leavin brothers

sooooo who's disturbed that lehman and merrill lynch went under? lehman brothers was a 158 year old bank ... i kinda feel like entrenched power just took a major hit ... in 158 years what have any of the members of the lehman fam done to obliterate poverty? just asking ...

i am disturbed by this 'crisis' mainly because no real poor people are paying attention (i live around lots of poor folks and aint nobody talkin bout this trust me) ... i am disturbed that banks can get bailed out by the fed and no one notices or bats an eyelash ... i am disturbed that no fed agency is going to bail out the average homeowner and yet the WORLD's largest insurance company, AIG, is asking the fed for 'emergency funding' ... you know that funding is in the several billions don't you?

i am disturbed by the american people ... who are not connecting the dots ... not connecting g.w. bush to lenient financial regulation which caused this crisis ... not connecting federal bailouts to their income taxes ... not connecting the price of gas in lebanon to the price of coca cola in brasil and then connecting all of that to the diminishing quality of their 3rd grader's american education ...

hey ... maybe it's not connected ... but isn't it at least worth googling?? just a question ... cuz i loves you and i cares bout yall. and i'd hate to see the chaos in wall street personally connect with your wallet.

lastly, i am - as usual - disturbed by capitalism. it's an illusion. and this 'crisis' is what happens when fake money meets real people. do your research ...

you can read an assoc. press article on this matter as well.

now we payin fannie & freddie's bills too

in case you missed it ... us taxpayers who earn maybe $10 per hour (ok just me?) will be bailing out multi-billion dollar companies, fannie mae and freddie mac ... cuz nobody trusts their word that the loans they made to banks who used the money to lend to homebuyers will ever be re-paid ... or that's what they tell us ... is it coincidence that people who sit on the board of directors for fannie and freddie are second-cousins to g.w. bush? no.

but you are now confronted with a choice. you can find out what's really going on ... why are fannie and freddie so tied to our ENTIRE financial system? why do two companies control almost 50% of all u.s. mortgages? yes, i personally know the answer but ... do you? and now that it effects your pocket will you burry your ass in the sand and add fannie and freddie's bills to your own ... or will you inform yourself about what's really going on? cuz let me tell you ... us taxpayers outnumber congress. we outnumber fannie mae. if we refused to stand for this ... and acted collectively ... of course, something could be done. but what will you do now? ... keep surfing the web or sieze control of your destiny. it is a hard choice. and i love you no matter what but damn ... i'd really love ChANGE.

from cnn: Together, Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee more than half of the U.S. mortgage market - that's more than $5 trillion in loans.

Here's how they work: Banks loan money to home buyers. The banks then sell those mortgages - assuming they meet certain credit standards - to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

But without an "explicit" guarantee from the U.S. government, the stock of both companies continued to drop, and major investors - including the central banks of Russia and China - started selling Fannie and Freddie bonds fast. That made it harder, and more expensive, for Fannie and Freddie to raise money.

That guarantee that investors wanted is now explicit. The U.S. government is now in the business of buying and reselling mortgages, and Paulson and his cohorts hope that sends the message that Fannie and Freddie are safe.

The bad news - taxpayers could get stuck with a $200 billion bill for the bailout.

from bbc:The federal takeover is one of the largest bail-outs in US history.

"Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so large and interwoven in our financial system that a failure of either of them would create great turmoil in financial markets here and around the globe."

from the springfield sun-times: "The bailout will give the mortgage industry a stability that we haven't had in a couple of years," said Rich Cosner, president of Prudential California Realty. "But frankly no, it won't help (struggling borrowers) to refinance."

CNN quotes me?!

read the article and view the video - i'm in that too!

love in the time of bureaucracy

bureaucracy is the pillar of modernity. the motherfucking foundation upon which most of it is built. i won't go into the history (yet) but i will tell you about what happened this morning.

every morning i wake up ready to tackle the world. with love. to be nice to all people even in the face of evil ... to forgive small petty mean-ness ... to stay peaceful and project LOVE. that shit is hard.

i tried to log on to blogspot this morning to write you people and i couldn't remember my password ... long to short is i am STILL on hold with time warner cable's online department ... i have spoken with TWO customer service reps and gave them both the SAME information ... i am at work ... i am living my life ... so, no, i don't have time to spend HALF MY DAY simply retrieving a PASSWORD to an e-mail account i hardly use ..........

and yet, the soft tinkling of classical elevator music wafts around me as i write this. and when (after waiting 40 minutes) a HUMAN gets on the phone i have an attitude. i got a attitude cuz now i been on hold forever and this human works for a company that thinks it is ok to keep people on hold that long. (even though us customers pay over $100 month to wait on hold for 40 minutes) and i can't keep the irritation, frustration, and impatience out my motherfucking mouth. i think this treatment of customers is UNACCEPTABLE.

ah but where is the love?

it is not the customer reps fault that his company is a big bureacratic machine in which the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. a bureaucratic machine that just keeps spinning and cycling people through without a care for their humanity.

did i mention i am still on hold? even now that i have written four paragraphs ...

i was a little rude to the service rep ... and i got a paper cut. i am working on breathing, taking a step back, and not taking out my anger on another human being who just wants to finish his or her workday.

but bureaucracy makes it hard. oh! they just picked up ... you want my name and address ... AGAIN?! see ... you keep making it hard to be nice and loving to you.

but love will prevail .............. because it's right and true. so, if you know what i'm talking about and you've had to deal with service reps and being on hold and the run around shuffle around department to department repeating your address like you were seven years old again and can't remember where you live ...... i commend you for keeping your cool and showing some love to humans who know not (or can't help) ... what a big bureaucratic mess they are part of.