Our biggest problem is when the government allows industry to use our taxpayer dollars against us! Our second biggest problem is a public that either doesn't understand government, industry and finance, or just flat out doesn't give a damn.We like most people do not like being regulated. We prefer to think of ourselves as independent. But we are not. Without federal spending most of us would have a much lower standard of living. The problem is many do not realize just how much federal monies impact Jobs. When you include Education, aerospace, farming, defense spending, construction and any number of jobs created by government (NASA and the internet are probably two of the biggest government created job generators other than war) or people in jobs that are supported by the money that people in government created jobs spend, it adds up quickly. In fact the state of Maryland is totally dependent on federal spending (see also: States Addicted to Federal Spending? Rhetoric Against Spending Far From Reality).
Yes, the government does a lot of stupid stuff with money such as build bridges to nowhere and other pork, some elected "by the people" representative manage to deal for. But the really stupid thing the government has done with taxpayer dollars is bailout banks without insuring accountability or restricting them from engaging in the same corrupt actions they engaged in that "caused" our current problems.
Deregulation of industry has been implemented by both sides of the political fence. And both sides have profited from it. As we have previously pointed out in other posts, many industries give to both sides of the fence to cover their ass. By adding industry elites to the advisory corp, i.e. GE's chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, as the head of a Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, it would appear that Obama will not be the exception to the rule.
The real problem is, Massive deregulation precipitated massive corruption which in turn precipitated massive devaluation. (author unknown)
As we have pointed out in other posts Goldman Sachs is a master of theft and avoidance of prosecution. Now they are after our food supply!
From:How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis Don't blame American appetites, rising oil prices, or genetically modified crops for rising food prices. Wall Street's at fault for the spiraling cost of food. NOTE: This is a two page article from which we will re-post the last 3 paragraphs. Emphasis ours.
The result: Imaginary wheat dominates the price of real wheat, as speculators (traditionally one-fifth of the market) now outnumber bona-fide hedgers four-to-one.You may have noticed our note above about Diesel Fuel. Besides being used in farm equipment it is also used in generators that keep Doctors from having to stop in the middle of surgery when the lights go out, and fuels the trucks that deliver food and other products all over the world. Knowing that Platinum, one of the rarest and most expensive metals on earth might be why JP Morgan Chase (JPM), the biggest derivatives issuer of all U.S. banks, is busy below the radar, loading up its vaults with 50 troy ounce platinum bars. JPMorgan has been a large net physical platinum buyer in 2011, and it was also a big buyer in 2010. What does Platinum have to do with Diesel Fuel?
Today, bankers and traders sit at the top of the food chain -- the carnivores of the system, devouring everyone and everything below. Near the bottom toils the farmer. For him, the rising price of grain should have been a windfall, but speculation has also created spikes in everything the farmer must buy to grow his grain -- from seed to fertilizer to diesel fuel (Note: watch for our mention of Diesel fuel and Platinum). At the very bottom lies the consumer. The average American, who spends roughly 8 to 12 percent of her weekly paycheck on food, did not immediately feel the crunch of rising costs. But for the roughly 2-billion people across the world who spend more than 50 percent of their income on food, the effects have been staggering: 250 million people joined the ranks of the hungry in 2008, bringing the total of the world's "food insecure" to a peak of 1 billion -- a number never seen before.
What's the solution? The last time I visited the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, I asked a handful of wheat brokers what would happen if the U.S. government simply outlawed long-only trading in food commodities for investment banks. Their reaction: laughter. One phone call to a bona-fide hedger like Cargill or Archer Daniels Midland and one secret swap of assets, and a bank's stake in the futures market is indistinguishable from that of an international wheat buyer. What if the government outlawed all long-only derivative products, I asked? Once again, laughter. Problem solved with another phone call, this time to a trading office in London or Hong Kong; the new food derivative markets have reached supranational proportions, beyond the reach of sovereign law.
Volatility in the food markets has also trashed what might have been a great opportunity for global cooperation. The higher the cost of corn, soy, rice, and wheat, the more the grain producing-nations of the world should cooperate in order to ensure that panicked (and generally poorer) grain-importing nations do not spark ever more dramatic contagions of food inflation and political upheaval. Instead, nervous countries have responded instead with me-first policies, from export bans to grain hoarding to neo-mercantilist land grabs in Africa. And efforts by concerned activists or international agencies to curb grain speculation have gone nowhere. All the while, the index funds continue to prosper, the bankers pocket the profits, and the world's poor teeter on the brink of starvation.
And if Ships are forced to cut down on pollution, well then JP Morgan will be very much richer.Platinum is the primary catalyst for diesel and it cannot be replaced by palladium. So, long term, the future demand increase is going to be much bigger than 2010, regardless of incentives or the lack thereof.
We suspect that there are any number of people living out west that are going to have a problem with free market capitalism considering the history of Water wars.
And even regulation does not stop the theft of commodities when the government chooses to be blind.
Consider the E-mails between Andrew Maquire,
(From Wikipedia, Andrew Maquire is a former Goldman Sachs trader. He went public in April 2010 with assertions of market manipulation by J.P. Morgan and HSBC of the gold and silver markets. The United States Department of Justice's Antitrust Division and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are conducting civil and criminal probes steming from a New York Post article concerning Maguire's allegations.[1] Maguire said "JPMorgan acts as an agent for the Federal Reserve; they act to halt the rise of gold and silver against the US dollar. JPMorgan is insulated from potential losses (on their short positions) by the Fed and/or the US taxpayer." "No one at JPMorgan is familiar with Andrew Maguire," said Brian Marchiony, a JPMorgan spokesman. HSBC declined to comment.and the CFTC.
Maguire and his wife were injured in a hit-and-run accident in March of 2010 after Maguire's name came to light during a CFTC hearing on limiting gold and silver positions held by large market participants in order to prevent manipulation. The accident occurred the day after Maguire was interviewed on the radio with GATA board member Adrian Douglas.[5] The driver of the other vehicle was apprehended after a police chase in London but his name has not been released.[6])
In the e-mails to the CFTC which can be found here, Maquire accurately described for the CFTC events that would occur in the precious metals market that prove manipulation. The CFTC ignored him! WHY???
Now the Title of this post is, "Deregulation has you paying the banks more for food and other "stuff."
So how are "we paying the banks twice?"
Because after they crashed the economy playing the exact same game with mortgages YOU and I had to bail them out!
And what has the result been? Did anybody go to jail? Did the corporate heads and bureaucratic overseers lose money?? Were the rules changed to provide a fair and equal playing field for the rest of us???
NO! THEY ARE PLAYING THE SAME DAMN GAME WITH OUR MONEY, CAUSING US TO LOSE MORE MONEY THROUGH HIGHER PRICES AND INSURING THAT WE WILL HAVE TO BAIL THEM OUT AGAIN!
You may wish to remember the price of oil when it all went to hell in 2008!
So again we do not like to be regulated. We prefer Freedom over slavery to corporations. When our forefathers were putting together the constitution I do not think their concept of liberty included the freedom of corporations to dictate who will eat and at what price!Add to Technorati Favorites
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