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Capitalism and Campaign Finance Reform

Is electing the lesser of the two evils for a second term the only option?


by Sam Mishra, 2008 Obama Supporter


When Obama was invited to chuck “Campaign Finance” by John McCain and go for public financing (equal spending by both parties) in 2008 elections, it was not a fair deal for Obama, so he declined. After all, he was sure to garner more money from public for financing his campaign; he prevailed, and also won the elections.


The bankers funded (as they will again) both parties in the last elections, and are being happily rewarded for backing both parties. After all, one party has to win, no matter what.


In other words, capitalists rule everywhere, here in Silicon Valley (where we call them VCs, aka Vulture Capitalists), in Wall-Street (where the greedy bankers are doping with Cocaine or with that million dollar bonus or with both), in Washington DC via stooges like Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner who got trained by Secretary Robert Rubin during the Clinton era. In case you forgot, Robert Rubin was the CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming the Treasury Secretary in Bill Clinton's cabinet (when Geither was the deputy treasury secretary) and Robert Rubin is currently the Chairman of Citi Group.


The capitalist does not create jobs. You create your job by dint of your efforts, by going to work every day, by looking for work every day. The cliché “did you ever get a job from a poor man?” is a ruse by the capitalist to keep you duped into thinking that the blood of the capitalist is thicker, the brains of the capitalist are benevolent, the banking the capitalist does creates wealth.


The capitalists work in co-opetition with other capitalists: their goal is to accumulate more capital. They help each other (Warren Buffet gave $5 billion to Goldman Sachs for a few Goldman shares during the banking crisis), violently compete with each other as required (as in one company forcibly acquiring another), hence the term co-opetition (competition + cooperation). You may be breaking your skulls under police batons in the Occupy Wall Street movement, you and your 10,000 co-workers might be laid-off (which can permanently destroy your family and thus disfigure you for life); but in either case the capitalist thinks that it is a necessary evil (or good, if he is doing God's work, as quipped by the current Goldman CEO) that society needs to endure to create wealth.


In other words, the capitalist does not care if you lose your job (and as a result, your wife divorces you, or you become an alcoholic, or you waste part of your precious life living in tents, funded by, you guessed it, the capitalists). Wealth-creation for the capitalists is not wealth-creation for you or your progeny; more like it is divorce for you, unemployment for you, poverty for you...


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If we want meaningful campaign finance reform, we need to make sure the capitalist can't spend money directly via funding the Obama or the GOP campaign. However, preventing the candidate from taking money from the capitalist will not help: the capitalist can funnel the money indirectly via tea party of coffee party, which can then advertise for the chosen candidate via Internet, TV, etc. In other words, capitalism is well entrenched to suck all the blood out of middle-class America, middle-class Europe, middle-class India, middle-class China. In fact, the Communist in China is also a capitalist; for the party members make the big bucks in the land where everyone is free (or may be not; as per one body of research, you need to get the communist party visa to travel from Rural to Urban China).


So, if you are middle-class, what do you do? You have two options: behave like how most middle-class behave: make money while the sun shines, for this is capitalism! The other option is more sinister (at least, in the eye of the capitalist): think different!


….

Thinking different does not necessarily mean not making money. Make money, by all means. But don't confuse making little money with Capitalism...


Here are some ways you can begin to think differently:

  1. The capitalist has not given you a job; you have gotten it because you deserve the job.

  2. The rich man can give others jobs (and the poor man can't) is a myth capitalists and parasitical journalists (who are as much parasites as capitalists are) spread to maintain the status quo.

  3. Be entrepreneurial by resorting to two of the three resources you need to build big business: land and labor (the other being capital, of course). Does this mean you don't need capital? Absolutely not, you do. But you don't have to beg a capitalist to start your venture.

  4. Leave the begging to the politician. The politician will beg in various ways and guises for money from the homeless, the unemployed, as well as the banker and the capitalist. Here are two samples (coming soon) as to how the begging is done in the Internet world.

  5. Stay engaged in the political process. Click here to download a PDF version of this article which you save to the desktop; you can email the PDF to others as an attachment.

If you have any thoughts / comments, please e-mail info(at)franconomics.com. Thank you.


SAM'S E-MAIL BACK TO THE FUNDRAISERS IN THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN ---

(Sent on Dec 1, 2011)

Hello People on the Obama Campaign,

The word on the street is that President Obama supports bankers, who give him big money. Yet, at the same time, the Obama campaign also likes to take money also from the little guy. After all, the 99.9% lowly people hold the votes; and the bankers are now trying to buy these votes; the current President is just a rubber-stamp President who supports Wall Street, the big banks.

The bankers (also derogatorily known as banksters) screwed the little guys, and keep doing it with impunity; and instead of being thrown in jail, they are the people in power, for the President eats with them regularly. Here are some stats ---

Foreclosures in 2011 (projected): 4 million
Foreclosures in 2010: 3.8 million
Foreclosures in 2009: 3.8 million
Foreclosures in 2008: 3 million

More stats:
Unemployment: 9% to 10% official; 15% to 20% actual, 25 million Americans currently not working...


I voted for President Obama, and wrote many articles via my website in his support; check http://www.franconomics.com if you have time.

...

However, this election is different; I can't allow politicians, democrats or republicans, to play with peoples' lives --- when someone loses a job and / or home; frequently his life gets shattered, he loses his family, etc. What was happening to the ghettos in America is now mainstream --- it is happening to people everywhere...

In short, I will not allow a few people (the top 0.1%) to scam the rest of us via big words like Democracy and Capitalism. I have no interest eating dinner with President Obama or the First Lady...In other words, I decline putting in my 2 cents into the same coffers filled with the bankster cash, boatloads of them, supporting President Obama...




Also, if you are human, and reading this, I believe you are in the 99.9%. While you still have life left, I advise you very humbly: get out of politics / raising money for the rich, and do something more meaningful with your life.

Best regards,
Sam


On Dec 1, 2011, at 8:47 AM, Michelle Obama wrote:

Sam --

I'm excited for the chance to meet you and whoever you decide to bring to dinner.

I really hope you give this a shot.

Give $3 or whatever you can to be automatically entered for you and a guest to have dinner with Barack and me:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Dinner-With-Us

Hope to see you soon,

Michelle

CURRENT PODCAST (27 Nov 2010)

This latest FRANCONOMICS.COM podcast exposes how Republicans oppose anything that is good and just. As with other podcasts, this podcast exposes the corruption in the highest of places in America. The podcast discusses the following in some detail:

  • Obama gets slapped in the mid-term elections: Sweet justice, don't you think? The democrats got humiliated in the recently concluded mid-term elections; after all chugging along with corrupt / inept officials like Summers and Geithner in charge of the Economy has hurt Americans like anything, and the Americans lashed out in the elections. People are not stupid: Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the two rich Republican ladies lost in California. Meg Whitman, a former board member of Goldman Sachs lost in spite of spending $146 million dollars of her own money. Carly Fiorina, the loser who had been unceremoniously kicked out form the job of the CEO in HP a few years ago, was trying to bank on the public frustration at Obama and whatever the democrats are doing; it is great that she lost as well. After all, the republicans are worse than the democrats when it comes to serving the poor and the downtrodden.

  • The Republican crew members oppose the delaying of the inquiry report from the FCIC (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission) crew?: While Phil Angelides is no Ferdinand Pecora, it is good that he wants to inquire more into mortgage fraud which the banks did. So the FCIC is going to delay the publication of the inquiry report. Now, who voted against this delay in reporting? The 4 Republican members of the 10 member commission, of course. The inquiry report synthesized so far must be really hollow; the republicans want it published and want to be done with it. Trillions got looted and no one will be caught. What a great American tragedy!

  • Elizabeth Warren has been recruited by Obama to shape up the newly forming Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: This is the best thing that Obama could have done. This is one of the best recruitements by the current administration. After all, Professor Warren has shown that she is fearless when it comes to quizzing even Geithner. She will fight on behalf of the American consumer, and the bankers looting the gullible through insane credit card interest rates will be checked. No wonder, Judy and Spencer, two republican congressmen are opposing this recruitment.

  • Where actually is the American Economy, and the World Economy? How about the Stock Markets?: Obama will be a one-term President if he does not realize that the economy is tottering. 1 in 7 Americans is full-time unemployed. So, just because we had a 2.5% annualized quarter-over-quarter GDP growth for the 3rd quarter, it does not mean the economy is out of the recession. Millions are still suffering, millions are unemployed, millions are getting foreclosed / being kicked out of their homes. Looking world-wide, Greece had been rescued a few months back; recently Ireland got rescued with a bailout. So, the world economy is not looking good. We have had a strong run-up in the stock markets. So, are we due for a correction?


Listen to this fifteen minute long podcast to find out more ...




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THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Corrupt Collusion

In response to the recent report that Treasury Secretary Geithner met Goldman CEO Blankfein a record 38 times between February 2009 and March 2010: The corrupt nexus between the politicians (and their hand-picked bureaucrats) and the Wall Street crooks continues. Goldman not only spends millions lobbying in DC, but also funds campaign finance. We had exposed in a podcast last year how a Dem in Congress was circulating a brochure on this, but the brochure was pulled in less than 1 hour by Dick Gephardt, who admonished his fellow Democrat: “Don’t you want money for your campaign finance?”

If you look into California and the millions that Meg Whitman is spending against the Democrats for the powerful governorship, you will see that Democrats are starving for campaign money. That the Goldman employees gave almost a million dollars to Obama’s Campaign shows why and how bankers keep more than Geithner in their pockets.

This corruption is eating up the moral fabric of America. Geithner is corruptly colluding for a job in Wall Street banking once he gets fired from his job. After all dozens like him, including Summers (now back again in the administration along with Geithner since 2009), Rubin, and other treasury Secretaries have enjoyed multi-million dollar pay packages in banking.

This nationwide robbery was started by Hank Paulson, the previous treasury secretary, who bailed out AIG, so that AIG could bail out Goldman, his ex-employer. Without the bailout, both AIG and Goldman were going BANKRUPT.

We Americans need to change internally, so that our elected representatives will be morally less corrupt. That is step #1.
AN EDUCATIONAL VIDEO




Please check our VIDEO RESOURCES page for a complete history of the current corrupt collusion which ate up your trillions...
COMING SOON IN PAPERBACK



THE 20 TRILLION DOLLAR VALUE DRAIN
How Goldman and Other Banks Looted America and Why They Will Do it Again



By

Sam Mishra



Browse the latest Value Drain article by Sam Mishra here

Browse / Buy Strategic Case Analysis by Sam Mishra, now a prescribed text-book for a management course in a Major Accredited University, on Amazon.com

THE FOURTEEN TRILLION DOLLAR VALUE DRAIN™

(This Value Drain Article# 2 was first published here in August 2009)

INTRODUCTION

In our first of a series of articles on the Value Drain by the banks, I had challenged fellow MIT alum Ben Bernanke, the current Federal Reserve Chairman, as to whether he had used the considerable number of Economics Ph.Ds he commanded as a resource base to sum up a simple geometric progression of financial derivatives. Well, looks like Dr. Bernanke has done his math by now. And has come up with a number. As we commented in our weekly economic update podcast for the business week ending April 17, 2009, it is really a huge number. So, how big is it --- well, it could be as big as the American GDP, which stood at $14 trillion at last count. And if you never listen to any of our podcasts, you might be wondering: how could that be, because it was only a $700 billion bailout, followed by another $747 billion which the Congress passed under President Obama.  Simply put, the Federal Reserve is working simultaneously to bloat up its balance sheet with a lot of the toxic waste that  has been sugar-coated as "legacy assets" by the economic brain trust of Obama.

Here, let us put the capacity of the Federal Reserve in a VALUE DRAIN™ equation format:
Equation 1: Federal Reserve Bailout = Geometric Sum of All Toxic Assets and Derivatives Thereof (GSTADT) – Treasury Bailout Capacity

In other words,
Equation 1: GSTADT = Federal Reserve Bailout + Treasury Bailout

Now, let's see how the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are going about doing it in the next section.


SECTION I - $9 TRILLION BAILOUT COMPONENT OF THE $14 TRILLION DOLLAR VALUE DRAIN™

A. The multi-trillion dollar complex rescue package by Dr. Bernanke and the Federal Reserve:

BUY UP TOXIC ASSETS
1. $1.8 trillion to buy commercial paper
2. $540 billion to buy mone market funds short of cash
3. one trillion dollars in TALF-term asset backed securities loan facility
4. $1.45 trillion in housing related purchases from Freddie and Fannnie
Total: $4.8 trillion in Federal Reserve’s plan to buy up toxic assets


PROVIDE NEW LENDING
1. $620  billion in expansion of SWAP lines
2. $900 billion in Term Auction Facility (TALF)
TOTAL: $1.9 in New Loans

FEDRERAL RESERVE BAILOUT GRAND TOTAL = $4.8 trillion + $1.9 trillion = $6.7 trillion Value Drain


B. Able Support from the Treasury:

1. $700 billion bailout architected by Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary under President Bush
2. $300 billion from the $787 billion stimulus (let's assume the rest flows back into the economy as extended unemployment benefits, one time retirement benefit checks, mortgage / housing prop-up schemes, mortgage refinance incentives because of lowered interest rates by the Federal Reserve, etc.)
3. $ 1 trillion lost through the pPiP (public private investment plan) plan --- if they have their way (in light of the SIGTARP's 250 page report made public on Apreil 22nd 2009, the banks may drain more than $1 trillion, in which case we will update this amount to what is actually looted.

TREASURY BAILOUT GRAND TOTAL: $700 billion + $300 billion + $1 trillion through pPiP = $2 trillion Value Drain

Let's combine A and B above and call it the Announced Fed Bailout

So, Announced Fed Bailout = $6.7 trillion + $2 trillion = $8.7 trillion of Value Drain

This is displayed by our up to date Value Drain Framework applied to the current public looting in the name of Free Markets, Meritocracy (AKA greed of Wall-Street executives):


If you look at the above picture, you can see that we have plugged in the entire value drain of $700 billion Paulson bailout as one of the components of the Value Drain Framework. The above value drain analysis provides a clear picture of where things are today. Also, if you compare it to our previous article, you can see that is this whole financial scam is the biggest money drain in the history of American Capitalism.

SECTION II - ROOT CAUSE OF THE MELTDOWN - FRIEDMAN? FREE MARKETS? FEAR?

We podcasted a few weeks ago (April 3rd weekly podcast) the mind-set of Dr. Lawrence Summers, the head of the Obama Economic Brain Trust, and a died-in-the-wool Friedmanite (he has said so on record). Now, Milton Friedman, while having utility in terms of bringing in Glasnost and Perestroika in the erstwhile Soviet Union, corrupted the entrepreneurial mindset of Business America.

We have podcasted Dr. Krugman's critique of Friedman in the same April 17 update: "In the aftermath of the Great Depression, there were many people saying that markets can never work. Friedman had the intellectual courage to say that markets can too work, and his showman's flair combined with his ability to marshal evidence made him the best spokesman for the virtues of free markets since Adam Smith. But he slipped all too easily into claiming both that markets always work and that only markets work. It's extremely hard to find cases in which Friedman acknowledged the possibility that markets could go wrong, or that government intervention could serve a useful purpose.” Read more...


We called out the Real-Estate Scam as early as 2007, please feel free to browse ...

(8/14/2008) If you want to minimize your losses in the declining real-estate markets, putting in 20% down gives in a better deal than putting in only 10% down.

Using 6th grade math, the author convincingly proves that putting in 20% down while buying real-estate in today's declining markets is good insurance against massive losses down the line, should the buyer have to sell for a loss. Read more …


(9/18/2007) Going for fixed rate mortgages, with 20% down, is the financially savvy way to buy your dream home in the aftermath of current sub-prime carnages and rising foreclosures / short-sales.

With subprime mortgage meltdowns rocking the Feds to lower interest rates today by a whopping fifty basis points, whether to buy, sell, or hold is on the mind on every real-estate investor / speculator. . . When flipping was in vogue, taking adjustable rate mortgages with teaser rates made immense practical sense. You wanted to buy low, flip high, and leverage extremely by going for low teaser rates for the first couple of years, assuming you could successfully flip within that time-frame. But, is taking adjustable rate mortgages for a house you want to own over the long haul a good financial idea? Read more …


(4/12/2007) Home sales plummet 21% in Santa Clara County, real-estate agents lose quarter of a billion dollars in commissions this past year; How, When, and Where you should buy that SFO Bay Area dream home this spring-selling season . . .

... Or you should wait a while before you buy a home quickly in the SFO Bay Area this spring-selling season, may be? One in five real estate agents lost business because of plumetting sales in Santa Clara county. ... In other words, $ 240,690,933.88 / $50,000 = 4813 real-estate agents went out of business in the last 12 months in Santa Clara County. If we assume that the agents who went out of business were earning 6 figure of $100,000, then also we come up with a number of 4813 divided by 2 or at least 2400 agents who are hurting because they did not earn any commissions last year! Read more …


(3/15/2007) California foreclosures are up 300% ... Is the SFO Bay Area housing-market primed / sub-primed for a meltdown?

California foreclosures are up 300% year over year for January 2007. Recently, RealtyTrack data showed that with 142, 429 foreclosures in 2006, California suffered a year over year increase of 131% compared to the number of foreclosures in 2005... Read more …


(3/7/2007) Demand for housing to fall 40% this spring-selling season, should you be worried?

The Wall-Street Journal Online reported today that 16% of all mortgages issued last year belong to the Alt-A category. Alt-A category falls in the gray area between prime and sub-prime mortgages. Considering that sub-prime mortgages contributed to 24% of all mortgages last year, the total of Alt-A and sub-prime mortgages added up to 14% + 24% = 40% of all mortgages issued last year. Read more …


(2/8/2007) Here comes the Spring-Selling Season… Should you buy that dream first home in 2007?

People don't like to move in winter. But spring is a different matter. Change is in the air. People change apartments, and the more fortunate amongst us buy our first dream home. Should you buy that home this spring? Or should you wait? Read more …


(2/5/2007) Number of vacant U.S. homes for sale reach four decade highs

In the final quarter of 2006, about 2.1 million vacant U.S. homes went on sale, as per the census bureau. The census bureau has tracked the number of vacant U.S. homes for the last four decades, and U.S. home owner vacancy rates have never been higher: the rate currently stands at about 2.7% (+- 0.1%) , as per the bureau. Read more ...

Economic Data in Detail
Updated Weekly

COST OF WAR in IRAQ: $805 billion    in AFGHANISTAN: $480 billion

Official# of Unemployed Americans: 13.9 million (9.0%)
FRANCONOMICS.COM Real Unemployment Multiplier = 1.8
Actual Full-time Unemployed= 25 million (16.2%)

Annualized Real GDP Growth in 3rd Quarter of 2010: 2.5% (2nd Quarter GDP Growth: 1.7%)

Total # of Foreclosures (Projected Data for 2010): 4 million households
Total# of Vacant Homes (As of 2010 First Quarter): 19 million (15%)
Mortgage Delinquencies: 10.06% of All Loans   Loans in Foreclosure: 4.63%
Total# of Mortgages Underwater = 15 million

Consumer Price Index (CPI - U) = Up 1.1% over the last 12 months
Producer Price Index (PPI) = Up 4.0% over the last 12 months