Europe and Japan: You're on your own America
 

No bailout from Europe and Japan. Good for them. I don't blame them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/bu...ss&oref=slogin

Massive corruption and crime were involved in Japan's bubble and collapse.

I think we are going to see the same here in America. The stories will start, then pick up speed, then come to a full boil as we see how billions were stolen, with the American taxpayer holding the bag.

A handful of people will be made examples of, and the rest will get away with it.

Amen. What he said.

Read "Yakuza" by Kaplan and Dubro.

Banks gave organized crime-linked businessmen and the actual criminals themselves, HUGE, speculative non-backed loans. And when the investments started to fail, they gave these people EVEN more, desperately hoping they wouldn't fail. Of course they did.

We'll see the same in America. Loans to shady figures, with no backing collateral, more loans to prop them up, finally being bailed out by Joe Taxpayer. That's how it ends folks. Other people getting rich and you and me paying for it.

By their own free will and choice?

As the stories unfold, note where the villains received their education. All the enlightenment available in the worlds best universities can't cure a corrupt heart.

Mormon MLMers are small-time crime compared to these guys.

If my reading of the BoM and today's society is correct, materialism is the greatest evil we face, and it goes unchecked, unabated in the church.

In the church or amongst the members?

Primarily among the members. I don't know enough about the church's use of money to comment. I do know that, by my accounting, there seems to be a curious silence about materialism from the General Authorities. Compare that to what the Pope has said recently.

Yeah, if only church leaders would have given instructions along the lines of avoiding debt and living within our means. Their silence is deafening.