Michael Moore is out and about promoting the upcoming DVD release of his movie “Capitalism: A Love Story”. As a part of his publicity tour, he made an appearance this week on the politically progressive podcast called “The Young Turks” and he hit the nail on the head when it comes Washington doing something to fix our economy and change how things are done on Wall Street. Moore reminded listeners to the show that it’s only been a year and a half since the big crash on Wall Street and asked what’s happened in that year and a half?
“Not one single regulation has been put back in place. Not one rule,” Moore says.
“And for Wall Street, they're back to doing the crazy derivatives. They're back to the credit default swaps. They're back to all the crazy loony bin casino stuff that got us in the mess that we're in. And the Congress has not done one single thing to stop it. (And) It's not going to get fixed. There's going to be another crash. The commercial real estate bubble hasn't burst yet. That's going to burst. The credit card debt is so huge right now, it will never be repaid. That's a house of cards waiting to fall. So the crash of '08 is going to look like coming attractions. And we're in for a much, much worse time.”
I hate to say this – but Michael Moore is right. I’d like to be an optimist and think that we’re going to get out of this recession and that things will get better in this country – but I really don’t see it happening. Instead of things getting better in this country – it seems like things are getting worse.
I would a venture a guess that anyone who is reading this blog has a story to tell about how our shaky economy is affecting their life. Personally, I could get a little support group together of people I know and love who have lost, or are about, to lose their jobs because of cutbacks. These are good hard-working dedicated people who have been working twenty to twenty-five years for one company; and many of these people are being forced to make a decision before a certain day or face losing some of the retirement benefits that they always thought would be there for them. It’s hard to put a happy face on the direction that our country is going when you see your friends and family members losing their jobs and, in some cases, health care benefits that they thought they’d always have.
Maybe I was a little naive when Barack Obama was elected in thinking that he might be able to get this country back on track. His vision of “change that we could believe in” may have been too big and too vast for him to actually accomplish some of the things that need to be done. Yes, he had to do something about health care and we might actually see some real change in health care in this country – but you would have thought that Obama has enough people working for him in the West Wing of the White House that they could have tackled some sort of regulatory reform of the economy and Wall Street at the same time.
If Barack Obama is going to do anything – he’s going to have to come to the realization that he better do it now while the Democrats are still the majority party. There’s no way in hell that he’s going to get bipartisan support on anything that he wants to do – and I mean anything! If Barack Obama were to hold a press conference tomorrow and proclaim that there’s nothing purer than Mother’s milk – the Republicans would probably come out and say that mother’s milk promotes cancer or acne and would never accept Obama’s proclamation on the purity of Mother’s milk and that’s why things will never get done in Washington.
Yup, we have all seen how tough it has been to get some change in this country’s health care system – now imagine Washington doing something about how things are done on Wall Street. It ain't gonna happen and if they do something – it’ll probably be too late. It’s already to late for a lot of people I know.
