Collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch

Ah-HA! Now we see why so many GOP and D.C. lifers have had such a hard on for 'Privatizing' Social Security.

It was NEVER about you getting to privately decide what to do with YOUR money (as the GOP hounds have loved to call that nugget set aside for the care of the elderly). The house of cards was getting close to collapse and they damned well knew it. They needed a massive infusion of new cash for the pyramid scheme that is Wall Street.

CEOs have done nothing to grow anything. They have cut production, they have cut costs until they are not making anything in America but paperwork. They kept getting more and more productivity from the American worker but it was never enough. They would not tighten their own belts so they ate the workers' pensions, the investors' nest eggs, and finally a whole lotta actual daily payroll.

What have most CEOs actually ever done? Cut cost! "Cut cost!" is not a business plan. Sitting on each other's boards, giving each other bigger and bigger compensation packages is not a business strategy. Throwing your workers further and further down the economic ladder then wondering where all the consumers have gone is not leadership. Whining about how sensible regulation, holding business up to sane rules which protect business, consumers, workers and the economy, is not protecting capitalism!

Acting like a bunch of two year olds in expensive suits is not how to run an economy.
Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine is not free market. It is the most base aspect of human nature.

Well, the two year olds in expensive suits have eaten their parental units (that'd be us, the workers/real producers/investors/CONSUMERS) out of house and home. We are pretty well destitute and begging on the street corners of the world for crumbs. We're screwed.

And the fat two year old cats in expensive suits knew, KNEW, this was coming. They knew they had squandered all the small investors' discretionary investment capital. They knew they had blown through the pension funds. They knew the money saved from excessive tax cuts was gone on fast cars and high living. They knew third world work forces had already saved them as much as they could on payrolls. They knew the customer was the same as the worker, and that the workers had already given all they could. The worker/customer had no cash to spend as their paychecks were getting smaller or disappearing altogether.

Instead of being happy with the golden eggs, they ate the goose and they damned well knew it!

They knew, because they created all those conditions by their own agendas, policies, actions. They KNEW they were frauds and eventually the con game would collapse. They knew they were out of new communities to ride into with their carnival and house of smoke & mirrors.

But, those of us who still had jobs still paid taxes. And we put some money aside, along with our employers, for Social Security. We collectively decided to pull some resources together to fund a system to keep our elders from dying, cold and hungry, on the street corners of America's Main Streets.

The government, us, for those who forgot, set up a system of forced contributions to a pool from which elders and infirm could be kept from starving before our eyes.

The two year olds in suits, who had gone through all we could voluntarily give them to play with in their shell game markets needed another big fix of cash. If they could just somehow force us to invest in their schemes and mismanaged corporations, if they could delude us into thinking the government was not us, but some evil other, they could have all that money the 'evil other' has been setting aside.

The junkies knew they were out of things to sell off, steal and fence, out of people to prostitute to feed their habits. They wanted that pot of gold set aside for simply lived golden years for the many. They wanted to rob Granny and Goldilocks too. And they wanted the strong arm of the US Government to be their bag man, forcing shopkeepers and shop-workers to give them protection payoffs.

They were holding our delusion that everything was fine for ransom. Pay up or we will have to stop all this high living, and if we stop, we take you with us.

Either way, we lose. Give them the Social Security taxes and they will squander them as the have all the capital before it. Deny them that last slush fund and they crash sooner rather than later. But they have yet to sign up for any sort of re-hab, so why let them have anymore of our blood to put into their own sick veins?

The mighty, those who kept patting us on the heads and saying everything is fine, have fallen. Sadly, it is the rest of us, those who have lived more reasonable and generous lives, who will break their fall. We will be broken and crushed. They will land hard, but their falls will be broken on our very flesh.

They would not stand for intervention. They would not stand for re-hab. They would not change their ways. Now, when it looks like they will not get to maintain their stranglehold on OUR government, and they may not get to keep the playing field slanted in their direction. Now they throw in the towels.

The two year olds are tired and hungry and they have no idea of how to make their boo-boos go away. They tried to scam us one more time, but they couldn't quite pull it off in time.

The big babies have wrecked the house. The turnip is out of blood.