Finance 101: Blame the Poor (While Taking Their Money)

[jotsy]

Found this over at Information Clearing House by Gordon Arnaut

Did you know that the poor (and mostly black) people in the US caused the global financial crisis that threw the world economy into its worst slump since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. I didn’t know that either, until I heard this news from the US media and popular broadcasters like Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh.

This is how it all happened: Special interest groups representing poor people, minorities, and “socialist” elements in the US government “pressured banks to make loans to people who could not afford them, and then the whole thing melted down…” explains Beck, who has a radio and TV audience of several million viewers and listeners.

Statistics from the United Nations tell us that the bottom 40 percent of the population of the United States own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. That is about 120 million people. If each and every one of these individuals “forced” the banks to give them mortgages and loans, and then failed to pay them back, the worst that could happen would be a total national loss of 1 percent of wealth.

Is this what happened? That 120 million poor Americans all simultaneously defaulted on their mortgage and loan payments and the economy collapsed because of a 1 percent decline?

Or perhaps the collapse had more to do with the top 1 percent of Americans who own 38 percent of the national wealth? If we do a bit of simple math we see that a member of that top 1 percent—about 3 million wealthy Americans—owns, on average, about 1,500 times as much as a member of the bottom 120 million Americans. Put another way, about 1,500 poor people share a single piece of pie that one wealthy American has all to himself.

Also curious are numbers on who actually lost the most in this Great Recession. According to a study by a professor at the University of California, the average American household lost an astounding 36 percent of their total wealth. But the top 1 percent households lost only 11 percent. So the net result is that the wealth distribution is even more unequal than it was it was before the financial crisis.

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I've done some serious snipping here to condense, read the whole article at

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25430.htm>

The blue blooded nature of aristocracy scoffs at the notion of rabble without royalty to rule it. History consistently shows us the flaws in this philosophy, a lesson we seem as a species reluctant to learn from.

[begin_within]

1. The poor create poverty by not taking their share!

The poor create deficits by not paying taxes!

The poor create their own debt by not paying their bills!

The poor create high prices by not buying, therefore forcing the rich to pay the high price!

The poor create the recession by not investing in the stock market, therefore driving stock prices down!

The poor create slums by not shopping at Neiman-Marcus and not having expensive landscaping installed!

The poor create war by signing up for the military when they could have gotten jobs in fast food instead!

The poor create disease by not having regular checkups and costly diagnostic tests!

The poor create traffic by driving instead of having their chauffers drive them!

[jotsy]

2. Mama Babs is that you?

Here hiding from your nether life as the Borg Queen?