Change isn’t always good, in fact at least half of the time it’s bad. The changes we have been seeing since early in 2008 have been very bad for the USA and for all over the world. The economy has tanked in much of the world, largely due to greed on the part of financial institutions who were encouraged to make loans to unqualified borrowers, who offered credit cards with limits higher than common sense and charged usurious rates of interest on the unpaid balances. They also made “negative equity” car loans in which dealers took trade-ins on which there was more owed than their worth, then rolled the “negative” equity into the new car pricing and the bank bought the paper. Most car buyers started out in the hole and it only got worse from there.

In a recent article in The Sovereign Society’s Offshore Letter, guest writer Chuck Dolce equated the practices of the Federal Reserve, our central bank, to those of The Godfather, Vito Corleone, whom he quoted, “Give this job to Clemenza. I want reliable people, people who aren't going to be carried away. I mean, we're not murderers, in spite of what this undertaker thinks...” - Vito Corleone. It is Dolce’s contention that our banking system operated much like Mafia loan-sharking.

The American Bankers Association had assembled at a convention in 1923 and hired humorist, Will Rogers, to give a keynote address to the assemblage. Noting the scandals that had riddled the banking industry over the previous two years, Rogers began his delivery with, “You have a wonderful organization. I understand you have ten thousand folks here. And, if you count the ones in the various federal prisons, it brings your total membership up to around thirty thousand.” Much like in the twenties, the present day financial woes can be at least partially attributed to the easy credit, high limits and greed within our financial industry.