'The American Dream to Me...Has Been Erased'

After you're done reading all the articles featuring "experts" talking about how this week's superstorm could benefit the U.S. economy, you might want to watch the following video, which features individuals who've already been through one so-called recovery--and who probably couldn't survive another one like it.

Comments

[Tom]

300: Player Initialization Failed

Hope your "members only" site works better.

[Michael Panzner]

Sorry, works now. I guess it didn't like me resizing the player. Otherwise, my new site works great for those who appreciate the value of unique, insightful information. Thanks for asking.

[Corporate welfare is killing everything]

Michael Olenick: How Fannie Enriches Private Equity Investors at Taxpayer and Homeowner Expense

By Michael Olenick, creator of NASTIACO, a crowd sourced foreclosure document review system (still in alpha). You can follow him on Twitter at @michael_olenick or read his blog, Seeing Through Data

Corporate welfare queen Fannie Mae has decided to spread their taxpayer provided love, doling out taxpayer subsidized sweetheart deals to a small number of lucky real-estate investors.

Let’s examine one of those deals, Fannie Mae’s SFR 2012-1, which includes three groups of properties in Florida.

Fannie Mae sold 699 Florida properties, appraised at $81.5 million, for $12.3 million cash to San Diego based Pacifica Companies. In exchange, Pacifica must rent the homes, paying Fannie another $78.1 million from rental proceeds, but during that time Pacifica is allowed to keep a 20-percent management fee plus 10-percent of rental proceeds.

If that doesn’t sound like money for nothing, like the song goes, Fannie sweetened it by adding a trigger allowing Pacifica to keep 50-70 percent of rental proceeds, depending upon performance, after Fannie’s been “paid” (read: collected rent) amounting to $49.3 million.

Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/10/michael-olenick-how-fannie-enriches-private-equity-investors-at-taxpayer-and-homeowner-expense.html#H2ERImx3UJze1WDe.99

[Jim]

The situation appears very bleak for many of these folks contrary to popular views older workers are usually very productive. To be cast aside when one is fifty years old must be hard to take.

[sharonsj]

A friend in California just phoned to tell me about new classes in how to live on less, how to form new communities, how to barter, how to grow your own food, how to prep, etc., and these classes are springing up in all sorts of places other than schools.

Looks like more people are realizing just how badly we've been screwed.

[All for some, nothing for most]

Money For Nothing – An Upcoming Documentary About The Fed

More details from Ariel Cannon, a co-producer of the film:

Ours is the first film to ever feature strikingly critical commentary about the Federal Reserve – from current and former Fed officials themselves.

Our interview subjects include Jeremy Grantham, Jim Grant, Allan Meltzer, Raghuram Rajan, Gary Shilling, current and former Fed officials such as Paul Volcker, Tom Hoenig, Jeff Lacker, Charles Plosser, Richard Fisher, Peter Fisher (former Head of Open Market Operations at the NY Fed), and many others.

A 3 minute trailer can be viewed at: www.MoneyForNothingTheMovie.org

http://www.bearishnews.com/post/5161/comment-page-1#comment-5448

[More like a nightmare]

Country Club Sopranos

American banks are on a massive crime spree. Obama and Romney hope you won’t notice.

If they'd been common robbers, the bankers surely would have faced indictments. After all, their scams have run for years, their breadth and coordination breathtaking.

But not a single boss went to jail. Some firms settled for just a fraction of what they'd stolen. Most have never admitted wrongdoing. And in the ethics-optional land known as Wall Street, many saw their stock prices rise.

America's country club set has forged its own replica of the Mafia — only bigger, broader and capable of unleashing far more damage on the U.S. economy.

"Unquestionably, that's true," says Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, whose career prosecuting organized crime runs all the way back to the Kennedy administration. "I was looking at stuff on Mulberry Street, and the real theft was on Wall Street...All of the people who ran the scams have their big houses and their airplanes, and they're laughing — they got away with it."

The situation leaves Sam Antar with a sense of longing. He's a former chief financial officer convicted of securities, mail and wire fraud.

"My biggest mistake in life was that I committed my crimes in the 1980s," he says. "If I committed them today, I wouldn't even get house arrest. I'd just hire a good lawyer and pay a fine and I'd be free."

http://www.houstonpress.com/2012-11-01/news/wells-fargo-175-million-settlement/

[Mad Max]

Everyone feels hopeless because they have no idea what to do. We have one way out. Fix your government and stop Complaining. Get off your couches and do something before something gets done to you. Don’t be a casualty or a victim. Stop asking for change. Stop voting for change. You have to MAKE the CHANGE.
The three most important words in the constitution are “We the people” That means us.
Democracy is more than just voting and complaining about the government.
The revolution has started! It's just waiting for you!

“Be Smart!” -
FIGHT THE CAUSE - NOT THE SYMPTOM

U.S. Citizens
Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://revolution2.osixs.org )

Non U.S. Citizens
Read “Common Sense 3.2” at ( http://SaveTheWorldNow.osixs.org )

How else can I say this? "We Are Free!"http://WeAreFree.osixs.org "Spread the News"

This is how you get in evolved in democracy. Protesting and complaigning are for people with no ideas, not stategy and no leadeers. And worst of all No vision.
I’m not religious in any way but bleieve in the following:

“Where there is no vision the people parish”
- Proverb 29:18

[Tom]

Here's what's become of the American Dream:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4HZeouQIU1M#!

[whatever]

It ended with the stupidest lie I have ever heard.

"We didn't grow up with scarcity, like my parents generation."

His parents generations had so much they didn't even need two people working. Not like it is today. Where if husband and wife isn't working, it's because someone lost their job. The wife DIDN'T EVEN NEED A JOB.

But, but what about the Legend of the Great Depression? A Legend that grow bigger every time an old person begins whining hysterically? Can you hear the old people all crying and weeping and howling like little girls? Can you HEAR the whine?

The Great Depression started in 1929 and peaked in 1933. Our Depression started in 1999, and as of 2012 has not yet peaked. So, will our Depression be three or four times longer than theirs? THREE OR FOUR.

So did the poor old man lose his job for two or three years? Did it hurt his wittle feelings? Did he cry? And then the "Great Depression" was over and he got a job just as good as his last. And that was it for the rest of his life. AAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

How many people here who lost their jobs expect to EVER EVER EVER get a job as good as the one they lost?

[A serf]

Max Keiser: 'Barack Obama is clueless. Mitt Romney will bankrupt the country'

A serf in the days of King John, Max Keiser argues, was in many ways better off than some US voters in 2012.

"Because in the age of Robin Hood," Keiser says, "at least the process of theft was transparent. The barons came to your house. They whacked you over the head then they took all your money." Even if the poor didn't exactly empathise with their oppressors, Keiser adds, they could at least comprehend their methods. "And the serfs," he continues, "did enjoy a modicum of stability. They got something in return for their enslavement. A small plot of land. Shelter. A relationship with the lord of the manor." In the modern age of "financial tyranny" orchestrated by what Keiser refers to as "the banksters" in charge of the major financial institutions in the US and Europe, he believes, "We have reverted to a more pernicious kind of neo-feudalism. The instruments of larceny have changed; that's all."

"Barack Obama," he maintains, "has been a huge disappointment. He reneged on every one of his campaign promises except one: he did buy his kids a dog.

No channel in the United States will carry his broadcasts, which go well beyond the benign impudence of The Daily Show.

"There is a fury against this global banking fraud that is building every day," he says. "People from all kinds of backgrounds, all over the world, have had enough."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/max-keiser-barack-obama-is-clueless-mitt-romney-will-bankrupt-the-country-8269633.html

[Sleep tight]

Lauren Lyster Interviews Dan Ariely on Financial Fraud and the Psychology of a Cheater

I knew that Erskine Bowles was on the board of Morgan Stanley, but I did not know that his wife is on the board of JP Morgan. It is an interwoven world of mutual benefits at the top.

The current climate amongst the power elite is one of personal entitlement based on rationalization as described by Dr. Ariely, and assumptions of a natural superiority, self-portraying their actions even to the point of benevolence and civic spirit, guiding the poor helpless sub-humans who are incapable of self-governance and perhaps not even worthy of freedom: useless eaters. I call it the Tsar Nicholas complex.

It is a culture of narcissism, self-indulgence, exclusion, and self-reinforcement through separation from the other. The private discussions that were exposed in the recent presidential elections were a brief view into the mindset and groupthink. Their words betray them.

And it always ends, often badly.

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/11/lyster-interviews-dan-ariely-on.html

[Mary Kaplan]

It almost seems like if you don't work for yourself, all bets are off. It is very scary to think that when you're 50 and out of work, your chances of being hired for a job which fits your work experience is nearly nonexistent. When you are competing with younger people whose salary requirements are significantly lower, they get the job over the more experienced seasoned candidate. This is sad, but it's probably a good idea to simplify your lifestyle as soon as you are out of work to cut expenses as much as possible.

[Real Deal]

When Ronald Reagan arrived, he brought with him a whole lot of ideologies. One of them, the center piece of his economics, is called Supply Side, also popularly called Trickle Down.

It says if you shift the entire economic, trade and tax policies to reward those who run business, own the big assets, control factories, deliver education, then they will get even more rich and powerful. And as they do, their wealth will *trickle down* to the working class.

Politicians at all levels of governments proceeded to apply trickle down policies. During these 2 decades, these policies worked wonderfully - it shifted power and wealth ever higher to the ever more wealthy. And when the working class began to wonder if they have been fooled, politicians would tweak things to feed candies and freebies (called the magic of credit) to keep them quiet. To those who argue too much, they got hit them with 2x4's for daring to question The Great Wise One - Ronald Reagan.

2, even 3 generations of the mass of regular people, subject to daily brainwashing by big media, proceeded to VOTE AND VOTE FOR POLITICIANS AND GOVERNMENTS AGAINST THEIR INTERESTS.

But a strange thing happened along the way. The uber-rich, the powerful, the elite who was so handsomely enriched by national policies, refused to share anything, less trickle down a buck for the miserable millions. It seems they never have enough. Got a billion, they want 2 billion, then 10 billion.

Today, the great mass of regular folks have just about destroyed themselves. The end of the American Dream. Amazingly, a large portion of uber-rich did not do so well either. Because, permitted with unfettered greed, they cannot 'stop the music' and blew themselves up too.

And my friend, this is how empires of history died.