Debt: America’s weapon against the poor

Greetings,

Western culture….i.e….capitalism, is nothing more than exploitation, greed, theft, mass murder, and slavery. This system is dying being it in and of itself is predatory. It must has victims in order to sustain its way of life.

The evidence of such logic can been  seen the world over by colonial powers invading, demonizing, bombing, occupying, and destroying other nations who refuse to allow them to suck the natural resources out or who refuse to allow them to dominate their sovereign lands. This is a blood sucking society and system.

It can be called capitalism, but in fact it is vampirism! It exploits and attaches itself to the poor, the host of choice, while sucking all resources, riches, and life out of them and keeping them sick, hungry, desperate, pessimistic, and deprived in order to give themselves the life of luxury and lavishness.

All of if will soon come to an end. It is doing so now…”The white man cannot live in luxury unless he has the Black man and his place of possession in subjection of his will. But, as I repeatedly say in this paper and in all of my writings, “You cannot make God and His prophets liars,” nor can we reverse the time of their prediction in which these things would take place. So the time has come.

This is nothing but justice; that we have possession of what is our own. The white man is conscious of the fact that he deceived the Black man of the knowledge of the Black man and his possessions. But that particular authority was given divinely; temporarily. But, by the same Divinity, it is now being taken from the white race.

The white race is facing doom because she will not act according to justice and righteousness — which was not by nature put in her. But this is known and her race is frightened concerning her future, as we see here in America.”–Chp.43(tfoa)

Why ordinary people bear economic risks and Donald Trump doesn’t

In America, people with lots of money like Donald Trump (pictured), can easily avoid the consequences of bad bets and big losses by cashing out at the first sign of trouble.

Thirty years ago, on its opening day in 1984, Donald Trump stood in a dark topcoat on the casino floor at Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza, celebrating his new investment as the finest building in Atlantic City and possibly the nation.

Last week, the Trump Plaza folded and the Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy, leaving some 1,000 employees without jobs.

Trump, meanwhile, was on Twitter claiming he had “nothing to do with Atlantic City,” and praising himself for his “great timing” in getting out of the investment.

In America, people with lots of money can easily avoid the consequences of bad bets and big losses by cashing out at the first sign of trouble. The laws protect them through limited liability and bankruptcy.

But workers who move to a place like Atlantic City for a job, invest in a home there, and build their skills, have no such protection. Jobs vanish, skills are suddenly irrelevant, and home values plummet. They’re stuck with the mess.

Bankruptcy was designed so people could start over. But these days, the only ones starting over are big corporations, wealthy moguls, and Wall Street.

Corporations are even using bankruptcy to break contracts with their employees. When American Airlines went into bankruptcy three years ago, it voided its labor agreements and froze its employee pension plan.

After it emerged from bankruptcy last year and merged with U.S. Airways, America’s creditors were fully repaid, its shareholders came out richer than they went in, and its CEO got a severance package valued at $19.9 million.

But American’s former employees got shafted. Wall Street doesn’t worry about failure, either. As you recall, the Street almost went belly up six years ago after risking hundreds of billions of dollars on bad bets.

A generous bailout from the federal government kept the bankers afloat. And since then, most of the denizens of the Street have come out just fine.

Yet more than 4 million American families have so far have lost their homes. They were caught in the downdraft of the Street’s gambling excesses.

They had no idea the housing bubble would burst, and didn’t read the fine print in the mortgages the bankers sold them.

But they weren’t allowed to declare bankruptcy and try to keep their homes.

When some members of Congress tried to amend the law to allow homeowners to use bankruptcy, the financial industry blocked the bill.

There’s no starting over for millions of people laden with student debt, either.

Student loan debt has more than doubled since 2006, from $509 billion to $1.3 trillion. It now accounts for 40 percent of all personal debt – more than credit card debts and auto loans.

But the bankruptcy law doesn’t cover student debts. The student loan industry made sure of that.

If former students can’t meet their payments, lenders can garnish their paychecks. (Some borrowers, still behind by the time they retire, have even found chunks taken out of their Social Security checks.)

The only way borrowers can reduce their student debt burdens is to prove in a separate lawsuit that repayment would impose an “undue hardship” on them and their dependents.

This is a stricter standard than bankruptcy courts apply to gamblers trying to reduce their gambling debts.

You might say those who can’t repay their student debts shouldn’t have borrowed in the first place. But they had no way of knowing just how bad the jobs market would become. Some didn’t know the diplomas they received from for-profit colleges weren’t worth the paper they were written on.

A better alternative would be to allow former students to use bankruptcy where the terms of the loans are clearly unreasonable (including double-digit interest rates, for example), or the loans were made to attend schools whose graduates have very low rates of employment after graduation.

Economies are risky. Some industries rise and others implode, like housing. Some places get richer, and others drop, like Atlantic City. Some people get new jobs that pay better, many lose their jobs or their wages.

The basic question is who should bear these risks. As long as the laws shield large investors while putting the risks on ordinary people, investors will continue to make big bets that deliver jackpots when they win but create losses for everyone else.

Average working people need more fresh starts. Big corporations, banks, and Donald Trump need fewer.

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