DIFFERENT TOON

I demand that the Monterey County Weekly publish an apology for Ruben Bolling’s cartoon, “Medicated Morty,” (March 19-25), which has violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, requiing equal treatment of people with disabilities in all public accommodations, including media outlets. Ruben Bolling’s bigotry has no place in an open and tolerant society or publication.

DROP A V8 IN IT

I was in the waiting area of an auto repair shop and picked up the April 2009 issue of Automobile magazine.

In it was an article on how General Motors was lamenting the fact that their newest and smallest trucks GMC Canyon/Chevy Colorado were not meeting sales expectations. After careful study and market research they came up with a solution to this situation: Offer these trucks with a V8 engine. That’s right folks, these geniuses at GM have taken the world’s biggest corporation and have driven it to the brink of bankruptcy. Their solution for problems for the last 30 years has been: Make it bigger, put a bigger engine in it and blame everything on the unions. In this same magazine, an article said that Ford will offer a bigger engine in the F150 to one up GM and Chrysler.

Now they come to the American taxpayers begging for money so they can keep theircompanies solvent. With ideas like these I’m not sure the Big Three are worth bailing out.

BETTER DEAD THAN FED?

If you’re looking for a “black hat” in the meltdown of our economy, instead of placing all of the blame on Wall Street or Fannie & Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act, I have a suggestion: Follow the money. What entity created the conditions that led to the abuses on Wall Street, the mortgage industry, the subprime debacle, etc.? Why not place the blame squarely where it belongs: The Federal Reserve System. The truth is the Fed manipulates interest rates and the monetary supply and creates the conditions that lead to the moral hazards we saw taking place in the economy.

A speech by Fed Governor Donald Kohn in 2004 says plainly that the Fed was pursuing an easy money policy that was boosting housing prices. For example, “Long-term interest rates – the ones most relevant to the borrowing and spending decisions of households and firms – have been held down by easy monetary policy and the expectation that short-term rates will remain low for some time. And these low rates in turn have boosted the prices of houses and the value of corporate equity.” In their own words the Fed admits to juicing the economy on a sugar high of easy credit that is now crashing and giving all of us headaches and a painful and deep recession that our ham-handed electeds inWashington areturning into a depression.

Want a sound economy and prosperity for all? End the Federal Reserve System. Now.