I Am Responsible For The Financial Crisis!

On Main Street and on Capital Hill, along with some bipartisan work on legislation to reduce the financial crisis, there is much finger pointing, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. The voters are angry at the very idea of taxpayer money having to prop up financial institutions where greed ran over common sense and solid business practices. Who is to blame? Everyone want to know, who is to blame?

I am. I take sole responsibility for this crisis. For the past 28 years, I have been too inactive and too silent. When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, I was still on active duty with the Army, but I could have raised my voice louder. Like many, I understood the fundamental flaw, the con if you will, in trickle down economics; I did too little to prevent congress from embracing this con.

I have rationalized this by my aversion to angry conflict. Since Reagan's inauguration, it has become progressively difficult to discuss politics in a civil manner. Look at the opening of "A Letter from a Republican." The writer begins by calling me "certifiable" and then goes on to insult President Clinton—all without a single supporting detail. And I guarantee you this is mild for this individual. Across this country, in families, cafes, and bars—and on TV nightly—reasoned persuasion is met with insult and derision. I apologize for not having faced it more resolutely.

Somehow, I needed to find a way of showing those Republican foot soldiers who, like the writer of "A Letter from a Republican," are so terribly focused on preventing the indigent from getting a dime they don't deserve, that they fail to notice the government's slight of hand. Like a magician catching your attention with his right hand while his left slips into his vest, the government has diverted middle and working class Republicans from noticing that trickle down economics essentially entails the real redistribution of wealth to society's upper income groups.

We all know how it is supposed to work. Tycoon Bob gets a $300,000 tax cut, which he invests in Pigmy Computers. Pigmy Computers takes the money and buys more parts and hires more workers and makes more profits that go into increased salaries, and prosperity flows down. That is the magician's right hand. What is in his left? Ownership. Tycoon Bob's tax cut bought him $300,000 worth of Pigmy Computer Stock, which if he invested well, will be worth more after a year than it was when he bought it. His enormous tax cut bought him ownership. That does not trickle down.

Add to Reaganesque tax cuts, allowing wealth to concentrate at the economic top of society, the Republican penchant for market deregulation, which allows increasing manipulation of wealth, and eventually the system needs a massive adjustment. We have reached that point, and as I have said, it is my fault for not being active enough to prevent the continuation of doomed economic and regulatory practices.

I can only hope that by my contributions of time and money, I will help put Barack Obama and Democratic Senators and Representatives in office, and that we will begin a tax system that spreads prosperity and ultimately ownership from the bottom up. If the financial bailout now in front of congress and the election of those with a new direction for the country proves to be too little too late and we fall into an economic depression, I have only myself to blame.