2010: The Year Main Street Sticks It to Wall Street and Washington

Look what's happening out in the streets
Got a revolution, got to revolution

-Jefferson Airplane

There is one thing I would not want to be right now: an incumbent politician.

From the president to the dog catcher, many in elective office are suffering from rapidly declining popularity. People are angry and broke. Governments are being forced to make massive cuts in programs and services. They will be forced into more layoffs, which will make even more people angry and broke.

It's not a fun time to be in government.

Next year will be a year of reckoning. We are going to see massive numbers of politicians get voted out of office. It could be that many unemployed people make a new career move -- such as running for office. If anyone has ever dreamed of being an office holder, 2010 is the year to do it. There are going to be several situations where voters elect a complete unknown, just to express their anger about the incumbent.

People want change, any kind of change, especially on the economic front. To those of us on Main Street, it looks like Washington and Wall Street are ignoring the economic pain and trying to pretend as if the crisis didn't happen or is all over with now.

Wall Street is gearing up to pay itself record bonuses. The president went to Wall Street, shaking down fat cats for campaign contributions. Instead of cracking down on Wall Street abuses, Obama wants to convene a conference and "talk about it." Yeah, that will do a lot of good. It pushes any real action down the road a few years. Maybe you could have a fundraising event while the conference is going on.

The same old story, same old song and dance. Next year could be the time when we change the tune.

President Obama was elected on change. But his economic team is just another variation of the Washington-Wall Street version of "good old boys." Dr. Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geitiner and Ben Bernanke are the same people who got us into the economic mess. They screwed up badly, but Obama put them back in charge to try again.

I've been reading Andrew Ross Sorkin's riveting new book, Too Big To Fail. It's a fascinating view of the personalities involved in the current financial crisis. One of the things that immediately strike you is how all the characters seem to be buddies from way back. They've worked together, played tennis together and spend all their time talking to each other, which is why they are clueless about what is happening on Main Street.

As someone who has opposed government bailouts since the beginning, I would like to say, "I told you so." But that doesn't get us out of the mess we are in. I suspected that the Wall Street-Washington alliance would think about each other first and the taxpayers later. That wasn't hard to see. All you have to do is look at recent history. For years, Wall Street has been paying for high priced lobbyists and funneling millions in campaign contributions to Washington. The overwhelming majority in Washington gets re-elected because they are able to outspend their opponents. It perpetuates a cycle where Wall Street and Washington only talk to and socialize with each other and think they can ignore everyone else.

Next year is when the voters are finally going to make them listen.

When you see companies who accepted bailout money wanting to dole out billions in bonuses, you see how tone deaf the people in Washington and Wall Street are. They don't get that there is real anger in the country. And it's not just because we have high unemployment and real economic pain. It's because the people are tired of being played for saps. That is why 2010 will be the year of the great upheaval.

Americans are tired of self dealing. From the largest cities to the smallest towns, any sign of an office holder feathering his own nest will be met with public retribution. Any challenger looking for an issue will find one. As Robert Penn Warren wrote in All The Kings Men, "There is always something." Anyone who voted for the Wall Street bailouts will automatically have a hard time. Wall Street and Washington think that the public has forgotten, but they have not.

They've been waiting for, but not seeing, some return on their investment.

I don't think President Obama is going to "get it" before 2010. He's big on the concept of un-elected "czars" -- a concept that scares me even more than the bailouts ever did. "Czars' aren't accountable to anyone and will be hard to get rid of. Voters want more ability to influence government, not less. They don't want some "czar" speaking for them. They want their own voices to be heard.

I voted for President Obama, just like I normally vote for the Democratic nominee. Obama is getting called out by conservatives, as one would expect. But some liberals, such as Arianna Huffington, are also taking him to task. He thinks that if he dominates the "news cycle" and bashes on Fox News, the rest of the country will let him do what he wants.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

I'm not ready to sign up with Glenn Beck and the tea baggers of the world. But I do understand that people are tired of being ignored. Unless vast numbers of people on Wall Street and in Washington start to "get it," and get it quickly, you are going to start seeing a whole lot of new faces in Congress, state legislatures and city councils all across the country.

It may not change the unemployment rate. But it will at least change who is unemployed.

Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is one of the world's leading authorities in helping people deal with "Big Money" issues. McNay is an award-winning syndicated financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor. You can read more about Don at www.donmcnay.com McNay founded McNay Settlement Group, a structured settlement and financial consulting firm, in 1983, and Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC in 2000. You can read more about both at www.mcnay.comMcNay has Master's Degrees from Vanderbilt and the American College and is in the Hall of Distinguished Alumni of Eastern Kentucky University. McNay has written two books. Most recent is Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win The Lottery. McNay is a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table and has four professional designations in the financial services field.

Follow Don McNay on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Donmcnay

Comments

[therealredstateblues]

I would like to see a viable third party that addresses

trade imbalance - getting us out of bad trade deals
learns to mind our own business in world affairs, stops being the worlds policeman and avoids foreign entanglements
puts manufacturing back in the forefront of our economy
reigns in the excesses of Wall street and washington
provides affordable health care to all who want or need it
has common sense and economically viable environmental policy
is fiscally responsible rather than lip service
stays out of peoples personal lives

these are issues many on the left and right can agree on - perhaps a third party can form on this common ground

[Robert Cantor]

yes ... but I would rather see a viable 1st party that does all of that.

[William50]

2010 will show a remarkable change away from Democrats and Republicans to a new, may be a few new strong parties that will run on the reality of the actions of those in Congress. As shown daily by the media every vote or word a Senator or Congressman has uttered is available for print. Their own words, votes, money trails and actions will condemn ten to twenty percent of the Senators in Washington and up to forty percent of the older Representatives.
Here is how you can be in Congress next year. The first step is never say a bad word about the person now in Congress. Always have his voting record and backers printed in large letters behind you as you tell the voters of America what you will do.
You will, cut interest payments on homes by half. Cut principal on all home loans by at least thirty three percent. A billion to each state to start manufactoring jobs that have been shipped over seas. Anything shipped into the USA has to equal the cost here. Education will be reformed. Religions will be alloed to place rules on public areas, all equal size. If you have a student loan you can become a part of American professional military program, no shipping outside the usa and for each weekend service one months cost taken off your loan. Ya, there is more!!
Midamerican 2010
Casey

[KOSMOCITIZEN]

the same way the middle class feels strongly that they got screwed by Wall Street
the same way Wall Street feels strongly they deserve their riches, and defend their
game as a normal business practice . Always they win and everybody else loses..
the irony is they are wright to feel that way. why ? because the middle class gave Wall Street the tools and the power to play their game on their own expense.
how that happened ? first Wall Street got the tools by the deregulation on everything (REAGAN)and second ,got the power by the tax cuts the middle class gave to them ( because every one got the crazy fantasy that one day maybe rich) and on top of this insanity , middle class invested , all they had left ,in Wall street
i know the politicians voted for those laws , because the middle class was sleeping for 25 years and just now finally they wake up and smell the coffee. IT is to late. To fix this mess, it requires fight and suffering for long time ahead, and the fix would NEVER come from the politicians. this is the next
reality thought that has to sink in the minds of the regular folks. Politicians are for themselves not for people.

[sonoffestus]

The system is rotten to the core. It will make very little difference who gets elected. Congress is bought and paid for. Members of congress, are merely big business's prostitutes.

Until campaign finance reform is seriously addressed be happy with incremental changes. You'll get nothing more. It's a pay to play game and the average citizens have no one in the game.

[alreadybad]

So we replace the Congress. If the majority of Congress were replaced that would send one very strong and clear message. We change the laws, quickly, and we go on to managing the business of this country first and stop this ridiculous nonsense. This administration does not get how close to revolt and angry the people are. People are hungry, they have no where to live and they are watching their children go through this with no help. It makes no sense, to any sane person, that an extension of unemployment benefits should even be a question to be debated. You sent their jobs away, dang, why can't they get it?

[sonoffestus]

There is great confusion in the States. People assume because they are told that the government is working for their best interests. It is not. The government serves it's corporate sponsers. The system no longer represents the will of the people. Dress it up however one will, the fact remains that congress is simply a commodity that can be bought and sold.

Governments do work, they are just not working for the people.

[tones]

So we will elect in new unknown officials who will be corrupted by the lobbyist with in there first year so i don't know what it will be other than a changing of the gaurds

[WellTickleMeWillie]

As The WHO sank in their hit "Won't Get Fooled Again," -"meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Our people may be mad as hell but electing someone who is actually going to change things? And from one of the two major parties? Daddy Bush once said "Ain't gonna happen."
Misdirected anger will not solve anything. It may actually make things worse by electing an unknown who could do much worse than what we already have. Now I am not saying we should not vote out the bad guys, but keep the good ones like Rep Alan Grayson, Senator Weiner, Senator Feingold, etc. You know who they are. We do have a failure to communicate and the best way to resolve that would be to support a stronger Progressive party and elect more progressives to COngress. It ain't gonna happen overnight but we need to get it started.

[therealredstateblues]

I agree we should keep the Graysons, Sanders, Kucinichs, Dorgans and Feingolds, and maybe even the Pauls but for the rest of them - throw the bums out. I don't see how you can do worse than we already have, and if they don't cut it keep throwing them out till they get it right

we need some economic populists in office, with the guts to actually do something about wall streets excesses rather than hope for change.

Every electio we hear the same calls to get rid of the bums, yet the same old crew just keeps coming back

is there finally enough anger on main street? time will tell. I doubt it unfortunately