now we are broke. And the solution is not more capital. The solution is more justice and less capitalism....Thanks...Sweeney