Traffic lights have Green, Yellow and Red colors. Green for GO, moving traffic flow along, maybe even synchronized to make traffic flow even more smoothly through multiple intersections. Yellow for CAUTION. Red for STOP.

Getting rid of all Red Lights (Regulations), thus leaving only Green Lights at intersections would lead to a whole lot of wrecks…or in the case of the de-regulated Wall Street, a blazing financial wreck and meltdown.

If you’ve noticed, crooks fleeing from cops in high-speed car chases don’t observe Red Lights at intersections. Wrecks and deaths often ensue.

So criminal-minded Reaganite Republians, like former Sen. Phil Gramm of Enron infamy and John McCain, have been pushing for almost thirty years for removing all the Red Lights from financial markets, energy trading centers and even our federal agencies.

Why?

So the corrupt conservative Republicans could give the “Green Light” to all their crony corporatist pals, letting them rob our country for as much as they could rip-off without silly “Red Lights” or government regulations impeding their rush to obscene riches…at the expense, the wreckage of everyone else.

And the Yellow “CAUTION” Light?

Treasury Secretary Paulson, formerly of Goldman Sachs, no doubt saw the Wall Street intersection’s traffic light flashing Yellow faster and faster, but blew off the warning signs. (Just like the Bush administration blew off all the pre-9/11 warnings of an imminent right-wing domestic terrorist attack).

Finally, all Green Lights (supposed free-market capitalism) is just as dangerous, therefore, as are all Red Lights, which one sees in one totalitarian dictatorship after another (especially Red Commie dictatorships). A blinking Yellow Light cautions against going to both extremes…which history has shown only leads to disaster and wrecked lives.

Let’s do a dissection of the current Wall Street crisis.

George W. Bush declares himself to be the “ownership society” president. He, therefore, pushes for more U.S. citizens, whether financially qualified or not, to own, own, own. Buy a house. Buy something else on credit to put in the house, driving up one’s credit card total.

To accomplish this “ownership society” scheme, the Republicans (and Bush) needed to relax the “rules,” to turn off as many of the regulatory Red Lights as possible…which they have done over the past eight years to such great success…and devastation.

But what’s the real reason behind this “ownership society” scheme?

Well, “owners” tend to be more conservative, especially the owners (and families) of “property” like a home…which must have given some Republican strategist (Karl Rove?) the idea that pumping up the number of “owners” would lead to more people voting Republican.

Besides the normal graft and greed of the Republicans, I believe this “political” calculation was also one of the major reasons for Bush’s “ownership society” gambit.

Now all the anti-regulatory mangy Republican chickens have come home to roost.

Nothing like allowing predatory lending to take over which created this debacle.

No, we don’t want our government to do anything but take our taxes.

ENRONed again…

ENRONed again: this time by oil futures contracts speculators who are unnecessarily and very profitably driving up the price of crude oil and hence retail gasoline prices.

We’re being ENRONed again. Curious as to why you are suddenly paying over four dollars a gallon for gasoline? No, it’s not due to “supply-and-demand,” no, it’s not due to “OPEC,” nor is it due to “peak oil.” It’s due to totally unregulated electronic oil futures trading in world markets. Check out the very lucid article that explains the unseen financial machinations in oil futures markets written by F. W. Engdahl on May 2, 2008, entitled, “Perhaps 60% of Today’s Oil Price is Pure Speculation.” It may be viewed at http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/2008/0502.html.
In a nutshell, he suggests that the Bush Administration dropped the ball in January 2006, when they allowed totally unregulated electronic trading of oil futures contracts in New York. Previously these electronic trades had been made at the London Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Futures Market. With that decision by the Bush Administration, all of the world’s oil prices were then opened to upward pressure from speculative futures contracts. In essence, oil futures contracts made by speculators, banks, hedge funds and pension funds all competed with real demand on the spot markets and had the effect of driving up both wholesale oil prices and retail gasoline prices. Speculators have made billions of dollars on their trading of oil futures contracts. All of their profits come right out of our pockets.
Even with a stable oil supply, there is a slow worldwide increase in demand for oil, which creates a long-term upward pressure on oil prices. However, with the relentless saber-rattling and war-mongering by Bush and Cheney in the last several years, and the more recent war talks by McCain and the Israelis, the oil futures markets are rife with speculation and paranoia. This war talk keeps ratcheting up the prices on the oil futures contracts and hence the wholesale spot market prices. It is an endless spiral of greed and paranoia.
As long as there is no tough and effective oversight of the electronic oil futures markets by the Bush Administration, the oil prices will climb endlessly. These oil prices will be quickly followed by hikes in the retail gasoline prices at the pump. The 60% speculation share of the $4.25/gallon gasoline price, is about $2.55/gallon, which is what we consumers are paying to these oil speculators as a “service fee.” Not a bad “fee,” since the speculators produce no usable goods or services…Just a few large greedy oil futures traders helping themselves to your gas money.
Without this added-on oil futures “service fee,” you would be paying about $1.75/gallon for gasoline. Write, call or smoke-signal your Representatives and Senators today and suggest that they read the June 2006 report by The U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations entitled, “The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices.” Then demand that they investigate and then force the Bush Administration to firmly regulate the computerized oil futures contracts trading in New York, London and Dubai.
 
These unregulated electronic oil futures trading markets should be completely shut down immediately. They serve no social purpose, they only enable corporate greed. These same greedy corporate speculators are probably also responsible for the rapid rise in the prices of basic food commodities, such as wheat, rice and corn. No one who is not prepared to accept physical delivery of one thousand barrels of oil on their front doorstop should be allowed to participate in the oil futures markets. Same goes for wheat futures, rice futures and corn futures.

Birk is a little too creative. Nice plan but 85B/200M is $425.00, not $425,000.00.

Gee, thanks for clearing that up, John.

Now, which part of Glass-Steagall was the stupid legislation that prevented a meltdown of the financial system for the prior 60 years? Cause, if was smart, you and Phil never would have repealed it, right?

Posted by Jake | 19 hours ago

P.S. Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it’s either good for laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on How Best To Use $85 Billion!!

And does that mean that lobbyists and their clients are McCain’s “people” ?

He also urged organizers of Friday’s presidential debate at the University of Mississippi to postpone the event.

I hope Sen. Obama calls these lying aholes out. No postponements. mcchimpy will do/say anything to gain the advantage over Sen. Obama.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain announced Wednesday that he is suspending his campaign to return to Washington and focus on the “historic” crisis facing the U.S. economy.
McCain said it was time for both parties to come together to solve economic crisis.

McCain said it was time for both parties to come together to solve economic crisis.

The Arizona senator called on his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, to do the same.

Oh Please. What campaign?

We need it now more than ever!!!!

PEACE