Buy Backs and Student Loans - We Can Do Better

The Stock Market reached all time highs a month or two ago.  Most of the increase over the last couple years hasn't been because investors thought corporations were a good investment. For years the stock market has been driven to new high after new high not by extra investor interest, but by corporations using their profits to buy back their own stock. 

Wall Street and CEO's promoted stock buy backs as a way to "add to shareholder value."   

Where is all that shareholder value now?  The only folks whose profit was not wiped out by the stock market crash were the CEO's who got paid more because of the increase in stock price, and Wall Street folks who collected trading fees for the transactions.  

Since 1996 Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress 14 years, Democrats 2.  Republicans have controlled Congress and economic policy ever since Ronald Reagan.  They sit by complacently and do nothing but encourage whatever Wall Street wants.  We are now in the midst of the second major economic collapse in the last 24 years, and for that period growth in the national debt has exceeded growth in the economy. 

Now the Fed wants to start buying bundled student loans to address the economic collapse.  What it will accomplish is protect all those loan sharks that buried students in unaffordable education debt, and Wall Street, who then bought the loans to bundle groups of loans into investment vehicles.

Its 2008 all over again.  In 2008 it was bundled mortgages from all those fly-bynight lenders who sold houses to people who couldn't afford them by pitiching it as a surefire investment that would increase in value.  Wall Street bought those mortgages and bundled them into investment vehicles to sell.  Waves of foreclosures caused the financial world to freeze up with fear over who was going to have to take the loss.

Voters need to figure out that Republican economic theories are stupidly simple - business - any way people can figure out to make a buck- is good, government is bad.  It is almost criminal complacency rooted in the idea if someone is making money by exploiting other peoples situational fears or difficulties - more power to them. 

Share this, don't just like it.  Republicans get away with their stupid ideas because voters generally don't understand markets - polls consistently say voters think Republicans are better at managing the economy.  

Education about how Republican economics actually plays out will insure a better future for our kids and grandkids.