Tea, anyone!?

It is official. The tea party has begun in full force. Tax revolts are officially beginning in a neighborhood near you. The things that I have been talking about for the past 5 weeks are becoming apparent to everyone now - even the administration. Trust me you, Team Obama is not terribly happy about what is happening either. I am working on a post in coming days about Russia which is a tremendously important topic. But as I research this topic thoroughly, I want to make mention of how someone brought to my attention the tax revolts that are taking place NOW.

Firstly, you would not be on this blog if we were not on the same wavelength. You want to feel a little pressure, a little push? Why don't you start with this 5:00 video from Rick Santelli. If it does not get you fired up, I don't know what will!



If you are like me, you are thinking about the straw that broke the camel's back right now. Was it the impending doom, the stock market crash, or was it deciding we were going to spend trillions of dollars on earmark ridden, "imperfect" legislation going to "infrastructure" projects? The accountability starts now and you know what? It starts with the man on the top.

Reteaparty.com is one of the organizing sites, although there appears to be an amalgamation of these sites. I am currently suggesting that it is a good idea to participate in peacable social discourse. We are not happy, nor are we impressed with the waves of money being thrown at problems that in the past were dealt with through business.

To draw a parallel, neither is the CEO of Wells Fargo, Richard Kovacevich, who is trying to figure out how to give back the TARP money because of the 'asinine' strings attached to it as bloomberg.com is currently reporting.

Sure, TARP helped bail out some bad banks. But the outlying consequences have already begun taking place. The government has no idea what to do with the fallout, as demonstrated by their dealing with the bailout recipient bonus issue. Did you guys really think big time corporate executives work for companies out of the goodness of their hearts? Of course they had contracts in place that make them get paid bonuses. Why are they acting so surprised? You bail out a bank and then expect its execs to fall on their own sword? You must be joking. If we would have let them fail, these same execs that are taking bonuses would have been forced out!!!

The discourse of the White House is pretty dismal - they seem to think that nothing good at all comes out of Wall Street. While I am certainly cognizant that there was some very funky business regarding CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations) credit default swaps and of course, hedge funds. I am also cognizant that the SEC has been neutered for much of the last decade. While Bernanke figures out what to do with mark to market regulations, (which may indeed help) we should remember that overall the Financial Services industry is NOT made up of a bunch of crooks.