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As a regulating agency please start to reign in the especulators. While the inequality in the country grows by leaps and bounds, people loose their jobs, and their houses get foreclose, especulators make millions with the help of congress and the regulators. It is time to stop this tragedy, we are killing the best country in the world. For instance, in 1970 80% of oil futures was traded by companies that used oil for their operations. In 2011 80% of the oil futures is traded by especulators and 20% by the companies that use oil for the operations. The end-result is a few people making billions while whatever is left of the middle class continues to be squeezed. The US has become a third world country where a .5% of the population controls 70% of the wealth. It is a total shame that regulators and tea party congressmen rather see the country ruined that correct the situation. Alvaro Castro See message I sent to Senator Nelson Dear Mr. Nelson, I know you are doing a good job and hopefully we are able to keep you in Washington. I used to be a democrat and have been so disappointed with the state of business in our country that decided to become an independent. As an independent voter and a capitalist at heart I would venture to get on the soap box for a few minutes. I truly believe that if person works hard he or she should be able to reap the rewards of his/her work and hopefully see a way to contribute to society. So, here it goes. The question many of us ask today is "What is wrong with our country?" It is not terrorism or that we are spending huge amounts of money on security, the answer plain and simple is "Greed." As I take a look at the state of business in the country I realized I have lost my ability to stay engaged and almost became apolitical. The political landscape we have today is a polarized, self serving system that is taking us down at a rapid pace. I would dare to say that it is close to failing. But we don't have anybody to blame but ourselves, we are the ones who elect the people to congress and keep them there, thus, very little room to complain. As the saying goes "People have the government they deserve." The political system we used to have seem to be balanced and work pretty well for the most part: Republicans were fiscally responsible and felt that people would be able to care for themselves with very little government interference, and Democrats were socially responsible and believed that government would level the playing field via social programs. This strategy seemed to keep the government working well and for the most part it kept the country on the right track. Unfortunately today's politicians see reelection as their main priority, forget the good of the country (incumbency supported by pork barrel politics and hatemongering is the key.) The new political strategy to get to a political office is divide and conquer, polarizing the country. This strategy is accomplished easily leveraging such issues as abortion and gun control. Forget the economy or that people don't have jobs, that is not critical. Thus, the end result is an economy that is tanking, people without jobs, deficits running rampant and the only thing we see coming out of Washington is political infighting, and guess what, we keep electing the same people and expect different results, not likely. According to republicans we need to take the country back, the question is back from what. The previous administration left the biggest mess in the history of the country (or globally for that matter) but taking the country back was never on the table. We saw budget surplus become huge deficits, got into fabricated wars (that we did not have any business to be in) the economy collapsed, large banks went out of business playing poker with our money and "taking the country back was never a question being asked." The sad part of the economic mess is that large part was created almost illegally under the deregulation umbrella by bankers (ending the Glass-Steagall act was a mistake,) who made money while business was good and continue to make money while business is bad, and again, not a single banker has been sent to jail. Instead many bankers retired with millions of dollars and deferred compensation after crippling the banks they ran (including the mortgage companies Country Wide, Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac.) Just as a side note, Dodd was in charge of finance in the senate, he was a very good friend of Country Wide president Mossino, he received in excess of a million dollars discounts in loan fees as a "friend of Mossino." And to add to the party, Hedge managers tax rate protected by democrats in New York. The new president is elected and instead of trying to fix the economy spends all the energy working healthcare. I know healthcare is important but the economy is more critical. Granted, the stimulus worked somewhat and no more banks failed. But, since the TARP was given to banks with no strings attached, banks proceeded to give themselves 69 billion dollars in bonuses and decided not to lend money to improve their balance sheet, end result, the economy is in check. So here is where we are so far: there are two wars, bankers making millions of dollars, the inequality in the country growing by leaps and bounds, people without jobs, the economy tanking, the infrastructure falling apart, students graduating to a "no-jobs" environment and our elected politicians fighting in washington. Of course the solution to all problems is to continue providing low tax rates for the wealthy and ending social security. This wonderful SS solution is presented to us by the same people who have the best retirement and health package money can buy after serving only one term in congress.. We have become like third world countries where the acquisition of influence by our industry leaders and politicians has become their main goal to enrich themselves. Forget party lines, greed is the name of the game and is done by everybody, democrats and republicans. For starters, who are the regulators of Wall Street and the banking industry, the same people who have a revolving door at Wall Street, regardless of party affiliation. Rubin, Summers, Hubbard, Polson to name a few. And the ones who don't work for Wall Street make millions advising Wall Street while they formulate policy for the government. It is impossible to regulate an industry when the regulator is making millions from the same industry he or she is trying to regulate. They come to the government from WS and once done working for the government they go back to Wall Street. It just does not work. How many of the Wall Street bankers who reaped hundreds of millions in bonuses selling toxic documents (and causing personal grief to the middle class) went to jail, not one. In fact, they continue to make huge amounts of money as if nothing has happened. And the icing on the cake, the middle class had to bailed them out. We did not have a choice, too big to fail. The end result of deregulation has been huge companies, less competition and in the case of banks (too big to fail.) Forgot small detail, before the newly minted regulators start working for the government they cash all their stock options, deferred compensation and special bonuses tax free; this is done because of meeting their Patriotic Obligations in "heeding the call of duty" to work for the government for less (which is very subjective.) The acquisition of influence is so pervasive that it is in any area of our social fabric. The armed services procurement process used to work in an ethically and fiscally responsible manner until it was changed from civilian control to the pentagon. Maybe up to the Johnson administration generals retired from the armed services to contribute to society and live a great retirement life. Nowadays, they retire to work for the defense industry. Thus, the money they make from retirement is very little compared to the money they make working for defense contractors; here we go again. Even our presidents "The Carlyle Group." In the 80's a huge economic transformation started taking shape as we moved from a manufacturing to a service economy. The process seemed to work as jobs were created by the service industry and it was able to absorb the displaced from manufacturing. Although salaries in the service industry are much lower families managed to make ends meet as more women joined the work force. Unfortunately the move to a service economy caused a major shift in the educational system. Since we became a service industry people moved away from engineering and other careers that contributed directly to the economy to MBAs. Thus, colleges started graduating more people to meet the market demands for financial needs (i.e. Managing other people's money) and not manufacturing needs. The latter has led to a situation where money is made strictly playing on the financial markets instead of creating a meaningful product. For perspective, the cost of oil, it is very high and we all know it, is high in part because of demand, but the biggest factor is speculation by hedge funds bidding the price of futures through the roof. In 1990 eighty percent (80%) of the oil futures were traded by companies that use oil for their operation (i.e. airlines, trucking companies, etc.) today, 80% of oil futures are traded by hedge funds and 20% by the industries that use it, end-result, a few especulators/hedge fund managers making billions of dollars, regulators no where to be seen and the middle class being squeeze to the max. I don't want to be the voice of gloom and doom and I still believe we have the best place to live in the world. My concern, for how long. Kids coming out of college are moving back with their parents for lack of work opportunities, is that a bright future (see the latest news on poverty and graduates moving back home for lack of opportunities.) For the first time in the history of the US the next generation will not be able to improve their standard of living, and I don't think it is because of laziness. Worse, we have become like third world countries, it is not our smarts and hard work that moves people ahead, it is who you know not what you know, thus we traded meritocracy for connections (who you know is more critical than what you know!) definitely not a good place to be for people starting their careers. Based on what I see the future looks very gloomy and the sad part, this is the country most people would like to live in. Last but not least, democrats had a great majority in 2010 to get the economical agenda moving ahead, but as it can be seen clearly the opportunity was squandered. What do we have to look forward to in 2012, the Tea Party, not a good choice. I hope we are able to elect and keep more people like you in Washington. Alvaro Castro
