How Many Capitalists Does It Take?

Obama, the Democrats, and the Republicans have the entire idea of how a capitalist economy works backward. The mortgage melt-down was because government promoted unethical and unhealthy capitalist processes.

Q: How many people does it take to "stimulate" the economy?

A: Only as many capitalists as have the money to do it.

I ask and answer this question, because of several things that have come to the attention of the public:

• 200+ economists publicly declared the President is wrong;
• President Obama goads legislators on both sides of the isle to forget that wealth is created by capital investments, and to forget that
• [A]spending money without
• [B] thinking about where it is going,
• [C] where it is coming from,
• [D] how long this spending spree will take to work,
• [E] how long it will take to pay itself off, or even
• [F] whether our grandchildren will be illegally indentured servants to the spending whimsies of Obama and the 111th United States Congress--is not capitalism;
• In order to spend more money on projects than would be necessary under a fair-bidding policy, President Obama signed an Executive Order that stating that "it is the policy of the Federal Government to encourage executive agencies to consider requiring the use of project labor agreements in connection with large-scale construction projects in order to promote economy and efficiency in Federal procurement," where "project labor agreements" mean the exclusive use of union labor, as described elsewhere in the Order. A "large-scale" project is one over $25 million;
• The spending of public monies by Wall Street capitalists and others on projects that put people to work is strictly forbidden, as in the example of the corporate jets that are no longer acceptable to purchase or use, and the junkets that are no longer acceptable that would have put hundreds of hotel and restaurant workers to work, which puts hotel and restaurant suppliers to work, which puts the manufacturers to the suppliers to work, which puts farmers, textile workers, commercial laundries, garbage removal companies, cab drivers, truck drivers, and gasoline suppliers, and others to work.

In other words, Obama and the Democrats and the Republicans who agree we must spend, have the entire idea of how a capitalist economy works backward. The mortgage melt-down was not because of capitalism; it was because government promoted unethical and unhealthy capitalist processes.

It has been argued by many that if the government wants to put people to work and create or save jobs, it should give the money directly to those who will spend it immediately. Brookings senior fellow in governance studies Pietro Nivola suggested that Congress "proceed in two tranches. The first would pump money directly into the hands of consumers and businesses through a combination of judicious tax relief and quick-hitting expenditures (including, as one example, ramping up military equipment procurement and recruitment of personnel). Subsequent legislation could take up the long-term infrastructure spending and more exotic projects..."

But it would seem President Obama would rather injudiciously scold Congress for their attempt at being responsible with the people's money. "I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis," he said.

Would these be the theories of Congressman Barney Frank, who encouraged the sub-prime lending that got us into this crisis? "These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—" said Frank, "are not facing any kind of financial crisis." Frank was (and remains) the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Would these be the theories of President Bush who as early as 2003 sent out the distress calls that the mortage crisis was on the way? Would these be the theories--[1][2][3]--never listened to, that statistically demonstrated how government spending, when used as stimulus, never works?

No. Instead, the President said, "Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the essential. Let’s show people all over our country who are looking for leadership in this difficult time that we are equal to the task."

What he means is that what is "essential" is the profligate spending that Vice President Joe Biden publicly declared had only a 70% chance of success. "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong," Biden said.

"Some critics, said the President, contend the bill 'is full of pet projects. When was the last time that we saw a bill of this magnitude move out with no earmarks in it? Not one.'
"Ratcheting up the sarcasm, the president said: 'So then you get the argument, "well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill." What do you think a stimulus is?'
"'That's the whole point,' he said, as the audience hooted and applauded."

From Wall Street to Main Street, every business owner and capitalist knows you don't throw money at debt hoping for a 70% success rate at getting out of debt.

The Democrats and Republicans both should leave it to the free market to solve the problems. Their success will come faster than anything government can do, but 21st century government doesn't want to ever have to admit that capitalism is better than socialism. Biden warned that the consequences of failing were too great for the country, to allow it to allow politics to prevent action.

What Washington can't see is how greatly they have prevented the free market from acting, by promising free money that generations of Americans will discover is not free at all.

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Creeping Jihad at Harvard & VA; Your Town Next?

Lord Ahmed

is a repugnant individual in association, character and morality who has threatened jihad on the House of Lords

A Member of Congress announces she is inviting Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders to come to Washington to meet with members of Congress and discuss his documentary film “Fitna.”

When Congressman Abdullah hears about this, he threatens the Member and the entire Congress that, unless Mr. Wilders’ visit is cancelled, he will mobilize 10,000 Muslims to prevent the visit from taking place.

As a result, the visit is cancelled and Congressman Abdullah praises Allah for delivering a victory to the Muslim community. "The Pakistani Press is jubliant, and [ ] is praising Allah for delivering ‘a victory for the Muslim community’."

Of course, this couldn’t possibly happen in the United States, right?

Read the commentary, roll the clock back thirty years, and ask yourself how many Brits do you think would have believed it could happen in Great Britain today? What was unthinkable in Great Britain thirty years ago is reality today. This is “cultural jihad” at work.

"Lord Ahmed is a repugnant individual. Not only in appearance, but in association, character and morality. [H]e has threatened jihad on the House of Lords if their lordships should fail to meet his demands..." [emphasis added] Cranmer

Twenty years ago who would have believed that today Harvard would create “women only” gym hours to meet the demands of Muslims. Or a state legislature would allow an imam to open its session with a prayer that calls on “victory over those who disbelieve.” Or the Fairfax County (Virginia) police department dropping an anti-terrorism training program after complaints from Muslim police officers – one of whom was engaging in the various types of subversion the training program was intended to prevent.

For the British Parliament to abandon its right to free speech by knuckling under to the intimidation tactics by Lord Ahmed will only invite more – and bolder – tactics. To think that we in America can follow the path Great Britain has trod and not end up dealing with the same intimidation tactics is the worst form of wishful thinking.

Used with permission from
ACT for America
P.O. Box 6884 Virginia Beach, VA 23456
http://www.actforamerica.org/

Read this important report:

majicJack rips off consumers; leaves behind spywar...

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Capitalism, China, and the U.S.

Do Americans Understand the Concept of Capitalism?

Twenty years ago or so products from China started showing up on American shelves. Things like pot holders, and cheap little ceramic statues.

I'm old enough to remember when the same thing happened with Japanese items, but it was cheap transistor radios and other electronics, remarkable in that the Japanese industry would revolutionize the way electronics were designed, manufactured, and marketed. Look at the percentage of the electronics market they own in the U.S.--almost all of it. There are no TVs made in America, the last time I checked.

But it doesn't matter me that the Japanese have done so well. They are our political friends; we helped rebuild their nation after WWII.

But the revolution came to Japan first, not America. Americans refused to listen to W. Edwards Deming, widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, but laughed at--by Americans after the wa--because of American egotism: American manufacturing had proven itself during war-time production, and now it was king.

Japanese was not king, it barely existed. The Japanese were hurting economically, and being the smart people they are, they knew that quality goods would sell if they only manufactured them inexpensively enough. America laughed at those early Japanese products because we thought quality meant expensive, but we bought them because they worked--and because they were inexpensive.

As for the Chinese products America began to see two decades ago, I was incensed to see them in our stores, on our shelves, competing with products made in free nations. Anything that had a tag that said "Made in China" I put back, and bought more expensively--when there was a choice.

The world has changed. No longer can you just put back things "Made in China" because so much of what is for sale is made there. Thousands of dogs and cats died a year ago because of tainted food products; the year before that it was children's toys painted with lead. After the pet food scandal, the very same scandal erupted in China itself, with the tainting chemical being in infant formula.

The Chinese industrial revolution is filled with unethical practices, but with fear of the government: the man who owned the toy factory that used lead-based paint committed suicide because it was more honorable to him than being put to death by the Chinese government for his "mistake."

"You may remember when the world was divided between communism and capitalism, and when the Chinese were communists. The Chinese still call themselves communists, but now they’re also capitalists," writes Robert B. Reich, the twenty-second United States Secretary of Labor, serving under President Bill Clinton. http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0110-42.htm

But saying China is capitalist is like saying America is socialist--true, yet not true. The bigger truth is, we are becoming more like a socialist nation than the Pilgrims could have imagined; they gave up communism in the spring of 1623.

Gus Van Horn quoted The New Republic: "It's too bad for many reasons that, 'this nominally communist country now [only] seems more capitalist than Wall Street'" [italic added by Van Horn] He then added his own observation:

"The people [of China] have come to expect the fruits of capitalism (e.g., high wages and a good standard of living) while remaining ignorant of the nature of capitalism. True, they may blame the government when things turn sour, but this will likely be for the wrong reasons. Anyone who expects a government to be able to turn things around by any means other than simply protecting individual rights will be repeatedly disappointed.A blind rebellion is unlikely to result in China ending up free. Worse, capitalism will get the blame for the uneven and unsustainable growth pattern that has resulted from foolhardy attempts at central planning on both sides of the Pacific." [emphasis added] http://www.objectivismonline.net/

Unfortunately, what Van Horn forgets to say is that most Americans are ignorant of the nature and the source of capitalism.

"The gap between China’s rich and poor is turning into a chasm," writes Reich. "China’s innovators, investors, and captains of industry are richly rewarded. They live in luxury housing developments whose streets are lined with McMansions. The feed in fancy restaurants, and relax in five-star hotels and resorts. China’s poor live in a different world. Mao Tse Tung would turn in his grave.

"Capitalism has won hands down. The real dividing line is no longer economic. It’s political. And that divide is between democracy and authoritarianism. China is a capitalist economy with an authoritarian government." http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0110-42.htm

In the sense that the use of capital exists in China and that its users are allowed to profit, it may be called capitalist. But in the sense that politics is the dividing line, America is becoming more like a socialist nation every day.

"Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned," wrote Ayn Rand. http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html Private ownership means private decisions about the use of the property, and money is property because it was created by the minds and labor of those who earned it, not by the government that printed it.

But soon we are to see "the shared presumption that the way forward is always through moderation and compromise." http://www.aynrand.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=43221&em_id=46243.0 And we will see it in the way Americans handle the incoming administration of Barak Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress.

Rights, as in property rights, as in money being property, are not something to compromise on. Compromising on rights turns them into privileges that are "allowed" by the government only to the point that we as Citizens allow; or so we thought. The overwhelming majority of Americans told the Congress not to use our money to bail out Wall Street's economic mess in the mortgage industry. They failed to listen. We did not vote the bums out of office, we increased the majority of the greater of the two sets of bums, the set which is more dangerous because they don't even give lip service to the free market as do the Republicans.

In the November 4th vote, Americans "presumed the way forward" was to compromise on their rights. This demonstrates we, as a nation, no longer understand the nature of how capital is created.

"The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good', wrote Rand. "It is true that capitalism does[achieve the "common good"]—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice. What Is Capitalism? Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal 20

Americans voted in the most liberal legislator of our times, one who will not even acknowledge that associating with people who hate America and/or committed crimes against it is anything to own up to.

Clearly Americans do not understand the justice in capitalism, or we would not, year after year, treat our right to control our own property as a privilege granted by the government and as something we can allow to be compromised into obscurity.

See also: Obama's Continuing Socialism; Obama and the Fairness Doctrine; Al Gore and Coercion in the Free Market; No Justice in "Luck Egalitarianism"; Distribution of Labor, Capitalism, and Obama; Originalism and Obama; Artificial, Public-Financed, Non-Profiteering Indu...; Economic Freedom Needed in the U.S.

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Power Reserved to the People, Respectively

Eliminate Constitutional Clause and Give Power back to the People, Respectively

"The best way to limit the federal Leviathan is to have Congress and the presidency controlled by different parties," said Ilya Shapiro of the blog of the Cato Institute. http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/10/24/a-plea-for-divided-government/

Wrong. That statement of Shapiro's demonstrates the similarities between the so-called conservatives and the out-and-out liberals.

The best way to limit the federal Leviathian is to stick to the origins of the Constitution. That is called "originalism," or sometimes "original intent". Wikipedia explains it this way:

"In the context of United States constitutional interpretation, originalism is a family of theories central to all of which is the proposition that the Constitution has a fixed and knowable meaning, which was established at the time of its drafting."

This does not in any way prevent it from being applied to American law in any decade or any century. The original intent can--and ought--to be applied because that was the intent of those who wrote it. They provided us with the means to change their intentions, and that means was not to ignore their intentions. That means was not to place any meaning on their words that fit our purposes. That means was to either nullify by Amendment where necessary, or alter by legislation where allowed, the intention of their words.

The answer to the question of why we, in the 21st Century ought to follow the spirit of their words is because that spirit is the spirit of Americanism. We can keep the spirit but change the words that transfigure what they saw in the 18th C. into what we see in the 21st. To ignore their intent is "rule by men", not rule by law.

Original intent theory is interpretation of the Constitution consistent with what was meant by those who drafted and ratified it.

The original meaning theory, which is closely related to textualism, is the view that reasonable persons living at the time of its adoption would have declared the ordinary meaning of the text to be. It is with this view that most originalists, such as Justices Scalia and Thomas, are associated.

Just this year the Supreme Court proved that originalism could be used effectively, when it ruled on the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Court effectively nullified the first clause which made the Amendment appear to require a "well maintained militia" to enable the right to bear arms. The Court, after reviewing hundreds of documents from the Colonial period, decided that it was never the intention of the drafters and signers of the Constitution to limit arms to the maintanance of a militia.

By ruling in this way, the Court proved that originalism will sometimes benefit the America of the 21st Century. Had it declared that it was indeed the intent of the Colonialists to limit the right to bear arms to the militia, it still would have made the correct decision if the historical facts supported the decision. But at that point it would have been up to Congress to write a new amendment that would override the "militia clause" of the Second Amendment.

Originalism is the way the Constitution is supposed to work. If history does not support the facts of life as they exist today, as the Constitution was written, then it is within the right of the people to amend the Constitution.

Originalism, besides limiting the size and scope of the federal government, will return to the States that which is not "prohibited to" them, and which "are reserved to the States respectively"; which will subsequently return to We, the People, what is not prohibited to us and is reserved to each of us respectively. [Tenth Amendment]

What is reserved to each of us respectively is sovereignty of self, otherwise called individual sovereignty. Laissez-Fairre: the Economics of Individual Sovereignty

No one on the right or the left is going to convince me to believe that being a "citizen of the United States" is better than being a "Citizen of the Several States" of the united States. It is not better to be part of a government Leviathian than to be part of a semi-autonomous region.

This does not mean an Afghani or Iraqi style autonomous tribalism--it never did, and it will not--not so long as all the people of all the "several States" remembers that there are limits to what is achievable when home rule is brought closer to "home."

The "citizens of the United States" clause of the 14th Amendment should be struck down. That would eliminate most of the Federal power over the States. We were never intended to be citizens of the "United States". The Continental Congress did not set it up that way. They deliberately limited the size and scope of the Federal government. Since Senator John McCain wants to cut funding for all but what he or Congress or someone deems is "necessary," this is the route he should take.

Of course it would take a Libertarian who is strong as Ronald Reagan to do such a thing.

I don't think McCain is even a libertarian. But he should return as much power to the States as he can without mandating, as Reagan did, that the States pick up the Federal slack.

Picking up that slack is not downsizing--it is passing it off on the States.

Give the power back to the States, don't mandate anything except to follow the remaining and existing Federal statutes (or sue the Federal government over it, the legal way of resolving disputes,) and when we all see power returning to the People, we will not only be empowered again politically as we once were; but we will be empowered psychologically as we have not been since before the Civil War.

Note: originalintent.org is one of several organizations dedicated to "Restoring the Republic...One Citizen at a Time."

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Is Obama A U.S. Citizen?

Federal Suit to Determine Obama's U.S. Citizenship;

Obama Hires Terrorist Organization to Defend Him

"Phillip Berg has filed a suit in Federal court. [Denver Dem Convention: Clinton Supporter Files to Disqualify Obama] The suit was against Barack Obama and the Democrat National Committee. It asked the court to force Obama to prove he was an American citizen.
If you are Obama, what do you do?

"A. Provide the court with the three documents in question and go back to shaking hands, making promises and smiling for the cameras.
B. Provide images of one of the documents to a friendly website to post, but not to the judge.
C. Ignore the judge, then make a motion to dismiss the case, in lieu of providing the proof.
D. In the meantime, quietly, post a notice at your website, FighttheSmears.com that you had dual citizenship with Kenya.
E. Hire the top gun attorney from the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to fight the case.
F. File a Joint Motion for Protective Order to Stay Discovery Pending a Decision on the Motion to Dismiss (which was) filed on 09/24/08, thereby putting the matter off until–hopefully–after the election.

"Time’s up. What do you do?
Most readers sensibly chose A.
But, if you’re Barack Obama, you chose answers B, C, D, E and F.
A curious response for a campaign interested in 'fighting the smears'". DBKP http://deathby1000papercuts.com/2008/10/obama-birth-cerificate-federal-lawsuit-the-curious-behavior-of-the-obama-campaign/

I highlighted the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) because of the tough, disciplined, and principled arguments made against it for years by ACT! for America and others including many Senators and Congressmen and Women--because Obama's attorney works for a domestic terrorist organization. http://www.actforamerica.org/

"[T]he Islamway website originally operated from Canada until a series of articles was published by National Post reporter Stewart Bell just days before 9/11 exposing that the website published an 'invitation to jihad' and provided instructions on how to train at terrorist camps run by Al-Qaeda. Islamway was defended by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which published several action alerts and press releases decrying the newspaper’s “tabloid journalism” and promoting Islamophobia, directing its supporters to besiege the paper’s editors to complain of the supposedly “anti-Muslim” bias of the reporter. The National Post reportedly received death threats during CAIR’s protest (again, which occurred less than two weeks before 9/11). The Royal Canadian Mounted Police initiated an investigation at the request of B’nai B’rith Canada, but the website relocated to the US, prompting authorities there to drop their inquiry." [emphasis added] http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/recent-news/268-mainstream-us-islamic-websites-and-terror-

"'CAIR: Names Will Always Hurt You;' The Investigative Project on Terrorism is among those who are critical of new guidelines discouraging the use of terms like "Islamist" ...

"In March 2008, it was reported that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was continuing their efforts to 'train' American FBI agents."

"'CAIR Gets Failing Grades at Running Ohio Charter'; Schools Taxpayers finance religious extremism and academic failure. by Patrick Poole The Ohio ...

"Terror on Trial: Hamas Leaders Used for U.S.-Based Muslim Charity Fundraising"

"When the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded, the HAMAS network leaders in the US turned to one of its own, Anisa And El Fattah/Caroline F. Keeble to serve as one of its founding board members. Her two mentors and former employers, HAMAS chief Mousa Abu Marzook and Abdurahman Alamoudi, have respectively been designated a terrorist and convicted of terrorist support. Thus, she is quite familiar with both the overt and more subtle methods of cultural terrorism." [all quotes above from
http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/component/search/CAIR?ordering=newest&searchphrase=all&limit=30
more from the Academy Blogger

Act! for America's very-outfront spokeswoman is Brigitte Gabriel. "Ms. Gabriel is a former news anchor for “World News”, the Arabic evening news broadcast for Middle East Television seen throughout Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. She covered the Israeli withdrawal from Central Lebanon, the Israeli Security Zone and the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza. Her work was international in scope, bringing her in contact with world figures such as Margaret Thatcher, George H. Bush Sr., Itshak Rabin, Shimon Perez and Ariel Sharon." http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/about-ms-gabriel [for a complete list of Act! articles Act! on CAIR ]

But Act! is not the only organization taking note of CAIR's radicalism in the U.S.

"Let there be no doubt that the Council on American-Islamic Relations is a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded by terrorists, founded by terrorists, and that CAIR wishes nothing more than the implementation of Sharia Law in America." Anti-CAIR http://www.anti-cair-net.org/

Anti-CAIR has the most complete and comprehensive single website against CAIR, but is not as well known as Act! for America. It is frighteningly enlightening to read U.S. Senator Charles Schumer say: "we know [CAIR] has ties to terrorism" [and] "intimate links with Hamas."" Statements From Sept. 2003 Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer: "To praise [CAIR] because they haven't been indicted is like somebody saying, 'I'm not a crook'" Sen. Boxer discussing her decision to rescind award given to CAIR Official

U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster: "Time and again [CAIR] has shown itself to be nothing more than an apologist for groups bent on the destruction of Israel and Islamic domination over the West."

Anti-CAIR says they "are a group of concerned Americans dedicated to eliminating the Islamist terrorist threat to the United States Constitution.
"We believe that the Council on American-Islamic Relations, (CAIR), is a clear and present danger to our Constitution and our way of life. We will continue to expose CAIR's involvement in supporting Islamist terrorists, terrorist-sponsoring organizations and groups in the United States. (Founded April 2003)"

And this is the group that Obama has hired to defend him?

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC

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Readers' Questions;"Libel Tourists"; Mark-to-Market

Readers Question, and I Answer

Q. Is law a basic code of ethics that all people are forced to live by? And is a man a bad person if his ethical code is not contingent with the law?

A. People break the law all the time and get away with it. Not because they are not caught, but because there are times when we are forced to disobey the law and obey the higher authority of our conscience. That is presuming our conscience is of a higher standard than even the law.

For example, a felon breaks the law by owning a gun, but then in his home he kills a mass murderer in the middle of the night who broke in. He must face the consequences of owning that gun, but if the prosecutor or the jury decide that this particular felon has owned the gun for 10 years and never fired it, they might find it justified and merely give him a slap on the wrist. Otherwise, if he's fired it before, he could go back to prison. Ethics are often accepted in law as being better than the law--if and when there is justification for it.

Q. What is your ideology of excellence? MORE

Islamo-fascists Use British Courts to Stop American Free Speech; Congress Fights Back

Condensed from www.washingtontimes.com/

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2007/jul/20/battling-censorship/

And from Act! For America

http://www.actforamerica.org/

One of the most potent weapons that global jihadists have to advance their cause is one of the least-remarked: censorship.

Billionaire Saudi financier Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz, sued Rachel Ehrenfeld, founder and director of the American Center for Democracy, for libel: in her book, "Funding Evil," she wrote that he was involved in funding Hamas and al Qaeda.

bin Mahfouz denied that he had knowingly given any money to either. Taking advantage of British libel laws that place the burden of proof on the defendant, rather than the plaintiff, Mr. bin Mahfouz sued not in the United States, where Miss Ehrenfeld lives and published her book, but in Britain, where neither he nor Miss Ehrenfeld live and where his entire case depended upon a handful of copies sold in that country mostly through special orders from Amazon.com, and the appearance of one chapter of the book on the Internet, where it may have been read by British readers.

Britain's libel laws have given rise to the phenomenon of wealthy "libel tourists," who sue there on the slimmest British connection in order to ensure a favorable ruling.

A shattering moment in America's fall from power

"There has been a good deal of talk in recent weeks about imminent economic armageddon. In fact, this is far from being the end of capitalism. The frantic scrambling that is going on in Washington marks the passing of only one type of capitalism - the peculiar and highly unstable variety that has existed in America over the last 20 years. This experiment in financial laissez-faire has imploded."

So wrote the author of the blog "Circle of 13," http://circleof13.blogspot.com/2008/10/shattering-moment-in-americas-fall-from.html But it is not entirely true. It may have laissez faire in the sense that no one was interfering in what Wall Street was doing; but that would be extremely misleading. Washington set the rules first, then, perhaps, did not interfere in the meltdown that Washington itself set in motion.

"U.S. Rep. Candice Miller is calling for the elimination or suspension of some current accounting practices as a way to improve the situation on Wall Street.

"One of those, she said, is the elimination or suspension of so-called mark-to-market accounting practices in relation to mortgage-backed securities. Mark-to-market accounting rules require assets to be valued at their current market value on a company’s books – and many believe mortgage-backed securities’ values have actually fallen below their inherent worth." freep.com http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080930/BUSINESS07/80930061 "Buried within the furore that has gripped Wall Street and other markets around the world, a request was submitted to suspend the practice of mark-to-market ..." wrote Business Day. http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/companies.aspx?ID=BD4A854855

"Under the 'mark-to-market' rules banks value profits based on an estimation of future income based on a calculation of what would be raised if all loans and mortgages were sold in the market at the best possible price. "A number of politician and economists believe this practice has been a key factor in the decimation of the banking system because it does not reflect the true value of the assets in turbulent market conditions." citywire http://www.citywire.co.uk/professional/-/features/sector-watch/content.aspx?ID=316017 MORE

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