There is certainly enough blame to go around, but it should be placed where it belongs. And it’s not just on the greedy, corrupt politicians (on both sides of the isle), predatory lenders, and corporate executives. I have to say that the American commercial television news media has been shamefully and woefully negligent in its duty to keep government honest and inform the public about what was happening. And while the print news media has been better, it’s not been good enough.

Even worse, the U.S. system of government has been shamefully and woefully negligent in not protecting the people from greedy and corrupt politicians and the greedy and corrupt corporate executives who bribed them.

Now we should understand that deregulation was initially sold to us by Ronald Reagan as "removing government’s smothering hand," and many subsequent Reaganites and later Bushites have claimed it was "getting government off our back." But, that was deceptive propaganda, to say the least.

As most people can now see, it was really designed to enable the wealthiest few and their huge corporations to indulge themselves completely and satisfy their lust for greater and greater profits and incredibly enormous incomes for top executives. And that trend spilled over from the private sector to the public sector, enabling high government officials to rake in higher and higher incomes as well. Thus the rich got increasingly richer, while everyone else became less and less financially secure, the middle class shrunk and more and more people fell into the working poor population, and the working poor became much poorer.

It was actually history repeating itself, and what the Republican Reaganites and Bushites have done is similar to what Republicans did in the 1920s prior to the huge stock market crash of 1929. And we should realize that the Reaganite and Bushite deregulation was part of an overall agenda intended to overturn much of the New Deal programs initiated by the great Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the early 1930s, to clean up the mess and correct the mistakes and crooked deals that Republicans had made.

Today, more and more of us increasingly suffer the impact and consequences of all the unbridled greed and corruption that politicians have permitted and enabled during the last 28 years, catering to and serving the interests of the wealthiest few and their huge corporations, at the expense of everything and everyone else. And because of the enabling policies and legislation established by right-wing politicians, the system has been rigged to ensure that the top corporate executives can still rake in tens of millions of dollars per year in loot, while millions of people are suffering huge financial losses, losing their financial security, jobs, and homes.

Now what’s made matters worse is that the fear of not having enough is causing people to not spend and consume as usual, and that is causing many companies to lay off or fire many employees because they’re not selling what they’ve been producing. It’s a vicious cycle, and it was initially triggered by the inevitable consequences of unbridled greed and corruption.

But, fortunately, we can turn things around, and we can put a stop to the nonsense that has been sold to us by those who deceptively claimed "It’s just good business," and "the problem is not less government, but too much." It’s a big fat lie. It’s like organized crime bosses claiming that we need less police and less law enforcement, not more.

Unfortunately, too many Americans were gullible and believed Bush and the right-wing Republicans. We enabled him to continue and even expand Reaganomics, and the inevitable result has been increasingly detrimental to the rest of us, and increasingly detrimental to the environment, the infrastructure, public safety, public services, etc. And we should realize that the corruption that has been exposed is like the tip of a very huge iceberg.

We need to realize that most wealthy people are wealthy because they are smart, and the trouble is that some of the greediest are very cunning. They know how to sell people on things and ideas, and unfortunately they were very successful at selling right-wing "Neo-Conservative" ideas between 1979 and 2006. That’s when more Americans started to wake up and began to realize the reality that some of us realized all along.

President Barack may try to rebuild and maintain our infrastructure, and help the vast majority of us who have been hurt in so many ways. But, we need far greater reform than Obama can or would provide. For example, he is too enabling of the greedy and corrupt corporate culture that got us into this mess, and he still does not insist that the wealthiest few pay their fair share of taxes. Furthermore, unless we have a reformation of government along with a reformation of religion, Obama could be replaced by yet another deceptive, right-wing partisan demagogue who would do the same thing that Reagan and Bush did.

The way I see it, the more people have, the more they want, and the more afraid they are of losing it. That’s why the wealthiest few love "conservative" politicians who serve their interests, who promise to continue lowering their taxes, establish more tax loopholes for them, and deceptively denigrate "tax and spend liberals" to gain power over liberal progressive Democrats. The "conservatives" ignore the fact that liberal progressives simply want fair and equitable taxation based on our ability to pay. But the conservatives have succeeded during the last two and a half decades in deceiving and misleading many people, trying to make "liberal" a dirty word.

That’s always amazed me, because in fact, the dictionary meaning of the word liberal is "favorable to progress and reform," "advocating individual freedom of action and expression," "advocating representational government rather than aristocracies or monarchies," "free from prejudice or bigotry," "open-minded and generous," etc.

The wealthiest few know that, really, and the greediest of them are afraid that the general public may realize it too. That’s why the wealthiest few have provided 80 percent of the funding for the political campaigns of both Republicans and Democrats during past presidential campaigns. And that’s worked for them. They’ve gotten what they paid for in deregulation, lower and lower taxes, tax breaks, tax shelters and loopholes, subsidies, giveaways, and other government "welfare for the rich." And Democrats are nearly as culpable for that as Republicans are.

I have more to say about our current problems, but first let me show you what I wrote in 2000. For a long time I’ve been saying the U.S. political-economic system is inherently divisive and destabilizing, and it’s inherently corrupt because it’s driven by greed and self-interest. In my second book, written in the late 1990s and published in February 2002, I wrote a lot about that. Some of what I expressed in my books about partisan politics is highlighted on this web site, particularly on the page titled Partisan Politics, and some of what I expressed about economics is on the page titled Poverty in America. But I thought I’d show you some of the other things I’ve written about economics, that I believe are just common sense, and self-evident.

The following is quoted from chapter 3 of my second book, published in February 2002:

When I was a young man in the late fifties I could buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread for twenty-five cents. My first car, a 1947 model which I bought used in 1957 (only ten years old), cost $149. My first apartment when I left home in 1959 to go away to college was $70 per month. Bank savings earned five percent interest. The first house I bought in 1967 (a pretty nice two bedroom house with an attached studio apartment to rent out), cost $18,000, with a mortgage with five percent interest and payments of $80 per month.

In other words, back then, one could buy a nice house for less money than what most new cars cost today. If we look further back, we would see that the rate and impact of inflation has been even worse than that. The trouble is, it has been escalating at a far more rapid rate, and just considering those figures of just a few decades ago, it seems painfully evident how our economy and its built-in inflation has gotten totally out of hand, to the point of absurdity. After all, isn’t it absurd that a house that cost $18,000 just thirty-three years ago now costs several hundred thousand dollars, and that a ten year old car once cost $149 and now costs about $10,000? Certainly that is absurd, and if you project how much things will cost in thirty more years if we allow things to keep going the way they have been, it becomes even more absurd.

Fortunately, this is not beyond our control. It has only gotten out of control because we’ve allowed our economy to be driven by greed and self-interest rather than by fairness, common sense, and common interest. It doesn’t have to just keeping getting worse. We can control our own greed, and we can definitely control the greed of the landlords, the banks, the financial institutions, the merchants, the corporations, and other rich financial power brokers. We the people can do as we choose. We can make the rules and do what we know is right. But we need to fully understand the problem first.

We need to understand that inflation is a steadily worsening problem because we’ve actually been doing what we know is wrong. After all, we have created and maintained a vicious cycle, a treacherous economic game that is played by everyone trying to get ahead, and by everyone else trying to catch up. This is only natural, perhaps (being the nature of the beast), but when you really think about it you can see it is wrong and even a little foolish. We just keep raising the numbers on prices and wages, going back and forth in turn, trying to make our incomes rise. But while there may be temporary gains, in the long run all the numbers keep going up, and nobody wins! It’s just a vicious cycle that we perpetuate, all because everyone thinks they’re going to get ahead by raising the numbers. Unfortunately, while all the numbers get bigger, actual value and worth remains virtually the same.

Now, as we all know, the fact is that some people have made huge financial gains as a result of inflation. Some people have even made a "killing," especially in real estate, high technology, sports, and entertainment. Some people have gained enormously because of the economic practices and laws that allow inflation, while many people have suffered because of it.

A good example of that is how the minimum wage has gone up only very slightly during the last twenty years as its buying power has actually diminished, while during the same time the highest incomes of corporate executives, government officials, professional athletes, entertainers, and other highly paid individuals have soared by hundreds of thousands and even by hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Similarly, the prices and costs of certain basic commodities and goods and services have gone up only slightly in comparison to the prices and costs of some other things, and it has far less to do with the supply and demand than with greed and the abuse of power. In other words, it has not been balanced, and it has not been fair.

(Quoted from Chapter 3 of More Observations & Suggestions: The Followup to Real Prophecy Unveiled, published by iUniverse, Inc. in February 2002.)

*****

The following is from the first chapter of that book:

We have some very big and very serious socio-political-economic problems that are creating terrible injustice, inequity, hardship, suffering, and death — and I would be remiss if I did not fully expose them and bring them to light. That’s my job. I have to share my view, which is that in the last two decades since 1980 we have unwittingly allowed the dark shadow of Reaganism to thoroughly creep into our lives. We have allowed the basic elements of Reaganomics to take a very firm hold, enabling the rich to get incredibly richer while the rest of us have become less well off, while the working poor and the disadvantaged poor have become much poorer. And this was happening even while the economy was booming [in the 1990s].

In the last two decades we have allowed the gap between the rich and the poor to continue growing wider and wider until it has become a huge, gaping chasm. What’s more, we have allowed right-wing conservative politicians who serve the interests of the rich to adopt ever-newer and more plentiful ways for them to use their surplus private wealth to make even more money — to invest it in ways that pretty much guarantee huge profits and financial gains.

In that respect, the political-economic climate of the 1980s and 1990s was like a balmy caressing breeze for the rich. It allowed those who have a lot of surplus wealth to profit enormously from it in a wide variety of ways, and that’s why there are now (in 2001) 298 billionaires in the U.S., when in 1982 there were only 13 billionaires. According to Forbes magazine, 47 new people entered the 400 richest club, which took a minimum of $725 million to enter. And this happened while many formerly middle class people fell into the working poor population, and the number of homeless American families reached an all-time high.

In the last two decades since Ronald Reagan rose to power, the business-friendly economic climate has allowed the income of the richest 20 percent of the population to grow by 30 percent, while the incomes of the lowest paid 20 percent of us declined by more than 20 percent. Even worse, it has diminished the buying power of the minimum wage by 20 percent, which makes it even more inadequate than it has ever been, leaving the poorest of the working poor in extremely serious financial difficulty. And again, all this happened even while the economy was still booming, because it was booming only for the rich. Moreover, in 2000 and 2001 the economic downturn has made everything worse, except for the very rich.

We, the people, allowed all that to happen.

(Quoted from Chapter 1 of More Observations & Suggestions: The Followup to Real Prophecy Unveiled, published by iUniverse, Inc. in February 2002.)

*****

Please note that I point out that the problem kept getting worse even when a Democrat was in the office of U.S. President for eight years during the 1990s. Bill Clinton could not stop Reaganism or Reaganomics, and while part of the reason for that was a Republican-controlled Congress, many Democrats were also culpable and shared complicity in enabling the wealthiest few and their corporations to grow more and more powerful, and more and more corrupt.

As I said on the page titled Poverty in America, there is nothing wrong with being wealthy if you deserve it. There are some people who very much deserve to be reasonably wealthy, and there is nothing wrong with that. Those who are hard working deserve to be amply rewarded for their hard work, and those who are hard working and highly talented and skilled deserve to be richly rewarded.

However, many of the wealthiest few are really not deserving of the immense wealth they've managed to amass, and no one deserves to be as absurdly and excessively wealthy as some of the wealthiest few are now. The fact is that they have benefitted from and taken advantage of a very unfair, inequitable political-economic system that serves and caters to the wealthiest few, at the expense of the majority, the environment, the infrastructure, and everything else.

The trouble is, right-wing conservative Republican politicians have persistently and dishonestly claimed otherwise. Even worse, hypocritical right-wing neo-conservatives who claim and pretend to be "Christian" leaders have persistently colluded with them, and pushed and sold the absurd idea that great excessive wealth is a reward from God, and that the poor deserve their lot because they don't work hard enough and don’t have true faith in God. And Democrats and other moderate politicians have shared complicity and culpability, because they’ve either been unable or unwilling to break from the status quo. After all, it’s very profitable for them too.

Many people have "made a killing," financially speaking, but they do not realize how literally true that is, and they do not realize what they’ve killed.

In my view, it is unfair and totally absurd to put the country deep in debt while reducing taxes for the wealthy, who keep getting wealthier and wealthier and can certainly afford to pay their fair share in taxes. In fact, the wealthy can afford to pay and should pay at least 50 percent of their annual income in taxes, as they do in Europe. But, in America many of the very wealthiest few pay only about seven percent after taking advantage of all the tax cuts, tax breaks, shelters, loopholes and subsidies, and thus pay less of a percentage of their income than low income taxpayers do.

Instead, Politicians have given us unfair and utterly insane economic and tax policies. As I see it, "Reaganomics," which Bush continued and expanded, is based on the deceptive and erroneous notion that it will benefit everyone if we allow the wealthiest few to profit so enormously, and to keep more and more of the excessive profits and incomes they manage to rake in at our expense. Ironically, Bush’s father called it "Voodoo Economics" in 1979 when he was running against Ronald Reagan, and he was right. But the younger Bush loved it, because he was supported by the most corrupt of the wealthiest few who love it. But it is terribly unfair, and it gives the wealthiest few so many tax breaks, benefits and advantages that it has been called "welfare for the rich."

Furthermore, in my view, the theory that prices should be determined by "free market economy" and "supply and demand" actually means that the wealthy few people who control the supply can exploit consumers who need a product or goods or services. It means they can raise prices even with the flimsiest of excuses. And a "global free market" actually means that the wealthiest few have been enabled to gradually, step by step, take control of the world’s food supplies, water supplies, medicine supplies, energy supplies, etc. That’s what they’ve been doing, and, because of cunningly deceptive "free trade" agreements, they’ve been building huge monopolies and driving small family farms and family businesses out of business in the U.S. and in many other countries.

Why? Because they’ve been enabled by corrupt politicians from both parties in the U.S. Congress that do their bidding. And that’s what WE, the people, have enabled them to do because too many of us have been naive, gullible, and uninformed.

The whole world is now in a terrible mess, financially, and it is because of greed and corruption. And we have allowed it to happen because too many of us believed those who said if we enable the rich to get even richer, it will benefit us all. What utter nonsense, and what a horrible lie.

There would be nothing wrong with a free market economy if it is sufficiently controlled and regulated and monitored so as to prevent monopolization, price gouging, and greedy, unfair profiteering. There is a place for capitalism and free markets, and there is nothing wrong with making reasonable and fair profits. But we have given profit-seekers and profit-takers great license and free rein, without proper and sufficient regulation. We have allowed "privatization" of institutions that provide public services and used to be funded as non-profit, public institutions. Many of them have become privatized (for profit), including many in the health care system, prisons, and even schools. It has enabled the wealthiest few with excess money to invest to rake in more and more profits at our expense. So we have to be reasonable and fair about this and use common sense in discriminating what should be "privatized" and what should be publically funded and not for profit.

Common sense it what’s needed, because a lot of people who have an academic education in economics have not been able to keep us out of trouble. They never have, at least not for long. And that is because "expert" economists who influence partisan politicians are divided, and they disagree about what the best economic policies are. They are in conflict and disagree over partisan political ideology, which drives their opinions.

I was prompted to publish this page on the economy because I just could not get over how Republican George W. Bush, even as his reign was drawing to an end, had persisted in his claim that his huge tax cuts for the wealthy "are working," while in practically the same breath he admitted that the economy is in bad shape. That was a gross understatement, as has become increasingly obvious, because while the preceding president’s (Clinton’s) leadership had helped to produce a booming economy and balance the budget, Bush put the country deep in debt, weakened the dollar in the world, and was culpable in creating or exacerbating many of the financial woes that plague the majority of us and are utterly devastating to the poor and the growing working poor population.

In the last four months of 2008 we saw more of the inevitable consequences. And even when Wall Street’s financial-economic problems became unavoidable and made the greed and corruption that caused them more obvious, the Bush administration used fear tactics to try to get Congress to issue a blank check, without any criteria, without any accountability, for a $700 Billion bailout of failed banks, corporations and financial institutions. Bush’s appointees who headed the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board were deliberately vague in answering questions at congressional hearings, and they just kept saying a bailout was absolutely necessary to prevent financial disaster for the country. Many decisions were being made in closed sessions behind closed doors, and when Congress finally came up with a plan it was initially voted down because of partisan conflict and disagreement. Then, when it was passed, the Bush Treasury Department was either unable or unwilling to account for where the money is actually going, or how it was being used by the financial institutions.

In fact, in certain instances the money from the Bush Treasury Department bailouts of the banks and financial institutions was not used to help people who need help, but to consolidate financial power for certain banks, who used the money to buy and swallow up other banks or other financial institutions. With no accountability required, self-interest and greed still ruled over common sense, common interest, and fairness.

Then, when President Obama tried to get Congress to adopt an economic stimulus package, no Republicans would vote for it. Instead, they hypocritically claimed that it would produce "unnecessary spending" and would put us in debt. What hypocrisy! That’s what they’ve been doing for many years! And yet they deceptively claimed Obama is a "big spender" because his stimulus included things such as help for low income students so they could go to college, and other help for those who truly need help. Thus it was just more political conflict and bickering, as usual, caused mostly by those who serve their own self-interests and the interests of the wealthiest few who simply don’t want to pay their fair share of taxes. They of course claim they want to save you from paying too much taxes, but that’s not really what they want, and it’s not what they’ve done!

However, even some Democrats were against Obama’s plan, and I could see why. Obama’s choice of advisors regarding economics was a bit questionable. His top financial advisors are from the financial sector and are conditioned by the corrupt culture of the banks, lending institutions, stock brokerages, etc. They have been part of the economic-financial culture which has grown worse and worse during the last 28 years, in which top executives have been increasingly receiving outrageously and absurdly huge incomes while paying less and less in income taxes, while their institutions have increasingly exploited and taken advantage of borrowers and investors. Obama’s advisors have not risen above that, and do not recognize the corruption and the causes of the problems.

More recently, right-wing neo-conservative Republican extremists have been trying to label President Obama as a "socialist" for trying to establish even a little bit of reform, still thinking that slandering him with misleading accusations will do the trick and turn Americans against him. As I’ve said, they have hypocritically accused him of being a "big spender," and then they tried to claim it was terrible that Obama wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans from 35 to 39.6 percent. However, those die-hard Republicans conveniently ignore the fact that even under Republican Ronald Reagan (during his first term), the wealthiest Americans were supposed to pay a tax rate of 50 percent. And under Republicans Richard Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower the wealthiest Americans were supposed to pay tax rates of 70 and 91 percent. None of them did pay that much, of course, because tax shelters, loopholes, subsidies, etc. enabled them to pay far less than that. But the point is that a 50 percent tax rate on the highest incomes should be a minimum base rate because it’s reasonable and fair.

Most European countries understand that, and most Americans did too, before the neo-conservative Reaganites and Bushites gained power. And now we must not merely understand that. We must understand that we need to ensure that the wealthiest few pay their fair share of taxes without being given the huge tax deductions enabled by tax shelters, loopholes, subsidies, etc. For what is needed is fair, appropriate taxation to produce sufficient revenue.

We also need transparent government and comprehensive, proper regulation and full disclosure of the financial industry, to make sure that such economic disaster doesn’t happen again. We need to ensure criminal prosecution of the corrupt corporate executives who are responsible for the financial-economic chaos, and a return of their ill-gotten gains.

For example, the CEO of the failed Washington Mutual savings and loan bailed out with a "golden parachute" and an undeserved reward of $12 million, and he was able to get away with it because of all the Reaganite/Bushite "deregulation" of the last 28 years. And by the way, speaking of CEO financial "compensation," you should know the average yearly payouts raked in by the CEOs of the financial companies that have been in the headlines recently, who were largely responsible for the debacle. These are based on an average of what they got paid in 2005, 2006 and 2007: Lehman Brothers CEO averaged $79.3 million per year; Morgan Stanley CEO averaged $18.2 million per year; Goldman Sachs CEO averaged $83.5 million per year; Bear Stearns CEO averaged $18.4 million per year; Merrill Lynch CEO averaged $80.5 million per year; Washington Mutual CEO averaged $13.3 million per year; AIG CEO averaged $15.4 million per year; Fannie Mae CEO averaged $5 million per year; Freddie Mac CEO averaged $5.3 million per year. And that was their "reward" for putting their companies in the terrible situation they are in, ignoring all the unfairness ... ignoring the fact that lack of fair and proper regulation enabled predatory lenders to misrepresent the terms of loans, make loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, make loans with tempting but deceptive teaser interest rates that were later raised way too high, sneaking in undisclosed charges and fees, and even paying illegal kickbacks.

Even worse, the ten highest CEO incomes in 2008 were as follows: (1) Blackstone Group LP CEO: $702.4 Million; (2) Oracle Corporation CEO: $556.9 Million; (3) Occidental Petroleum Corporation CEO: $222.6 Million; (4) Hess Petroleum Corporation CEO: $159.5 Million; (5) Ultra Petroleum Corporation CEO: $116.9 Million; (6) Chesapeake Energy Corporation CEO: $114.3 Million; (7) XTO Energy Inc. CEO: $103.5 Million; (8) EOG Petroleum Resources Inc. CEO: $90.4 Million; (9) Nabors Petroleum Industries CEO: $79.3 Million; (10) Abercrombie & Fitch CEO: $71.7 Million. And that’s just the top ten CEOs.

We need to stop and prevent this kind of unfairness, and this kind of looting. We need to establish proper regulations to ensure fairness and equity. We need to ensure that the wealthiest few and large corporations pay a fair and appropriate amount of taxes, without any loopholes, subsidies and tax shelters. We need to provide tax cuts to small businesses, lower middle income workers, and the working poor, who really need them. We need to prevent speculators from using other people’s money, like worker pension funds. Furthermore, we need to give shareholders real control over the corporations they own, rather than have corporate decisions made by executive-dominated boards behind closed doors (which is why CEOs of large corporations have been able to get away with virtual robbery during the last 28 years). For if we establish sane and fair regulations and tax reforms it would ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, which would produce adequate revenues, balance the budget, and lighten the tax load on middle and lower income working families.

Furthermore, there must be provisions to ensure the taxpayer’s money provided in the bailout is paid back with interest. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a loan repayment. For example, in the $1.2 Billion 1979 Chrysler bailout, Jimmy Carter demanded that Chrysler issue stock warrants to the Treasury as soon as possible, which Chrysler did, and the Treasury wound up selling the warrants for a $400 million profit. This is relevant because Congress has provided many hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts to banks, financial institutions and insurance companies, as well as to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, and we must make sure that we get a good return on our invested money.

By the way, the last government bailout I just heard of as of this update is to the huge AIG Insurance giant, its fourth huge bailout since September 2008. And I was astounded when its CEO made this comment: "When the world gets pneumonia, we get it too." It seems he wanted to make it seem like the financial crisis is the fault of others in other countries, and that American companies are just victims. I think that was misleading, because it was American companies, especially in the financial industry and insurance industry, that are most at fault.

Speaking of the financial industry and their mortgage-backed securities, we should work from the bottom up by restructuring all the fraudulent mortgages so homeowners can afford to stay in their homes. If banks fail, the government should temporarily nationalize them, and the FDIC should insure savings up to $500,000, rather than just $200,000. We should make sure that the Government Accounting Office (GAO) works with Treasury, and that all inspectors general will be truly independent (and not like the sham "independent" IGs that gave Bush free rein). They must truly monitor all of the Secretary of the Treasury’s decisions. There must be reasonable, strict limits on the financial payouts to corporate executives, because no one should be enabled to rake in millions of dollars when the lowest paid workers are not paid enough to support their families or afford the basic necessities of life. There must be bankruptcy reform to ensure that corporate executive are not able to walk off with millions of dollars and leave a lot of people with losses. And all the corporations in the financial industry must be required to pay fair and reasonable taxes to pay for the bailout. The financial bailout that Bush and Congress doled out to financial institutions before he left officedid not do that. It merely rewarded the wrong-doers.

As I said, we cannot merely treat some of the symptoms of America’s financial-economic problems, because it's like putting on a band-aid and does not deal with the underlying infection, or the real problems and their cause. We, the people, must do that, and establish real fairness, equity and justice, at long last. And the only way we can do that is with a reformation of government, to put an end to the presidential form of monarchy, and the divisive, winner-take-all competition for the "throne."

Now, you should understand that I’m not writing this out of partisanship to make a case for Democrats, because most of them are part of the problem. And, as long as we cling to the status quo and perpetuate this political-economic system, the economy will only get worse for the majority of people, while the wealthiest few will continue to reap greater and greater profits and live more and more luxuriously. After all, rapidly escalating and inflating prices for all the necessities of life really don’t affect them, because they have far more than enough money. In fact, the wealthiest few hold and control 90 percent of the financial wealth of the nation. That’s a big part of the problem.

I tell you truly, money can be the root of evil, and the lustful desire for money can be a snare. I must tell you that it is easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than for an excessively rich and selfish person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And I tell you truly that as you do unto the poorest and the least of our brethren, so you do unto me, and to your very Self.