I am pro-organic food, which means I am anti GMO food and Monsanto, who is trying to control the world's seeds and genetically modify food so it is resistant to Roundup. This company is insidious and evil beyond imagination. I am also opposed to Codex Alimentarius and any proposals that will limit my access to foods, herbs, and supplements that I would want to use for the benefit of my health.
I am anti-nuclear power and also coal power. Nuclear power is a never-ending nightmare that will be with humanity for as long as we exist on earth. There should be a moratorium on all nuclear plants and all existing ones should be dismantled. I am appalled by the immoral use of depleted uranium in ammunition and artillery that the United states introduced into conventional warfare during Gulf War I. Read about it. It is evil, and we are the perpetrators.
Coal is also a bad fuel because of the pollution it creates. Mercury is vaporized and has poisoned the waterways making most fish harmful and unfit to be eaten. Also the burning of the hydrocarbons contained in coal leave crystalline rock and heavy metals, including uranium, in the ash. The coal ash disaster at Harriman, TN has demonstrated the harm it causes. The ash is actually radioactive.
Change I can believe in would be to fast track truly safe energy such as solar and wind. I am afraid that it will be back to business as usual after the Japanese accident, and more plants will be built in order to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. To me the ideal power source would be to use solar energy to hydrolyze water which would form oxygen and hydrogen and recombine them in an engine that would turn a turbine. It could be done more practically in a stationary apparatus such as a power plant than in an automobile. If they can handle nuclear fuel and waste, they can handle hydrogen and oxygen. And if one explodes it leaves behind water, not deadly radioactive isotopes. Other possibilities include Tesla generators.
This country has fallen economically due to a number of factors. Not the least of these is the "global economy" model that was perpetrated by Alan Greenspan and others who attributed the wealth developed in the United States as due to free trade within our borders. The problem with this model is that the world contains borders and separate countries with different currencies and governments. All of the deficits in trade amount to enormous claims that foreigners have on American assets. Warren Buffet said we would become a nation of sharecroppers. This country should return to the situation that enabled us to achieve the prosperity that we enjoyed a few decades ago, and protect our economy. Ross Perot rightly forecast that with NAFTA the loud sucking noise we would hear would be the jobs leaving the country. Both Democrats and Republicans were falling over each other trying to enact NAFTA. Big business wanted the global economy because free trade would allow them to bust unions. So now we are comforted to know that our goods are produced largely under oppressive labor conditions. Similarly, the US raised higher safety standards on the foods we eat by banning harmful pesticides. However the chemical companies ship these banned pesticides overseas and we buy the food grown with them in use. We also import a number of goods from China that would not be allowed to be produced in the same manner domestically. None of this makes sense. We should insist whenever possible that our trading partners uphold the same standards of fairness and safety that we require in our country. That is the only way to level the playing field.
The economic collapse of course has many causes, such as the housing market, which was pumped up after the dot-com crash, abetted by faulty economic theory espoused by Alan Greenspan who purposely talked in a way to make Congressmen think they were stupid if they did not go along with him. Mr. Greenspan was also fully aware of the nature of fraudulent derivatives and the unregulated hedge fund industry. Credit default swaps were sold to the tune of hundreds of trillions of dollars and the default of even one percent of them would be enough to cause a major investment bank to fail. Of course they are too big to fail, so the taxpayers got to bail them out, so they enjoy enormous profit without risk. Certain derivatives that cannot possibly be backed by the writers are fraudulent and should be banned. If banks are able to match counter parties for certain transactions, such as interest rate swaps, then they are OK. The hedge funds have become more powerful than central banks, able to bring down entire nations through credit default swap spreads that affect interest rates and can cause a vicious cycle of borrowing costs for troubled economies. One thing that Islam has right is that usury is immoral. The use of leverage in the stock market was permitted around 1920 when the banks wanted to increase their profit, and this singular fact was the largest factor in the Great Depression, as it caused a speculative bubble fueled by leveraged money. It is essentially a sum zero game with some winners and some losers, and the banks, always making money. They in effect turned the securities markets into a gambling casino.
I am opposed to leverage in all forms that can be directly accessed by a securities account. If one wishes to borrow money to invest, so be it, but don't make it easy to do by leveraging the securities account. I recognize the need that commercial entities have to hedge their commodities and think that options provide a way of achieving this goal without having as much impact on price. The price of crude oil, for example, is much higher due to speculative buying in the futures market. I think that it is fair to say that all of the market crashes we have seen are due to excessive speculation.
I don't favor big government as a fix for all problems, but I do favor taking care of people with needs. It is unconscionable to me that we would put people into the streets who are aged or disabled before we would raise taxes on the wealthy, who are now paying one of the lowest tax rates in history. Our federal deficit is the largest threat to this nation, and at some point if inflation takes hold, which surely it will after two rounds of quantitative easing (i.e. printing trillions of dollars), the amount of interest that we will pay on the debt will become enormous. Our balance sheet is worse than Greece's. We have managed the debt because of unprecedented low interest rates and the fact that until now our credit has been sterling due to sound fiscal policies. But just as a homeowner with a variable rate mortgage gets squeezed by rising interest rates, Uncle Sam will lose it when inflation comes back. We have spent trillions fighting wars and conquering nations. The military budget somehow is sacred and untouchable, but all the social services are the first to be axed. Something just doesn't make sense about this mindset...
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