So the new year began. Optimistic beginnings. The end of an era, (or error depending on viewpoint), and the start of something fresh. We, in America, had opted for change. We cast our ballot for a fresh and hopeful restructure. Out past was crumbling and the future looked dim.

We needed to scrap a system that had become entwined with special interests. One that rewarded and enabled less than scrupulous entities with wealth beyond all imagination. Our lives were being wholesaled out to the highest bidder. “Buy more” they cried. “No credit ? No job? No money?, No problem”! You qualify!

And now, it all has caught up with us. The old saying that states, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is”, has come home to roost. We maxed ourselves out and listened to the, “authorities” of finance. After all, they must know what they’re talking about. They get big bonuses from their companies. They must know something that we don’t know, right? I mean, who can argue with their success! They made big bucks telling us how to make big bucks. Well, the truth is that they made big bucks by telling us what they needed to make big bucks.

Invest here! Put your money over there! Buy more than you can afford, because in a very short time it will be worth more than you paid for it and you can sell it to some other sucker by telling them the same.

Well, it was exciting while it lasted. Many people took advantage. Of the market and of each other. I suppose as with anything financial, the saying, “caveate emptor”, “Let the buyer beware”,  should apply, but this time, they cut too deep. They made up laws that benefited the wealthiest and made the middle class pay the tab. Goodbye retirement! So long to the notion that if you work hard, some day you’ll be able to reap the rewards. In record numbers, the dreams of the middle class working person has begun to erode.

So now what? Do we just put it behind us and move on? What do we do with the lives that have been destroyed by the likes of Madoff, AIG, and the countless other corporate entities that were willing to gamble the middle class away? Who should pay? Perhaps all of us!

We need to question, “authority” and promises that seem too far fetched. If a stranger came up to you on the street and told you that if you give them twenty dollars for a cab ride to the bank, they will mail you fifty dollars back, would you do it? Probably not, so why do you believe everything from someone who calls themselves an, “authority”? What makes them an authority? They are merely human beings, (less than that in many cases), who are guessing at best.

Like children who’s parents let them eat too much candy to teach them a lesson, we have over indulged. We need to suffer through the tummy ache and learn that we ourselves, need to watch out for our best interests. When you see a market for anything beginning to quadruple within a few short years, you should question the wisdom of long term investment into it.

Yes, we have been mislead . I would call what Wall street and it’s corporate entities have done criminal. While we should have known better, it is still criminal and should be handled as such, reaching to the highest branches to punish those who sought to undermine the very backbone of this country and the world; the working class! Those who were in a position to protect the interests of this country didn’t. They sold it out to the highest bidder. Unlike the parent that let’s their children learn from their mistakes, this parent prostituted us out to the special interests to further their own agendas.

Let the unwinding of the facts begin and let us go forth and cause those that knowingly perpetrated these schemes against the people of the world, pay for it like the common criminals that they are. However, going forward, let us be a bit more streetwise as well. If something is too good to be true… it generally is!