"My fellow Americans;
Four years ago, on this day in 2008, Bear Stearns stood on the edge of collapse. We did not know this, of course, as other than their two hedge funds' failure their internal condition was hidden -- by the company and by the regulators who were charged with keeping our financial system safe.
...Today, we're not in much better shape.
We have failed to address the first, and only, reason we find ourselves mired in an economic situation where we cannot grow and we cannot prosper.
Where The Senate has failed to pass a budget for nearly three years.
Where The House has proved unable to put forward a set of spending and revenue bills that balance.
The reason for our economic malaise, for the near-collapse in our economy in 2008 and the inability to exit the job recession of the last four years is that those who you vote for are incapable of telling you the truth.
The truth of a nation's financial situation is no different than that of your household.
You cannot spend more than you earn in your household for a long period of time.
...It is a time-honored practice in America for politicians to make promises they cannot keep.
...We promise that you will have medical care in retirement, but we never funded that program.
We promise that you have a "lock box" in Social Security, but then we raid it to make the budget deficit look smaller.
...Our medical system has increased in cost at a compounded 8% rate for the last 30 years.
In 1980 the Federal Government spent $53 billion on all medical programs combined.
Last year it spent over $800 billion.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have taken the "gold-standard" position that nobody over the age of 50 will see their Medicare tampered with, as they know that you, the voter, will fire them if they tell you the truth.
The truth is that Medicare cannot be fixed and neither can Medicaid, standing alone.
Instead we must repair the medical system itself.
...The practices of cost-shifting, where what you pay for a medical procedure, drug or device is set based only on how you pay for it or where you live, all exempted from laws that make this conduct illegal in other lines of business, must end.
These changes must take place now...
If they do not our medical costs will double in another six years, and we do not have the money to pay that cost.
The result of inaction today, as a matter of mathematical certainty, will be rationing of medical care and collapse of these programs.
The same rot that has infested our medical system must be excised from the rest of our Federal Budget.
...we are borrowing more than one third of every dollar the federal government spends.
This will double the national debt in less than a decade -- again.
We have added more than 50% to our federal debt in three years, and we cannot continue on this path.
Eventually, foreign and domestic creditors who have lent the government that money will go on strike, dramatically raising the cost of financing.
...There are people on the right side of the aisle who say that we have to "grow the economy" to get out of the current fiscal mess.
They're lying.
...The economic bubble in Internet stocks in the 1990s and the housing bubble of the 2000s were both caused by outrageously-fraudulent acts -- first through making of knowingly-false statements about exponential growth of the Internet that could not possibly be true for more than a couple of years, and then again through the making of "fog-a-mirror" loans that were packaged up and sold as "solid AAA credits" through the financial system.
Both bubbles were driven by knowing lies.
The tax system at the corporate and personal level favors debt instead of equity, leverage over thrift and industry.
This must end.
...none of the people on the right side of the aisle -- or the left -- are actually proposing to cut off that fraudulent emission of credit nor are they proposing a balanced budget...
...no matter how much money we shovel into Washington it will spend every penny and then continue to spend more, even though Congress doesn't have it.
There can be no fiscal discipline nor a resolution to this problem until the Congress stops spending money that it has not been able to first tax from someone.
...we temporarily made possible the appearance of prosperity through excessive borrowing at all levels of the economy -- federal, state, local and personal.
But those days have now come to an end and we must deal with what our fiscal and employment situation is on-balance, not what we would like it to be.
...Companies can either construct their goods and provide their services with labor and materials from the United States, employing Americans, or they can cover the social spending necessitated by exploiting our markets with slave labor and environmental destruction abroad through tariffs imposed on their activity.
The choice is theirs, but this mandate must be ours, without fear or favor.
...we must both remove the non-dischargable status of student loan debt and in fact remove all federal subsidy and support of higher education.
30 years of interference has proved that all of the "benefit" accrues to university bloat rather than educational outcome with costs increasing at more than three times the rate of inflation.
In 1980 you could flip pizzas to put yourself through college; today that is impossible.
This is not due to market forces; rather, it is due to intentional government interference that must be withdrawn.
...if our laws are just then they must be enforced evenly against every entity, irrespective of their size or alleged "importance" to the nation.
The CEO and other corporate officers and board members must be held to account through personal liability when they either are aware of such violations of the law or willfully avert their eyes.
Sarbanes-Oxley allegedly addressed this failing in the white-collar world yet not one financial executive has been charged under this law.
...Capitalism is the premise that one succeeds or fails through the wisdom of one's investment, predicated on capital formation (that is, the investment of economic surplus into various economic activities.)
While the vestiges of this system remain in America, what has replaced it is a feudalistic system of scams, frauds, allegedly "lent" funds that do not in fact exist and bribery of various forms, both legal and not.
Later this year America will go to the polls to select a President and all 435 members of The House, along with one third of The Senate.
A vote for those candidates who are currently in office is a vote to continue the policies of theft, fraud and scam.
Neither major political party has shown any interest in reform or putting a stop to the scams, nor has either been willing to tell the truth.
...That which we refuse to admit to yet which is nonetheless true remains our responsibility.
...we have the choice to either change course or drive straight toward certain government and economic ruin.
...We can either focus on the political minutia such as abortion and gay marriage, or we can demand and vote only for candidates that will stop the deficit spending, put a final and complete end to the offshoring of our labor through the exploitation of the environment and slavery in foreign nations, and imprison the fraudsters in our financial system without regard to who they are, restoring the rule of law.
The choice is yours America, and so are the consequences."
Karl
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