There is only one solution here: We must inundate the entire planet in cheap american-made crap. Fill the streets with our pens, cigarette lighters, and cell-phone covers. Provided we actually still make any of that stuff.

or I could just pay my credit card bill.

We fought communism and now we get money from communist, we are a farce of a nation!

The chickens (read outsourcing) have come home to roost. Our powerful corporate Titans, tin cups in hand, have now been reduced to begging for cash infusions to shore up their crumbling Empires. Relative to yesterday's closing price, the market capitalization of Merrill Lynch is down 37.5 billion, and that of Citigroup down a staggering 134 billion. My firends, a large root in this stew of causality is outsourcing. Today, approximately 5 million Indians are doing the work which was previously done by Americans. The represents tremendous downward pressure on wages (econ. 101 Circular flow), to say nothing of those who are rendered unemployed, etc. Bottom line: Many of us IT folks have been laid off, exhausted our savings, and currently living on our 401K's etc. I'm afraid, this is just the opening act....it gets worse!

In other words, crappybank is going to become essentially yet another foreign-owned financial institution where people in foreign countries with a little chip on their shoulder will have the divine opportunity to drive americans FURTHER into debt. Virtual indentureship, here we come! Cat sandwich?

Free trade and unbridled capitalism means the ability to sell your children into slavery!
Notice I said 'your' children.

I wonder what all of the great leaders of the World War II era would think if they were alive to see that all of the blood shed by Americans to protect this nation and our form of Democracy was in vain since today's business leaders are being forced to sell America off piecemeal - but in ever larger chunks - to conceal the impact of their greed-driven incompetence and corruption?

The Chinese and the oil producting countries have been buying shares and whole companies for some years now. Obviously they're getting wealthier, but don't have our European or American malls to spend their money, hence they currently can invest their forced savings in our countries.

The problem might be bigger in the future. When Chinese people become the broke wasting consumers we already are, when in less than a century saudis and kuwaitis don't have any oil left, who will save our kids'banks and companies from bankruptcy ?

Just a reminder for the Clinton fans.....does the name Robert Rubin get you all misty?
well he's killing all of us.

Someone will probably shoot me down on this, but I'm going to say it anyway -- what the hell were the lending institutes thinking?!

We don't manufacture anything in this country anymore (except munitions and military technology, I suppose, which is why having war going somewhere is always a good idea). The rest of our industries are subsidized, thanks to shrewd lobbyists, to be inefficient and uncompetitive. We had an economy driven entirely by the housing market. Then along come lenders, like New Century and Countrywide, mortgage underwriters like Citibank and Morgan Stanley, and credit raters that over-valued the whole mess. Greed, greed, and more greed. Good-bye, golden goose.

A word about ARMs: in my opinion, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept. It allowed people of modest means to buy into the American dream, stimulated the enconomy and revived neighborhoods. So far so good. Then mortgage payments doubled, tripled and quadrupled -- what sane banker couldn't see this coming?!

Please don't talk to me about the hamburger flipper who bought into a $400,000 house, or the real estate speculator who flipped houses like hamburgers. Don't talk to me about tax-payer bail-outs either, because the people I'm concerned about are/were tax-payers too. (And speaking of tax-payers, ain't it just grand the way that tax base is just drying up and blowing away?)

Somewhere out in the Hamptons, another investment banker is buying a huge second (or maybe third home). Somewhere in Butte, someone is losing the only home they ever had. And all the while, the Saudis and Chinese are buying up America.

Can't sell more to the Saudis - they already own how much?

Wait, if memory serves me correctly, President Clinton tauted the formation of Citigroup as good because it was just too big to fail.

The bigger they come...

Conyers does NOT care about Wexler"s Petition to start Cheney impeachment hearings!

Read the transcript from Democracy Now.

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2007/12/22/from-democracy-now-interview-with-conyers-he-doesnt-care-about-wexlers-petition/

View the video of his speech from September.

http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/john-conyers-on-the-topic-of-impeachment/

He will NOT allow impeachment hearings to take place.

Conyers knows that Pelosi will undercut the efforts of impeachment rather than helping to build a bi-partisan coalition to impeach.

Conyers knows that Pelosi will again be Speaker of the House next year and she will take him off the Judiciary Committee if he goes against her wishes. It"s a "lose-lose" for him and impeachment.

Let"s help him and the rest of the members of the House of Representatives by removing an obstructionist Speaker. It can be done and must be done to start the impeachment process.

http://www.petitiononline.com/everyman/petition.html

Does nobody besides me ;-) see a rather gaping military/national-defense HOLE in all of this? Is it, like, "just okay .. just the way things are now .." when not only your Source Of All Goods but now your Source Of All Money now belongs to your enemies?

I'd like to think that we're entitled to have a country too, no matter how much money unscrupulous businessmen (and legislators) looted from our banks and our national treasury .. from all of us.

So what's Chinese, or Arabian, for "W3 PWN Y00, D00D?"