Reply #5: Robert needs to look in the mirror for the origins of our current crisis..

[ddeclue]

not that he's responsible for Wall Street's dirty dealing but..

If we still had good jobs in this country then people wouldn't need adjustable rate mortgages, balloon loans, nothing down loans, etc. in order to buy a home because they could save up a proper down payment.

The problems with our economy are:

1) Free trade agreements instead of FAIR trade agreements which eviscerate all the gains of the original progressive era over the gilded era robber barons: ending slave labor, prison labor, child labor, a minimum wage, collective bargaining, health and safety regulations, consumer regulations, environmental regulations, labor laws to protect against over work and exploitation.

2) A lack of regulation and oversight which has allow Wall Street and corporate CEO's to pervert their book keeping processes and game the system to insure their own bonuses rather than the long term viability of their companies.

3) A failure to prevent mergers which have created these companies which are "too big to fail" and which destroy capitalist competition through monopoly power and which make the merged companies too powerful to regulate and which leave consumers and workers no options and no bargaining power.

4) A dangerous dependence on foreign oil which is bankrupting our country and destroying the environment.

5) A failed corporatist health care policy which leaves 47 million without healthcare access and overburdens employers. Single payer government run health care as they have in the rest of the industrialized world would eliminate this burden from the companies and employees alike and would cost less and provide better service by cutting out the profit motive middleman.

6) A falled education policy which leaves far too many Americans without viable job skills or job opportunities. We should have lifetime free education for all Americans to get a oollege education or learn a new job skill - not merely when we become unemployed but rather while we are still working so we will be prepared to switch over when our next job fails.

7) A failed foreign policy which is bankrupting the country by using military force instead of diplomacy. Iraq costs $10 billion per month - at this rate we could bail out the big 3 automakers in 10 weeks worth of war expenses.

8) A failure to provide a living wage which traps people in poverty without any hope of a better job, a house of their own or medical care.

Doug D.