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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 13, 2008 / 14 Tishrei 5769

Voter hatred of Wall Street: As explained by FDR

By Dick Morris & Eileen Mc Gann


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If the crash of 1929 and that of 2008 are similar, then let's study the voter anger that 1929 kindled to inform our understanding of what is going on today. In the thirties, voters turned sharply against their former Wall Street heroes and the name of big business 20 became mud for millions who felt misled by greedy financiers and took it out on the Republican Party.


To grasp what happened then and is happening now, look at the first inaugural address remarks of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He gave voice to the angst and anger of the times and gave us a clue to understanding what is going on today.


"Plenty is at our doorstep," he began, "but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply." Then he assigned blame. "Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the minds and hearts of men." He continued "true they have tried but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition." Then, in remarks that could have been aimed squarely at=2 0the Hoover-esque bailout bill, he said "faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence." Then, reaching across the decades to articulate an ancient truth he said "They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision and when there is no vision the people perish."


Finally, he came to his peroration. "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths." In a barb that could have been aimed at the golden parachutes that spread their bounty across Wall Street this month, he said "the measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit."


While our opinion leaders debate how long the markets will remain in flux, those who follow public opinion or run for office must realize that the rupture of faith between the leaders of our capitalist system and the investors who followed them with their hard earned money is deep, bitter, and long lasting. Those who so abused our trust as to lend money to people who could never dream of repaying it and who bought paper, with our money, backed by such shady loans have abdicated their positions of leadership. In their drive to expand home ownership so as to placate an ever larger constituency of minorities and poor people, the Democrats have saddled us with an unbelievable burden of government insured debt. And in their desire to reap profits from these enterprises, the Republican barons of Wall Street have inveigled us all into buying their stocks based on values inflated by fraudulently obtained loans. The natural reaction of voters is to wish for a plague on both the parties. Their animosity and hatred will not soon disappear and any who think themselves exempt are in for a rude awakening.


But all of this anger is being played out against the backdrop of a presidential race entering its last month. How will it effect the vote? In normal circumstances, it would impel a Democratic landslide. After all, the malefactors who made out like bandits were Republicans, the Administration and the regulators were Republican, and for most of the time the Congress was Republican.


But voters face a choice between a Republican Party whose image has been destroyed by its Wall Street allies and a Democratic nominee whose spiritual advisor is Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Whose financial backer is Rezko. The man who provided the money for his first real job was William Ayers. And, now it appears, that the object of his financial largesse and the organization for which he was Illinois general counsel was ACORN, massively implicated in voter fraud, funded, in large part, by Obama's presidential campaign funds. Are we to elect such a man president? Are we to trust the party of Wall Street with four more years at the till? That is the dilemma that makes this election unstable and unpredictable. May the least worst man win!

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JWR contributor Dick Morris is author, most recently, of "Fleeced: How Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies ... Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) Comment by clicking here.



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