If you watch or listen to any kind of news, you’ll know by now that the government has taken over, or at the very least purchased a more than controlling interest in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG insurance just in the last week or so. In the meantime, Lehman Brothers has gone bankrupt and Merrill Lynch was the prize in what really amounts to a fire sale.
The result, as I understand it, though certainly the facts and figures are difficult to get agreement to and even to comprehend, is that the government now has some financial role or backing of something around 30-40% of the mortgages in the country, and owns an 80% stake of one of the largest insurance companies in the country.
It’s free market economics run amok.
So today, in an extended period of surfing because our request system was FUBAR at work (and when you’re in an escalation team, not having access to your assigned requests kinda shuts you down), I ran across this fascinating morsel, the upshot of which is that basically the Vatican has some major role in our economy. (Yeah, I had to backtrack and hunt for about 45 minutes tonight to find it again).
It’s a confusing read, and certainly falls under the conspiracy theory category. But the important thing here is that the guy nailed the date of the huge stock market downturn (~800 points in three days) in postings on a forum in July, and that the primary cause, according to him, is pilgrimage contributions by American companies to the Vatican.
You start to wonder, when you’re reading conspiracy theories, just how much of this any of these groups can pull off: the CIA, NSA, MI5, the Freemasons, Opus Dei, the Girl Scouts, etc. Is it even possible that those few people can really alter the course of the country on a daily basis? (Okay, the Girl Scouts can drastically reduce the health of the country, but only during cookie time). Reading conspiracy theories intrigues me, simply because they’re so far-fetched, yet so well thought out and frequently presented with at least some semi-factual evidence. There’s no question that the theorist deeply believes his or her claims, but at the same time, you are left thinking one of a couple of things: “if this guy’s right, then we’re all screwed,” or “wow, she’s a real nut-job.”
I have a hard time believing conspiracy theories, mainly because I have no faith in a group of people being able to pull off so much work without being detected, telling anyone else, or not having to hire some 3rd party supplier. I mean, somewhere along the line, wouldn’t someone who isn’t part of the plan’s inner sanctum had to have come in contact with some part of the plans? A waitress, perhaps, bringing in another platter of late-night, secret plotting sandwiches?
For Pete’s sake, you can’t get a church council of a handful of people to agree on a time for worship service very easily. So how can you get a group of Freemasons to agree on how to manipulate the framing of the constitution, control elections, and fully control the direction of governments around the world without anyone having a clue?
I’ll agree with most of the public statements of blame: greed. Our economy and government is good at that. All have a proven track record of greed, and each time it screws us over, they back off for while, then go full bore until it happens again, and much worse. Back off and repeat. Back off and repeat.
So here we are, steps away from the government owning everything, or at least most of our financial system.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts…
See you tomorrow.