THE SLOW TRAIN WRECK GOES ON AND ON AND ON

More than a year ago it became evident that the United States economy was in serious trouble. It turns out that the securities created from bundled mortgages are wrapped up in something called derivatives. Derivatives are supposed to be a mathematically more sophisticated financial instrument. Sophisticated maybe, but a pig in a poke is still a poor investment. You keep on hearing investors don't know what a derivative instrument represents. No one knows what kind of pig is in that poke!

It seems that realtors, appraisers, county tax assessors, brokers, fund managers and Wall Street in general all collaborated to falsify the actual value of real property. Hence property values and county tax revenues sky rocketed. It was an investment bubble but for a while everyone was making money.

Now we see that the whole housing boom was largely a fraud bilking millions and tens of millions of people into taking out loans they couldn't possibly pay in the long run. By the time homeowner couldn't pay the loan originator had disappeared with the profits and investors wound up taking the bullet. These profiteers sold these securitized mortgages to investors all over the world. Investors of all kinds are finding that their wonderful investments are squeling to high heaven. A pig in a poke named "Derivative" appears to have brought capitalism to its knees. Now we taxpayers get to bail out the Chinese government which invested in these mortgage based securities. Yes for a year or more housing bubbles have been bursting one household and one institution at a time.

With the bipartisan endorsed multi-trillion dollar obligations now imposed on you and me for the bailout of private corporations Freddie Mac and Fannie May the crisis is being resolved at our personal expense. Yet, even that bailout, and the bailout of AIG there seems to be no effect on the falling stock market. How many other bubbles are out their just waiting to burst as well?

Yes, something rather serious is going on. Billionaires, millionaires and big investors all around the world are picking the pockets of the little guy.
Of course, if the little guy tries to get that money back the rich folks will point out just how wrong it is. Yes the owners of our Society believe they have a right to take the money of the workers and use it as their own.

Apparently various national banks around the world are trying to pour money into investment rat holes hoping against hope that no one will start looking for the rats! Only two investment banks remain standing in the United States. Then they keep on saying that one bank won't lend money to another bank. The banking system is in peril.

All the policy wonks on television have lost their professional air and look more like Alice hurtling down an apparently endless rabbit hole. Then wasn't it Greenspan who said it was a hundred year decline! That means worse than the so-called Great Depression. Will it be referred to as the Greater Depression?

What can the little guy do besides listen to Adam Bold on PBS? All the workers and small entrepreneurs can do is unite to fight for their rights and their freedom against the big bourgeoisie. Housing rights could be a multiracial civil rights issue/movement. Imagine a homeless camp of a million in Washington, D.C. demanding the restitution of foreclosed homes!

BAILOUT THE SCAMMED HOMEOWNERS FIRST!

BAN AND PROSECUTE PREDATORY LENDING!

OUTLAW USURY!

Of course, here in the United States, the people need to be united and mobilized in mass movements that remove the stranglehold of big oil, big coal and big gas from the throat of our economy. The economy and society must be modified so it can cope with the challenges of global warming, economic collapse and other damning features of capitalism.

The mass movements should start building a new society even as this one is falling apart. Parallel institutions to serve the people must be formed by activists because the United States government and state governments are walking away from their own citizens. Look at New Orleans and now
Galveston and Houston. Look at the health of our citizens. The government just walks away. Progressive mass movements can provide help, services and support that the government cannot or will not provide. This is not to say that appropriate government aid should be opposed or refused by people in need.

The time has come for progressives to begin filling this needs vacuum and to do this by mobilizing the masses and to help them struggle for genuine power so they can run society in their actual self-interest. The working class should basically own and operate society and we can see if the results are better than the last five hundred years of capitalism.

The biggest challenge seems to be that there are a lot of reactionaries who don't want the kind of liberating change we need. How can we organize so these reactionaries can be persuaded to support working class rule? Of course, if some remain adversaries then how can working class movements effectively defeat these reactionary leaders in political contests such as elections or campaigns of one sort or another.

Naturally a feminist group might take a different approach than an ecology focused one in contributing to human survival and social revolution. Of course, opposition to imperialism and support for
working class democracies running the country and the world are two
essential components of any progressive trend.

Bush and Cheney want bourgeois democracies everywhere, or at least they say they do. This is not the same as working class democracies inasmuch as capitalists rule the first type of society and workers rule the second type.

A powerful, indigenous, anti-capitalist majority can now be formed if millions of progressives unite in supporting and leading such a mass movement. It is a once in a hundred year capitalist collapse. With the very viability of the Earth at stake we need to move on and put capitalism in the history books!