Trust Me, They Can Shoot

I’ve been mulling over what to write about for days. The obvious peril is the foreclosure fiasco -- “fraudclosures”. I’m not sure I can wrap my head around it. It’s huge. I can’t imagine a bigger issue than not being able to figure out who owns what in a country based on private property rights. I read an article where the merits of starting over -- if you posses it you own it -- was actually being considered. It would be the end of the world as we know it.

Professor Krugman’s words keep coming back to me. “America has turned Japanese.” In case you haven’t kept up with this line of reasoning, you can see what is in store for us (if we can’t find the political will to do otherwise) in this recent article from The New York Times.

The Great Deflation -- Japan Goes From Dynamic to Disheartened

”First, he was forced to reduce trips abroad and then eliminate them. Then he traded the Mercedes for a cheaper domestic model. Last year, he sold his condo — for a third of what he paid for it, and for less than what he still owed on the mortgage he took out 17 years ago.”

But I believe I found the words to unlock it all in (of all things) a movie review my brother sent me from Vanity Fair. The movie being reviewed -- “Inside Job” -- is appropriate material, but the words in the review itself are what set me off.

”The sticking point has been what to do about it. Although we might feel like we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, the complexity of the crime confounds our ability to decide on a remedy. Meanwhile, the financial industry’s well-paid, well-resourced, and well-connected advocates have swooped in and re-defined the debate. In fact, they haven’t even had to re-define it. They just want to give us a headache so we’ll move on and think about something else.”

It boiled down to this for me. This is where I fear the wheels are going to come off. One day, even the relatively smart rednecks are going to come to the conclusion that they can’t outsmart these crooks. If they can’t outsmart them, they’ll decide to just shoot them. And trust me, they can shoot.

We have an election in less than two weeks. Vote. While you still can.

Don Brown
October 20, 2010