Free Enterprise versus the boys of Goldman Sachs

Voluntarily or Through a Subpoena, Issa and McHenry Call on Towns to Bring Geithner Before Oversight Committee - I would like to thank Congressman McHenry for calling for Congressional hearings involving the Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner. I think we are starting to gain traction on this issue. Geithner, Henry Paulson, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin all ran Goldman-Sachs and have held positions at the higher echelons of our government and the Federal reserve. It is time for the clowns of today to be brought to the realization that most of us live with. The appearance of impropriety is impropriety.

It is time to end this. These people think that we are their servants. They think they are better than us and we are here for their disposal. They are criminals. Why does someone rob a convenient store and get seven years and these people have stolen trillions, played games with their tax bills, facilitated insider trading, arrogantly displayed blatant conflicts of interest, and diluted the value of our currency. Sociopaths never think they will ever be held accountable. It is time to pay the piper!!!

As you can see, I attended the Town Hall meeting on Free Enterprise this past Tuesday. I truly do believe that this was one of the most important events that we have seen in this area's history. This event ranked right up there with Congressman McHenry's Town Hall from this past August. Like that meeting, this wasn't really about local issues. It was about how national policy is having a direct effect on Hickory's Economy.

Danny Hearn, the President of the Chamber of Commerce, has hit it out of the ballpark several times this year. No one can state that the man has been resting on his laurels. He has brought forth a lot of innovation over the past year and people can see the passion he exudes when they listen to the inflection of his voice as he addresses the issues of today. I know that this era can be quite stressful and overwhelming, but people can see he is facing these issues in the trenches head on. He is right there with us. He keeps saying, "Where's the Urgency?"

This meeting wasn't about a bunch of people jumping on the bandwagon, like we saw at McHenry's Town Hall in August. That was a spectacle to behold and it definitely served a purpose, but I fear that many of the people that were there that August night have gone back to the six pack and the recliner. That night there were 1,500 people in P.E. Monroe auditorium and question after question was asked pertaining mostly to healthcare. That event lasted over 3 hours. I believe that most of those people from that night feel that the battle has been won, but this is not some simple matter. I believe that it is true that people do get the government they truly deserve.

The meeting on Tuesday was great, because it was mostly the business people and stakeholders of the Hickory area. These are the people who have the most to lose. The subjects broached here were not dumbed down or sanitized to the least common denominator. This was an event where adults addressed one another as adults. This was about getting down to the brass tax.

Danny Hearn opened this forum by talking about the virtue of Free Enterprise, but in the end I wish that someone would address what we are truly talking about here. We are talking about Capitalism. We are talking about allowing market forces to dictate commerce. That has been given a bad rap, because of the corruption that has been allowed to permeate its way throughout our capitalistic foundation. That is the reason why so many have bought into the nanny state, because they feel that they have been cheated.

Danny talks about American's trusting entrepreneurs more than CEOs. That might be because the average person can relate to the small businessman. Americans understand that a successful small businessman works hard just like they do, many times right beside them, and they realize that our country was built upon such egalitarian principles. It is the essence of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Ask the average employee, all things equal, who would you rather work for and they would choose small business over a huge corporation most every time.

Danny says that you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. Yes, we have long been ruled by divisions and this is where we have gotten off track. This goes back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt and the Robber Barons. The vitriolic class warfare that he exuded was unnecessary. All we needed was equal protection under the law, but instead we got more laws and the beginning of the precedent of having law stacked upon law without real and equal enforcement of the laws - like in the book Animal Farm when it talks about "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Now we see how divisions rule our lives. We see men pitted against women, white vs every minority, natural-born citizens vs immigrants, divisions by sexual preference. One can go on and on. It has become a part of our everyday lives. At one time, we were called the melting pot, but can that be said any longer? We need to get back to being Americans.

Americans do want freedom, but freedom has just become a word. People have been all to willing to sacrifice liberty in the name of security. I like when Danny talks about the sense of possibilities. It's like the old saying that if you work hard, then you can obtain your dreams. We cannot obtain our dreams, if the government is always going to stand in the way and tell us how to direct our lives. It seems like now that if you work hard, then the great American succubus is going to come along to see what it can get out of you. That is what has happened to the dynamism of our economy. This succubus has its tentacles in every aspect of our society. It must be removed to restore the energy and ability to grow to our nation and its people.

I think that David Chavern and Congressman McHenry had a focused and clear message. Mr. Chavern talks about the role of the Chamber in explaining why free enterprise is important - business is the answer and not the problem. Businesses need some assistance from the government, because so many elements of our society are out of control. In the current environment, people look at business and capitalism as evil. The political environment is not conducive towards getting the economy back on track. We don't have too little regulation, we have too much and it isn't effective. We need regulatory reform. We need effective regulations.

Mr. Chavern talks about the need to get back to basics. People keep looking to the government to solve their problems and they are hostile towards business. They believe business is tied into the government and pitted against the average individual. He says that we need people to understand that Free Enterprise is you. We need 20 million jobs over the next decade and it isn't going to come from the government.

Mr. McHenry talks about small business being the lifeblood of our economy. People make us strong and give us the capacity and the way forward. We (government) need to stop making the problem worse. We need to put a cease and desist order on new regulations. This is creating an uncertainty in the economy that keeps businesses from making investments. Government has been soaking up capital that businesses can use. We need to have trade policies that back up the American workforce. We don't need to have trade just for the sake of a trade agreement. We need a level playing field that will help us to have a stronger economy. We have to have people involved and engaged. How do we make this possible?

I think the bottom line is that we need to get back to the best of what this country used to be. Some people don't want to turn the clock back, because they were hurt by the old system. We have to admit there was racial and gender discrimination in the past, but would our nation be better off to throw our whole system out or to bring the best of the system to everyone?

We cannot do this by spreading the wealth. We cannot divide the pie. We need to grow the pie. We need to be more productive. We have to remove the American Succubus from our lives. That Succubus has been fostered by a rogue element within our government that does not live of, by, and for the American People. These people are pushers who want to get you addicted to government largess, while siphoning off monies for their personal enrichment. This element lives of, by, and for the themselves in the name of the bureaucracy.

These individuals look to empower themselves by empowering government as a corporate entity, for in doing so they become a syndicate that answers to no one. They are no better than the mafia. They are supposed to be accountable to the people, but as long as they work with one another within the bureaucratic system, they can basically protect one another and do whatever they want. They have built a structured subsystem as part of an empire, with cronyism as a base, that has permeated throughout our governmental infrastructure at every level.

My question about Goldman Sachs is a prime example. We have to get to the bottom of this situation to ensure that it does not happen again. The whole derivative structure is fraudulent. We do not owe these people this money. They have this ever growing scheme of digital money that is supposed to represent insurance on assets, but what we see is that the assets that the derivatives are supposed to insure are worth less, if not worthless. So the people (investors in corporations) who invested in these assets have assets that are worth less. They still have the assets, but the markets have come back towards equilibrium from the lofty bubble values that they were at. So the government is protecting, and paying off, the ill gotten interests of these too big to fail organizations at the expense of the future wealth of the American people.

We see corporations like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, who have representatives that have infiltrated our government to represent their (company's) personal interests at all levels, at the heart of this matter. From the three past administrations, we have had Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and Henry Paulson who have been at the highest positions of Goldman Sachs. Our eyes show us that there are definitive conflicts of interest and insider trading taking place.

Empirical evidence shows that these companies made money in creating the credit bubble and now they are making money as the bubble deflates and the economy crashes. They (these officials) own stock in their companies (such as Goldman Sachs), which are supposed to be in a blind trust, but they are making decisions that blatantly represent their company's interests.

They are doing this through fear. They tell us that we don't need to study the information, they will take care of that; if we don't act fast, then the country will become a financial debacle. The bottom line is that the country is already financially failing, but these people are going to make sure they take care of themselves, before our currency collapses and they are basing decisions about their personal welfare on information that only they are privy to. It's a rigged game folks.

We have to make these people accountable. The guilty have to be punished. These are offenses that have destroyed people. People have lost their houses. People have lost their livelihoods, all for the sake of these people's greed. These people need to be incarcerated for the crimes they have committed. Paulson and Geithner had the gall to provide themselves waivers which allowed them to facilitate functions (payouts of government money) involving real, statutory conflicts of interest.

These people are not better than us. They are not above us. They are subject to the same laws as the rest of us. If there is not equal justice, then we are subject to anarchy.

We want our money back. We want every single red-cent of our money back. We are in real trouble if this is allowed to stand. Can you not see that we have to demand this? We cannot rebuild an economy amongst thieves. People you better realize that your future is at stake. This is identity theft at the highest level. Did you give these people permission to do this? If someone personally robbed you or a family member, what would you do? Do you understand that this is no different and we, the American people, are going to be slaves to this fraudulent scheme, if we don't do something to bring the people involved in these schemes to justice. You better wrap your mind around it, because THIS IS REAL!!!