Write a blog, lose your bank account?

Barack Obama gives great speeches. I agree with most of what he says, often passionately. He's able to inspire a damaged nation to believe in itself again. He hasn't been in office for long enough for all that he talks about to take place. That said, some consistent themes remain:

The government and industry often appear to have more power over the president than vice versa -- a president's own advisors are often more powerful than the president himself, a concept written about by both Plato and Strauss.

Barack Obama is but one man presiding over a government full of folks trying to take him down.

The financial elite are above the law.

Some consistent problems remain unaddressed:

Wall Street engineered the housing & debt bubble, bribed and blackmailed politicians and secured bailouts worth more than the net worth of the companies receiving the bailouts, while everyone else who can't pay their bills goes bankrupt or out of business.

Banks are being further bought up by international organized crime and the Carlyle Group

Most people were against bailing out banks and now most people are against bailing out homeowners. Now there appears to be momentum toward nationalizing banks.

"The plan proposed in Washington would effectively force the troubled US banks into receivership and put them under government control, recapitalise them with taxpayers' funds and then sell them off to private investors, wiping out the existing shareholders' equity. The President said of the US banking system last week: "I think what you can say is I will not allow our financial system to collapse. And we are going to do whatever is required to get credit flowing again, so companies and consumers can do their business and we can get this economy back on track.""

Maybe a new US Department of Banking would be created and then the work of the department would be outsourced to new companies formed by the currently out-of-work hedge-fund workers who helped get us into this mess. I thought I was kidding, but the possibilities aren't so far off.

I really want to like the idea of bank nationalization. I've read convincing arguments but I can't help but note that the government outsources everything and oversees nothing. We end up overpaying for sweetheart deals that don't have a good record of accomplishing what was originally intended. Do you really want your money supply to be centralized? We're already headed toward a future of profile-aware everything -- for instance, picture entering an airport and a machine stopping you from proceeding -- "Please pay $44.23 to pay your Blockbuster fee before proceeding. Say YES to confirm deduction from your US National account." What's to stop the next Bush-style administration from shutting down your bank account or internet access based on critical comments you make on the web? The ultimate goal of some industrialists is to have all of our information and money accessible by a chip embedded in a card we carry (ie, passport?) or directly on our person. Some might say this is alarmist, but what was called alarmist 10 years ago is accepted as common today. 

This isn't what is being suggested now, is it. What is being suggested now sounds like more bailouts with a vague notion of temporary government ownership.

Is this a good idea? Bad idea?

Citigroup's Clever Plan To Screw Taxpayers Again

I can't stand this guy or TV station, but, he's right:

Diebold 'offices' listed in yellow pages are mostly Wal-Marts

Obama administration backs Bush, tries to kill 'lost' White House emails lawsuit

Bush's fraternity stole Geronimo?

"The heirs of Apache chieftain Geronimo are suing Skull & Bones, Yale's oldest secret society, for the return of the old warrior's skull, the Yale Daily News reports.

Geronimo died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Okla., but the suit alleges that members of the society, whose membership rolls include George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, John Kerry, and William F. Buckley, exhumed the remains around 1918 and placed them in the society's tomb. The paper says rumors have long suggested that Prescott Bush, father of the 41st president, was among the group allegedly involved." USA Today

Old Quotes:

"I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years for less evidence for conspiracy with less evidence than is available against Ollie North and CIA people. . . . I personally was involved in a deep-cover case that went to the top of the drug world in three countries. The CIA killed it."

Former DEA Agent Michael Levine

CNBC-TV, October 8, 1996

Your Job
What role do you want the government to play with banks?