[Sangetsu]

As you may have seen in the news today or yesterday, Lehman Brothers and Merryl Lynch have collapsed. The banks here in Tokyo are having a tizzy. My GF works for one of the few investment banks which hasn't been consumed by the current mess.

I'm just waiting now to see who points the finger at who. It will all be a farce because both parties are equally to blame. It is the politicians on both sides of the aisle who have modified and manipulated our tax code over the years to the point where it is over 8500 pages long, and consists of upwards of 60,000 rules and regulations.

The politicians are resistant to changing the current system as their real political power is exercised in the fine print of the tax code. The tax code is how they repay special interests for campaign contributions, and how they hurt those whom they dislike. It is so indecipherable that few human beings in the world have any idea what it truly contains.

Their meddling is not limited to just the tax code. There are also codes regulating pensions, investments, insurance, and whatnot. These codes are manipulated to increase profit and decrease the risk of the banks, insurance companies, etc, and shifts the costs of their losses to the taxpayers. The greed of our politicians and the greed of Wall Street has finally caused their collective house of misdeeds to collapse.

I wish we could redo the election primaries, I doubt we would end up with any of the same candidates whom we have now. It's going to be interesting to watch them blame everybody and anybody but themselves.

The chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Finance is Barney Frank, the senate committee is chaired by Christopher Dodd. Neither of these morons has the ability to organize their checkbooks properly (Frank is under investigation by the IRS for failure to report income, and he also under investigation by the ethics committee an a related issue). Frank and Dodd (and the other ranking members of each committee) should be held even more responsible than the "greedy bankers" that they are sure to malign in their next speeches. It is these prostitute- I mean "politicians" whom we elected to keep the bankers under control.

If you want "real change" in the government, do not vote for any member on either of these committees, Democrat or Republican. You can get the committee membership list by doing a search on "house/senate committee on banking". Many of these senators and congressmen are up for reelection this November.

BTW, MMM, the "wealthy" 25% tax tier begins at an income of $78,000 (it was lowered to this level by the Clinton administration when they increased taxes on the "wealthy"). The tier increases to 30% at $332,000.