Rope a Dope?

Woman scares burglar away
by scratching on her door
and acting like a large dog.

You know the saying, “Give them enough rope and let them hang themselves.” I have no idea if this was President Obama’s strategy all along, but it seems to be what is happening with both the Insurance and Banking corporations. At the very moment the Insurance giants are under attack for their outrageous practices, they come back with even more outrageous demands. For example, premiums for employer sponsored health care have risen 131% from 1995 to 2009, according to Time, and employee contributions have risen 128%, so now small business owners are told to expect a 15% increase for the coming year. It’s like they are saying, things haven’t been bad enough, let’s make it worse (you would think they might have kept it quiet, at least for the moment). Similarly, it has been revealed that health insurance was going to be denied to a baby because he was too healthy (too fat), and in another case because the baby was too thin (or so I read somewhere). In Colorado a mother of two was denied health care because she was not sterilized after her latest C-section which they said would constitute a pre-existing condition. Rape also was apparently considered a pre-existing condition in another case. And while their bought and paid-for man, Senator Baucus, has created a bill just for them, the Insurance companies want mandates with no cost controls. That is, they want it made a law that everyone must have health insurance (thus adding many millions to the system), but there cannot be any cost controls (so they can rip even more people off even more outrageously). And, of course, they keep insisting at all times that if a public option is included costs for insurance will rise (and they have their own statistics to prove it). If that is not bad enough, Representative Paul Broun, a Republican from Georgia, has introduced a bill to privatize medicare! I would like to think they are just deliberately spreading fear, rather than that they are just too dumb to realize the impact of their actions.

If the Insurance industry is acting stupidly (or perhaps not stupidly, depending upon your point of view), the Banks are doing much the same thing. Under attack at the moment for their (virtually criminal) tactics when it comes to banking and credit cards, they are raising their interest rates and fees. I read the other day that Citicorp was raising their interest rates on credit cards to 29.9%. Frankly, I find it hard to believe this is true or that anyone could be that greedy, but I gather it might be true. I do know that other banks are almost universally raising their rates as well. Not only that, apparently Bank of America is going to start charging people for paying their bills on time! It might seem strange that at the very moment people are beginning to hate banks more than ever, banks are deliberately trying to make people hate them even more, with hidden fees, higher interest rates, tighter credit restrictions, and questionable regulations that amount to little more than legalized theft.

Banks and insurance companies have had it all their way for far too long. Basically, what they have been getting away with is lending money to people who don’t need it, and refusing to lend to people who do. The Insurance companies have been insuring health for people who don’t really need it, and withholding it from people who do need it. In America if you are rich and healthy you are fine, if you are poor and unhealthy, tough. These are rackets that put Ponzi to shame as by dint of having lots of money and being able to buy all the influence they need, they have managed to legalize theft and make people even believe it is fair (if it’s legal it must be fair?).

I have no idea if Obama figured this out in advance, but by carefully staying somewhat quietly out of the way he has managed to accomplish something no other President has managed to do for 60 years, bring about some kind of meaningful health care reform and also bank reform. You can describe this as the joining of two strategies, “give them enough rope…,” and “rope a dope.” That is, allow them to exhaust themselves fighting you and thus become vulnerable to attack, or let them hang themselves through their own actions. This may not have been consciously planned but it does seem to be happening. Could it be there is a significant correlation between greed and stupidity?

Little Known but Interesting Quotes:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson (Attributed)

Things I Learned Today:
Pope Sixtus V condemned the practice of charging interest as "detestable to God and man, damned by the sacred canons and contrary to Christian charity.”