If you were a regular reader of the Coltons Point Times or previous work by the editor you would be a lot richer than you are today. Since the '70's we have predicted the economic, stock market and housing fluctuations, trends and crashes with unusual accuracy from the oil manipulations of the '70's and 2007 and 2008 to the real estate mess in the early '80's and 2007, from the dot com meltdown of 2000 - 2002 to the interest spiral of the late '70's.
For years we have warned you of the conflict of interest of the "industry analysts" employed by Wall Street to influence stock prices. We listed the billions of dollars in fines paid for fraud and corruption in the financial and pharmaceutical industries and watched with awe as Congress passed the $700 billion bailout to save the same firms. Over and over we warned that there was nothing "free" about our free market system that is being manipulated by sources far more powerful than our government.
Wall Street and Madison Avenue, the financial and advertising centers of the universe, have joined forces to brainwash and spoon feed the American public with seeds of greed, obsession with materialism and disregard for laws and authority. Here we are today, a new president, a Democratic congress, and an inspired electorate yet the same architects of our current economic chaos are firmly in control of both the present and new administration.
Nearly a trillion dollars in bailouts have already been approved by Congress and our new president, a second multi-billion dollar bailout will be approved before Obama is even sworn in as president. House Speaker Pelosi is meeting today with the auto manufacturers and union leaders to decide on a second 25 billion dollar bridge loan. Barney Frank has promised just about everything to everyone while Pelosi is treating the Treasury as an endless pit of money and our new president may not even have a voice in what takes place.
For years we have warned you of the conflict of interest of the "industry analysts" employed by Wall Street to influence stock prices. We listed the billions of dollars in fines paid for fraud and corruption in the financial and pharmaceutical industries and watched with awe as Congress passed the $700 billion bailout to save the same firms. Over and over we warned that there was nothing "free" about our free market system that is being manipulated by sources far more powerful than our government.
Wall Street and Madison Avenue, the financial and advertising centers of the universe, have joined forces to brainwash and spoon feed the American public with seeds of greed, obsession with materialism and disregard for laws and authority. Here we are today, a new president, a Democratic congress, and an inspired electorate yet the same architects of our current economic chaos are firmly in control of both the present and new administration.
Nearly a trillion dollars in bailouts have already been approved by Congress and our new president, a second multi-billion dollar bailout will be approved before Obama is even sworn in as president. House Speaker Pelosi is meeting today with the auto manufacturers and union leaders to decide on a second 25 billion dollar bridge loan. Barney Frank has promised just about everything to everyone while Pelosi is treating the Treasury as an endless pit of money and our new president may not even have a voice in what takes place.
Make no mistake, Madison Avenue convinced us we must have everything and Wall Street served it up through the maze of financial tricks of the trade and no one bothered to ask do we really need all this stuff. No one bothered to wonder why car companies were making more money off repairing your new car than selling it as "planned obsolescence", in other words making cars that would break down, became a bigger profit center.
Our FDA has turned its head to the proliferation of new drugs from an industry used to charging about 10 to 20 times the fair market value for prescriptions. Tens of billions in fines have been paid by the same pharmaceutical firms for fraud, price fixing, and bribes to doctors and hospitals. Yet Congress wants to expand our already broken and highly corrupt health industry to provide unnecessary medical care and drugs to everyone.
Many consumer product companies are in serious trouble because people did the only thing they could to survive the financial disaster, they stopped wasting money and started saving what little they had left. That is a very good thing but will extend a recession for those interested in bailing out Wall Street. Our media became dependent on advertising dollars that no longer exist so watch for television, radio and cable stations and networks dependent on advertising to start going under.
Our internet firms like Yahoo, Google, E Bay and millions of small businesses on the net will see their value collapse even more as the ad money dries up and as people realize that internet advertising really is the most over-valued method of reaching people with an undiluted message. Credit card fraud, cell phone fraud and identity theft flourish as a result of the internet and the failure of anyone to protect the consumer from such predators. Automated banking will be the next victim of the internet.
Entertainment companies including the record industry are operating with a broken business model and have had to resort to corruption to make money. The five largest record companies in America have paid tens of millions of dollars in fines recently for bribing radio stations to play records and now over 600 radio stations are under investigation for corruption. The record industry is beyond fixing and must collapse.
Many of the very industries our Congress is saving have no business in a free market economy where innovation, quality, service and competition are supposed to be the dominant attributes. Right now we reward fraud, corruption, greed and unfair business practices. How long is the American public going to continue to support the industries with their money and support their protectors (Congress) with their votes? The day of reckoning is at hand.
1 comment:
You shouldn't be so tough on Internet advertising: this blog you spread your message on is given to you for free as a result of it. Just several years ago you would have had to pay to host an expensive server and rent a domain name to get your message out. Not to mention that Google has taken on the likes of Microsoft with their free suite of Google Doc publishing tools. Yeah, they even let you store your created documents on their servers also for free. And if you choose you can do all this in complete anonymity. Google and Internet advertising, albeit annoying, has changed the world for the better.
Automated banking? Are you talking Internet banking? Just think about all those dummies recently standing in line to get their money out of failed banks. The fools should have been sitting at home moving their dough to safer institutions with their mouse and a few clicks.
The biggest injustice we face hasn't changed, it's the use of media companies to further political agendas. At least the Internet is helping anyone who chooses to do so to harpoon those institutions. Don't like what others say? Start a newspaper and put it in everyone's mailbox. The County Times should come to mind.
Finally, some food for thought. No better tool has ever existed to expose corruption and find the truth than the Internet. Everything is archived and searchable. You've got the library of the world right at your desk 24/7. Just imagine how it would have changed your life had it been there in your youth.
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