Year: 2011

It’s the lack of personal responsibility, stupid.

When I was a kid one of the earliest and best pieces of advice my dad ever gave me was about money.

He told me it doesn’t matter how much you make, it’s more important how much you save.  The example he would use was that the guy who makes over a hundred thousand dollars but spends $125 thousand dollars a year is the loser compared to the guy who made $50,000 and saved $10,000.

Back when I was a kid we started out with Christmas Card accounts and passbook saving accounts and you earned interest.  7% interest in a savings account and you could see your money grow.  He told me to always re-invest your dividends and keep separate accounts for your savings, one you use for your bills and one for your retirement and never ever tap that retirement account unless there was some crazy emergency.

People were rewarded for saving back then.

Now you have these Savings Rates taken today from The Bank of America Website-

• Growth Money Market Savings Rate .08-.30% APY
• Regular Savings Account Pays You .05%
• Custodial Savings For Youth .05%

Make note, that’s .30% as in point three percent as in three tenths of one percent

Meanwhile they will gladly lend money

For a thirty year fixed 4% or %2.75 for a variable rate mortgage.

Isn’t that akin to loansharking?  Isn’t that something like they will gladly lend you money at 13 and a half times what they will pay you to keep your money in their bank in a savings account in their most generous of all accounts the .30% APY?????

They put dudes on the street in jail for charging that kinda vig.

So on top of not getting any significant return for keeping your money in their bank they decide last week to charge $5 a month to use a debit card.

Excuse me???  What are they doing now?  Penalizing the folks that don’t want to use credit cards which charge exorbitant interest rates. Oh and thereby making it costly to use an instrument that would teach a novel idea by today’s standards- “Using money you already saved to pay for shit” -a debit card.  Yeah let’s penalize the savers and folks that live within their means.

Using money you already have in your account it seems is wholly un-American damnit!  We need youse guys to be banging your credit cards.  Don’t worry, we’ll let you pay later at god-only knows what percentage rate.  Oh and don’t worry if you can’t pay off your credit some time in the future.  You can blame it all on us guilt free- it’s The American Way.  What were they thinking, giving us access to free money?

Now the business channels scoff at the idea of savings.  They tell you you are being a bad American if you are not doing your part to spend and keep the economy afloat.   Seniors who were taught all along to save and then as they got older to move their money from risky stocks into more conservative investments like cash and bonds get zero return because the Government prints money like toilet paper making the dollar less and less valuable and seniors take bigger risks chasing returns in stocks only to get smoked when the markets swing violently instead of being able to get a decent rate in a CD (remember those) or in treasuries .

Picture yourself as a teenager right now.

What does a parent tell you?  To keep saving in the bank?  For the what, negative return you will get after they get done fucking you up the ass on every fee imaginable?

The investment magazines tell you to take out the largest loan you can afford so you can invest the money in the stock market and get a larger return on your investments than you will be paying in interest.

Trouble is that we’ve all gotten away from what we were supposed to be investing in stocks for in the first place.  The idea behind investing in stocks was that you would participate in that companies’ profits in the form of dividends.  Now hardly anyone pays attention to dividend paying stocks and these companies hardly even give the money back to the shareholders.  They simply pay their executives ridiculous salaries and toss a few pennies or zero dividends back to their share holders.  And why wouldn’t they?  There is no outcry from their shareholders to pay more out, the board of directors of these huge companies are all populated with CEO’s of other huge companies who sit on each other’s boards and approve each other’s exorbitant salary increases and golden parachute exit plans when their corporate plans go to shit.

So again picture yourself as a teenager.

You see all the corruption, you see the banks not paying any interest, you hear about how there is absolutely no way they can get their social security money.  You’re forced to work for a Fortune 500 company or a government job because every small employer can’t possibly afford to pay the insane costs to provide health insurance for you.

So you turn on the TV and what do you see?  A commercial with a lawyer who is telling you not to pay your mortgage because you will make out way better to default on it.  Then on the next channel you see  that there is a massive protest going on in which people are angry because they took out loans they couldn’t possibly afford and the organizers are telling the people who are being foreclosed on to trash the places on the very last day before their eviction.  Smash the plumbing, smear crap on the walls, break the sheetrock (yes this is what the protest organizers are tell people to do).

At what point did we stop taking personal responsibility.  Did you not read the fucking loan that said you need to pay $2000 a month to support this mortgage and you only bring home $2000 a month?  Or did you read it and because just like the banks that get bailed out, you figure that the government would bail you too out?

Every single step of the way what these kids see is a reinforcement that what you should do is to not take any personal responsibility.  What’s the worst that can happen right?  Things turn to shit and the government or the lawyer will bail us out.

When did taking responsibilty for our actions go out the window?

Did it all start with the broad that sued McDonalds for getting fat when she was stuffing down Big Macs like fucking tic tacs?

Or was the dude who sued Dunkies because he couldn’t read that the coffee he was about to drink on the WARNING LABEL SAID THE COFFEEE WOULD BE HOT but he drank it right away anyway.  Who knew the Coffee labeled hot would actually be hot? 

Enough is enough- us working people who are trying to be responsible and have done the right things all along are fucking fed up supporting all this bull shit.  We the working people who go to work early, leave work late and make sacrifices all along the way being responsible are tired of carrying all these idiots who want to blame everyone else but the person in the mirror for making shitty decisions.

No I don’t want my Government to sponsor hundreds of thousands of jobs for which there is no return in making our collective lives better.  No I don’t want our government to give Multi million dollar tax credits to green technology companies who will erect a $2,000,000  windmill  that will end up with energy savings of $200,000.   No, I don’t want to bomb oil fields overseas with bombs our companies make so we can send our oil field repair companies to repair.  You wanna “waste” money?  “Waste” it on educating our children.  “Waste” it on building bridges to get product from here to there more efficiently.  “Waste” our money by paying lawyers to remove barriers to entry for small business instead of erecting them.

No I don’t want a government that will reward waste and irresponsible spending.

How bout looking out for us working folk, the middle class who you’re gonna need to carry us out of the mess you seem determined to drive people toward.

ENOUGH

Never mind bailing out these lousy bankers who make shitty loans, how bout instead you clean house and award the banks to existing banks that have demonstrated through strong balance sheets that they know how to asses risk.  Sell off Bank of America for 2 cents on the dollar and if you’re gonna save it so it goes forward in any way shape or form let it go forth with management who have a godamn clue.