"Will You Walk Into My Mortgage?" Said the Spider to the Fly

"'Will you walk into my mortgage ?" said the spider to the fly;
"'Tis the prettiest little mortgage that ever you did spy.
The way into my mortgage is up a variable rate,
And I have many curious things to show when by these rules we skate."
"Oh no, no," said the little fly; "to ask me is in vain,
For who accepts your variable rate can ne'er be out of debt again."

Excerpts from Michael Moore's latest letter:

Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door.

Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout. NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance.

This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars!

What did Garrison Keilor Have to Say?

Poor Larry Craig got a truckload of moral condemnation for tapping his wingtips in the men's john, but his party proposes to spend 5 percent of the GDP to buy up bad loans made by men who walk away with their fortunes intact while retirees see their 401K go pffffffff like a defunct air mattress, and it's business as usual. Mr. McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers and bankers do as they please -- remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and his intervention with federal regulators on behalf of his friend Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush, the brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small fine and went skipping off to other things? Mr. McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be forme d to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for chastity.

The Republican Party used to specialize in gimlet-eyed, steel-rim, crepe-soled common sense and then it was taken over by crooked preachers who demand we trust them because they're packing a Bible and God sent them on a mission to enact lower taxes, less government. Except when things crash, and then government has to pick up the pieces.

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I'm thinking and reading some about the financial crisis. There are a lot of suggestions about what to do - contact Obama with your opinions, contact your Representatives, take to the streets, etc. I think that it's also personal and am interested in ideas that DCP readers have for how to get through this crisis and how to respond to it.

Locally, Washington Mutual has collapsed. Personally, our son's best friend has a job in jeopardy. Others we know or meet have accounts they want to be reassured about or investments that are down the tubes. National Review's Mark Krikorian now has a post titled "Cause and Effect?" on the collapse of Washington Mutual. The only implied cause in the post is a news release from Wamu which says "Company ranks in top ten of Hispanic Business' Diversity Elite and earns perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index" - See National Review". So the scapegoat is minority lending? Sounds like a cop out. As Michael Moore points out, one of the actual main causes of foreclosure is medical bills incurred by those without health insurance who have something catastrophic happen. Remember the bankruptcy bills and the stories of those with huge medical bills? Doesn't every candidate encounter such people on the road?

At our house, we don't know where to start but one place is belt cutting, which we were already starting before this banking thing completely hit the fan. We want to make permanent changes and drive less, not because gas is high, but because every tank of gas has a history. We want to eat less processed food, not just because it's more expensive, but because it's unhealthy. It not only hurts us and puts us more at risk (and we don't all have health insurance!) but we don't know it's history either! We don't intend to rush out and buy gold, nor do we know of a magic change in investments that will cut risk of loss of retirement funds. We do see a connection between the war costs and Wall Street greed so continue to support neither. We have probably never felt so powerless, and an election in less than 40 days is a first start.

What are others thinking and doing out there? (photo sent by Judith Wood in CA, just as I was going to break precedent and not use one)