Some lyrics from Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

I would tell my children that for survival's sake don't be stupid. Don't buy everything that is dangled in front of your face if you don't need it or don't understand it or cannot afford it. We have to take personal responsibility so we do assist in our own victimization in a rapacious world.

That being said, the mortgage brokers should be prosecuted for fraud, stripped of their wealth and thrown in jail.

soma90405 stated "BTW, NOTHING the government is proposing will save anyone facing foreclosure, all they propose is still for people with good credit and equity in their property."

Actually, what the government is proposing is to bail out unscrupulous lenders while letting dim-witted borrowers twist in the breeze.

I was wondering how the Fed was going to make sure that the wealthy profited from the cataclysmic misfortune of those on the margins. Just another classic bail-out, which, in the end, will fall to ordinary people to pay for. Their latest $200 billion transfer of treasury funds to wealthy investors and corporate investment banks comes to... let me see... about $700 per person. So for my little family of three, the feds just arranged for the transfer of $2000 from me to Bear Stearns.

And these folks say it's not the role of the government to be redistributing wealth! Hah!

The executive summary: It is unconscionable for the government to bail out people who made poor borrowing decisions. But bailing out the people who made poor lending decisions, or even more importantly, bailing out investors who made poor investment decisions, is a national priority.

When are Americans going to start taking responsibility for their own actions? It's not the lenders, or the mortgage brokers or even the real estate agent who are at fault but the people themselves who in their state of self entitlement and delusion chose to buy houses with no equity they could not afford. I don't care if you can't speak English or not, mathematics has no language barriers. Like if I make $16.00 an hour working 40 hours a week, I cannot afford a house of $760,000 (a story in the SF Chronicle). In order to bring the real estate market back to a place of sanity, all these houses need to go to foreclosure and we need to face a glut on the market. The 800 lb gorilla in the room of which no one speaks? All those "A" paper option ARMS with negative amortization will be going into incremental payments very soon meaning from one month to the next, those payments will increase by 3 to 4 TIMES... $1,200 this month and $4,800 the next. The sub-prime melt down will be remembered fondly in these coming times. BTW, NOTHING the government is proposing will save anyone facing foreclosure, all they propose is still for people with good credit and equity in their property.

"I was unable to locate any commentary there which addressed the BBC's error in reading the "facts" before they happened "

It's there Paul, in the first link I posted. I just double checked. Search the page for "BBC" it's most of the way down. Part of it is miscommunication, officials on the scene expected WTC7 to collapse, and may have told this to BBC and they interpreted it as having already collapsed.

"I'll think for myself, thank you. Last of a breed."

Very good. Here's something to think about: What advantage was there in "leaking" information about the collapse of WTC7 before it happened? Why not just let them report on it as or after it happened? There's no good reason for the "consirators" to leak it. That is discussed in the link as well.

Unfortunately, Jake, I was unable to locate any commentary there which addressed the BBC's error in reading the "facts" before they happened -- and why their powers of observation were so poor that they didn't even recognize the skyline in the window behind Standley. What was their source for that little piece of crystal ball gazing?

In any case, I couldn't care less about the debunkers OR the "truth" movement. I'll think for myself, thank you. Last of a breed.

Annabelle,

I generally disagree. To accept a credit card, you must read (or at least the lender must present for you to read) the terms and conditions of the contract. Whether or not you read and understand is up to you. People of average or better intelligence have no trouble understanding. If you don't understand it, you shouldn't sign it. Most loans/cards/lines I have signed contain the language "THIS IS A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT. IF NOT UNDERSTOOD, SEEK COMPETENT LEGAL ADVICE". Still, there are undoubtedly people who cannot or will not read what they are getting themselves into.

I also disagree that credit card companies "issue cards to teenagers without jobs". You must be 18 to get a credit card, first of all. Secondly, I have never seen a lender that would issue a card to someone with no income and no assets.

I do believe that the lending industry is in part responsible for the credit crisis. But nobody is forcing anyone to obtain and use credit cards. Similarly, nobody is forcing Americans to buy huge homes that they can't afford. Nobody is forcing Americans to buy $40,000 SUV's for which they can barely afford the insurance and license, let alone the loan payment. As Americans we need to understand that we are not simply entitled to have everything we want. This is what must be understood to fix the credit crisis, along with several other problems we are facing as a nation.

Here's another article about WTC7:

http://wtc7lies.googlepages.com/introduction

"what the SEC had inside WTC7"

Right, anytime I have information I want to hide, I arrange to have my entire apartment building wired with explosives, As well as a couple buildings next door, fly planes into those buildings which cause fires then set off the explosives in those buildings which cause much of one of those buildings to fall on my building, then set off the explosives in my building like seven hours later.

You know, wiring a building for explosives has some delicacy about ot, with the equipment and the wires and everything, do you think fires and planes and debris collisions might, oh I don't know, cause the explosives to not go off as planned?

"The debunkers are trying to argue that she was standing in front of a blue screen"

They argue a bit more than that, see here, most of the way down the page:

http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm

The system I would rather see is one which encourages people to become self-reliant, resilient, strong, critical-thinkers, independent, fierce champions of liberty -- dependent neither on the usury parasites nor on their State.

Re: Capitalism

Let's not get hung up on semantics/labels of 18-20th century economists. Let's step back, assemble a list of qualities -- essential ingredients -- of capitalism.

* Division of labor.
* Division of wealth, resources, access/control of resources.
* A wealthy class which gains some or all of its wealth from the labor of others.
* Permanently displaced laborers. They cannot be allowed to "become wealthy", lest the system break down (predicated on division of wealth, see an earlier prerequisite). Real estate (real equity/wealth) is not allowed to pass in large amounts to the laboring classes.
* A government system which preserves/promotes the above.

I'd wager that most all governments since the dawn of agriculture have capitalistic, or at the very least, proto-capitalistic, tendencies embedded within other things which (at first glance) may be totally contradictory. Including ancient Egypt, Rome, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China and the US.

dlnelson7 is correct. Until the financial industry is re-regulated to 1978 standards and the US government revises the way they calculate the CPI and other inflation-measuring methods to 1978 standards, we will experience ever-worsening financial crisis that continue to transfer more wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

Paul Bramscher said "If the people realized that 9-11 was an inside job, you feel this would lead to civil war."

to which lizard replied "Why? Wouldn't ALL Americans be outraged? Would there be any that approve? Would it not unite the country in wanting to have the perpetrators punished?"

Doubtful. There are people who still believe that Oswald was some lone psychopath who gunned down Kennedy single-handedly. They even believe this if they've seen the footage clearly showing Kennedy being hit from the front. They prefer to believe some "magic bullet" theory over the evidence provided by their own eyes.

People believe what they want to believe. What really happened has nothing to do with it.

It looked to me from the film footage that WTC 7 was demolished. So what? The bottom line is that the people who know what really happened aren't talkin', so we can argue about this as long as we've argued about the Kennedy assassination and my guess is that not one single opinion will change. The government can run an "investigation" (although the trail's probably a little cold by now) and assure us that WTC7 was destroyed by uncontrollable fire from the nearby twin towers, but so what? They stated patent lies as official fact about the Kennedy assassination, so who can believe whatever they say about WTC7?

Oops! Excuse me. I'm being unpatriotic! How dare I question the integrity of our highest officials? In a time of war, that borders on treason...

What you said.

We live in a culture where, at the highest levels of government and business, there is not general antipathy to lying to the public by omission, or just lying outright.

I'm sure that no matter what happens, the high earners involved in the "housing bubble" will get to keep their Gulfstreams and Yachts.

The credit card companies are as complicit in manipulating the public as the banks are. They issue credit cards with all kinds of incentives to keep using the cards while the interest rates are never fully explained to the average consumer. They issue cards to teenagers who are not employed and to others who do not have the means to pay the extensive rates of interest. When the meltdown is blamed on the consumer it is the same as saying that they deserve to have their legs broken when they don't pay the loan sharks. The loan sharks rule. Forget the so called 'credit' cards, stick to a 'debit' card.

Big Money kind of said it, but then got off on some testimonial to capitalism.

Capitalism doesn't provide for the people of a society, except as a side effect of profit making. When the profits stop, so do the benefits. So you can say that we live very well under capitalism. That's true if you define living well as having lots of stuff made by poorly paid slaves in other countries and bought on credit.

The higher the credit limit, the better we live. The longer we draw out the payment due, the longer we live well. All this hand wringing over silly FIRE people keeping it going too long is ridiculous.

If the credit had stopped a year ago, or 2 years ago, that's when the economy would have collapsed. There was never a time that it all could have worked out well.

Focus on sub-primes alone will make you miss the forest for the trees.

Awakening to 9/11 is a small first step, but a necessary one, to understanding the greater conspiracy in play. The manufactured economic crisis of today is another stage to move us toward the infamous NWO and one world government (OWG) by destroying the dollar as the reserve currency. This objective of a OWG has been a work in progress for almost a century now, and is responsible for the 2 World Wars, a global depression, the Cold war and the GWOT.

My thoughts on Bush's role in the grand scheme of things, the so called "Bumbler in Chief", is that his mission was to discredit America before the next stage and to corporatize government to the point where they are one and inseparable. Other Presidents (ala mensheviks) before him were pursuing the same objective, but they did so discretely, methodically, and made an effort to maintain the illusion of our Democracy and an America who was a force for peace and democracy.

Bush of course has done the exact opposite (ala bolsheviks). He could not have done more to make people question their government, put the finishing touches on the destruction of our currency, economy and constitutional government, and made other countries question democracy and the benevolent nature of America. All of which plays into the globalists hands who would like to take the next step towards one world government to protect the global citizens from the big bad wolf (US) of American imperialism and hegemony.

The 9/11 attacks and official story were intentionally flawed so as to force you to question it, once you could open your minds to the horror of it, which was more easily done for non-Americans. Even so, most Americans today simply do not want to deal with that reality of it, for understandable reasons. For those of us who have been or will be awakened, and poverty for those still asleep will do wonders to wake them up from their slumber, Bush has for the last 7 years been able to put in place all the tools he needs to turn the country into a police state and crush any dissent. It is all in place.

The British play a dominant role in our elites membership, and have always wished to get back their empire. For most of the 20th century, since the Fed was established in 1913, we have simply been their bankers (under their supervision) and security forces (paid for by the US taxpayer). Today, British troops are being trained in Kansas on controlling American citizens in an emergency, and agreement has been reached with a British Commonwealth Member - Canada, to send troops in the event of an emergency in the US (welcome to the commonwealth, no wonder the queen knighted Sir Bubbles Greenspan for his role in bringing down our economy)

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2008/mar/07/brits_overrun_town_training_exercise/

That said, in the coming Anglo-British elites fascist takeover, those who can be convinced they will benefit will support it.

Subprime lending, which is just code for DEBT, is a natural development of the predatory nature built-in to capitalism. It is capitalism in its raw form, as is drug-dealing (which is SO capital-friendly it became a CIA specialty from the '80s onwards for raising money for superblack-ops --like the stand-alone-cell superblack-op on 9/11-- that were off the books, agency-deniable, and out of Congressional reach - just ask Papa Bush).

This is Pure Capitalism... as is also prostitution. So what's the big deal. The ability for the people to service ALL the debt Capitalists want to place on them had to come to its no-more end sometime. And that sometime is now.

Sorry, Dubya, ya didn't quite make it out of office before it all came crashing down. Now it really is, as it should be, your stinking turd. To go with all the monstrous number of other stinking turds in your stinking shitbox of a presidency - one award though - Worst Ever American President, in fact an American-existential-threat of a president.

Here is a definition of capitalism in a nutshell: buy low and fuck that guy, and sell high and fuck that guy too.

Good example of capitalism: Nike Shoes - slaves make 'em (buy low and fuck that guy) and fashionistas buy 'em for fifty times cost (and sell high and fuck that guy too). Or Naomi Klein's example of a firm that for every $200 paid by the US Government for work during the aftermath of Katrina and in Iraq, paid $2 to a sub-contractor to actually DO the work, keeping the rest for profit - buy low and fuck that guy and sell high and fuck that guy too - and that 'guy'... is us.

I can go on and on with such examples (Microsoft, GM, GE, Halliburton), the Fortune 500 being the most egregious examples of such behavior, along with the Forbes Richest 500. Totally amoral. Just like the entire Bush administration, the lot of which should be en-dungeoned forever. Bush, very corrupt; Cheney, super-corrupt; Rumsfeld, ultra-corrupt; Kissinger, hyper-corrupt; Baker, massively corrupt; Pa Bush, hellishly corrupt; the whole mob, and I mean Mob. Read Naomi Klein's THE SHOCK DOCTRINE and weep, because it is being applied to our nation.

And not a single motherfucking MSM anchor is throwing the windows open and saying they aren't going to take it anymore. They are multi-millionaires, and remain so merely at the pleasure of their corporate bosses, and so have been corrupted themselves.

We are all enemies of each other under capitalism; not a way to structure a decent society I would say. Even so, capitalism has had to, time after time, be rescued by the state. So it isn't even, as it claims to be, self-sufficient. As it will have to be saved by the state again this time.

Because of its bribed goons in governmment leadership, and its can't-let-it-fail true-believer/pope of money, the Chair of the Fed, who just happens to CREATE all the money and set the interest rate BY DECREE, Greenspan/Bernanke, capitalism will be saved by the State once more. And it will survive for its disciples to curse State aid - Socialism- to anyone else (but themselves and their schemes). And no, Dubya, the problem is not 'dey done bilt too many houses' - is this cretinous moron for real or just putting us on? Oh, and thanks a bunch again, Yale! Nothing like an Ivy League education, and I mean, nothing like an education.

The $14 Trillion (plus $146 Trillion in debts-forward plus a $3 Trillion Iraq War Debacle) in 'national debt' that Bush has created out-of-his-ass is to be paid by all the American people... because Bush (and the Lickspittle branch of government, Congress) signed 'em up. But the benfits have been directly transferred into the stock market and property owners and tax breaks and more for the rich - trickle-up or should I say gusher-up - to the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush et al. Bush is the culmination of evil emanating from the Republican Party and their perverted lust for money, beginning with that double-dealing-snake-oil-quack Reagan, and on.

This is supposedly the modern world. It is about time for ol'-style 'free' (ie, bullshit) capitalism to die, as has its most evil, murderous and depraved priest, Milton Friedman, and its most elite, effete spinmeister, Bill Buckley -whose own dad once argued in Congress for the US to invade Venezuela in the '30s, as it had nationalized some oil concerns he had down there.

Hopefully their exit will mark the end of an immoral Gilded Age era. And with it, the end of capitalism - to be replaced by Socialism as practiced in Scandinavia or in the 'we can' spirit of America, better. Remember, too, the unreedemably corrupt nature of the Republican Party and its new candidate, McCain - of the Party of Cain, the Party of Judas. Traitors and murderers all. And Enslavers of the American people with DEBT in all its forms, private and public.

So many references to 911 conspiracy theories in today's small number of posts.
Interesting.

"Were' the regulators that deregulate"
SOAD, a couple of years ago.

It is all about maintaining the status quo - keeping the money where it needs to be.

Not allowing anyone to ask the hard questions, and screwing over those who do ask the questions, while glossing over them.

The Italian and Russian mobs need to take care of their own too, just as Cheney and Bush do.

The rest of us?

Who??

Big Money

Ancient Egypt was successful for 5000 years before capitalism was invented. They didn't even have money until Alexander the Great. After that everything went to hell.

Nowadays, countries that limit capitalism in some way are doing better than the raw capitalist states such as the US. Unfortunately the EU is being destroyed by predatory capitalism even now.

Cuba has done amazingly well, impressive despite all the pressures on it from the US.

I don't think Bush is nearly the idiot we're led to believe. His pet industries have profitted quite nicely, and the texture or pattern of the sub-prime debacle seems too similar to the S&L fleecing to be mere coincidence.

Deregulation by Reagan/Bush Sr, (Neil Bush was manager at one S&L himself), massive fleecing, and subsequent bailout of the banks at taxpayer expense. Dems are complicit too -- showing that crime does pay. And 4 out of 5 of the Keating Five were Democrats (McCain being the sole Republican).

An aura of idiocy is the best thing Bush has got going. Probably 40-60% of the country thinks he's an incompetent dolt. What if, in some alternate sci-fi universe, they saw him as extraordinarily competent? And these actions were not the result of foolishness, but rather outright hostility, ruthlessness, even directed at our own citizenry and institutions -- all in the name of simple greed, lust for power?

what i get from this piece is that subprime lenders have been playing us like fish and that they could not have done that if the sec were actually regulating them. as for the comment stream, i believe that the bush administration chose to ignore warnings of the coming world trade center disaster but did not plot it. those sentences, combined, make bush the worst president ever. he just set a record for most vacation days by a sitting (yes, sitting) president.

with such an idiot in the white house, i cannot understand the depth of bitterness that commenters choose to direct primarily at hillary clinton. i believe she would be the better, but by vote you have to admit that she and obama differ by very little. she shows more experience and a willingness to work incrementally toward her goals.

It would be interesting to see if there has been a revolving door with the folks at the SEC and those in the housing industry. Enron had a board member who was the wife of a former senator from Texas who had been employed prior to going on the board. Of course hindsight is 20/20 but then foxes have keen eye sight when they are watching the chicken coop.

emaho - to borrow a capitalist expression, I'm not buying that. Can you think of a single successful society that has been built without the use of capitalism? If so, please tell me about it.

A huge part of the problem, as I see it, is this whole "with us or against us" mentality. Those who count themselves as "conservatives" hoot and cheer for every flavour of theft their ideological companions come up with, even when it's clearly not in their interests. Well, except for Ron Paul and his supporters.

As for progressives, or liberals, well, some are like emaho, just hate the whole system without putting forth a model by which we could have food, clothing, and shelter without having to grow, weave, and build it all by ourselves. This isn't too different from blaming the oxygen content of the atmosphere for the damage caused by an arsonist.

As for the progressives who have some interest in prying the system out of the cold dead hands of those who have been exploiting it for personal gain, right under our noses - I see there are a few people who post opinions on the subject here at one of the biggest progressive news sites on the web. So aside from a few on the fringe, both left and right, no one seems to know or care what's going on on this front. No-one is watching the watchmen. The fox is guarding the hen-house. Don't look behind that curtain.

Fortunately, as many examples as history provides of entire nations falling flat on their faces, history provides examples of nations getting up off the ground and enacting sound, fair, regulated systems that actually work.

But someone has to give a darn, first.

CAPITALISMM IS AN ILLOGICAL AND IMMORAL SYSTEM OF COMMERCE AND CONNECTION BETWEEN PEOPLE. ANYONE WHO EXPECTS ANYTHING BUT AN ASS-F**ING FROM CAPITALIST ENTERPRISES IS ONLY FOOLING THEMSELVES. BEING SUCKED IN, AND SUCKED OFF, BY PREDATORY CORPORATIONS, MAY LEAVE ONE FEELING GOOD IN THE SHORT TERM. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE LONG TERM??? MORE SUCKING AND FUCKING, I WOULD IMAGINE. THIS SYSTEM IS DEAD AND THE SOONER WE BAIL OUT, THE BETTER. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO HUG A DECAYING CORPSE???

The problem is that physical evidence was not open to public/academic scrutiny -- limited to the NIST, etc. by the Bush administration. So a 9/11 argument which hinges on physics, but lacks access to the physical data in question, is inherently hampered. At best you can analyze footage and draw from known experimental data outside of this event, and make a referential analogy.

But reporters discussing an event which contradicts the scene behind her, is a logical impossibility, a contradiction. No analogy, reference, technical physics, etc. required. The building was still standing. They jumped a little too far ahead on their script.

Don't forget Rudy had relocated his emergency control center to WTC7 over any and all protests.

But it does fit the scenario.

Google or youtube search for "9-11 coincidences"
It's a 21 part series, it will leave you slack jawed. The opening sequence is testimony and an explanation of the the law of conservation of motion as applied to the WTC collapses. All three buildings fell at free fall speed into their own footprint. This can only happen if there is no resistance at the base, that can only happen if the base(ment) has been removed. And that is exactly what happens in a controlled demolition. It just gets more compelling from there

Big_Money -- With such a screen name, did you know that Barbara Bush is a Pierce, the same as Merrill-lynch-Pierce-fenner-Smith, and once Prez Pierce (1840s ?).

Geo the inferior thief_in_terror is descended from two lines of Prez's.

It helps explain why Enron's Wallst biggiest (merrily-lynch'em) was never sullied with any dirt, especially flying into thin air with WTC7 collapsing on cue. The fix is in the bag, in the dust, the money's in Switzerland dummy (of course!)

Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK

Paul - While I wouldn't trust half of what I read about how or why that building fell, I was watching the news that day when they showed some perfectly-framed footage of nothing but that building falling effortlessly into the earth - they showed it once, not seven hundred times like the other towers - so I've always been a bit spooked about it.

What is less open to conjecture is what was in that building. What if Enron were just the tip of the iceberg? What if everyone found out, and lost confidence? And now, every single one of those cases is closed, and can never be more than more conspiracy theories - the evidence is 100% gone.

So, lizard, you ask "Wouldn't ALL Americans be outraged? Would there be any that approve?"

What if the alternative to all of the SEC's skullduggery was the outright collapse of the global economy? Would you approve of their hiding legal details and technicalities that they were entrusted to investigate, if it were necessary to maintain confidence (confidence) in the economy, so that you could still heat-n-eat, and ride off into the sunset on a hyper-inflationary spiral? Seriously, if you were presented with the option of dishonesty or bankruptcy, which would you choose? Which would you want those with the power to act on your behalf to choose?

Lizard -- Perhaps he means a class war, where the lines would be economically drawn, proportional to those who directly benefited from the rapacious ungirded greed and wicked disregard for human suffering and the reverence of all life.

It would be hard to know which side of that line any of us would be on, as we all share some complicity by "virtue" of being Americans. Regardless, it would hardly be worse to kill each other than Iraqis, just more difficult to "get over" as time marches on. All life is sacred.

Namaste
… … … … … Mahatma Gandhi … & … ML King … … Inspiration … … … … …
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world »
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed »
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — MLK

The debunkers are trying to argue that she was standing in front of a blue screen -- that it wasn't a live report and her gesturing to the "scene behind me" was staged. But from my own analysis, it's certainly a real window -- the sunlight on her hair is consistent with the position of the sun outside -- and the sunlight on the same faces of the buildings behind her.

This country -- perhaps the west in general -- is very, very, seriously hosed.

"The SEC, instead of watching Wall Street, insulates it," notes Aguirre. "The subprime issue is a direct consequence of the SEC's failure to act proactively to intercept fraud as it develops."

The GOOD NEWS, which we don't hear very often, is that State Governors and their Attorney Generals are working around the Federal Government insulators and finding the necessary legal means by which to prosecute these lenders for fraud, among other crimes.

State legilators and regulators are well aware that this sub-prime scandal along with the problems associated with the selling-off of these high-risk OTC derivatives is not only creating major losses for banks and shareholders, but creating havoc and tremendous losses for states and local communities.

If Governors and their Attorney Generals stick together on this issue and prosecute the criminals involved, we may very well see a major Constitutional battle take place between the federal government and the "States" - which created that federal government.

Paul, some nice points. Liberals? At least they put up some opposition. Those who consider themselves Conservatives not only should have been offended that all that footloose-and-fancy-free stuff was being done under their banner, but were in more of a position to exert influence. However, they let illusory brand-allegiance egg them into cheering for the whole stinking scheme. They don't deserve the banner of Conservative.

Once again we have seen what happens when regulations are loosened or eliminated.

Re: WTC7 & SEC
If the majority of Americans ever began to feel that it was an inside job, half the country would be in ruins and we'd be plunged into a civil war. But if this level of corruption keeps going on, it'll probably happen anyway. Someone better start breaking the news to us before it breaks on its own.

I'm not an economist, and I saw this problem back in '00-01. It defied all logic that my generation was watching jobs getting oursourced left and right, while home prices were shooting up. Clearly, the reverse would have occured if real estate were fully exposed to supply/demand dynamics.

The vast number of lending schemes from the parasitic usury industries (ARM, sub-prime, 30-year mortgage, 50-year mortgage, etc) all work to disguise the actual cost of the property. The name of the game is a modern-day version of serfdom. First you need to displace the populace from its traditional lands, or any sort of ownership. Then you charge them basically lifelong tribute just to have a roof over their heads, square footage to plant a garden, etc.

The loan is sold on an international market nonetheless. So basically gigantic segments of America aren't even "owned" by America -- a large chunk of our hard-earned money is leaving the country to foreign investors.

We can thank banks for this, and liberals for failing to put up a serious opposition to tyranny.

As this latest corporate fiasco shows, it is well past time for a constitutional amendment that denies 14th Amendment protections to corporations. Some federal sentencing guidelines that give out prison time now doled out to drug smugglers (including the 85% of sentence must be served provision) would be welcome as well. Until the legal armor that a corporate structure provides is neutralized, we will always be on this sick merry go-round.

Big_Money,

The DNC/DLC and corporate media keep opposition in a small box. The reason we don't have Edwards or Kucinich is because of Hillary and Obama -- not McCain. Let alone someone like Ralph Nader, Jim Hightower, etc. feeling welcome. The liberals are a faux opposition, an opposition-squelcher.

By the way, I took you up on your dare and Googled WTC7 and the SEC. I can't believe what I found, and why this was never commented on here at Common Dreams. Apparently the BBC reported the collapse of WTC7 20 minutes before it fell. The building was still in the background, clearly visible as the reporter (Jane Stanley) prematurely discussed its (planned) demise:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7SwOT29gbc&feature=related

I'm led to conclude that 9/11 was a gamed event, statements were issued to major (and complicit) press in advance -- to keep them in-line. And someone either prematurely announced the collapse, or the demolition crew encountered some delays in pulling it.

So I think your link between the 9/11 and corruption in the FIRE industries has some merit. But if someone had the power to take down the building, and wouldn't have to worry about pesky investigators finding evidence of explosives -- if they had that sort of power and immunity -- they'd have probably done something simpler, such as just making the papers disappear. Unless, perhaps, they were worried that an employee would squeal.

Unless it wasn't a real window behind her...

Confidence. The Enron boys, after their convictions, claimed that there was nothing wrong with the company, it was a failure of investor confidence.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/con%20artist

And, if you're feeling really brave, google about for info on what the SEC had inside WTC7.

Paul Bramscher: If the people realized that 9-11 was an inside job, you feel this would lead to civil war. Why? Wouldn't ALL Americans be outraged? Would there be any that approve? Would it not unite the country in wanting to have the perpetrators punished?