There’s one specific Rosland Capital commercial “starring” G. Gordon Liddy that’s really gotten under my skin. There are a few of these ads with Liddy, and they’re all kinda bombastic and annoying, but this one takes the cake for me! (It’s not on YouTube, though, so I’ll just have to tell you about it. Unless you ever watch Fox News, and then you’re sure to be sick to death of it by now!) This is the spot where the former Watergate burglary-conspiracist guy says the dollar is a lot of "hot air", and then he proceeds to deflate all of these finance-related balloons, like piggy-banks and stuff. He makes an important point at the beginning of the ad, but he’s only telling a small part of the story, so it’s especially propaganda-y and dishonest, in my opinion. And if he’s being so misleading about such a simple point, then can we really believe him about the gold stuff? I’d have to say: “No!” (Gold may be a good investment if the dollar tanks, but otherwise, it’s a little late to get in now, I think, as the price is so high at this point. But it is a good hedge against the dollar: that's true.)
So, what does he say that’s so controversial (to me)? He says this: “The economic crisis was the result of risky lending and easy money!” Um, a part of it was, that’s true. But if that had been all it was, it wouldn’t have been a worldwide financial crash and continuing recession. No, it was all of the unregulated, dishonest stuff going on at Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds, not to mention insurance companies (one, in particular), concurrent with an almost complete lack of meaningful oversight by the SEC, that made this such a devastating occurrence, and not mentioning that seems like someone’s trying to obfuscate and conceal some stuff here, don’t you think? So don’t blame the rich banker/investor guys; just get mad at them poor people! That’s disingenuous, I think, since it basically whitewashes the crooks who really did “cause” the economic crisis, in addition to all the government spend-thrifts (Funny that “thrift” could be in that term, but whatever.) who have spent us into bankruptcy. (I’m looking at you, George and Barack!)
So it wasn’t just home-mortgage-holders trying to scam their way into a bigger house than they could afford that’s to blame here. There may have been a few of them, but I doubt there were many. In fact, it looks more and more like most people were tricked into taking predatory mortgages because they didn’t know any better, and the banks targeted them. These banks should go out of business, or at least fire everybody involved in this stuff! A major bank (the one with the wagon) was just implicated (allegedly) in a scandal that suggests they (allegedly) targeted minority homebuyers with good credit, and intentionally steered them into predatory loans to gouge them as much as possible with fees and stuff. I allegedly think they’re criminals if they really did that stuff. That would allegedly be against the law, in addition to allegedly being against the civil rights laws. But that’s just allegedly. I’m allegedly sure they’re allegedly nice, trustworthy people. And so is Gordon Liddy, the ex-con Watergate criminal. Allegedly, that is…
Oh, but I’m actually getting a bit off-message here, for I wanted to make an important point that has nothing to do with gold or crooked mortgage-lending. It’s simply this: the credit-default swaps that crashed the world economy and really led to the massive bailouts were completely undercapitalized, and knowingly so! So then, that’s FRAUD! Whether they were regulated or not, fraud is fraud, and the guys who did that stuff should be in prison now! What the president should have done is this, in my opinion: He should have said that the credit-default swaps were unethical and illegal, and that as a result, they would not be honored. The people who paid for that “insurance” (the credit-default swap was a hedge in the form of insurance) should have lost their premium payments, and the issuers of the swaps should have been prosecuted and drummed out of the financial sector. Then, nobody would have been on the hook for those massive payouts, and the bank bailouts (as well as AIG) wouldn’t have been necessary. Then there would have been plenty of money for stimulus if that’s what we wanted to do, and we wouldn’t be at this debt ceiling impasse now.
Oh, but then gold wouldn’t be worth so much, would it? So maybe it’s a good thing our economy crashed; right, Rosland Capital? Oh, and if they can convince you that Wall Street had nothing to do with the financial crisis, and that it was just poor people’s home-loans, then maybe we won’t re-regulate Wall Street, and we’ll have another economic collapse that will send gold prices soaring even further! And then think of all the money Rosland Capital would stand to make!
(And by the way, re-regulation of Wall Street does not need to be that complicated, and should be as simple as possible, just so everyone easily understands what the regulations are! So reinstate Glass Steagall, prosecute things that are dangerously over-leveraged as insufficiently-capitalized fraud, and break up companies that are “too big to fail”, and we should be in good shape! Too much over-regulation {and simply too many regulations} is counter-productive, because it gets in the way of legitimate business, because it's very difficult for everyone to even know what the regulations are! It's not easy to do business legally when there are hundreds of new regulations written in legalese gobbledygook, because everyone would need a lawyer just to make sure everything was legal before they did it, and that gets in the way of getting anything done, so most people would probably ignore the new regulations and hope they didn't get in trouble {or else use their connections in government to keep from having the regulations apply to them}: you know, like with MF Global {allegedly}. So simple, easy to understand regulations, and as few as possible to keep things from being dangerous or abused, would work the best for all sides.)
(And by the way, re-regulation of Wall Street does not need to be that complicated, and should be as simple as possible, just so everyone easily understands what the regulations are! So reinstate Glass Steagall, prosecute things that are dangerously over-leveraged as insufficiently-capitalized fraud, and break up companies that are “too big to fail”, and we should be in good shape! Too much over-regulation {and simply too many regulations} is counter-productive, because it gets in the way of legitimate business, because it's very difficult for everyone to even know what the regulations are! It's not easy to do business legally when there are hundreds of new regulations written in legalese gobbledygook, because everyone would need a lawyer just to make sure everything was legal before they did it, and that gets in the way of getting anything done, so most people would probably ignore the new regulations and hope they didn't get in trouble {or else use their connections in government to keep from having the regulations apply to them}: you know, like with MF Global {allegedly}. So simple, easy to understand regulations, and as few as possible to keep things from being dangerous or abused, would work the best for all sides.)
Here is one of the ads he does for Rosland Capital (but not the one I’m referring to here):
