Wall Street financial corporations lent billions to people who they knew couldn't afford to pay back mortgages. Then they packaged these mortgages as mortgage backed securities to investors who thought they were buying Triple A investments bonds; the most secure investment out there.
Then, since they knew those "securities" were all but secure, they bought insurance on these bonds so they could make money on the bad investments they sold to begin with. Honest investors were stuck with bad investments. Once the hundreds of millions of Adjustable Rate Mortgages adjusted, the house of cards began to tumble, and only the initiators of these "derivative investments" were in any place to benefit.
In other words, they made money by charging exorbitant fees on borrowers of Adjustable mortgages; they made money by selling the mortgage backed securities and at the same time shifting the losses to someone else. Then they bought insurance on those bad securities which allowed them to make money once they defaulted.
Once the house of cards fell, the economy collapses into the worst crisis in generations and in the end, these same financial institutions make billions in profits after they received handouts from the federal government because they are "too big to fail." The executives of these corporations end up getting millions in "bonuses" and the perpetrators of the mortgage back securities and derivatives make millions. And NO ONE GOES TO JAIL?
In the aftermath, states are left with huge deficits, the impact on our nation's basic services such as education, is devastating. The only solution that these pseudo-conservative, far right messianic political pawns of Wall Street can come up with, is to continue the devastation of working class americans.
The two institutions that have created some measure of social mobility in this country have been education and labor unions. The increases in state college tuition have put the dream of a college education out of reach for a large portion of our youth. The vilifying of public school teachers and public education as a whole is an ominous shadow looming over our society. The attacks on collective bargaining rights for union members is an assault on working americans. Unions have been at the vanguard of protecting middle class values and a middle class standard of living.
If the events of Wisconsin are allowed to stand, the perfect crime will have been perpetrated. Working class Americans will first have been robbed of their homes, the tax money that they pay will have been used to bail out the companies that robbed them and then the deficits created by the bailouts have been blamed on them. And just in case this wasn’t bad enough, conservatives are attempting to give a death blow by taking away the right to negotiate a decent wage and health benefits. Talk about blaming and punishing the victims.
This must not stand,
Roberto
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