Have A Little Drink On Me

Our youngest son recently took a new job in Des Moines, Iowa, so Corky and I loaded the motor home with several tons of “stuff” from his Fargo home and used $3.79 gas taking it down to his new one. Des Moines is a nice clean city, looks prosperous from the interstates, and offers many amenities.

We took a little tour of Iowa’s capital, including an area where there is a rather large gated community complete with its own perimeter guards and guard shack. It suddenly struck me that perhaps we are returning to the feudal estates of 1,000 years ago where the lord and master ruled his fiefdom with an iron hand, dispensing food and justice to those pissants who did his scut and farm work for him, allowing only those vassals who pledged loyalty to him in protecting his walled estate to share in his largesse. Only friends were allowed through his guarded gate.

Sure, we have had feudal lands and castles in the United States since some of our ancestors hit Plymouth Rock, and the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and J.P. Morgans have ruled their own kingdoms with the help of our government and its subserviant officials.

With what has been happening to our economy and our relationships with foreign governments, I’m afraid our children and grandchildren will be living in a different country because it is being led by lords of the corporations who dominant the president and the Congress who are supposed to be governing us.

North Dakota’s Virtuous Senator And The Scandalous Countrywide Financial Deals

What really saddens me--and supports my “feudal” system contention--is today’s story in the Washington Post and the Fargo Forum about how Countrywide Financial, the main player in our subprime mortgage scandal, sucked up to and “bought” lawmakers in both parties to further its assault on truth-in-lending practices.

We all have heard of Angelo Mozilo, the greedy CEO of Countrywide, who made hundreds of millions of dollars from devising and supervising shady and sometimes fraudulent mortgage deals. It seems that North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad, a corporate vassal with the spectacled, squeeeeky clean image of the good banker in High Noon, has covered himself with slime by calling on Angelo to land him a hot mortgage deal to cover a $1.07 million loan on a Delaware beach house. Conrad was quoted as saying he saw nothing wrong with directly calling Mozilo.

Let’s see if I have this straight. Conrad at the time was the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee and an important member of the Finance Committee (this “hot” deal took place in 2004 before the Democrats took the Senate in 2006), committees that have much to say about how the United States financial institutions “service” the people. So a high mucky-muck on the committee that assists in regulating banking (Conrad) calls the CEO of the country’s largest mortgage lender--in person--and says in Dickensian tones, “Please sir, may I have a good mortgage?” It doesn’t meet any kind of smell test.

And Conrad claims he “received no special deals.” But an e-mail has surfaced from Mozilo to a subordinate: “Take off one point. Make an exception due to the fact that the borrower is a senator.” What’s a point worth on a million-dollar loan? $10,000 a year, some say. Joe Sixpack could have used that. Would it be too much to assume that Conrad’s million-dollar beach-house is in a walled, gated community?

Senator Conrad, there is something wrong with a person using a powerful position to get a point off from a company that is screwing his constituents out of hard-earned cash in sleazy, small-print mortgages.

Conrad says, “I was never told I was given preferential treatment. I didn’t ask for it, didn’t seek it, and as far as I know, I didn’t get it.” Methinks Kent protests too much. Why call Mozilo if you weren’t “seeking/asking” for preferential treatment? You called so you could get a name of a Countrywide broker in Delaware? How dumb do you think we are?

At least one aspect of Congress is bipartisan: congressmen seeking hot deals directly from the ones who bribe them. Senator Chris Dodds, present chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, says, “When my wife and I refinanced our loans in 2003....just like millions of Americans we shopped around and received competitive rates.” Yes, and got a hot deal from Countrywide Financial. Conrad says he was “baffled” by Mozilo’s e-mail instructing the loan officer to “take off a point.” You betcha, Kent was shocked out of his gourd when he heard about it.

Transferring Money To U.S. Oil Companies And Middle Eastern Potentates

When the oil company executives were called before their friends in Congress to go through the semi-annual charade about high fuel costs, it seemed to me that they did not even bother to play the game for us commoners. They were arrogant and condescending and paid no attention to their hired hands in Congress. They have assumed the mantle of the divine right of kings or of oil executives who have received $400 million retirement programs, such as the retired chairman of ExxonMobil.

There is no doubt that the United States has now seen the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class in its history. Ronald Reagan’s “trickle-down” tax programs have actually “tinkled-down” onto the piss ants, drowning them in the waste floating the yachts of the super-rich.

But at the same time we are seeing the greatest transfer of wealth to the oil-rich Middle East from the United States, Europe, and Asia for oil that costs a dime a barrel to pump out of the ground and sells to manipulators and speculators for about $135 a barrel.

Symbolic of this is the world’s most expensive cocktail now being sold in the most expensive hotel in Dubai, a country which is an ever-increasing pile of sand sitting on an almost depleted pool of oil. But it has prepared itself for the next stage of the world’s economy by investing in projects which are the envy of the governing and corporate elite.

Rich patrons in the most expensive vacation land in the world can now order a glass of 55-year-old Macallan single-malt Scotch with bitters poured over ice cubes made from water percolating near the Macallan distillery in Scotland. Served in an 18-carat gold Baccarat tumbler, the drink will set you back a record $7,440. A customer bought two a couple of nights after they were introduced.

Our oil money will help Dubai become the playground of the world for the rich. They can buy vacation homes priced in the millions on islands dredged up from the ocean floor. Dubai will open the world’s tallest building in 2009, has already the world’s tallest all-suite hotel, and will open the world’s largest shopping mall this August. Well, Lurch did tell us to go shopping to sacrifice for the war after 9/11. The temperature may reach 130 degrees in the Dubai desert but it has built the first indoor ski slope.

Hedge Fund Managers At $2.7 Billion, One Foreclosure Out Of A Total Of 483 Homes In The Cities

The ever-widening income gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is metastasizing to Europe and Asia. India now has its gated communities with homes and condo towers filled with flat screen TVs, blissful air conditioners, and elevators. These islands of wealth are staffed with cooks, chauffeurs, and maids from the surrounding landfills, shanty towns, and corrugated iron-roofed shacks.

A quarter of all Indians still live in poverty on $1 a day while a quarter of city residents live on only 50 cents a day.

Nearly one-half of all Indian children never have enough to eat and are considered to be clinically malnourished.

But the computer industries and other technologically-based businesses, including medicine, have created 100,000 Indian millionaires in just a few years. Those with skills have done well, but those without live in feudal times.

I’m reading David McCullough’s 1,000-page tome on Harry Truman. In the strikes that occurred after World War II, 15,000 elevator operators in New York City paralyzed the finance and retail business centers of the city. Workers could not walk up 50 flights to their jobs. I wonder if there is an elevator in the country still operated by a “Floor, please” operator. It illustrates how quickly opportunities change in a developing society.

Creating A New Business Out Of Disaster

Because of the number of foreclosures in the last year and the attempt by owners to use storage facilities to store furniture and personal items after eviction, a new business is sweeping the country. We now have so many storage companies auctioning off the items stored in units where rent has been unpaid that entrepreneurs bid on what is in storage units without knowing the contents.

An article in the May 11 New York Times outlined the common practices of auction houses. People bid on the items although they are often prevented from opening boxes to see what is in them. There are 51,000 storage facilities nationwide so the auction business is booming. In larger cities as many as 50 units in a facility may be auctioned off in a day due to local foreclosures. In some cases managers have discovered foreclosed and evicted homeowners and their families actually living in storage units.

A recent book by Cullen Murphy titled “Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America” describes Rome as being governed by elites “who ruled as if the common good coincided with their private interest.” Murphy says Rome failed because the governing elite did not improve life for the majority. Are we going down the same rocky road?