Web Letters: Obama's New Monopoly Set

Mr. Greider wants to see populism. I have your peaceful populism right here.

Send a free pre-written fax to Sen. Minority leader Mitch McConnell telling him to stop every Republican filibuster, get the Employee Free Choice act enacted into law, along with single-payer universal health care, a fix for the Medicare Prescription drug benefit, a $10-an-hour minimum wage, an end to the Iraq war, and until that happens you will boycott some Republican campaign contributors.

You can go to online and send Mitch McConnell a free prewritten fax. This website appears completely noncommercially. I don't sell anything there.

We have to hit the friends of the GOP in their wallets. Oh, and if you only send your fax, this will fail. You need to get friends to send the fax and have their friends send the free fax and so on.

Dennis Baer

Bethpage, NY

Aren't we all tired of the games that have been played in Washington and those that are taking place in the rest of the world. The elite have gone far enough. The people "get it." This game and the bailouts and all the money that has been thrown at financiers and investors could have been put to much better use by the people who are actually going to pay for this "game." The middle class, if not already gone under, is in the throes of distress. The government threw us $1,000. What did they think we were going to do with so little? Well, we did the same thing that the financial institutions did, we re-capitalized. If the amount was $100,000 to all citizens over 18, other than those in prison, etc. we could have re-capitalized the banks ourselves. Paid off credit-card debt, car loans, medical bills and at least made a dent in our mortgages or held off foreclosure. This would free up a large amount of money for us to spend. If we are going to foot the bill, then we should benefit. I wouldn't buy a car for my neighbor to drive, and these are very rich neighbors.

Marsha Cameron

Cary, NC

I wish I could add a bit of intellectual trivia to the article but everything has been covered well. I listened to our hero today at his Q&A session, which made the article all that much more cogent. A lot of trite stuff about education and about Wall Street being essentially good. Are we being had while they ship our jobs to China?

James L Pinette

Caribou, ME

On Monday Secretary Geithner was defending the multiple rounds of bailout in excess of $160 billion to save AIG from collapsing. On Tuesday Mr. Geithner was demanding from Congress the authority to take over companies like AIG. On Tuesday night his boss was praising Geithner for the quality of the job that Brownie--sorry, I meant the treasury secretary--delivered.

We have been promised the change, but we didn't hope for a kind that would make neck-breaking shifts in direction every single day.

Isn't it ironic that we always wanted our presidents to lead by a personal example until now. This time we really hoped that the president who promised us improvements would demand that others change. We wanted him to change the climate in Washington, DC, not himself personally.

What really stunned us was $1 trillion gift for the Wall Street bankers. That's something what even the Bush Administration hesitated to do and opted to avoid.

They let Mr. Obama get a job done for them and in process they let him bury the Democratic Party too.

The GOP was a party of the fiscal responsibility till they got the power. The Democrats were a party of change till they got the power too.

Our tragedy is that there is no responsibilty and no accountability anymore, regardless of what party is in power and regardless of the catastrophic policies they implement, like starting an unnecessary war or exporting the domestic manufacturing overseas or looting trillions of dollars from 401(k) funds. The same culprits will get another chance to launch another war, to bury another domestic industry or to spend another triillion dollars.

Isn't it ironic that we are helping the Afghans get a better government when we need more competent and less corrupted government too?

Here is a description. A government is acting irresponsibly, for close family members and friends are getting unrestricted access and influencing the decision-making process, a substandard leadership has deeply harmed domestic industries, the national infrastructure is crumbling because the leaders are focused on aiding campaign donors, governmental money is being transferred into private pockets without any control or a paper trail, the governmental coffers have been emptied as if there is no tomorrow, no politician feels obliged to honor campaign promises, people's retirement funds and life savings are disappearing overnight, no official is held responsible for reckless decisions, the people are losing the trust in the government, elected officials care more about clan loyalty than about the national interests, the government is running chronic budget and trade deficits, the country is increasingly dependent on the foreign imports for own survival...

Who could tell us with 100 percent certainty what country is being described here: the USA or Afghanistan?

Isn't it tragic that instead of Afghanistan getting more like us, we are becoming more and more like them?

Maybe we should withdraw from Afghanistan before it's too late.

Let's focus on our own faults and deficiencies first. As soon as we eliminate a majority of them, we can continue helping other nations.

Kenan Porobic

Charlotte, NC

Mr. Greider has a genius for explaining complicated financial schemes in simple terms. Even the editor of the private equity trade publication PEHub provided his readers--the so-called Masters of the Universe--with a link to Greider's article.

Well, chances are that the Masters would gladly play Geitner's "No Loss Monopoly": there is no other game out there right now to make an easy billion or two.

Meanwhile the rest of Americans, who will subsidize this game for the Masters, might want to dust off their old Monopoly boxes. The play money contained in those is the closest to an "easy buck" they'll see for a long, long time...

Andrei Vorobiev

Lexington, KY

So let me get this right. The global financial crisis has been blamed on a combination of gambling, easy credit and lack of regulation, so the solution is gambling, easy credit and a lack of regulation? After all, this is the new game that Geithner and Obama have come up. Let’s loan a bunch of money to some very rich people so that they can buy groups of toxic assets in the hope that the assets will rise in value. Oh, I forgot to add that at this government-run casino, the players can’t lose because the house is giving them all of their gambling money and insuring the losers against their losses (can anyone say AIG?). I guess it is too hard or too socialist to just take over the banks we now own and force them to lend and sell their devalued assets; instead, let’s just double down since no one who is paying the bill understands the game or its rules. When are we going to stop playing the same game over and over again?

Robert Samuels

Santa Barbara, CA

Geithner's new proposal "to save the financial system" is so transparently outrageous in its trying to save the ultra-rich who own trillions in toxic investments, that it has the potential to provide Obama with new political freedom, if only progressives take advantage of the opportunity.

The left should welcome Geithner's proposal as a once-in-a-lifetime teaching moment about the billionaires who wag the USA dog, including their bribed demoblican politicians, journalists and economists.

But this requires that the left stops distracting the public with complaints about "Wall Street," "the banks," "the greedy bankers," etc., since the billions that Geithner wants now are not for the failed banks, they are meant to save the ultra- rich !

Demoblicans have been blackmailing Americans by crying wolf about "saving the financial system" almost without any credible opposition by the left (since opposing "saving the financial system" creates panic even in angry taxpayers).

But Demoblicans won't be able to blackmail anybody anymore if they are compelled to cry wolf about "saving the billionaires."

Therefore, patriotic economy experts should finally make the effort to document and publicize non-stop the names of the billionaires whom the Demoblicans are trying to save with our taxpayer money.

Even publicizing crude macro-economic data about how many trillions in toxic assets are in the hands of, say, the richest 0.1 percent and how many of those trillions the tax payers will "save" for the billionaires if the latest Geithner plan is accepted would be devastating for Demoblicans and the billionaires, since it would make it impossible for the Demoblicans to continue saying that their bailout efforts are meant to benefit the public.

Only once the citizenry will start saying that it does not want to buy the toxic assets of the richest 0.1 percent, etc., will it become feasible for Obama to go against the billionaires, since at that point having him taken out by organized crime or by one of the too many mercenary armies of the USA will not make sense anymore for the billionaires.

Marc Dunord

Chicago, IL