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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >Your guess is as good as anyone's. I hope you are right because I  
> >think more people will be happy without the credit industry, and happy  
> >people are more law-abiding and simply more pleasant to be around.  
> >But, there is huge built-in resistance to such change. The wealthy--a  
> >much larger group than is generally acknowledged--will exert all their  
> >political power to maintain the present system, because their wealth  
> >is connected to it, often dependent upon it.
> 

Gene, I'm glad you brought that up.  The 'wealthy' have already exerted their 
influence and the legislators they own have responded ... and boy how they 
have responded!  To try to maintain the pseudo-wealth of idle investments and 
house flipping, they have thrown everything they have at it.  Interbank 
interest 
rates at zero (or very near it), eight trillion dollars of give aways and 
bail outs, etc. you know the news.

And yet the ship is sinking just as fast as ever.  What I mean to say is the 
just because there are a lot of pseudo-wealthy, and all of them can vote, it 
doesn't mean they can change reality.

Remember that we heard this same argument about house "values" (prices).  So 
much of the economy depended on people being able to ATM money out of their 
houses that the government, fearing being voted out of office, would not 
allow 
home prices to drop.   They dropped none the less.

All the geezers had their hopes of retirement in mortgage backed funds and so 
the govenment was not going to let the stock market lose nearly 40% of its 
value in a year because those vote-happy geezers might vote them out of 
office.  
The market fell anyway.

Very similar to this is the argument that someone's view of the trend or 
predictions are somehow unfair to some population or the other.  After all, 
if  we 
don't keep GM going, look at all the working stiffs depending on the status 
quo and how they will suffer.  So we just HAVE to keep GM going.  But then 
reality sets in and no one buys the cars and all the king's horses and all 
the 
king's men can't put GM back together again.

Politics is powerful, but reality trumps it every time.


James