Pyramid Building

I think it safe to say that no one knows exactly how the pyramids at Giza were built. How did ancient architects cut stone so precisely and move it into place? Could modern engineering, with huge cranes and laser positioning duplicate a world wonder? Everything I've read says no.

Still, if there's one thing that's agreed upon it is that the pyramids were built from the ground up.

After all, how can you start with a capstone and work your way down? What supports the crown?

An economy is much like a pyramid--it must have a solid base. When an economy collapses, as ours has, it must be rebuilt from the bottom not from the top. This is common sense.

Today, the US government gave Bank of America $20 billion and guaranteed another $118 billion of their bad loans. A few months ago, the government gave BoA $25 billion. $168 billion of taxpayer dollars in just three months. We used to run the entire country on $168 billion.

What has Bank of America done in return? Well, it has lost money. It has also reduced credit lines on credit cards, increased fees and generally refused to cut its customers any slack at all.

Then there's Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and all the rest who have taken taxpayer money and provided no relief whatsoever, not even lower rates to loan taxpayers their own money. Meanwhile, there have been buyouts to consolidate power, golden parachutes for executives and hedonistic retreats to celebrate good fortune.

Altogether, 8.5 trillion dollars has been earmarked to rebuild the capstone of the American Economy (the banking system) while virtually nothing has been spent on the base (Main Street.) Homes are being foreclosed, jobs lost, unemployment claims curtailed or denied and pensions squandered.

The government thus far tried to rebuild the economic pyramid from the top down. Where is the help for the bottom, for the people that churn the dollars that make the economy work?

Circuit City was in the news today, too. They didn't get a bailout. They must file for bankruptcy and liquidate their holdings. Thirty thousand people will lose their jobs. Sure, their jobs sucked and I shed no tears for the assholes that ran Circuit City into the ground, but they weren't a bank so they must die.

Banks do nothing but increase debt. Debt is our problem. Banks, as they now exist, are our biggest problem. No real work is done shuffling money around. A real economy produces things that people want and will pay for. Nobody really wants a loan. A loan means surrendering future earnings for today's sustenance. Loans are bad for everybody except bankers. Bankers are bad for everybody.

You may argue that occasionally credit is good for business and this is true where the business does not have the money to stay in business. Credit can stimulate the economy, but not when interest is attached to the loan. Borrowing without interest is a shaky proposition, borrowing at interest is financial suicide.

Obama's bailout has some small relief for Main Street, but when calculated into the entire picture will represent about 5% of bailout costs. There's one for you nineteen for me.

While the government tries to bail out the economy by pouring 95% of (future) taxpayer dollars into the capstone, the base gets dribbles (and not yet – we still “hope” for dribbles.) How do you repair a pyramid like that? Are they trying to say all the problems are at the top? The top has eroded the bottom since Ronald Reagan, at least. The bottom is long gone – outsourced and downsized – years ago.

All of the bailout money doesn't exist. It's funny money. The government is broke – it has been for a long time. The bailout money is “borrowed” by printing more money, owed with interest to rich bankers – the same fellows we're bailing out. How can we borrow money from whom we are loaning money and then pay them back at interest? The bailouts make no sense at all. If the banksters are so rich they can loan us money, why do they need our loans?

Here's the answer, here's the bottom line as I see it. The government is a fraud. The banksters are frauds. Most corporations are frauds. The only way we can pay any of these frauds anything is by agreeing to do their work for them. Clean their houses. Wash their cars. Cook their food. Protect their asses. All of their debt only works to enslave us.

I say fuck it. Fuck them. Let them wallow in their own shit. Let them fix their own damned cars, clean their own damned houses, fight to save their own worthless asses. We've paid all our lives, we don't owe any more to human cysts like them.

You want a revolution? Sit on your ass. Don't work. Your pension is gone already.