It has been a heck of a week up here in Paradise. For my usual August respite, Barack, Michelle, the kids and me all vacationed together on Martha’s Vineyard. Okay not exactly together, but only a few miles away on this small beautiful island, their hearts beat with mine. It was a sublime dream of unity.

I did see the camera crews at Sweet E’s Cupcake Shop waiting breathlessly for a glimpse of the Big O. But it was not to be, the First Fam was ordering gulf shrimp one town away. Still this week it was comforting to know that half the secret service, some of the nation’s best military and the Prez himself were battling it out with locals through the three day Nor’easter.

Speaking of unity, Krishna Das dazzled audiences at Union Chapel the other night with spiritual songs and chants in Sanskrit and English. It was a divine experience for everyone present. After two hours of musical love, I floated away with his new CD, “Heart as Wide Open as the World.”

Ahh, if only the world could be as wide open, loving and blissful as Martha’s Vineyard in August…

But truthfully, even Martha’s Vineyard is not as blissful as itself when the season ends. Work is harder to come by than ever since the financial crisis. The local housing market is a shadow of its former self. Foreclosures still pop up all over the island. Property values have diminished 30-50%. A talk with local realtor Roy Cutrer of Martha’s Vineyard Premier Properties  reveals there are good deals to be had and local banks to finance them, but sellers and buyers continue to be hesitant. Who knows what is coming down the pike for the economy? (Read Saniel Bonder’s take on the rocky “recovery.”) 

Yet remarkably, some good news is on the horizon. I am happy to report that democracy is alive and well on Martha’s Vineyard despite the current economic challenges. The community has united to form Vineyard Power, an island-wide collective initiative, to provide real solutions for renewable energy. Two passionate VP supporters are local celebs, John Abrams of South Mountain Company and Steve Bernier of Cronig’s Markets.  Both of these folks are living breathing examples in their highly successful enterprises of socially and environmentally responsible businesses. (Full disclosure: SB is a friend.)

South Mountain has been a pioneer in the sustainable building industry long before it was fashionable. The “employee-owned company offering integrated development, architecture, building, interiors, and renewable energy services” has been around since 1975.  Abrams and crew are devoted to the local community and continually innovating solutions for affordable and sustainable island housing.

Cronig’s Market is simply my favorite grocery store anywhere. Coming from a gal who shops in New York City, land of Fairway, Zabar’s, Grace’s, Garden of Eden and the usual staples Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, that is a big statement. What do I love about Cronig’s? Well, everything really – from the sleek and elegant way it looks to its wide selection of organic and local food to its sustainable product annex, Healthy Additions and eco-friendly philosophy. The supershop even has an extensive gluten-free section for otherwise breadless folks like me. Cronig’s was one of the first major markets to eliminate plastic bags and offer reusable cloth satchels. The store is on the cutting-edge of the shop local movement and is an active member of the Island Grown Initiative, “a non-profit grassroots organization working to support local food and farming on Martha’s Vineyard.”

But back to Vineyard Power… Unfortunately, I had to miss VP’s community meeting this week in favor of the once-a-year musical event with KD. (Sorry Vineyard Power, but you can’t sing.) Yet that is not to discount how thrilled I am to be a part of such an amazing display of not only democracy in action, but of a highly developed community spirit. Sitting in a July meeting at the Katherine Cornell Theater, it felt like a throwback to early American days – those years when common folk really controlled their own destiny and fulfilled the promise of self-government. Discussion revolved around a shared conversation of how to join the island community together to create renewable energy.

The goal of Vineyard Power is to develop a totally sustainable island within the next few years. Ultimately, wind power will be offered to islanders at “cost” rather than profit and will be a 100% community owned initiative. Membership is refreshingly inclusive, rather than exclusive. Every resident, seasonal and year-round homeowner or tenant is eligible to join the effort. The strength of its results will be in the numbers. After all, they are taking on strong forces of opposition—mainly the big energy companies with a vested interest to stop them and not least of all, residents who prefer to save their water views than save the planet.

And really that view thing – if you ever had a great water view you know— is a big issue. Sometimes the reason you buy a particular house is because of the view. Obstructing the horizon can diminish property values substantially. As a former waterfront home owner myself, I am sympathetic to opponents. A beloved islander Walter Cronkite was a staunch foe of the wind power movement. An avid sailor and long-term resident he did not want wind turbines blocking his view of Nantucket Sound. Yet dear Walter is gone now and so is the choice about whether to wind power or not.

Renewable energy is no longer an elective. Those days are long past. Nowadays, there is no confusion—the survival of our planet is at stake. We are all called to make some sacrifices to that end.

Vineyard Power believes that sustainable wind power is inevitable, especially on the island where the wind resources are enormous. In the true American spirit, VP’s collective action is an effort to control the island’s own energy destiny. The belief is that something so essential to daily life should be directed by locals rather than an unknown corporate entity with little concern for people and planet.

The “community-owned energy cooperative” Vineyard Power hopes to generate its own renewable energy, minimize electrical costs and reduce the island carbon footprint. The business and community leaders behind this project are those that understand that people always come before profits.

That really is a sublime dream of unity – to continue in our 21^st century evolution to open our hearts as wide as this wonderful world with all its infinite possibilities.

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director  

It’s all in the way you think about it. Debtors or victims? Creditors or usurers?

The ancient dance of debt and credit has changed partners and its moral compass through 4000 years of recorded history. Humanity has had an ambivalent relationship to debt since civilization began. The current battle between borrowers and lenders reveals the age-old struggle shows no sign of abating.

The New York Times published a remarkably biased report entitled, “Debts Rise, and Go Unpaid, as Bust Erodes Home Equity,” on the growing phenomenon of Americans “choosing” to walk away from debts. Far from “all the news that’s fit to print” the yellow journalistic tone of the article makes one wonder whether writer David Streitfeld and the New York Times were fronting for bank lobbyists. Streitfeld writes that defaulting homeowners “prefer” bankruptcy to honoring their contracts.

Of course this reasoning is so logical, as we all know how simple it is to declare bankruptcy. Just become a prisoner for the next 20 years of your consuming life and it’s basically a walk in the park! (Perhaps he was thinking of Central Park at midnight.)

The normally fair-minded Marc Gunther who pens a column on sustainable business followed up the Times article with more borrower bashing in an article entitled simply, “American Deadbeats.” Gunther wrote while he doesn’t mind paying for his sunroom, he doesn’t want to pay for yours too. In his blog, Gunther pontificates on the moral hazards of unemployment and defaulting on debt.

The housing meltdown is, needless to say, still with us today. It’s the single biggest reason why millions of Americans are unemployed, people aren’t spending and the economy remains choppy, at best. It’s also a cause of what, at the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy, looks to me like an erosion of moral values, as many thousands of borrowers simply refuse to pay what they owe.

Simply refuse to pay what they owe? Who? Where? What?

Never mind that being unemployed might lead to a tragic inability to pay ones debts, not by choice, but by no choice. Gunther notes the source of the economic crisis is the housing collapse, yet rather than sympathize with those whose incomes have evaporated and find themselves overwhelmed by debt because of it, he judges their state harshly as a willing abandonment of American “moral values.”

Neither of these articles acknowledges the economic suffering going on in Middle America. People are struggling to stay in their homes, struggling to keep the lights on, struggling to find work, struggling to feed their families. They are literally struggling to keep themselves alive and not shoot themselves in the head due to long-term joblessness and continuing threat of homelessness.

How did they miss that? Is the New York Times so cushy a job that the economic despair of the nation can go unnoticed?

Sure let’s make the victims of the housing collapse—the underwater, unemployed, overextended— the source of the problem. Why not, victimize the victim? Isn’t that a brilliant tool of defense used by many abusers? Doesn’t a rapist say of his victim, she wanted it? Essentially that is what these folks are saying. Debtors are walking away from their homes, because they want to go bankrupt? Excuse me, but what ordinary person (not corporation) wants to go bankrupt? I don’t know any.

In the NYT article, Streitfeld portrays borrowers unable to repay debts as “unwilling” to pay. He uses quotes from a Phoenix attorney Christopher A. Combs who teaches classes on foreclosure and claims, “Mom and pop making $80,000 a year were taking out $300,000 home equity loans for new cars and boats.”

Firstly, any lender who was reckless enough to issue a loan at 4 times a person’s income was knowingly spinning a roulette wheel. Chances are the “lender” sold the unstable loan to Wall Street underwriters for a fast and fat premium. Wall Street sold it back to mom and pop pension funds for an even fatter premium. No one held the loan for a more than a few weeks. Now who do we feel sorry for?

Secondly, I don’t know too many Mom and Pops with 80k incomes who own yachts, do you? More likely, “mom and pop” took out equity loans to send their kids to college, fix a leaky roof, or pay for their liver transplant.

A little due diligence on Times “expert” Combs, reveals he is part of “CAI,” a group of Arizona bottom-feeder lawyer lobbyists making big bucks from foreclosures. Mr. Combs claims that settling debts for less than the full amount of the loan “rewards immorality.” I guess he would know.

Streitfeld’s second “expert source” is a collection agent who makes his living squeezing pennies out of down and out debtors. A vulture capitalist who pays $500 for $20,000 loans from lenders, any amount Clark Terry extracts from the misery of others is worth his time. Never mind that the borrower and he never willingly entered into a contractual agreement. Parasite Clark somehow feels righteous enough to preach to the fallen. As he pounds the nation’s struggling unemployed and foreclosed with thousands of legal threats and phone calls a day, Clark opines, “Americans seem to believe that anything they can get away with is O.K.” Yes indeed.

Even more peculiar was the fact that two of the three borrowers depicted in the article were not “mom and pops” at all, but savvy real-estate investors who walked away from investment properties. A real-estate agent who defaulted on one of his properties said, “I am not going to be a slave to the bank.”

Perhaps an investor has the choice not to be enslaved to a bank, but ordinary homeowners do not. Anyone who lives in a community where their kids go to school, their friends and family live and where they have put down roots for a life cannot just walk away from an underwater property. First of all, that investment is their home, not a dispensable luxury. Secondly, if they declare bankruptcy or default on their mortgage, who is going to rent to them with trashed credit?

For many “mom and pops” loss of income, a family business and long-term unemployment has become a nightmare of debt enslavement from which there is no escape but bankruptcy or default. You don’t walk away from a home even if its value has decreased if you have no place to go. Bankruptcy limits one’s options for home and job severely – even in post-financial crisis America.

While it would be easier to believe that debtors are “choosing” to walk away from underwater homes, more likely than not, those losing their homes are trapped in a living hell. Foreclosure destroys marriages, families, neighborhoods, communities, careers and lives. It undermines the very foundation our nation is built upon – home ownership and hard work.

While Streitfeld and Gunther call defaulting debtors “deadbeats” and “immoral,” these people are actually our unemployed neighbors and friends who have been caught up in a mortgage securitization Ponzi scheme they could never have foreseen. The sad truth is that many defaulting borrowers have been caught in an ancient struggle for 21^st century survival.

Debt Slaves

Debt slavery has a long history in human civilization dating back four thousand years. Back in the day when one’s collateral was his or her own labor, things went from bad to worse for debtors. Ancient Mesopotamia just south of Hammurabi’s kingdom was the birthplace of the first recorded “Wall Street” and home to a thriving debt slavery industry.

According to Yale’s financial history wizard, William Goetzmann (and contrary to the common belief that only American consumers have gone to borrowing hell), the ancients were living their own credit and debt nightmare. 

Time is money and the ancient lenders figured out what modern finance understands all too well—your time and your money equal my profit. Evidence of a complex lending and loan trading industry in the Sumerian city of Ur (circa 1800BC) reveals that the oppressive system of credit and debt that evolved four millenniums ago has remarkable parallels to our modern credit-based economy.

Ancient bankers paid low interest on deposits and charged large interest for credit. Legal interest rates were limited to 20%, but savvy lenders figured out how to circumvent the rules and charged the limit on a monthly basis.  (Congress circumvented interest rate limits in 1978. In the U.S., the sky, literally, is the limit on interest.) Lenders borrowed silver mina from the Temple at 20% over five years (3.78% annually) and made short-term loans to ordinary folks not fortunate enough to access Temple funds. (Nowadays big banks borrow from the Fed Discount Window under 1% and lend it to you at 29%.)

Longer-term loans were issued generally over five year periods based on a person’s future production. Debt was commonly sold and borrowers were often obligated to repay someone they never met. (This is 2010 practice as well.) A largely agricultural society, borrowers offered future crops as collateral. Fisherman borrowed against the day’s haul. If crops or fish did not manifest, borrowers pledged their freedom in return for necessary credit. In Ancient Mesopotamia, you could borrow from your neighbor and ultimately be enslaved to your worst enemy.

The ancient system of credit was a matter of survival. The uncertainties of nature could force hard-working people into debt. Floods, droughts, storms, insects, earthquakes and natural disasters could result in a debtor and his or her family becoming slaves of creditors.

The system of debt and credit quickly became a destructive force of oppression in Sumerian society. At one point, more citizens were slaves than were free. Just like the U.S. today, Ancient Sumerian society could not function without the free flow of credit. So the Babylonian King, Rim-Sun had no choice but to cancel all the debts. Creditors were not happy, but debt slaves were freed and the Ancient City of Ur flourished once again.

Debt Slavery in America

It is time to understand that the system of debt and credit in post-subprime mortgage America has become a destructive force of oppression in modern society. Many debtors in today’s economy are victims of the outrageous and callous actions of a few hundred thousand mortgage brokers, lenders, underwriters, securitizers and finance pros. I hate to break it to Mr. Gunther, but we are already paying for the sunrooms of several thousand CDO traders as well as their Porsches, swimming pools and Hampton homes. Yet in a democratic society, this is how it is. We pay for each other’s mistakes. That is why we create laws to prevent them.

Since September 2008, the rules have changed on debt and credit. When the top tier financial institutions (i.e. creditors) reneged on their debts, all bets were off for the rest of America. Many of today’s debtors are former prime borrowers—people who had long-term secure jobs, solid incomes and perfect credit scores. People who were never late paying a bill and would have found it unthinkable to do so now field calls regularly from aggressive collectors—the same creditors that created the credit crisis in the first place. Streitfeld writes:

The amount of bad home equity loan business during the boom is incalculable and in retrospect inexplicable, housing experts say. Most of the debt is still on the books of the lenders, which include Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.

The irony of this statement is that these are three of the institutions that are directly responsible for the housing collapse and continuing financial chaos. The further irony of this is that these three banks actually receive government support (away from TARP bailouts) to put these debts “off the balance sheet.”

Ever heard of Term Auction Lending Facility or Term Securities Lending Facility? These are official “federal programs” (i.e. legal ways to avoid repaying debt) that allow insolvent or debt ridden banks like B of A, JPM Chase, and Citi to unload bad “assets’ like defaulting mortgage securities in exchange for taxpayer cash.  

Yet JPMorgan Chase, B of A, and Citi are three of the nation’s most aggressive foreclosers and debt collectors. Yes it’s true—the same folks who put us in debt are now collecting on our debts.

Creditors have become the modern oppressor – enslaving borrowers in debts they themselves refuse to pay. So the bad investment you made on your home is your problem and the bad investment your creditor made on your home is your problem too.

The difference between leveraged creditors and ordinary debtors is that the government (Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury and Congress) has their back and not yours. Big creditor banks are legally allowed to dump their debt on taxpayers, but they will pursue folks experiencing economic hardship directly due to their own mismanagement to the “fullest extent of the law.” All this subjective “immorality” proves is that the “law” needs to be changed.

So who is the real deadbeat now? The underwater unemployed borrower swimming upstream to try to salvage his or her home? Or the bank that created the economic collapse and is now able to have you pay all their debts through bailouts, “toxic asset” programs, special privilege, lobbying and distortion of the free market system?

Like King Rim-Sun it might be time to give the debt enslaved some relief and put ordinary citizen toxic debts “off balance sheet” too.

Like the third debtor in the New York Times article remarked, “There is strength in numbers.” Come on America, let’s turn this tanker around.

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director  

www.good-b.com/blog

Often politics and business mix in a big way. Small Business America is no exception. Access to credit for small business, sole proprietors and entrepreneurs in the United States is in dire straits according to every walking & talking politician out there from the Big O to the Fed Chief to elected officials from both political parties. Yet nowhere is any real and effective help forthcoming.

The recent Small Business Jobs and Credit Act was shot down with filibuster assault rifles by the entire Republican Senate. The act included tax incentives and federal lending guarantees. Even one of the authors of the small business bill Olympia Snowe, the moderate Republican Senator from Maine, voted “No.”

Guys and Gals, while you are fighting amongst yourselves for power and privilege, Small Business America is sinking like the Titanic!

Why did the Senate torpedo such hopeful help for the nation’s entrepreneurs? Because according to opponents, it’s a mini-TARP. “It has all the quality and features of the TARP program, ” said Snowe.

And what is wrong with that??? Have you forgotten there is a continuing credit crisis for anyone but the largest banks and corporations?

Let me ask you a question Ms. Snowe and fellow Senate naysayers, why would you deny helping small biz the same way you helped big biz? Are you unaware that the TARP program is credited with “saving” the economy by many of the nation’s top economists?

Did you also forget that TARP was created and engineered during the 8-year Republican Presidency of George Bush Jr., under the direction of former Goldman Sachs CEO (US Treasury Secretary) Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke – both appointed by that President?

Did you also forget that the purpose of TARP at the time of its origination was specifically sold to Congress as a way of supplying necessary credit to consumers and small business?

The fact that TARP was a fraud to cover for banking mismanagement and designed with no lending stipulations whatsoever for big banks is a matter worthy of criminal investigation. Errant financial firms were bailed out, because “credit needed to keep flowing.” Our Fed Chief Bernanke claimed that the purpose of the bailout was to support Small Business & Consumer America. Yet we still have not done so nearly two years later.  Are you waiting for America’s small businesses to die on the vine in the name of politics?

It has been repeated over and over by  members of Congress and most recently President Obama, “Small businesses create two out of every three jobs in this country.  So our recovery depends on them. And if we want to keep America moving forward, we need to keep investing in our small businesses.”

Yet for all the talk, Republicans do not want to pass any small business legislation before November midterm elections for fear that will help Democrats get the vote. And Democrats have waited twenty months after the credit crisis began to help the little guys just in time for an election fight.

Where is Small Business America in all this? Left in the dust of the partisan politics that is the state of the U.S democracy circa 2010.

Small Business has been on life-support since September 15, 2008 when Lehman Brothers, the investment banking giant and toxic debt King, crashed and burned. Since then we have saved AIG ($183bn), Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley ($20bn) and allowed them to borrow tens of billions more from the Fed at zero percent, liquidated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ($160bn), bailed out Bear Stearns for JPMorgan Chase’s benefit ($30bn), gave Bank of America an early Christmas gift of Merrill Lynch with taxpayer money ($45bn plus $118bn federal guarantee of toxic debt losses), saved Citibank for their bad behavior with another $45bn taxpayer cash and $306bn in toxic debt acquisitions, supported state, city, and federal government workers with a $1.2 trillion “stimulus”, and billions of government “buybacks” of toxic debt, (i.e. defaulting mortgage securities created by the big banks and so-called investments from “bad” banking) for a total of $6.4 trillion according to CNN’s Bailout Tracker.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Yet we can’t spare $30bn more for small business lending even though it supplies 2 out of 3 jobs? With 300 million Americans this amounts to an investment of ten cents each. Brother, can you spare a dime?

In this country, our politicians have their priorities mixed up.  Senators and House members continually pretend to represent Americans. “Americans want…America is…”Americans need….”  You know what Americans need?  They need a government that gives a damn whether they succeed or fail – instead of picking and choosing the winners from the campaign trail.

As an entrepreneurial American I will tell you straight from the trenches, Americans are behind small business. It is built into our DNA. Yet despite this basic fact, the battle cry of small business is dimmed by loud partisan bickering of hypocritical lawmakers. Walk your talk people. We are dying out here.

Recently I spoke confidentially to the CEO of a $10bn hedge fund on the state of credit; he said, “The U.S. is a credit-driven economy. Right now there is no credit at the consumer and small business levels.”

Why then is nobody with power to change this listening?

“Among the most difficult challenges facing small businesses in Washington and throughout the nation is access to credit…Expanding Main Street’s access to credit is the most effective thing we can do to promote our ongoing economic recovery,” according to Washington State Senators (D) Cantwell and Murray.

Yada Yada Yada. We might as well be talking to a wall. Forty two Republican Senators filibustered an end to any hope of small business credit. How long can you remain underwater before you drown is the question for Congress?

Small Business: The Key to Recovery

According to Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, commonly believed by Republicans and Democrats alike to be the top expert in the nation on the economy, “Boosting credit to struggling small businesses is key to the economic recovery.”

Dear Congress: Rather than hear it from politicians who have been supported by taxpayer bailouts their entire career, small business itself has something to say: Step up to the plate and hit the damn ball!

Instead Senators continue to claim they “love” small business—only not enough to actually support it.

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) said “While I support the bill’s tax incentives for America’s job-creating small businesses, I can’t support creating yet another lending fund that turns the Treasury Department into our national bank.” In other words, Small Business America is not worth investing in.

(By the way Senator, just FYI, the Federal Reserve (not the Treasury) does serve as the nation’s central bank.)

Small business feels the heartbeat of America better than any elected or appointed official. They represent the grit and hardiness that politicians love to covet. Small business doesn’t want charity – these are entrepreneurs, the kind that America celebrates – those hardy folks that create something from nothing on their own wits and ingenuity. All small business wants in post-bailout America is a fighting chance. How can it compete against the federally funded coffers of the Big Boys?

“To support the recovery…small businesses are important in creating new jobs,” says Bernanke.

So where is the funding to do this job creation? Where is the low cost Federal lending given freely to big banks and in turn to bond issuing corporations for the past two years for small business economic recovery? Why are there two standards for lending – one of unlimited credit for errant too-big-to-fail institutions and another, “Sorry pal, can’t turn the Treasury into a national bank,” for the little guys that hold the nation up?

In his testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Bernanke spoke of the continuing credit crisis for the nation’s job creators:

“Small businesses, which depend importantly on bank credit, have been particularly hard hit.”

That is a mouthful. Now that we agree on the problem, what are we going to do about it?

Chairman Bernanke: “At the Federal Reserve, we have been working to facilitate the flow of funds to creditworthy small businesses. Along with the other supervisory agencies, we issued guidance to banks and examiners emphasizing that lenders should do all they can to meet the needs of creditworthy borrowers, including small businesses. We also have conducted extensive training programs for our bank examiners, with the message that lending to viable small businesses is good for the safety and soundness of our banking system as well as for our economy. We continue to seek feedback from both banks and potential borrowers about credit conditions. For example, over the past six months we have convened more than 40 meetings around the country of lenders, small business representatives, bank examiners, government officials, and other stakeholders to exchange ideas about the challenges faced by small businesses, particularly in obtaining credit.”

Real Help for Real People 

Forty meetings over six months and we arrive nowhere. None of these efforts matter a hill of beans unless there is some official enforcement behind it. Regional and community banks are not receiving the same bailouts their big banking brothers are, so the Federal Reserve is trying to incent them with government guarantees—the same guarantees that failed to incent their liquidated siblings. Smaller banks always on alert for FDIC takeover will be understandably less likely to take on added risk. In the current economic stress and continued joblessness, small business credit is a major risk for not-too-big-to-fail banks.

What is the solution then? Incent businesses to hire using tax breaks and federally sponsored access to credit – similarly to the way the Feds handle big business and big banks.

First and foremost: “Credit-worthy” small business is a loaded term. Many businesses without access to credit have levered up to the limit of their former credit lines, borrowed from family and friends, mortgaged their homes (if they could) and depleted their personal savings to stay afloat. This is how the real entrepreneurs of America fight for survival – by the skin of their teeth. Not on the cushy backs of banking lobbyists and government paychecks.

Credit allows businesses to wait for receivables, hold onto employees, and generally weather the storm until the recession clouds part. In the process of waiting for the economic tides to turn, many small businesses have lost their former good credit status, laid off long-term employees and generally had trouble making ends meet.  It’s war out there in Real (non-government sponsored) America.

This is where the Feds can step in. Liquidating the big banks through TARP allowed these businesses time and money to recover income and absorb losses. Big banks borrow at the Fed “Discount Window” when they are short of cash, can’t make payroll or need to invest in revenue producing innovations. (For example, Goldman Sachs borrowed $10bn from TARP and paid  $10.9bn in compensation a few months later. From the Fed lending facility, the firm has been able to borrow unlimited cash with almost no interest to invest in profit making ventures. So how did Goldman get back to the top of the heap? They borrowed their way back – that is how a credit economy works. Business needs capital to run.)

1. Therefore, the Federal Reserve should create direct source lending at near zero percent for small business in the same way they do for the big guys. $30bn? Try $90bn for starters – an investment in American small business at 30cents per citizen.
2. Credit worthy? Use the same criteria the Fed used for the big banks who were actually insolvent when they were bailed out and take their bad assets “off” the balance sheet. Now how credit worthy are they? Is their business obsolete? Or do they just need funds to wait for economy to rev up again? How about access to credit to meet payroll?
3. Investment tax breaks are great. But if this is about jobs, then why not give tax breaks for creating jobs? What about significantly reducing employer payroll tax for every new hire or rehired worker? After all, this will cost the government far less than social services in the end.

Contrary to popular pundit bellyaching – people want to work. They want to be useful. They want to create businesses and fuel the entrepreneurial engine of America. That is how our nation was formed on self-reliant innovation. We like to invent the wheel and we prefer to do it on our own.

But there are extraordinary circumstances, like the once-in-a-lifetime economic tsunami, where help is necessary to get back on your feet.  Small business was knocked down and is still trying to get up. The words of a Billy Holiday tune echo the cry of the 2010 American entrepreneur, “I been down so low, it looks like up to me.”

Senators, Small Business America is calling on you to help our nation’s entrepreneurs boost job creation.  So fellas and gals, put your, er… our money where your mouth is.

For heaven’s sake, what are you waiting for?

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director  

www.good-b.com/blog

More Resources:

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke: July 21, 2010 Testimony on State of Small Business

Something remarkable happened in the world of the richest men on earth. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who dedicated most of their lives to accumulating as much wealth as possible, decided to give nearly all of it away - in their lifetimes. Why? To help those who cannot help themselves. And even more than that, they have asked their peers to do the same (the Giving Pledge) – give it all away.  If you don’t see this as unusual, think again. This act represents one of the most extraordinary moments in global economic history.

Rich men (I am leaving women out purposely) do not give their money away easily. After all, it represents their life’s work. Their wealth supports their egos, power and position in the top levels of gazillionaire moguls. We imagine a secret society of power players divvying up the world’s wealth for themselves with no regard for those without. When you give your money away, you give your power away too. It’s emasculating. Male virility shrinks with one’s portfolio. Big swinging….well, you know the rest.

So why would the world’s two richest men give it away?

It boils down to an evolving sense of social conscience – the deep belief in individual responsibility to help relieve human suffering.

Perhaps we all have this mandate to some degree. We call it charity, tithing, philanthropy. Yet social conscience goes beyond those traditional labels to the depths of our being. We are not simply writing a check for a “good cause” or attending a gala with our social set. We are investing ourselves in creating a better world.

The innovative David Miller, who heads up Princeton University’s Faith and Work Initiative, writes, “We all have greater capacity than we realize to live lives of radical generosity. We can do it with our time, treasures, and talent.”

The new giving pledge is a part of our consciousness. We give, because we must. However humble, all of us can affect someone else’s life in a positive way through kindness, compassion and generosity—not for the kudos, but for the personal satisfaction of knowing we are part of a giving (not taking) world.

Beyond Noblesse Oblige

Commitment to philanthropy is nothing new. Noblesse Oblige has dictated that wealth and privilege requires the responsibility to serve society. No one embodies this more than the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II. In modern monarchal systems supported by the taxpaying public, royals know the part they play in balancing the scales of privilege—lest they lose their heads. Modern royals have given moguls a model for social responsibility.

We have come to a moment in the evolution of humankind where we recognize that each of us has co-created the world we live in—the good, the bad and the ugly. Each of us is responsible for the state of our fellow inhabitants. Each of us has the power to change our world to a more caring place.

Apathy is a direct act. If we do nothing; we are part of the problem. It is a clear statement of “I accept all that is and will make no effort to change it.”

For those of us like myself, who do not, cannot, will not, accept all that is—we are called to fight. Like spiritual warriors, we charge into the Battle for Goodness. It is our mission to usher in the change that we know, as consciously evolved human beings, is our purpose here on earth.  In the fight against the ugliness of gluttony and the violence of greed, compassion is our sword. Arm yourselves and get ready for battle.

Contrary to outdated beliefs, compassion is not weak. It represents love and love is the strongest force in the universe. It is the very essence of what we live and die for. It takes great courage to love in an unloving world, great courage to show compassion in a culture that reveres aggression, great courage to stand up to destructive forces of power and say: Enough! You have had your time at the top. We are taking our world back.

Only the strongest among us can do this. It requires us to push through the status quo of who has more, and those that want only more for themselves. It forces us to not play both sides by catering to the self-serving while claiming concern for humanity, or placing self-interest above social conscience. Love inspires us to recognize that we are indeed at war—with corruption, greed, injustice and the brutal inhumanity of top down economics.

If we say yes to social responsibility, we are saying yes to the fight for Goodness and the hope of transforming humanity from a culture of hate and selfishness to one of compassion and community. All of this brings me back to the Giving Pledge and the example of two business titans, Gates and Buffet, who are galvanizing the troops to create a better world for us all.

It is a giant leap forward in the evolution of human civilization for power and privilege to finally join the Fight on the side of Good.

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director  

www.good-b.com/blog

Who knew until just a few weeks ago that Big Oil had a contract with God? BP, the self-proclaimed poster child for corporate social responsibility, got their right to dig one mile below the surface of the sea direct from above.

Yup, that is just the way it is. Nothing any of us can do about it. Because if God gave them the right to drill baby drill, who are we mere mortals to question their authority? 

How else would the American government, the international maritime agencies, and oil industry regulators have allowed this one profit-driven company and any oil digger out there, the right to destroy our God-given eco-system? It must have been the Big Guy, or Gal, herself.

You don’t believe me? It says so right in the Good Book. Look it up.

Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Okay, so what happens after that?

Chapter 1, Verse 28: “God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

So human beings, i.e. governments, private profit-driven oil companies, industry regulators, have determined they were given the right to “subdue and rule” over the earth and sea from the highest authority. That must be why Big Oil believes that off-shore drilling is its Divine Right. How else would these shareholder companies have the opportunity to drive their drills down five thousand feet underwater to annihilate our fish of the sea, birds of the sky, and every living thing that moves?

Do you get it now? We can’t blame BP. They get their mandate to destroy the eco-system from a higher authority. They do it all in the name of the Almighty.  In the case of global oil companies, that higher authority is the Almighty Buck.

That means for BP and Big Oil, Buck is God himself. Or for all practical purposes in the United States of America, God is the Almighty Buck. Yup it has to be. Otherwise why would we worship it over Creation?

We would never let anything less than a Supreme Being take from us our rightful heritage. No human being would have the ability to trade our eco-system for profit. It just couldn’t be done—because we understand that nature itself is sacred.

We live in a shared world. No single person, group of people, corporation or nation has the moral, ethical, or legal right to rape, pillage and plunder what belongs to the living and yet unborn. Not unless it was given away by the Creator itself. So that must be the Almighty Buck.

Now I feel better. The Oil Spill in the Gulf at the hands of the inept and dangerous BP must be an act of God – like an earthquake or something. The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh away. For Big Oil, Buck giveth and taketh away.

So I ask you as you grumble, moan and wring your hands in despair at the great tragedy in the Gulf, WHO GAVE BRITISH PETROLEUM OIL COMPANY THE RIGHT TO DESTROY THE SEA?

Almighty Buck.  Buck is in charge. Buck is the one who decides who lives and who dies, who thrives and who perishes. You did not create the universe. You cannot determine how to use our earth. That is Almighty Buck’s  job and only He decides who has dominion over earth and sea.

Right now that is BP.

You thought a mere oil company would not be free to poison the seas that belong to you, me, our children and theirs.

You thought that nature was so grand and awe-inspiring in design that no person or institution should be allowed to tamper with its majesty.

You believed that human beings were given the privilege of protecting and preserving our natural world.

You thought wrong.

Our sacred covenant with the earth is not to protect and preserve it after all. BP and our oil drilling laws have shown us that the covenant with Almighty Buck gives human beings the right to strip the earth of its abundance and leave behind environmental devastation for posterity.

The earth and seas are under the rule and dominion of private profit-driven international corporations. The global community decided long ago that this is how it should be. Common economic ideology dictates that our natural resources should serve only short-term human needs. Our governments, even the most enlightened among them, are convinced that profit is more important than people, that shareholder value is greater than nature’s value.

In the name of freedom, free markets and that Holy Grail called “Enterprise” we have forsaken our own eco-systems—those that sustain us. In the process, we have forsaken humankind.

Somehow we cannot see a way to value life and money at the same time. We cannot find a way to profit without endangering the delicate balance of the earth.  We cannot imagine a comfortable existence without sacrificing our natural surroundings for it.

We continue the call for off-shore drilling. Almighty Buck wants it that way. We will not “kick our addiction to oil,” or so he says. We are not willing to sacrifice convenience for longevity. So we are told.

As we watch the billions of gallons of toxic oil plumes deadening our sea life, the majority of us would gladly inconvenience ourselves for an end to this destruction. We are willing to forgo shareholder dividends for peace of mind and a greater future on this earth.

It takes our business, political, religious, and global leaders to say “enough.” By ourselves, we do not have the power to stop “off-shore drilling.” We do not possess the engineering skills to create a green car, cheap solar power, or replace our national oil dependency with eco-saving alternatives. Yet we can imagine it; speak of it loudly and boldly for all to hear.

To effect real change, we must join forces in large numbers and say no more to the savage raping of our earth and sea.  No more to off-shore drilling. No more to threatening our eco-systems. No more to profit over people and life itself.

There is another way.

We can hold a vision, a dream perhaps, of a balanced life where the earth and sea serve us as we preserve them. Our vision includes a symbiotic relationship with nature – where She provides for us and we protect Her.

In the meantime, we watch in agony the destruction of the Gulf coast, the livelihoods of those that live by nature and the unbelievable toll of perishing sea life.  We recognize our vision remains a “pipe dream.” (No pun intended.)

Yet it does not have to be. Nature should not be trumped by private interests. People need not take second place to profits.

If you are looking for someone’s “ass to kick,” you might try finding Almighty Buck.

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director  

www.good-b.com/blog

Humanity is at a pivotal moment of transformation. How we proceed from here will determine the level of suffering we will endure or the level of peace we can achieve in our lifetime.

The more strife and hardship experienced by our world, the more we question the status quo. We have not arrived at this moment by accident. We are part of a growing force of voices that yearn to bring about change.

Humanity has suffered tremendously in the 20^th century.  The traumas of wars, conflict, and injustice over the past 100 years have taught us great lessons. From these painful moments we have made great advances in terms of human rights. The second half of the 20^th century brought forward a consciousness for the urgent need  to protect the innocent and to “right” the many wrongs of society. Before this shift in thinking, human rights was a fringe idea held by a small group of brave and enlightened souls. The creation of the United Nations and the hundreds of advocacy groups that evolved from it represent the dramatic change in our cultural beliefs. We have gone from killing each other to saving each other. At least some of us have.

What this proves is that it is possible for human beings to change in a fundamental way. As change agents, this is important for us to remember as we move through the often frustrating process of transformation. While it can be slow, plodding, and exhausting, when we look back over the last century we see enormous progress in the way human beings relate to one another.  In spite of those who wish to maintain the status quo, change does come.

One of those areas of progress is the treatment of women.

Beginning half a century ago the plight of women as second class citizens was brought to the world stage. We discussed civil rights, education, and economic rights, and made serious political and social advances. Most of all a consciousness grew that refused to relegate women to the simplistic roles of submission and subjugation we suffered as a gender for the previous 2500 years.

If you remember the progress we have made in recent years (after more than two thousand years of repression and suppression), we recognize as a species human beings have advanced further than we think. Yet the fight is still on…

We hear of young girls subjected to vicious attacks as they fight for their right to be educated. We witness the violent abuse of women worldwide as they struggle to take their rightful place along side of men. All of these challenges reawaken us to a simple fact. There is still so much to do.

We have arrived astonishingly in this new century at a crossroads of spiritual and cultural evolution of the world community. The advancement of women is a crucial part of that evolution.  If we wish to advance as a species, the 21^st century is poised to become the Century of Women. This will be the century where women fully participate in the decisions and direction of their own lives.

I worked in the financial industry in the U.S., here in New York, for several years—a traditionally male world. For all the progess America claims in the advancement of women, the world of money in the United States and across the globe is still controlled by a small group of men. The proof of this unilateral control was exemplified by the financial crisis that began in the U.S. in 2008 and spread around the world in a matter of days. It continues to wreak havoc today. Hundreds of millions of innocent people are struggling to survive due to the aggressive and predatory acts of a few thousand men.

I am convinced (and I am part of a growing consciousness) that the only thing that can right this great wrong will be the addition of women to the economic and political systems in a real and integral way.

Greed is not the sole province of men. Women are prone to this human flaw as anyone else. Yet what are traditionally recognized principles of feminine energy – compassion, love, receptivity and conscious humanity – are exactly the elements missing from the current economic structures of the world. These human qualities are precisely the factors that can fix the financial system and prevent another collapse from occurring at the hands of greed.

Compassion and business are not supposed to mix, but a human social system (whether political, religious, or economic) that does not include compassion is forever destined to destroy and not create.

The world needs love. The absence of love is the catalyst behind all human-made suffering. When we forget about love for humanity, we become violent, detached, and destructive. We needlessly create pain for others, because we falsely believe that caring about them will make us vulnerable.  The absence of love inevitably becomes a virulent hate; this is the greatest tragedy of our civilization.

Women are lovers. Women know that love makes us stronger. We understand in our deepest core that love not hate has the greatest power to heal. While hate destroys, love rebuilds.

We are mothers. We nurture our children who create the future of the world and give them strength to face the challenges they will meet. We are the givers of life, not the takers of life. In giving life, we give love with it.

Women are healers. Our job is to offer strength, tolerance, understanding, and wisdom to help repair our world.

In this Century of Women, it is not that women will replace men. It is that men by our example will open themselves to the compassion women embody. Men will find the courage to open their hearts to the love women innately feel for the planet, for our children and communities.

In this Century, women will finally face their fears of annihilation and find the strength to step up and take our rightful place as leaders along side of men.

It is only in true partnership of men and women in government, spiritual traditions, and in our economic structures that we can heal the suffering of our modern world.

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

Remember the Old Boys’ Club…? The boring, cranky, devious one that controls the banks, the economy and most of our wealth creation and money supply from behind the scenes? The one where nearly every key position in government is occupied by an Old Boy? Yes, that one.

Well, there are still a few lifetime members of the OBC firmly entrenched in the Federal Reserve (Grandpa Ben), and the Treasury (Timmy G and Larrykins) who continue to give all our money away to their ever-popular clubby friends.

These are the same old boy club members who along with ex-Goldman partner and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin gave the store away to the big banks in 1999 with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Ordinary banks like Citigroup could now legally play roulette with government guaranteed deposits. OB Robert Rubin thought it was such a great idea he took a job with Citibank only weeks after leaving the Treasury.

These same old boys, Summers, Greenspan, Geithner with OB Senator Phil Gramm (now a lobbyist for Swiss Bank UBS) the very next year pushed through the ill-fated Commodities Futures Modernization Act – otherwise known as Derivatives-Are-Born-Free Act. This little understood law overturned a century old rule that had prevented unregulated market bets since the Panic of 1907. Now all bets were off…

Meanwhile back at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency that was supposed to be supervising the gladiator games, another group of old boys put the final nail in the coffin. In early 2004, Chairman of the SEC William Donaldson (former head of securities giant DLJ) got together with a few good friends, card-carrying OBC members and business colleagues, the heads of the five largest investment banks in the industry including soon-to-be Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Together the six overturned a law that stood on the books for three decades limiting the amount of risky assets the nation’s largest securities firms could hold.  In a 45 minute meeting, the barrier between 12 to 1 capital to debt ratios and all hell breaking loose was removed.

Unlimited leverage became official:  the biggest banks no longer had to follow “the net capital rule” and could use their “own judgment” for how much risk to take with other people’s money. Within four short years, the five firms would triple and quadruple their risk levels to the point where three of the five firms collapsed along with the United States banking system.

Who benefited from merging boring deposit-taking banking and casino trading by dismantling Glass-Steagall? Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo…

Who benefited from under-the-radar derivative anarchy?
AIG, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, UBS, big banks, the hedge fund and private equity community…

Who benefited from reversing the capital restrictions on  risk for big banks?
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo…

I think you know how the roller-coaster fun ride ended.

It is clear who did NOT benefit from the free-for-all deregulation of banks and the refusal to create a derivatives exchange…The working public, small business, you and me. In fact it was the elimination of these three important legal statutes that pushed the American financial system to the brink of collapse in less than a decade. Are you getting the picture? In the words of Oliver Hardy, Old Boys’ Club of America: Another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.

And now for something completely different. The All New Girls’ Club.
Move over boys. The girls are back in town.

Democracy and Law

The recent nominee for Supreme Court Elena Kagan summed up the need for law in the preservation of freedom. “Law matters because it keeps us safe, because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms, and because it is the foundation of our democracy,” she said. These words could be easily translated to the current debate on financial reform.  Freedom only functions when the laws protect everyone. Keeping our nation’s financial system safe from rape, plunder, and pillage is the ultimate goal for financial reform.

Out of Washington this past decade, little of our government’s actions made rational sense. Economic anarchy was called “free-enterprise” and “reform” was equated with more war and less public safety. Same old story as the old boys kept their stranglehold on the gov and our economy.

Back in the old days (late 20th century America) one voice of reason rang out-the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born. In 1998, Born singlehandedly stood up to the firmly entrenched old boy network of Greenspan, Summers, Rubin, Geithner and SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt and fought hard to regulate lethal derivatives citing the risk of unmitigated disaster. Unfortunately, the irrational voices of the old boys drowned her out and her warnings of financial crisis came true.

Sitting on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission a few weeks ago, Born had her chance to chastise the champion of free-for-all enterprise and economic recklessness, Alan Greenspan. She told the old boy that he “failed to prevent the housing bubble, failed to prevent the predatory lending scandal, failed to prevent the activities that would bring the financial system to the verge of collapse…You failed to prevent many of our banks from consolidating and growing to a size that are now too big or too interconnected to fail.”

Wow! What a woman. It was almost worth the  painful two years of financial woe to see Greenspan become visibly angry and categorically deny what is already documented fact. Ding dong “the Oracle” is dead.

In a sea of male bankers, another woman’s wise words stand-out. Sheila Bair, Chairwoman of the FDIC and long an advocate of safe banking and distressed homeowner assistance, has the odd distinction of being one of the few banking industry regulators in favor of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Such an agency “would help community banks, not hurt them,” she claimed in direct opposition to her old boy colleagues. In accepting the Profile in Courage Award alongside Brooksley Born, Bair said, “I’m particularly pleased to be joining …other female awardees who stood up when some of their male counterparts failed to act, or worse, actively fought them.”

Next up in the House of Feminine Wisdom is consumer rights champion Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law Professor and Chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel. As head of the panel, Warren is a fierce critic of how the bailout money was allocated by the Fed without condition. She has become the nation’s most vocal and toughest advocate for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

Warren summed up her fight for reform with this, “It’s ultimately about protecting the whole economy. When we destabilize American families; when we sell them terrible products that explode in their faces. That in turn destabilizes the entire economy. These products that were gonna offer these huge, huge profits weren’t just lousy deals for consumers. They were lousy deals for investors. They were lousy deals for pension funds. They were lousy deals for the worldwide economy.”

Wall Street: Fix this Mess You Made

Two weeks ago as I stood outside New York’s City Hall listening to angry protestors chant, “Wall Street fix this mess you made.” I realized that only our lawmakers can fix the mess they made.  A financial system without laws protecting the innocent constitutes economic anarchy… And anarchy is a dangerous thing. It has been an expensive and painful lesson for us as a nation and global community. What does the “free market” really mean? What keeps a  society truly free from tyranny after all? Laws can create tyranny or protect us from it – the choice is ours.

The only way to safeguard our economic system for consumers, financial professionals, investors, as well as for bankers is to vigorously regulate the markets. Limiting leverage with capital and debt restrictions, reining in risk of deposit-taking banking institutions (separation of Bank and State), removing conflict of interest from official regulating and rating agencies (eliminate regulator – ratings shopping), and creating a consumer financial protection agency in the same way we oversee every other product on the market from food (FDA) to children’s toys. These changes are basic and reasonable responses to maintain economic freedom, not obscure it.

The Old Boys’ Club has launched a battery of lobbyists who are fighting hard against these reforms and the women in power are pushing back.

Ladies Night

At a recent evening celebrating women leaders, California veteran Senator Diane Feinstein claimed that, “If Congress were all women, we would have financial reform by now.” That may or may not be true. Yet there is something to be said for the healing quality of women. The women in government right now seem intent on fixing the problem, not denying it exists or throwing more wood on the fire.

Feinstein pointed out that 18 years ago when she was first elected to the Senate, there were only two females in that body of Congress. Now there are 17 female U.S. Senators. That is an increase of representation from 4% to 34% in a decade and half. Every election we move closer to shattering the glass ceiling held firmly in place by the OBC that has dominated our nation’s financial system for over two centuries.

Feinstein, Olympia Snowe (R-Me), Susan Collins (R-Me), Barbara Boxer (D-Ca), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Kay Hagen (D-NC), and Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) are all leaders on comprehensive financial reform. Margot Dorfman, CEO of the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce took the opposite view on financial reform from her male counterparts at the big business lobby thinly disguised as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The USCC is campaigning against the creation of a consumer financial protection agency. Dorfman declared her support for the agency and for “America’s small businesses and communities” by urging Congress to “pass comprehensive financial reform.”

Additionally, Mary Shapiro as head of the new and improved SEC, Bair, Born, and Warren -embody a newly established feminine wisdom that is moving the ineffectual and outdated Old Boys’ Club out of the way.

Women are healers by nature. We are mothers, sisters, daughters, problem solvers, and leaders. The time has come for the feminization of our politics and our economy. Our nation needs to be healed. That’s not a job for the timid or delicate. It’s not for sissies. It is for the strong, powerful, and wise. The way women really are.

The logic of the Old Boys’ Club represented by the ancient Greenspan and the not-so-ancient 50 year old males controlling the nation’s largest financial institutions has rapidly dissipated by its own self-defeating actions.

As for me, I think the patriarchs in the tired dreary old boys’ network had their shot and screwed things up just fine – now it is time for the ladies to take their turn and see if they can clean up the mess the boys made. For my money, I put my trust and faith in the New Girls’ Club.

We have come a long way, haven’t we?

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

It used to be that indifferent wealth building and outsized risk was sexy. For thirty years, the world of high rolling high finance was the object of admiration and envy. The chants of “Wall Street sucks” some ten thousand strong in front of City Hall last week signify that the days of glamour and greed are over. Inarticulate and ineffectual as that phrase might be, it reveals the increasing rage building against Wall Street titans. In the wake of the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, economic hardship has become too real for too many.

Wall Street’s ”burn baby burn” ethos isn’t looking so hot these days. The thrill is gone baby. The thrill is gone away.

Last week, Wall Street’s ruling class, the risk managers of the mortgage securities division at Goldman Sachs were skewered to a well-done temperature by a suddenly alive and outraged Senate Committee.

Question: Where was this “you done wrong” stance when the Street paid themselves millions on the backs of the downtrodden and newly homeless? Where was the outrage and effective action when the industry cannibalized itself and then walked away with the Golden Goose? The rage of our elected officials on display across TV Land America seems too little too late to help those in foreclosure or destitute from loss of income directly due to the excessive greed of a select few.

So what was this humiliating display of Goldman Sachs princes falling from grace all about?

The current anger at Wall Street seems to be channeled almost exclusively at one firm and that nefarious place called “Wall Street.” Goldman Sachs has come to represent for many critics, the Great Satan in modern America.  Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi called Goldman the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”  His attack of the Big Bank established lines of battle between those who believe the investment banking giant can do no wrong (Warren Buffet  & junk bond king Michael Milken) and those who believe they are modern day Dillingers (Taibbi and most of America.)

In case you missed it, the Securities and Exchange Commission suddenly awakened from its decades long “see-no-evil” stupor and brought civil charges against Goldman Sachs for allegedly deceiving clients by selling bad debt called “synthetic CDOs” and then profiting on their client’s investment faux pas. These “exotic” financial instruments were once ironically termed “weapons of financial mass destruction” by Goldman’s most vocal supporter, Warren Buffet. (Buffet invested 5 billion dollars in GS in the fall of 2008.)

Goldman’s defense: Our investors are big boys capable of making their own decisions. Translation: “We are not responsible for your ignorance…suckers!”

Taibbi points out in a recent UK Guardian article that the philosophy behind their defense is the medieval business model of “caveat emptor.” He writes, “The investment bank’s cult of self-interest is on trial against the whole idea of civilization – the collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even if we can.”

Goldman’s greatest critic is indeed correct that the investment giant’s “cult of self-interest is on trial,” but this is not exclusive to Goldman Sachs. They are simply the most visible and seemingly “best” practitioner of unrestrained profit-seeking at the expense of the greater society. Goldman Sachs is not on trial literally (at least not yet). The entire business model of profit-at-any-cost (Atlas Shrinks) is “on trial” in the eyes of the public.

For years, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. As a culture, we have defended a business model of profits-before-people that has come to bite us in the bloomin’ arse. The model has been reduced to an inane battle of “conservatives versus liberals.” Just curious: Since when is it “conservative” to take the food out of a baby’s mouth and the roof over a hard working family’s heads? Since when is it “liberal” to establish a morally restrained code of behavior that embodies the Golden Rule? All these absurd labels prove is that as a society we force people into tiny boxes for our tiny minds to comprehend and then completely miss the point.

The Point: Are we survival-of-the-fittest capitalists in a deadly game of Darwinian magnitude? Or are we morally responsible and socially conscious capitalists who have personal boundaries in the pursuit of profit which we won’t cross? In other words: In the quest for money, is there anything at all that we won’t or can’t do?

Libertarians or Randian greed-mongers would say no. In the purity of the “free market,” there is nothing we should not be able to do. Theirs is a Wild West philosophy of lawlessness, predatory mortgages, and under-the-radar “derivatives.”

The chances of Goldman Sachs breaking a securities law and being convicted of fraud are pretty slim. They are too “clever” and too connected to behave criminally. Goldman does not have to break laws to profit; they simply change laws to their advantage-circa Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The purity of our democracy is the real issue, not Goldman’s alleged “fraud.”

Law of the Land

While in Wyoming traveling from Yellowstone National Park some years ago, the owner of a lodge asked me if I wanted to go grizzly bear hunting. I replied, “I thought it was illegal to shoot grizzly bears.” The cowboy smiled, “We make our own laws here.” Looking around at the rugged and wild expanse of nature surrounding me, it was easy to understand his conviction. He could have killed me too and no one would have ever known.

What struck me most about his question was that he and I were of such contrasting worlds. I, a city girl, was comfortable with society’s rules. He, a wilderness child, had no respect for anyone else’s law. The fact that he thought I would share his love for the indiscriminate killing of innocent animals astonished me. We held a completely different moral view.

It reminds me of a conversation with a former mortgage trader from one of the big banks just after Lehman’s fall. He had been skiing in Aspen in 2007 and overheard two mortgage brokers ranting about a deal they failed to close. “F***ing Bitch,” they swore of the cautious widow who refused their loan. My friend was weary of the business and said, “I made my money; it’s not fun anymore.” His was a rare conscience in the world of finance-one where he gave up “the fun” to become part of Vermont’s middle class. The price of easy money became too high for his morally conscious mind.

What is really on trial with Goldman on the hot seat is our cultural ambivalence to greed. There is no such thing as easy money or “money for nothing” – that is the great American myth. There is always a price to pay when we throw care and responsibility to the wind.

We live in a shared society, not an island apart from the world. We are part of a complex and extensive global community. Everything we do from polluting the environment to polluting the economic system comes back to haunt us. In our adolescent materialism, we forget there are consequences for our actions.

For the record, “Wall Street” is not the few blocks stretching downtown that last week’s protestors symbolically walked. Wall Street is an amorphous destination that exists as much in our minds as it does behind the gold and glass plated doors of 200 West Street. It stretches from one end of the nation to the other – south, north, west, east and everywhere in between. It reaches every continent on earth and directly affects every nation. It operates through every bank, insurance company, corporation, lender, and financial advisor. It includes the stock exchanges and bond markets in New York, London, Hong Kong, Chicago, and around the world. Wall Street is not a “place” at all, but a global economic system. The question is do we want to support a system that creates value for society or destroys it?

The myth of the “free market” is that we should have no laws. We should be able to shoot grizzlies and each other with impunity in our current economic philosophy. No one will really know if we “screw” each other over. As long as we do not leave a trail of emails behind, it’s your word against mine. Who would ever know?

Our market values do not emulate our societal values. We live in a ”free society” within a complicated system of laws designed to protect us from the tyranny of each other. I can no more “kill” you, than you me, without legal consequences. Yet I can sell you bad debt hidden in between thousands of pages and laugh at your stupidity as you writhe in agony from economic disaster. The double standard of our flawed morality makes little sense.

Greed is looking ugly these days. “The great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” is greed itself. Unbridled greed is primitive, crude, crass, dangerous, socially obsolete and not in the least bit sexy. To paraphrase that great philosopher, B.B. King:

The thrill is gone baby.
The thrill is gone away.
You know you done us wrong baby.
You’ll be sorry someday.

Taibbi writes of the task facing the modern world to make a collective decision once and for all, “not to screw each other over” just because we can.

Goldman Sachs is not the source of the problem. The real source is the primitive and socially unconscious business model they embody and we embrace. The acceptable for-profit survival of the fittest model where we “take the money and run” without responsibility for our actions. The model where it is not only “okay” but “good business” to leave dead bodies in our wake. The model where if I survive and you fail… I win!

After all, they shoot grizzly bears don’t they?

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

So much for democracy…

There isn’t even democracy among bankers these days. Community and regional banks are being shuttered around the country by the FDIC to the tune of 218 since 2007. Any bank that levered more than its fair share of capital, suffered losses due to bad subprime, and generally managed their money poorly dies a quick painful death as it is swallowed up by the government “safe banking” machine.

Any bank that is except for the Supersized Big Bailout Six…

Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs - these banks live in a different universe than mere mortals. Why? Because of the buzz phrase you have heard a lot of lately. They are simply “too-big-to-fail.”

When a bank is insolvent, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) created by the Banking Act of 1933 not only has the right, but the legal duty to take over the bank, divide its assets, investigate its books, and make sure it is open for depositors on the next business day.

But the Big Six operate under a different financial system than the rest of America. Neither you nor I are able to put our debts “off balance sheet.” We are not able to borrow from the government unlimited amounts of mulah at zero percent interest. We are not able to keep our jobs after destroying our firms. We are not able to pay ourselves bonuses, buy Leer jets, take spa vacations, and golf on Trump’s course on government dollars.

Only the Big Six are “legally” allowed to get away with the economic murder of 10 million unemployed and desperate citizens and 8 million more newly homeless American families. Only the Big Six are able to walk away scot free from the greatest bank robbery in the course of human history.

Frustrated? Yup, me too. As Congress deliberates financial reform, their goal should be to create one set of laws for all 300 million Americans.

Currently, “ordinary” America, the too-small-to-save crowd, lives under a democratic capitalist system where economic failure is not met with pots and pots of government guarantees and cash. The Supersized Big Bailout Six Banks have created an elite super class that is bound by different standards – a world of no laws, a veritable economic anarchy reminiscent of Old World Kings. Theirs is a government sanctioned free-for-all-style monopoly on the nation’s wealth – a system that MIT economist Simon Johnson calls an “oligarchy.”

The Big Six are capitalist when it comes to profits and socialist when it comes to losses. Wow! What a world it would be for any of us if we could have some poor schmuck like you take over my debts for me. I can just keep the good stuff. Any takers?

Givers and Takers

Apparently, yes there are a lot of takers. According to the 2000 census, there are 300 million of them in the United States alone. That is the number of suckers on the dole for the Supersized Big Bailout Six. Not only is this one-sided undemocratic banking system legal, it has been orchestrated and executed through the systematic and calculated infiltration of the financial system over the last 25 years.

American democracy is characterized by equality throughout all economic classes, and not intended to support any privileged class of people apart from the common public.

Yet the financial deregulation of the past two decades, officially sanctioned by the monumental bailouts that began in early 2008 and continue to this day, have created a two-tiered system of economic inequality that favors the Big Six over everyone else.

So how did we become a society where all the rights and privileges are vested in the top management of the Biggest and Baddest Six American Banks?

Banks of our Fathers

The fight between citizen-centric Thomas Jefferson and banker-centric Alexander Hamilton echoed the current economic battle we continue to wage.

Jeffersonian economists warned vigorously against putting America’s financial power into the hands of a few select bankers exactly the way the government has done since 2008. As the nation’s “too-big-to-fail” banks were pulled back from the brink of economic abyss, the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury solution to the problem was to make these banks bigger.

While Washington Mutual, the largest bank failure in U.S. history, crumbled to its knees due to flagrantly irresponsible lending practices, JPMorgan Chase was allowed to acquire WaMu at a fraction of its value. The too-big-to-fail JPM had already benefited from the government “sale” of the fifth largest global investment bank Bear Stearns for a remarkable $2 a share. This sale price was accompanied by a taxpayer infusion of $30bn for JPM’s generous takeover of Bear along with the ability to leave Bear’s toxic assets in the hands of the Feds.

Bank of America with billions of subprime debts of its own happily acquired one of the great cowboy banks, toxic debt king, Merrill Lynch. With this “acquisition” they received $20bn for their trouble on top of the initial TARP $25bn. Additionally, they were pledged $118bn in toxic debt guarantees. (Translation: the U.S. government took over their defaulting assets at taxpayer expense.)

In the quest for financial stability, Bank of America was encouraged to absorb the blatantly unethical Countrywide Home Mortgage. Wells Fargo, one of the largest three banks in the nation, was urged with government billions to swallow up “Was there a loan it didn’t like?” Wachovia Bank.

The U.S. government had created three global behemoths who are substantially larger after the crisis than they were before.

Absolute Hubris

We know that humans are prone to “absolute power corrupting absolutely.” Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank (the fourth largest U.S. bank) now hold absolute power over the majority of the nation’s mortgages.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Goldman Sachs’ chief financial officer David Viniar was busy telling the industry that the “mortgage servicing businesses was critical for firms wanting to profit from the distressed mortgage market.” GS and fellow future bank holding company Morgan Stanley scooped up predatory lenders left and right only months before their own toxic debt bailouts.

These days, the Big Six are well positioned in the distressed markets, especially since they created them and enjoy government backing for their predatory efforts. They sink their tentacles into every distressed American home loan with glee. After all, they don’t have to worry about things like losing their job, income or investments. Uncle Sam, you, and I are taking the bullet for them.

All the while the Big Six pretend to be doing their “best” to modify contracts. To date only 200,000 mortgages of the millions at issue have been modified. Millions of homes continue to be foreclosed by the Big Bailout Six every day.

“Like all loans, mortgage contracts are based on a promise to repay money borrowed,” was the pearl of wisdom presented to the House Financial Service Committee by David Lowman, head of JPMorgan Chase home-lending business.

What Lowman really means to say is that if you are an ordinary human and not one of the Supersized Big Bailout Six you have to follow policies from which the banks themselves are exempt.

It seems F Scott Fitzgerald was on to something…

“If we rewrite the mortgage contract retroactively to restore equity to any mortgage borrower because the value of his or her home declined, what responsible lender will take the equity risk of financing mortgages in the future? What responsible regulator would want lenders to take that risk?”

Indeed.

Uh, excuse me, Mr. Lowman, but your concern for responsible lending and responsible regulators does seem… I mean under the circumstances, a bit of an oxymoron.

If too-big-to-fail JPMorgan Chase, fire-sale subprime trading wing Bear Stearns and the irrationally criminal Washington Mutual lenders hadn’t tanked the markets along with the rest of the Supersized Big Six, we wouldn’t be debating this. The irony of ironies is that it is precisely due to the irresponsible behavior of the Big Six and their regulators that we have the need for home-loan modification in the first place.

So much for justice and fair play. Hail to monumental hubris and hypocrisy!

Okay, calm down girl. Get a hold of yourself. This isn’t the first time in history that the perpetrators of crimes blamed the victims for those crimes. Remember Rome circa Year Zero of Our Lord? Remember the Holocaust?

The list goes on. Back to the beginning…

Economic Civil War

Eleven score and thirteen years ago “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men (and women) are created equal.”

Okay that was a good start…

Now we are engaged in a great civil war between the have and have nots, the big banks and local banks, the big “swinging dick” mortgage companies and small struggling homeowners, the politicians, lobbyists, and bankers pulling the strings versus the common interests of the taxpaying population – testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated to the ideal of democracy and equality, can long endure.

We are met on a great battlefield of economics. We have come to debate this in the halls of our legislature in the hope that the democracy created by and fought for by our forefathers and mothers should be true to its original vision of equality and justice for all Americans.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this now at this time as the home foreclosure and jobless rates escalate, as small businesses continue to be shuttered, as families and neighborhoods are forced to split apart in the struggle to financially survive.

It is for us, the economic survivors of the Great Recession, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which our founders devoted their lives to and have thus far so nobly advanced. It is for us, those who are left standing, to help those who have fallen and suffer at the tyranny of the Big Bailout Six. Ordinary America should not be forced to lose their family homes, jobs, and livelihoods due to the irresponsible lending and market manipulations of the Big Bailout Six. We must right this great wrong.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task of reforming our financial system that remains before us – that from this great duty we increase our devotion and highly resolve that those honored ancestors who fought for freedom from the banking elite and private interests of a small group of privileged money men shall not have fought in vain.

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom from the tyranny of the Big Bailout Six and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth and be replaced by government “of the banks, by the banks, for the banks.”

In the purity and sanctity of American Democracy, we trust and pray. May our nation rise once again to embody its promise of equality and unchain the millions of wretched souls who remain enslaved by the hubris and hypocrisy of the Big Bailout Six.

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

©2010 – All Rights Reserved

In the quiet beauty of Iowa farmland, a middle-aged unemployed “tea party” protestor, Randy, screamed his displeasure at the healthcare reform bill into a megaphone. He joins the ranks of radical activists mounting increasingly violent attacks on supporters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Randy and other equal-access healthcare opponents have medical insurance and they don’t want to share their good fortune.

“The most pro-choice president this nation has ever elected is forcing us to have health care. Every single person’s body in this whole country belongs to the government now,” yelled the bearded Randy to no one in particular.

Randy is angry at the passing of government supported healthcare for every American and expressed his rage on a poster depicting a Communist hammer and sickle. Since he receives health insurance through his wife’s job, unemployment insurance through the state of Iowa and federal government, financial support through the military for his eldest child, and free education for his high school age daughter, Randy’s rage at the “government takeover” is truly absurd. He is a man who claims to believe in self-reliance and individualism yet gleans all of his financial support from the United States government. Ironically, Randy “belongs to the government” already by his own free will.

Such is the hypocrisy of many health care reform opponents – those who call themselves “Christians,” “Capitalists,” and “Freedom Lovers,” yet live anti-Christian, anti-Capitalist lifestyles of subsidized incomes and self-serving politics.

How can we respect citizens who milk the nation for all its worth, yet publicly declare their objection to government support for others? Who are these self-absorbed people and what will it take for them to reflect on their own duplicity?

They won’t be the first hypocrites in America calling for “freedom” at the expense of everyone else. The very first were the nation’s Puritans who called for religious freedom and Christian values while committing genocide on a native nation of indigenous people. Early Americans justified their heinous actions by their “genetic and religious superiority,” but what it really came down to was stealing somebody else’s land.

The second notable time newly minted Americans drew their freedom at the expense of others was the tragic institution of slavery. Self-proclaimed “freedom lovers” and “devout Christians” quoted the Bible on Sundays, the Constitution on Mondays, and enslaved millions of human beings as “rightful property” through it all. They justified profiting handsomely by robbing other people of their personal freedom.

Make no mistake-health care reform in America is about equality, liberty, and money. The nation’s citizens should have equal access to decent medical care, not just the well-heeled or well-placed. The U.S. has some of the best medical care in the modern world-but only if you can afford it. In an enlightened “Christian” nation, health care is a basic human right, not a material luxury.

Since we are right on the heels of Holy Week and so many health care protestors claim to be God-loving folk, let’s bring out the big guns and quote The Good Book. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40.

The nation’s uninsured from whichever lens you view them are the “least among us.” Those with pre-existing conditions and those with limited incomes are completely left out of the system-disenfranchised from medical care that any corporate, union, military, government, elderly or well-off citizen takes for granted. What happened to equality for all Americans?

The new health care reform bill, however imperfect, aims to right that wrong and balance the scales of justice.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” wrote the Founders. How equal are we if nearly half the adult population between the ages of 25-65 does not have access to health care?

“They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Thomas Jefferson’s prose claims it is neither the President nor Congress that gives Americans equal right to health care- but our Creator. The Declaration of Independence is virtually an endorsement for national health care. Will we deny someone their right to life, because they have a pre-existing illness?

Without a federal law, yes “we” will. Insurance companies have a monopoly on the nation’s health. American citizens continue to be denied life-saving operations and treatments by profit-driven insurance executives.

Just ask Wendell Potter, the former Cigna executive who blew the whistle on the industry. Like Paul of the Road to Damascus who went from killing Christians to becoming a founder of the religion, Potter too had a life-changing epiphany.

Wendell Potter was a VP for Corporate Communications at one of the largest health insurance providers in the nation. As communications spokesman, he was the guy that put the spin on spin. A famous case emerged on Potter’s watch. A young Los Angeles girl was denied life-saving liver surgery at UCLA Medical Center. The 17 year-old died waiting as Cigna refused the treatment recommended by UCLA’s best liver specialists. Massive protests were organized at Cigna’s headquarters. Tragically, help came too little too late. Family members and supporters called Cigna’s acts “criminal” and petitioned the District Attorney to charge Cigna with manslaughter. All the while, Wendell Potter was there spinning.

Perhaps this was the case that put a crack in his armor. Yet his real transformation occurred a year later not far from his rural Virginia home at a local “health fair.” Potter was shocked to see a scene akin to a third world nation. Thousands of people were lined up in the pouring rain while hundreds more received medical treatments under a make-shift hospital tent. Until he saw for himself the direct results of profits-before-people health care, Potter was a non-believer. The experience galvanized him to testify before a Senate committee that his and other health insurance companies, “dumped the sick to satisfy investors.”

Haves and Have Nots

We have created a system of haves and have-nots. Some of those who have healthcare do not want to share the pie and continue to call for “freedom” for the “corporatocracy” that disenfranchises whole segments of the population.

Certain loudmouthed government-subsidized lawmakers, intellectually challenged talk-show hosts, and (ironically) recipients of Social Security and Medicare oppose helping fellow citizens access the same opportunities they have at our expense.

What happened in America to the Golden Rule? Have we completely lost our moral compass?

If it were not for contributions from American taxpayers aged 25 to 65, there would be no Medicare or Social Security. We are the ones supporting Grandma and Grandpa. Most of us are proud to do it even if there may not be anything left for us. What would the country be like if the younger generations took the Tea Party stance and said “No way Jose. We are not going to support ‘socialized medicine’ or ‘government pensions’ for seniors!”

Let’s face it – no private company would insure the elderly if they were not forced to do so by the U.S. government.

Fifty years ago, the battle for “medical care for the aged” echoed the current fight for health care reform.

One lawmaker wrote on the eve of the Medicare vote:

“Stories of personal hardships to older persons who have been unable to meet medical expenses, who have gone without care they needed, who have lost all the savings of a lifetime with one catastrophic illness. I don’t know how anyone could ignore these facts or fail to recognize that there is a great human need that is not being met by the wealthiest nation in the world.”

Despite this sentiment, there was tremendous opposition to “socialized medicine” for senior citizens. The same sort of protests erupted against Medicare that we now experience with health care reform. The American Medical Association along with many of the nation’s hospitals simply refused to take part in the program, even after it was made the law of the land. It took President Lyndon Johson to work out a diplomatic solution and pressure the medical community to participate.

Circa 1964:

One doctor stated his objection to Medicare: “I have never had it brought to my attention that anyone suffered from lack of medical care because they were unable to pay for it.”

An Arizona resident said: “Not only is it unconstitutional to provide compulsory medical aid, but it is also very unwise. It is just another socialist scheme to destroy our sovereignty.”

Another person commented: “The aged people do not need this system of help, and it is just another way to take the individual’s dignity away from him and make weaker people become captives to a dole system.”

In 2010, some Medicare recipients are publicly echoing the same views about universal healthcare. Equal access to care is “socialized medicine” and will undermine our democratic capitalist structure, they claim. We have heard it all before—fifty years ago for those alive then and seventy years ago for those who remember the Social Security debate.

Medicare and Social Security are obligatory contributions from employees and employers—whether you want to participate or not. And isn’t it fortunate for the nation’s eldery that we have these programs? The over 65 crowd would be in dire straits if we did not. None of us born after the bill passed could conceive of such a socially reprehensible world where we threw the ailing elderly out on the street and allowed them to wither away without medical care or monthly stipend.

Healthcare Of the People, By the People, For the People…

An elderly aunt underwent quadruple bypass surgery last year. She was cared for around the clock in a New Jersey hospital that looked more like a four star hotel than a cardiac wing. Her doctor was a celebrated heart surgeon; her nurses attentive and top notch. Upon her release, she was visited at home by physical therapists, private nurses, home healthcare aids and in their absence monitored 24 hours a day with computerized readings sent back to the nurse’s station. It was as much of a Cadillac insurance policy that money could buy. Only money did not buy it—it was Medicare. Guess what? They haven’t dropped her since—even though she clearly has a “pre-existing” condition.

Without Medicare she would surely have died. So thank you JFK & LBJ and all the lawmakers willing to fight five decades ago for what we take for granted now.

Something hopeful and refreshingly new emerged from the passing of the health care bill – a new class of Americans emerged apart from the haves and have nots – the “have toos.” Those Americans who have insurance themselves, but because of their deep belief in reciprocity and equal opportunity for all, they want you to have it too.

It comes back to the Golden Rule. We wish for others what we wish for ourselves.

Randy, if we followed your theory of abandoning our own people, especially the least among us, you and your daughters would be homeless and destitute.

Isn’t it fortunate for you and your family that the majority of Americans still believe in The Golden Rule?

Monika Mitchell - Executive Director    editor@goodb.net

©2010 – All Rights Reserved