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The grim specter of the downward spiral. That downward spiral that I am talking about is the spiral that the US economy and much of the world economy is caught up in right now. It is almost unconceivable how much value some things have lost. The New York Pension Fund had been through this before. In the 2000-2003 downturn the fund had lost 31 billion dollars, but two years later it had fully recovered because of its diversification. But can a fund, even a fund run this well, which is the third largest pension fund in the country, survive this beating for very long? The economy is in trouble and it is so bad that I believe that no matter what President Bush does from now to when he leaves office, he will be remembered as the worst president that this country ever had. Thank God we are having an election, because we would have no economy after a few more years. No matter who gets in, it has to be an improvement.

One of the things that really bothers me is that many programs that the government is running could be revamped to save tons of money. If we take Social Security with Medicare and Medicaid and eliminate the fraud taking place in them, we would be running a surplus and have extra money to apply to other programs. No one wants to mention the amount of fraud in these programs. It is almost common place for some medical personnel to fake visits to indigents in the hospital and charge Medicare and Medicaid for them. I can't tell you how many bills are submitted that state visits were made to people after the date that they died. I know about this because I know people that were billed for things like co-payments and medical expenses that were not covered and the date of the visit was after the date the person died. Another thing that is being done is that tests are being charged for that are not conducted. It is almost like we are afraid to arrest some of these doctors for what they are doing. As far as I am concerned, a criminal is a criminal whether he or she are wearing a white coat or not.

One of the biggest areas where we are being cheated is in defense purchases. Anyone that believes that we are getting the best buy for our buck is in dreamland. Defense purchases are not made because some company has a better and cheaper weapon than another. It is an old boy network where there is almost a monopoly. What I mean by this is that when one of a few big contractors gets a contract, they subcontract out components to the other companies and the other few companies do the same thing when they win a contract. This means that only a few companies are getting most of the defense contract money. Quality hasn't even entered into it for years. Remember the A-10 Warthog, it was the plane known as the tank buster. It turned out that these old planes were very effective in Iraq in killing tanks. Applied Composites run by Dick Rutan, a famous genius aircraft designer approached the government and told them that he could build a replacement far cheaper than anyone else, that would do the same job. The government wouldn't even consider it. Was his plane inferior? No they would rather spend 10 to 12 times as much and give the contract to their buddies. Hey when the anti-missile started to miss in tests, the military decided to go to computer simulations and then declared that it was hitting the target every time. Talk about a load of bunk. Truthfully after spending billions upon billions of dollars on an anti-missile system, we still don't have a reliable one and every country in the world knows this.

We buy ships that eventually have to be canceled after spending hundreds of millions of dollars, because we were promised that they would be improved as they were being built. Who would really believe that nonsense? We buy planes that are not as good as some of the planes that they competed against, because they can be built in some powerful congressman's home state. The defense industry has one great thing going for them that we can't deny and that is their super powerful lobby where money flows like water. If I had a nickel for every time that I have heard that some politician was going to reform the system and do away with lobbyists, I would be rich.

One of the problems with this government is that they think that the average person is stupid and that they can do whatever they want and we won't notice. One example of that was when FEMA purchased over 40,000 house trailers, supposedly for the people of New Orleans, but they couldn't be used because they were contaminated. This was a purchase that was made, without examining the trailers, was some company getting a windfall for being a faithful party supporter or maybe even run by a friend? These are not isolated incidents folks, but common practice by those that have been appointed to powerful positions.

We keep hearing about the stock market going up and going down, but no one ever mentions the fact that big funds are able to manipulate the value of certain stocks by either buying in bulk or selling in bulk. If a fund is big enough its actions affect the entire stock market. You may wonder what I am getting at here? Look at things this way, if you know either the people running the funds or people in important positions in the funds, they whisper in your ear that they are going to make a move in a week or two and depending on what that move is, you either buy or sell your stock in that company. Sure acting on insider information is against the law, that is why it is done in a subtle manner. You don't really believe that those with huge investments in the market play it like gambling do you? First of all these are the kind of people that always get a chance to purchase what is known as initial offerings. That is new stock being issued by a company usually new to the market. These people will get the choice of the juiciest ones and these almost always go up within a few minutes of opening. You can really make a killing on them if you put in a sell order at a certain amount and get out right away. Try and buy this kind of stock and the broker will laugh at you, these are reserved only for his best customers, or should I say the richest and most powerful customers. The whole point is that while most people are losing their shirts right now, the richest are losing the least proportionally speaking. I saw an article the other day where one of the ultra rich was complaining, he said he lost a billion dollars, I don't believe him but even if he did he still had another 8 or 9 billion dollars. How much do you have?

As we spiral down, more and more homes are lost, more autos reclaimed and more jobs lost. Wouldn't the money that is being poured into companies have been better spent on creating jobs? Franklin Roosevelt faced much the same thing and what he did was create public works projects that hired people to work. He put practically the entire nation to work and saved the economy of that time. Why couldn't we have used all that money to repair our bridges and roads and at the same time employ people? Giving money to greedy companies doesn't make sense to me and either does hiring a person from one of the failed companies to distribute government money, which is what was done. Policies must be changed, treaties must be modified, fraud must be eliminated and jobs must be created and our exports must be made more attractive if we want to remain a world power. Let's stop the downward spiral now.