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A word on the madness of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve
Posted by Chris Knudsen on March 18th, 2008
Sometime I wish I didn’t know the things I know. Sometimes I wish I were just uneducated and ignorant about the things happening around me. After all…ignorance is bliss, right?
From Thomas Jefferson:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”
Yeah…that about sums it up.
The problem is that the people gladly surrender to the banks. While banks can no longer print their own money, they can print their own plastic and give that to those who are willing to mortgage their future in exchange for a few more trips to the mall.
Those in Jefferson’s day had the advantage of more direct consequences to their actions. They learned quickly. If you wasted food you ran out. If you squandered the goods you got from the country store and couldn’t pay for more, you quickly did without because you had no alternative.
Today, if you max out one credit card, you can get ten more and simply pass the balances around. Or, if you are the government, you can keep spending money and simply issue IOUs -i.e. treasury bonds. You can sell them to China Bank and Trust and hope they never call for payment or use the debt as leverage in other areas. When was the last time you took on a bank that you owed alot of money?
Unfortunately in life, we usually get what we deserve. The current financial mess is a result of people and their government simply surrenduring common sense in an attempt to get what they could not reasonably afford.
Left by Rand on 03/18/2008