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Rolling the Dice Again
As if to elaborate their gigantic con job, the investment banks, guaranteed by you the taxpayers, are now packaging life insurances policies in what sane, on the ground businesses would consider deranged exotic money plays.
Here is how the New York Times described the new securitization packages emerging from such corporate welfare goliaths as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and their eager rating agency, DBRS.
"The bankers plan to buy ‘life settlements,' life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash--...depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to ‘securitize' these policies...by packaging hundred or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell these bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.
"The earlier the policy holder dies, the bigger the return-though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money."
Continuing its lead front page story last Sunday, the Times describes Wall Street as "racing ahead for a simple reason: with $26 trillion of life insurance policies in force in the United States, the market could be huge."
The Insurance Information Institute's chief economist was not impressed. Speaking for the life insurance business, he said: "It's not an investment product, [it's] a gambling product."
The wild and crazy derivative spree is about to inject a new and recklessly ghoulish game of chance into the financial industry. The Wall Street casino boys are already drooling over the huge fees they expect to collect. Whatever wreckage occurs down the road will soak the investors. Washington, standby for another bailout!
If this sounds alarming, consider the fact that Congress has not even reported out of any House or Senate Committee any regulatory authority for the giant derivatives businesses that places bets on bets on bets in very complex financial instruments.
Trillions of lost dollars, destabilization of the economy, depletion of pension funds and college endowments-to name some affects-and Washington is still in stasis, sitting on its cushions of corporate campaign cash and consorting with industry lobbyists who want nothing done.
Still, you the taxpayers are on the hook for another round with these corporate delinquents and gamblers!
The only difference is that this time the insurance industry seems ready to fight. It does not want to be tarred with what one executive called "the brush of subprime life insurance settlements."
If so, my advice to insurance companies is to nip this in the bud by going to Capitol Hill. This madness will not be stopped by scattered state insurance commissioners.
With all the unmet needs for productive capital, the masters of the financial universe prefer making money from money through high velocity paper speculation, instead of financing real capital structures strengthening communities around the country.
To be sure, abstract derivatives are where the huge commissions and gigantic executive pay packages flourish. It is the arena where investment banks play blackjack. Heads they win, tails you lose.
But why do people have to pay 5,6,7 percent sales taxes in stores, but the derivative dealers on Wall Street pay no sales tax on hundreds of trillions of transactions every year? Seems like a hefty double standard, which is why Cong. Peter DeFazio (Dem. Oregon) has introduced legislation to tax such speculation. (HR 1068)
In addition, Congress needs to get going and regulate these derivatives and finally repeal Clinton-era and Bush-era laws that gave them a free ride.
Finally, there needs to be a prohibition on investments in such risky instruments by fiduciary institutions. And, standards of prudence have to be reinstated. Old time bankers and pensions managers would understand such reforms. Investor rights to sue these investment firms and rating agencies for deception and fraud are weak and require strengthening.
Someday, our society needs to decide how to increase peoples' control over their own money and establish incentives that can attract capital flows to where they can be productive. At present, perverse incentives are reflecting sheer speculative power and are promoting grotesque uses of money.
Let these casinos and their gamblers on Wall Street do what they want with their own money, but don't let them gamble with other peoples' money.
- Posted in
73 Comments so far
Show AllI'm not sure Ralph is right about this one. Lot's of people who have life insurance are hurting financially right now and might not be able to afford to keep their policies in force. Securitizing the policies could create a market that would allow policy holders to sell their contracts and maybe get a fair price. Otherwise it might be difficult to find a buyer for such contracts and the policies would lapse with the policy holder getting no value for a contract he paid lots of money into perhaps for many years. It is true that Wall Street will do its upmost to make as much money as it can on this... that's what they do. But so do insurance companies. Lots of people who should be advised to own term insurance are encouraged instead by the insurance "professionals" to take out expensive cash value policies, not necessarily to benefit consumers, but to benefit the insurers and themselves. Too many professions now work this way... instead of advising our children to take up a profession to provide a valuable service to others, we advise them to go into business to get rich, or make a killing. This is why so many folks on Wall Street take home million dollar pay packages. But they're not the only ones. It is a general failure of our culture to maintain its moral bearings. And now it's not always easy to find professionals in any walk of life who we know we can trust.
Mark,I once "surrendered" a small life policy to the issuer for it's cash value and got pennies on the dollar.I don't think that would change. peace
When you surrendered your small policy to the insurer, you got the cash surrender value that remained in the policy. Maybe you were one of those people who should have been advised to own term insurance. It would have cost you less and maybe you would have been able to afford to keep the policy in force. You got what you were promised according to the terms of the contract.
But this is not what Nader is talking about. He is talking about the SALE of insurance policies to some third party, not a surrender of it to the insurance company. The third party gambles that the insured will die early enough for the "investor" to make a profit. Kind of a morbid scenario. But without this third party person willing to buy the policy, the insured, for lack of money to pay the premium, might have no other choice but to let the policy lapse, thereby getting nothing at all. In any event, no one can force the insured to sell a policy he wants to keep. On the other hand, it is possible and probable that some people who don't understand what's going on might be advised to sell a policy they could or should keep, or sell it for less than it's worth. How to protect the insured is problematic (like it is for any complex financial transaction).
Perhaps we are missing the bigger picture here: the bottom line is that once again private financial interests are allowed to game the system with taxpayer money, pay nothing for it, risk creating another speculative bubble, and profit wildly. This while the rest of the economy tanks. The financial speculators are destroying the potential of productive capital and do nothing productive themselves. This is not only dangerous, but represents theft of public wealth, as well as a deeply immoral and unjust transfer of wealth.
I call this general situation "Vampire Finance Capitalism" Can anyone tell me why this is not fitting? I view this system as parasitical rather than productive
While we can quibble over some details, the overall message Nader is sending appears consistent with economists like Naomi Klein, Richard Wolff, Dean Baker, Michael Hudson and others.
Sioux Rose
SOCIALIST: Thank you for framing what's truly going on. When I think of all the trillions being printed/created, divorced from any labor/effort/rendering of basic worth... and that this faux paper can be used to purchase very real ASSETS, like Mother nature's resources, land, and in some cases people (certainly their life force and labor), it makes me sick! It is an Orwellian UNDOING of the very meaning of worth. With nature already expressing paroxysms of ecological over-kill, what more will be extracted from Her banks using this otherwise phony paper collateral as accepted token of payment? It kind of reminds me of getting Manhattan for $26 in wampun/trinkets! And it's interesting that that hoax, begun in and over Manhattan, happens to be where Wall St, the global casino of fake instruments, is positioned. Coincidence? Or karmic justice set into motion from lots of Indigenous prayers? the full weight of the con yet to come full circle.
"It kind of reminds me of getting Manhattan for $26 in wampun/trinkets! And it's interesting that that hoax, begun in and over Manhattan, happens to be where Wall St, the global casino of fake instruments, is positioned. Coincidence? Or karmic justice set into motion from lots of Indigenous prayers? the full weight of the con yet to come full circle." -- Sioux Rose
I also thought about this same scenario -- it all began in Manhattan, and it may end here. The full circle story is quite ironic, isn't it?
Good points SR and Kay; I had not thought about the full circle idea. Since this speculative electronic shuffle finance is self-destructive and un-sustainable, it appears that we shall soon witness karmic justice to come full circle.
In addition, as the oceans rise, due to global warming, lower Manhattan may end up under water!
The circle is unbroken.
Sioux Rose
KAY: "The circle is unbroken" is the last line of my 2nd novel (originally a script submitted to Hollywood) based on a covert global cloning project that successfully makes a number of copies of a very important person, highly esteemed in this forum. (If I give that away, the story loses some of its mystery.) Interesting that you used "my" line. We're in synch! And by the way, much appreciate your earlier long post.
Sioux Rose: Once again, we are in synch! It's a great line, and one that always circles back when I recall the Carter Family -- "Can the Circle Be Unbroken," along with Harry Chapin's, "Circle." Abbey Lincoln, too, wrote about the circle in her composition, "A Circle of Love," ending with:
A circle of love always will be,
A circle of love, you and me,
We come and we go,
The hawk and the dove,
Cause everything is a circle of love.
You are in great company!
And, thanks for noting my longer post. Here in NYC, the reality on the ground is stark, very different than what the M$M broadcasts across the country.
Those who sold their land for $26 were not honoring their ancestors. They believed that no one could own land and they thought they were getting away with something selling property that could not be owned to these dumb white folks. The white folks thought they were cheating the natives. If either party had been truly honorable the land would never have been sold. Of course the white folks had guns so they would probably have gotten the land anyway. I don't think the Great Spirit liked it when his land was being sold so dishonestly.
"Maybe get a fair price?" Get real.
Are you actually Mark A. Goldman Sachs?
"It is true that Wall Street will do its upmost to make as much money as it can on this... that's what they do. "
Oh, "that's what they do". Hi ho.
And how they do it?
"The bankers plan to buy ‘life settlements,' life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash--...depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to ‘securitize' these policies...by packaging hundred or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell these bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die."
As we've seen with subprime loans and other "toxic assets", the problem with derivatives is that when they "they plan to ‘securitize' these policies...by packaging hundred or thousands together into bonds" they are actually obscuring and then falsely inflating the value of the assets, which is then traded by people who have no clue what the assets in the bond even are. That's a recipe for a bubble of inflated profits. And when it pops, they're "too big to fail". And "securitize" just means over-leveraging investments to the point that when the bubble bursts it ripples further, internationally, in fact.
If they are "too big to fail", then they are too big to exist.
To put it really simply, Wall Street gambles. They claim that when they win bets, they keep the profit, and when they lose bets, we pay. After we pay, they just place more bets with the same arrangement. Why wouldn't they? It's legal theft.
Buzzards,selling life short and profiting on misery.Isn't the scheme counter intuitive? I mean don't normal life insurance policies work because the larger pool pays premiums while the relatively small amount of policy payoffs are covered by the pool?People forced into selling their policies for a pittance will still be burdened by burial expenses,loss of homes more bankruptcy in the event of early deaths.This is one of the worst examples yet of Disaster Capitalism and another reason for the return to Glass Steagall and other regulatory protections.
Thank you Mr Nader,your article clarified this scheme for me.I also think a transaction tax would help to solve the problem of speculators gaming the markets.Maybe 1/3% would raise trillions towards the deficit.Las Vegas East! good one,life is alot like a Casino it is free to get in but we pay dearly to stick around.
I just finished your latest book and really enjoyed it, being from the N.W. corner and knowing your family helped make it an even better read. Be Well in peace
re:
"The earlier the policy holder dies, the bigger the return-though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money."
It is not in my interest to have a bunch of rich gamblers having a stake in my dying earlier rather than later. Just how would they game the system to my detriment so that their wealth increases faster? Would they do so? . . . . well likely only if politicians and others can be bought.
M.A.G."On the other hand ,it is possible and probable that some people who don't understand what's going on might be advised to sell a policy they could or should keep,or sell it for less than it is worth.How to protect the insured is problematic(like it is in every complex financial transaction)" exactly Mark !if the product is too complex for the investor or regulators to understand,the potential for vast fraud is there. peace
Well the problem is.... the policyholders enter into contracts like this because they can't afford to keep them anymore. If they don't sell them, and the policies lapse before the insured dies, their beneficiaries will get nothing at all even though the insured paid the premium every year maybe for many many years. At least by selling them to these "investors" they can get something out of it.
Mark, I understand. When I sold my policy I was young and immortal,but too poor to keep up the payments.But to bundle and collateralise these "Derivatives" into bonds won't the policy holders have to be offered a fraction of the policy value?(not an M.B.A. here). peace
I'm not an expert in this kind of transaction, but the bottom line is that upon making an inquiry, someone might offer the insured some amount of money in exchange for ownership of the policy. The insured then will decide if he wants to sell or hang onto it. I suppose his decision of whether or not to sell will depend on what his options are... can he afford to keep it going awhile longer, take a reduced paid up policy, or cash it in and take whatever the cash surrender value is left. Making the right decision may require some number crunching or maybe the only logical choice will be to sell the policy. Once he sells it, he no longer has any interest in it. Some Wall Street firm might then package these policies into some kind of investment,and of course they will try to price the investment in such a way as to make a profit. It will then be up to investors to decide if the investment is worth the risk. As morbid as this sounds, I don't really see how the insured is losing anything. Being offered the opportunity to sell his contract just gives him one more way of getting value from the contract usually when he needs the money and can't afford to keep the policy going. The Wall Street firm and their investors can then haggle about the price. As long as taxpayers are never asked to bail out either the investors or Wall Street if they make a mess of this, I don't see off the top of my head where there's much to worry about.
The original insured and the eventual buyer of a securitized investment would not know each other, so there's probably not much risk that the new owner will try to hasten the insured's death before his time. Of course I could see where this could get out of hand and people could end up borrowing money to buy insurance on themselves with the intention of then selling them to some Wall Street firm. Without some kind of oversight who knows what kind of nonesense might evolve from this.
re: "As morbid as this sounds, I don't really see how the insured is losing anything."
& re: "The original insured and the eventual buyer of a securitized investment would not know each other, so there's probably not much risk that the new owner will try to hasten the insured's death before his time."
--
Where the risk is to be found is in allowing some of the wealthy the opportunity to make a large profit by reducing the life expectancy of the average person. We have been watching how the wealthy buy politicians to get laws changed to their advantage. If enough of these insurance policies were bundled then there would be an additional incentive to change laws and policies in a way so as to reduce the lifespan of the average person. Nothing personal mind you, just statistics and profit. One simple example. The wealthy do not want single payer healthcare because they are doing quite well under the current system. If they own securitized life insurance investments then a single payer healthcare system will cost them money because it will likely improve the livespan of the average person. Poverty and the lack of healthcare will reduce that lifespan. Do we (and that includes those who once were insured) really need to have wealthy people who might be more tempted to profit greatly by the reduction of workplace safety standards, the reduction of the safety of our food and water, and the elimination of the social safety net. Yes, there is a risk (to us and) to the insured in selling an insurance policy.
Unfortunately many people who have the power, have demonstrated a proclivity for maximizing their own wealth and power any way their imagination takes them no matter what the implications are for the rest of us. They would rather buy stock in Pfizer and hope for more profits than make sure ordinary citizens get affordable healthcare. Somehow they are able to convince people who need that healthcare to vote with the wealth class rather than with the majority. Maybe it's because everyone imagines that one day they could be that wealthy too and they don't want to ruin their future fun. A lot of politicians believe that the best way to insure employment and economic growth is to support military spending and war so that there will always be a reason for such spending to increase. Military contractors build factories in every state so that a majority of representatives will be sure to support their contracts. When you look at it closely it is really an insane mindset, but it exists blantantly. And ordinary citizens too play a part. They want to keep working where they're at even if the job they do doesn't do anybody any good or serve any useful purpose. Too many of us just don't have enough self-respect to adhere to intellectual integrity in our lives and in our thinking. And we are now experiencing where that leads. No one has proved that members of the middle class are any more honest than the rich. To take out a liar loan it takes two parties who think they are getting away with something. One of them, at least, gets an experience of a lifetime. http://www.gpln.com
Mark, thanks for your reply,if that is how the scheme is supposed to work it certainly is morbid.The size of the potential market almost guarantees the snowball to turn into an avalanche .I see "too big to fail" all over this, which reinforces Mr. Nader's objections.I think I can agree with RandB and your last sentence. peace
So how about insurance reform so that you get the value you have put in instead of losing everything? How about a bailout for individuals who have lost the ability to continue paying into an insurance pool? How about we CUT THE PROFITEERS OUT and set up a social insurance plan that covers everyone?
Why does it make sense to you that setting up a speculative bubble in insurance derivatives is a good fix for ANY problem? What are you smoking? Whatever box you are thinking inside of, you need to get out.
sierra7
Sounds like a new kind of enterprise opportunity: A killing machine for the destitute, elders, and those incapable of carrying out the complete terms of the policies....
Beware!
The one thing I agree with Nader about in this article, which he doesn't make explicitly clear, is this: First these Wall Street tycoons took the country to the cleaners, in my view by fraud. Then, after getting away with their crimes scot free, and even being bailed out to the tune of billions or trillions of dollars, they now get to turn around and take further advantage of all the people who were financially damaged by their gross infidelity. So these sick and elderly people who now own insurance policies they can't afford to keep, will be encouraged to sell them, making additional fortunes for the crooks who made these policyholders so poor in the first place, that they need to sell their policies.
More fortunes for the folks who ought to be out on the street or behind bars... and that includes our elected representatives who sold themselves to these Wall Street bankers and other corporate moguls.
OR.....they could lose their shirts and get bailed out by the taxpayers again!Another bubble blowing machine?
More paper shuffling. There was a time when people of ambition tried to get rich by actually producing something.
Now why am I not hearing Sarah Palin or Glen Beck screaming "Death Panels?"
Nader, as always, is absolutely right.
I'm wondering, too, if we can expect the creation of a new mafia of assassins using subtle techniques. Autopsies are rarely performed when the elderly or terminally ill die, so the risk of detection will be low.
Since the "investor" will reap bigger profits if death comes sooner to the "insured," I'll bet that in a few years, we will be shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that many "insured" are being given a firm push toward the grave.
Sioux Rose
PETR: I was thinking along these lines, too; although as a poster mentioned above, the "Disaster Capitalism" ethos now headed home can mean less money to treat the aged for conditions no longer deemed appropriate due to the diminishment of funds, all spent on wars of corporate adventure.
Investing in "life settlement" policies is positively ghoulish and should be illegal.
AS the economy gets worst, mortality goes up-they know the oldies don't have long to live the way they have managed this economy.
Not only that, all those policies with an "act of God" clause take the Insurance corporation off the hook and put the US Government on the hook (That means you and me as the bailout funders, folks). Does Wall Street know something the rest of us don't know?
"The earlier the policy holder dies, the bigger the return-though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money."
Well, look at the bright side; if we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, the mercenaries will still have employment and Wall Street investors won't lose. And if the mercenaries don't get us, poor health care or lack of coverage will. It sounds like another win-win for Wall Street.
The perversion just keeps getting worse!
"They will then resell these bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die."
Corporate interests profit from death in so many ways: imperial wars of conquest, the private "health care" and insurance industry (including BigPharma), and now this financial trickery and speculation.
It seems we are devolving into a culture of death. In a crude way, like the Roman Empire, we as a society are becoming so immoral and corrupt and it is leading ultimately to the downfall of our own empire.
"It seems we are devolving into a culture of death. In a crude way, like the Roman Empire, we as a society are becoming so immoral and corrupt and it is leading ultimately to the downfall of our own empire." -- socialist
I agree -- I feel the disintegration, myself, and I see the reality of that disintegration on the streets of NYC.
Continuing with the health care issue, I just finished reading a very interesting article, by Carl Ginsburg, on Counterpunch -- First Do No Harm...To the Shareholders: The Patient As Profit Center, about the 1980s, and the race to corporatize kidney dialysis -- huge profits were made by doctors and the so-called health industries. As much as I attempt to follow the issues, and especially health care, I completely missed this. Below, is part of a paragraph from the article written by Mr. Ginsburg:
"Health entrepreneurs began approaching nephrologists across the country in the 1980s with offers to purchase their practices and many doctors happily agreed. With practices of 70-100 patients per doctor and Wall Street setting a price of about $70,000 per patient, nephrologists got checks in the $5 to $7 million dollar range. For what, exactly? For promising to send their patients to clinics now owned by for-profit clinic systems. And that wasn’t the end of it. Doctors also got directorships and other consulting deals for handing over their patients. Doctors just needed to agree to the protocols of the corporate dialysis company – the standing orders governing dialysis procedures and drugs. Remember, nothing in medicine gets done without a doctor’s prescription, so there needs to be enduring cooperation between the dialysis corporation and the MD."
As I read the article, I couldn't help but ask myself, again, why the AMA is so adamantly opposed to universal health care and a single-payer system. Of course, the answer has to be money! Follow the money...
Now, in the past week, we have read several articles about the banksters' plans to securitize "life settlements" -- another gimmick, cooked up by Wall Street, to package life insurance policies -- bought from the elderly and/or very sick individuals -- into another get-rich-quick scheme. As cynical as I am, even I am bowled over by their audacity to gain profits at the expense of the lives of people who live in this country.
Ralph Nader asks in Rolling the Dice Again:
"But why do people have to pay 5,6,7 percent sales taxes in stores, but the derivative dealers on Wall Street pay no sales tax on hundreds of trillions of transactions every year? Seems like a hefty double standard, which is why Cong. Peter DeFazio (Dem. Oregon) has introduced legislation to tax such speculation. (HR 1068)" -- Ralph Nader
I agree! Where is the reform? "We the People," pay, and pay and pay, and then, we have to pay again. In NYC, we are already paying a higher city sales tax to make up for the bad decisions made by our elected officials: city, state and national. The banksters should be paying their share -- the same taxes we are forced to pay when we buy an item in a store. Why are they exempt?
I'm sure that Bloomberg would answer that with his typical response -- he wants to keep the bankers happy and doing business here. After the crash, he allocated $93 million dollars to retraining Wall Street bankers -- to keep them in NYC. There was a public outcry, and he then said that the money was federal money, not city or state. However, the federal money also comes from the taxpayers. So, his shift of payment was mute -- in my opinion. My point, at the time, was that these men are already highly educated, and should have made money through the years, so why do they need retraining? What about the people who lose their jobs and don't have high salaries? Will they receive any retraining? I received no answer.
Here in NYC, 1/3 of the public library staff was fired during July, according to a librarian I spoke to last week. The remaining employees are all petrified that they will lose their jobs, too. Two or three months ago, Katha Pollitt in her Nation column reported that the CEO of our library system makes $800,000 per year, and he still has his job. This is how skewed our system in this country is. All the while, bonuses on Wall Street continue with "business as usual," as if the financial crisis is a thing of the past.
Bring America Back !!!!
****The proper context here is that the Big Bailouts (the original $850 Billions was the shock and awe to the US Economy, just as 40,000 missiles were the shock & awe to the US invasion of Iraq !
****Recall how McCain and Obama had to suspend their
campaigns and do an emergency return to DC ?? Recall how
Chris Dodd--Chairman, Banking Committee came out of the Meeting white faced, flushed, gasping , mumbling that "they said it'll be worse than the 'Market Crash of '29" !!!
**Since then, Banks, Wall Street and Corps have been hand dipping into the US Treas==(our taxpayer pockets) at will !
Not even that has saved the housing market or the jobs mkt !
I wish Nader would stop playing his legendary "bad boy" role, and get into the real race for the Prize !! When Nader says banks should do this, and Obama should do this, and Congress should do this----Nobody's listening in DC, and they're all marching to the drums of their favorite lobbyists.
They tell me Nader is too old to make a run for the gold, and of course He's right on most all these issues there is cotton in all their ears.
Barney Frank, its time to show your real colors. If you are sincere in saying that you want to regulate this kind of financial insanity, its time to write the legislation that will put a permanent end to casino capitalism.
It should simply be illegal to profit from the death of another human being. That would simplify a lot. It could be done by making anyone who does profit from someone's death an accessory to murder.
Nader says, "Let these casinos and their gamblers on Wall Street do what they want with their own money, but don't let them gamble with other peoples' money."
That is the bottom line. They always use our money (tax dollars) to gamble. Just like a thief who uses money they steal to go drinking and carousing.
That is what the whole social security thing was about- to get a new pool of public money for the rich to play with. It is what school vouchers are about (taking public tax money and giving it to private corporations posing as schools).
I believe that Ralph Nader has always made a serious run for presidency. And all those people who attended his rallies over the years were serious about their commitment to Ralph Nader as a presidential candidate.
Neither Obama, Clinton, Kerry, or Gore spoke up for the democratic process when Nader was excluded from the debates. Nor did the people declare their outrage. You gets what you pays for.
There hasn't been honest discussion about serious issues for decades. Look at the health care issue, the middle east wars, the vietnam war etc.
One of the few people speaking about them was Nader. Unfortunately, he probably won't be running next time and there are few independents that understand the issues and have as much of a public audience as Nader (and even he couldn't overcome the obstacles that the corporate elite and corporate parties put into place).
so it goes
unrepentant Nader voter
Good points; we cannot expect serious discussion when the corporate media and the corporate-owned politicians control the vast majority of the discourse on any given issue.
Nader and others are fully aware that the corrupt two-party winner-takes-all electoral system is stacked against any non-Duopoly candidate in a major election. On top of all that, the corporate media conducts and directs the most expensive PR campaign in the world (the US general election). Nader and anyone elese who challenges the Duopoly is ignored, marginalized, and smeared. And the final topper is the amount of money it takes to win an election. If you don't have tens of millions to buy your way into office (supplied by the corporate taksmasters) you don't win, period.
In short, we should keep voting for Nader and other non-Duopoly candidates, however at the same time recognize that the system is rigged against them in so many ways.
William Rood, patriotic citizen of the world
See my earlier post on the need for progressives to unite with principled conservatives and libertarians to wrest control from the corrupt center.
I don't know exactly how we're going to do it. It's something that anyone I've ever talked to about "it" agrees with me about. So there must be some kind of "grass roots" way to accomplish implementing it.
The representative form of congress we now are under the thumb of, who are in turn in the pockets off the MIC, was created in a time that it wasn't possible to communicate instantly. They are therefor no longer necessary. If you think removing the insurance industry from the health care system would save we the people large amounts of resources, think of the resources we could save if we no longer needed middle men to make policy that effects our every day lives. The Public Servants that are now doing us ur.... the job, have taken such good care of themselves that they longer relate to the majority of there constituents.
I'm not a well schooled individual, but I do have the education of walking the planet for 55+ revolutions. Speaking of which, this is one who, left or right, most people who don't own their own representative, would be willing to join. You know there gona be one when the truth comes out and the moneys no good. So let's do it peaceful while we still can.
Are'nt we all guilty? If we buy anything from Big Business, food, cars, homes, watch their MSM, work for them, get health care from them, give them our "defense" money, vote for their politicians, gamble with our money, pensions and savings in the Wall Street Casino in any way, etc., etc., are'nt we guilty of perpetuating the system that oppresses us?
No, we are not guilty. We don't give them our money to gamble with - the government gives them our money through the deficit, taxes and the printing press. On top of that, red tape and various forms of intangible property have made it impossible to engage in useful production in this country. We have been sold out into slavery by both parties. A slave who has been sold into slavery by his own family is not guilty for being a slave.
Well said.
I agree!
Well said!
Every insurance company I ever dealt with was deceptive. One of the best examples from my own experience - for 35 years I paid high rates for the best coverage from my auto insurance company. I NEVER made a claim, until one day while stopped in a line of traffic, I was rear ended by a large speeding dump truck. My insurance company never paid me a dime. I never received a fair settlement from the one who hit me, totaled my car, broke my back, etc. I was hit by a State owned truck in Vermont. The State dropped its insurance in 1989! Never, never drive in Vermont. Many others have also had big problems with State trucks in Vermont.
If Nader was president the consumer would at least have a fighting chance for justice.
You are right.
Boy you said it. I got repeatedly hit by hurricanes and each time I tried to file a claim they dispatched an "Adjuster" hired gun, who claimed that wind damage and flooding didn't count! Since when does a Hurricane which my policy supposedly covered, not have wind and ocean surge? Then twice on my boat they sent this little turd out called an adjuster, who claimed the appraised value on my boat was not relevant and that they would only buy used (junk) components of less than half the value of what I lost. Then the check bounced and the guy reissues another one that's 3,000.00 lower with no explanation. But he's a subcontractor to the Big Insurance company, so he's not accountable to them......
I decided finally, it's better just not to own anything in the US because the huge corps are so crooked, no matter how many lawyers you hire every time they do this, they know you will eventual wind up in a corporate kangaroo court in which some Jeb Bush law on the secret books will exonerate them from paying their required payment and you'll get stuck with 50 grand worth of attorney's bills.
Take my advice: Run Naked! It's cheaper and safer. I don't insure anything anymore. Most Islands in the third world don't care. The thousands I save from premium extortion goes into a fund for my survivors.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson