First a little history, the phrase “perfect storm” originated with the 1997 book The Perfect Storm, and was cemented into most minds by the 2000 movie of the same title which starred George Clooney.  The phrase the perfect storm refers to the simultaneous occurence of events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the resulting combination of events.  Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, and any slight change in any one event would potentially lessen its overall impact.

Not surprisingly with all the turmoil in nature and financial markets recently, the phrase was awarded the top price by Lake Superior State University in their 2007 list of words that deserve to be banned for overuse.

Unfortunately, there is no better description today for what is going on in the economy and why it has become such a worldwide problem.  Headlines from today’s news and web sites show the obvious problems:

CNNMoney.com – “Big Three Plead for $34 billion from Congress.”
Wall Street Journal -  “Bernanke Urges Actions on Foreclosures.”
MarketWatch.com -  “Thirty Thousand Are Being “Right Sized” Right Out of Jobs.”

These are serious, and unless someone takes the reigns and owns up to the solving the underlying issues it’s not going to get better any time soon.  Some of you are probably wondering what that means, and that’s where my rant begins.  Everything I hear about lately involves handouts, buying worthless paper, and taking a loan that may or may not be enough and may or may not be repaid.  Not one article talks about putting people to work, improving our infrastructure, or investing these billions that we’re using in the bailout to build a better America.

We’ve lost our touch – America used to be an economic powerhouse.  Much of this was attributable to our military, but it also included our banking, manufacturing, technical, and pharmaceutical strengths.  Today we’re outsourcing, learning from other countries, and gambling on the future with derivatives and other crazy financial tools.  Major Wall Street firms are failing because they forgot the core tenants of business, including, don’t spend what you don’t have and don’t buy into anything that you don’t understand.  Many of these stoic organizations were quite literally gambling with your savings.  Through it all, the “rescue” starts with the people responsible for creating the catalyst for the downfall of the financial markets and bankrupting the average American.  They should be shunned and publicly humiliated for what they’ve done, and instead their cronies in Congress start by bailing them out and covering their losses.  These banks and investors are being rewarded for their own failures as the government not only offers financial salvation but creates a term for their spoils, toxic assets, so they can con scare Americans into believing that they’ve done the right thing.

The solution isn’t in these bailouts, and while there clearly haven’t been problems like this before, history tells us what might work to resolve this problem.  Instead of trying to buy banks out of this problem by covering their past losses, the government needs to put a “New Deal 2009″ program into place that takes from Roosevelt’s plan and initiates programs that will people people back to work, reform business and financial practices, and improve the American infrastructure.  Stop pork-barrel spending, wasteful government programs, and funding foreign countries and their wars.  Start helping states, promoting equality in foreign trade, raising money through duties and import taxes, and improve legislation to prevent financial companies from gambling with their assets and investor’s monies.

Frankly, I don’t think Bernanke (and obviously not Bush) are the people to drive this forward, and I am only somewhat hopeful that Obama will quickly get a solution in place, but I have to believe that something will read history and come up with some ideas that have worked.  It obviously can’t start with UncensoredRants.com, but my opinions can’t be alone here, either.  The average American has to use their voice and hold the torch for what they believe in.  Mine is lit – is yours?

Ranter

Some experts contend, and I would assume that they are correct, that the 158 year old Citigroup is simply postponing the inevitible if things don’t change in the economy as a whole.  Of course, it will curb the ever increasing number of foreclosures, but until the underlying problems get resolved its impossible to know what the long-term benefits of this halt will be.

From my chair, the government’s bailout (still be referred to as only $700 billion) is focusing too much on bailing out the financial institutions, which isn’t going to help the economy or, as is becoming increasingly obvious, the average American family.  People can’t get loans, jobs are being lost, and there is a tremendous amount of fear about what is going to come next.  The Mortgage Bankers’ Association recently revealed that 4 million borrows are at least one payment behind and 500,000 are in the process of losing their home.  These are the people that should be benefiting from government intervention.  It’s not going to fix the banks or solve their problems, but it will certainly save homes and families while benefiting the economy as a whole.

Unfortunately, that’s a lot more work, and we already know how the government feels about work.  It’s much easier to sit back and help your cronies so you can keep your dead-wood-ass in office to continue bilking the American public of their hard earned money.

Ranter