It's been a year

Well, it's been over a year now since my last post. Reading back on my earlier posts, things have pretty much followed their predictable paths. The economy is doing exactly what it needs to do - shrinking and going through changes. There is no economic recovery, just less people left to lose jobs at a record pace. With unemployment well above 10% now (which is really more like 22% if you use the original method of calculating unemployment) we've arrived at the new norm. The massive layoffs have slowed down dramatically, but you don't (and will not) see a massive recovery of corporate jobs. New company start ups will not likely replace the big company layoffs. The current situation is the new "normal" and the faster we all realize it and accept that this is it, the faster we can begin to make intelligent decisions about the future.

I still feel I don't have the answers to all of my own questions, but I am a bit closer to coming to grips with all that is going on and that has helped me to start to make decisions on what needs to happen next.

I see more and more underground economies emerging around me as time goes on. Double bookkeeping and under the table jobs are the way that an otherwise dire situation of joblessness gets dealt with in the real world. There is a lot more acceptance in the local economy of small start-ups and individuals that only deal in cash or cash equivalents. Here in my new home town, the dope business is booming and there's really no question in my mind what the economy here is based upon. "Legitimate" businesses are run with a "look the other way" philosophy that allows them to ignore the law when it suits them simply by pretending that they don't know better, or at least didn't notice anything wrong. So, the economic problems that we all face become a little less critical when there's a trickle of income that Uncle Sam has no knowledge of and no resources to investigate.

The problem is that the real role of our original government - to take care of problems that are too large for cities and counties to grapple with - has been replaced with a corrupt government that takes care of only the problems of the wealthy. While education, infrastructure, health care and welfare get less and less, the banks, investment firms, insurance and otherwise wealthy get more and more. The Trillions of dollars poured into the economy have simply gone to bail out those that took all of the money from the lower and middle class and invested it in pyramid schemes that were literally designed to make the top 5% insanely rich. Wall Street has done exactly what it set out to do. Take Main Street money and make it "dissappear" legally. You and I don't write the laws and Lobby... They do.

So, things are happening in a very predictable manner. The rest of us watched and learned our lesson from the rich. If you refuse to report your financial dealings, invent your own form of financial reporting, you aren't held accountable for your questionable financial dealings. In fact it seems that even if you are caught red handed being totally unethical and deliberate in your theft, you can re-arrange your wealth and hold out your hand and get more money from those you robbed in the first place. Especially if you are too big to fail.

Personal bankruptcy is now more difficult than corporate bankruptcy thanks to some perfectly timed laws that took effect in 2004 (right as the housing bubble began to raise eyebrows)... I don't believe that was just a coincidence. Banks were aware of what was going on and flooded capital hill with lobbyists fighting for personal bankruptcy reform. We can learn from that situation too. We need to start lobbying for ourselves - to wipe out the credit reporting agencies that now have HUGE control over our everyday lives. Try renting an apartment, buying a house, getting a decent job or opening a checking account without having a credit check done on you to "evaluate" your credit worthiness. More and more of our lives are tied to our income and financial status and the banks now have the power to blacklist you in more ways than you can imagine. There's no buffer protecting your credit reports from abuse and you have no real rights to the information contained in them. Try getting anything changed in the reports (even if it is an obvious error). It takes months of effort just to get a response, but only a few keystrokes for a financial institution to destroy you and your ability to get financing.

It's time to start looking at alternatives to the current system. Thankfully the seeds are already planted. People becoming more distrustful of the government, banking system and current legal system as time goes on. Justifiably so. We all see that their are two sets of "books" in the real world. The insanely wealthy don't live under the same laws as the rest of us and they have an inner circle of knowledge on how to loophole right by the rest of us. Look at the recent foreign bank account slap on the wrist that the filthy rich got... They were required to "come clean" or face possible jail time for income tax evasion on their overseas bank accounts. I doubt that more than a small handful of wealthy outcasts will ever even see a courtroom. Meanwhile, the rest of us fear total financial ruin and garnishment of any future wages if we fudge our tax forms in the slightest (not that we really can anyway - as most of us have straight reported income and don't receive "other forms of compensation").