Skull Duggery

Author : Ted Krager
Publisher : AuthorHouse
ISBN 13 : 1477220704
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (772 download)

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Download or read book Skullduggery! written by Ted Krager and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2012-06 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I spent 30 years of my life, 1977-2008, working in financial services - either for Wall Street or self-employed as a mortgage banker with 300+ employees in 39 states! In the 70''s when I graduated from high school and college, the country was besieged with protests over the war in Viet Nam and those protests tore the fabric of our society. My best friend from age 11 to 19 joined the Navy and became a SEAL. Each time he came home on leave and in the years after he left the Navy, I heard bits and pieces of some of the things he had to do and my heart bled. We also had the shootings at Kent State and the Watergate scandal under President Nixon. The country was ripped apart, much like the past 3 1/2 years, by social and political conflicts, riots and demonstrations. A pervasive air of racial strife persisted, caused by the shooting of Martin Luther King. Not surprisingly, a schism formed in the country just as the leading edge of the baby boom generation was becoming adults. It seemed that my generation transformed into "hippies / flower children, labels analogous today with progressives / socialists / Occupy Wall Street protestors. Others became conservatives. That first group was the epitome of "sex, drugs and rock and roll" even into adulthood while the second group seemed mostly to grow past that stage and become business leaders / self-employed entrepreneurs / conservatives. In Skullduggery, I make the case that it was the 60''s and early 70''s that caused the majority of 76,000,000 baby boomers to evolve into Democrats or Republicans. At my 20th, 30th and 40th year high school reunions, talking to my friends that were in both of those groups, I estimate that ~90% of the hippies are liberals today and ~90% of the others are conservatives. The exceptions are rare. The point of bringing this up is that eventually the country returned to more peaceful times: the Viet Nam conflict ended, Nixon resigned in disgrace and the wounds from Kent State healed. Today, in 2012, the country is again just as torn as it has was in the 1970''s due once again to Middle East wars, the Great Recession of 2007 - 2012, President Obama''s constant and incendiary rhetoric, incessant politicking over race, ObamaCare, divisive dialogue of the haves and have-nots, his infamous campaign gaffe to Joe the Plumber, spread the wealth around, the 99% vs the Top 1% (class warfare), millionaires and billionaires and his war with big business. So much for Hope and Change, Change We Can Believe In and my favorite the first post-racial president. To the contrary, the United States of America is as unsettled, divided and angry as I have seen it since the 1960''s and the early 1970''s. The big questions are easy ones: Why? and What caused this return to the anger and the hostilities of the 60''s and 70''s? Since I am part of the baby boom generation and was very much a participant in both the professions of Wall Street and mortgage banking, I am in a unique position to tell you about what I saw and heard up close and personal in the 1960''s - 1970''s AND about the decade that led up to what culminated in the Great Recession of 2007-2012 that we are still clawing our way out of. Here are a few things that might surprise you, further discussed in this book: 1. The overwhelming majority of Greedy Wall Streeters and Fat Cat Bankers are massive and consistent donors to liberal Democrats, even in 2012 in the face of Obama''s persistent (and false) accusations of casting them as the fat cat bankers and greedy Wall Streeters as causing the recession! 2. The senior most executives in these companies pilloried by President Obama, gave upwards of 60% of total donations, over $20M, to Obama''s 2008 presidential campaign and his Political Action Committees into 2009. 3. The earliest beginnings of the current Financial Crisis started back in the late 1970''s. 4. Some of the names that were catalysts of the Financial Crisis are very well known activists, anarchists, life-long socialists, present and former D.C. politicians and three very well known U.S. presidents. 5. And, just in case you have not done your research or taken the time to trace the trail of bread crumbs back to the source... you need to know the irrefutable reality that: The Subprime Mortgage Crisis = The Financial Crisis of 2007 - 2012 6. From the very beginnings of The Financial Crisis in the fall of 2007, the media referred to this as The Subprime Mortgage Crisis, until they didn''t. Why did they change the name, the label if you will, of the meltdown of the U.S. economy that soon infected the balance sheets of many foreign banks, other countries, even a small village in Norway? Because the powers that be, that have the media in their pocket, told the media that calling it the Subprime Mortgage Crisis was too close to home... too close to reality... too easily focused in on the exact manipulations that lead back to the beginnings of what became a global financial debacle. So, the media started referring to the meltdown as The Financial Crisis or The Great Recession and took the spotlight off the root cause, subprime mortgages, created by liberal President Jimmy Carter and then crammed down our throats by activist Chicago attorney Barack Obama and progressive President Bill Clinton. Your mission, if you choose to accept it and don''t want all this to happen again, or if you are just Mad As Hell and Not Going To Take it Anymore, is to take a journey of discovery back to the era that created what came to be known as subprime mortgages. You must understand the people and their rationales that took on a life of its own in throwing out the common sense rules and regulations that mortgage lending institutions (banks, credit unions, savings and loans, etc.) had used since records were kept starting in the 1940''s, that had kept mortgage defaults under 2% for 60 years but exploded to 14% from 2008 to 2010. (A mortgage in default is when a homeowner is 90 days or more in arrears.) Clearly, unequivocally, a 600% increase in defaults in less than 2 years didn''t arise overnight nor was it caused by a free market economy! Rather, it is the result of gross manipulation of free markets by ideologues that resulted in the worst, by far, financial crisis since The Great Depression, and it could have been avoided!