What does it take for people to get mad anymore? Sometimes it seems like any minute perceived affront by stranger or friend can send someone into a death spiral of over analyzed and disproportionate reactions.  We can be so enraged by another person who intentionally or not takes our assumed privileges like parking spaces and seconds of our day.  Being cut off, not being attended to quickly enough in retail stores or being attended too aggressively, waiting for traffic lights or traffic itself, people blocking the aisle at the grocery store, someone taking 20 items in the 15 items or less line, etc.  The list is really quite endless.

The curious part of this little bit of human nature is that when we are truly wronged it seems like it takes far more slight to get us riled up.  Case in point of course is our current financial situations as well as the lack of oversight and protection from those we deemed able to provide it by our votes.

We have an entire financial industry that has taken complete and total advantage of us as investors, homeowners, workers, tax payers, virtually every hat we wear has been affected by this gluttony of greed and yet the anger seems tempered and rationed.  Why is that?

I have to believe that it has something to do with a general lack of understanding of the abuse that has gone on.  It seems that maybe as a whole we are unwilling to believe what has happened; it's just too big to wrap our collective heads around.  Maybe it’s the slant of the media since no media is unfettered from corporate alignment we have no real source of consistent genuine unbiased information.  In order to decipher reality we have to use critical thought which admittedly can be tiring and since John Stewart, David Letterman, and Glen Beck are so much easier maybe it would be OK if we just regurgitate what they feed us as our own and get back to watching reality TV.

Well here's some cold hard truth.  The banks screwed us.  They inflated housing prices intentionally with the purpose of creating a bubble.  They intentionally sold loans that were structured to fail.  They sold these intentionally flawed loans to home buyers and investors and got the ratings agencies to grade them as pure 100% guaranteed products.  They flooded the market with these securities and then as the real market became less interested in them they started creating shell corps to purchase them inside their own companies just to keep the bubble inflated and to keep generating sales commissions.  They knew the securities were crap so they got our politicians to remove legislation which allowed them to short sell all the crap that they were passing on to us and their investors at the same time, thus generating millions in profits for individuals as well as the same companies that were running the operation.  They deregulated securities so the money they pulled off the soon to be collapsing housing market could be funneled into commodities futures thus driving up prices by creating a false supply and demand scenario creating much higher food and fuel costs.  Especially significant for those around the world that depend on grain commodity prices for their survival.  The bankers then took our tax dollars that our elected politicians offered them with blank checks and no recourse.  They continued to blame the housing inflation on investors despite all the mounting evidence.  They crashed the credit markets for small business and retail clients like you and me eliminating many opportunities for local growth and created many job loses. They burst their own bubble intentionally profiting on their short positions and caused countless people to lose their jobs.  They left us upside down in our homes.. They gave borrowers unfamiliar with finance extremely complicated adjustable and interest only loans.  They refused to budge and work in good faith with homeowners who had lost jobs or income based on the bubble they created and popped for their own greed and benefit.  They continue to refuse to adjust loan amounts to compensate for new market value even though they are the ones who drove it up intentionally and knew homeowners wouldn't be able to service their loans.  They use fraud and document preparation companies to create whatever they need to take a home because they have companies ready to pick them up using bid manipulations.  They created a system that robbed municipalities and counties out of billions in revenue and tried to circumvent the 300 yr old property laws that allow for individual ownership.  They created a system in which nobody can claim free title on any piece of property anymore and they pay and manipulate the judicial system to continue to see it their way despite falsified documents and obvious violations of well established law.  They used us! Intentionally! Without concern or empathy!  And you want to get mad at the guy who pulled in front of you during rush hour?

It's way past time that we get angry.  I know it's easier to get mad at the grocery clerk who's moving a little slow but let's point our anger at those who truly, honestly deserve every ounce of anger we can muster. 

We may think we are far different from the upheaval in the Middle East right now but it seems like we should be just as angry, just for some reason we've gotten soft... How much further do we need to be pushed?  Taking your job and your house and giving your kids a huge tax burden for years to come all for the greed of the already wealthy?

Think about it.