On November 6, 2012, the United States of America will hold an election that will determine the office of the President of the United States as well as 435 individuals of the House of Representatives and 33 of the 100 U.S Senators. The stakes could not be any higher for the country, the world, and most probably, civilization as a whole.
The Economy
After decades of reckless financial speculation and shady lending practiced by Wall Street and the City of London, our world was shaken to the core in the fall of 2007 when a chain-reaction collapse of the Trans-Atlantic world's financial systems brought the world economy to a sudden halt, freezing credit from flowing through the system and threatened bankruptcy to most of the world's largest investment banks who were by then utterly insolvent due to the trillions upon trillions of dollars of gambling debts under the weight of exotic financial instruments such as credit default swaps and other complex derivatives.
Four years later, after billions of dollars were spent on political bribing and bonuses, which led to trillions of dollars in fraudulent activity, trillions of dollars in bailouts of Wall Street and City of London and trillions in printed money, tens of millions of jobs lost and millions of homes foreclosed and countless of millions of lives ruined, the crisis continues as inflation set in and the price of food and energy sky rocketed which spread throughout the world, hence, The Arab Spring.
In 2008, the American electorate gave the newly elected President Barack Obama a mandate to reverse the policies that got us where we are today. And next Tuesday, the American people will decide if the current president fulfilled that mandate or at least set the policy trend to move the country, and by extension, the world out of our current predicament and into a real economic recovery. Or, if it is time to give someone else the opportunity to do so. However, based on challenger Mitt Romney's campaign platform, there seems to be very little daylight between he and the president's economic policy, for the exception of taxing the wealthy a bit more which in itself will not help the recovery in any significant way.
Faced with the limits of both the president and his challenger, what type of qualities do we need in a president that will bear the economic policies to get the country out of this mess? How about an Issayes Afwerki US Presidency? Would it succeed in bringing forth the necessary change to get the US and the world back on track to economic recovery? I think so.
Before the Issayes haters/detractors start having convulsions, let me explain.
After the 2008 financial crisis, Congress created the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report, chaired by former California state treasurer, Phil Angelides, currently on the New York Times bestseller list. It produced a scathing report going back 30 years and it placed the blame squarely on the repeal of key regulations and the failures of those mandated to supervise the financial markets. It also concluded that there was a "systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics."
So let's start there.
President IssaYES would first and foremost restore confidence in the financial markets and the government by frog-marching all of the culprits that caused or contributed to the crisis to the big house, after due process, of course. This would include all of the executives of the investment banks such as Goldman Sucks, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and the likes. He would model this investigation after the 1930's Pecora Commission.
Second, he would re-instate key regulations. Starting with the most important, Glass-Steagall Act. Glass Steagall placed a firewall between investment banks and commercial banks and only commercial banks would qualify for FDIC insurance. President Obama refused to re-instate this law that would essentially bankrupt the gambling casinos on Wall Street with no possibility of a governmnet bailout.
Third, a President Issayes would nationalize the Federal Reserve and transform it into the Third US National Bank modeled after Alexander Hamilton's First and Second National Banks. Congress would then create the credit instead of an unaccountable private central bank. This would allow cheap credit, which would be monetized, to flow to huge national investments.
Lastly, to address the chronic unemployment, especially among the youths in America, whose unemployment rate is a staggering 18%, and to also address the crumbling infrastructure in the country, president Issayes would create a government organization tasked with creating a Marshall Plan to fix our crumbling infrastructure and chronic water shortages in the western states. It would also establish a youth work program modeled after FDR's 'Civilian Conservation Corps'(CCC) that will provide our youths with badly needed employment. The youths would also benefit from "improved physical condition, heightened morale and increased employability".
Essentially, it would be an IssaYES NEW DEAL. However, to get this done it will take much courage, guts and a huge set of cojones. Something an Issayes administration would have plenty of.
