STOP THE LIES: WE AIN'T BROKE

Rochester, N.Y.-- With a record $2 trillion in cash and short-term liquid assets on hand, U.S. non-financial firms certainly seem poised to expand. What's holding them back?  The American middle-class wants to know why those with wealth are sitting on all that cash and why they are not investing in America.  Actually, we know the answer.  That was a kind of a rhetorical question. 

Many economists say companies are confused about which initiatives they should fund — and one root of this indecision is a general lack of confidence in the cost of capital projections they are using to make the call.

However, the fact of the matter is that U.S. companies are very strong.  And, Wall Street's five biggest firms put aside nearly 90 billion dollars for executive pay raises or bonuses for 2010-- the GNP of 13 entire developing countries.  The only thing is, America's richest corporations are taking the wealth that the working class generates and are investing that money in emerging markets in Brazil, India and China-- not in your hometown.  The rich are just buying time, hoping that they can tilt the scales to a GOP White House in 2012 which would give them carte blanche over the middle-class.

Multi-billion dollar corporations have two bottom lines-- it is profit, profit, profit and getting a return on investment to its shareholders-- they could care less about anything else other than managing your money in the form of tax breaks for the rich and keeping it away from you.

The before mentioned statistics are key findings of the Current Trends in Estimating and Applying the Cost of Capital research released this week by the Association for Financial Professionals, a trade group of 16,000 corporate treasury and finance practitioners. Here is a link to the report summary.

However, it also explains another phenomenon.  It means that we ain't broke-- no joke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

A major shift in wealth happened in 2008; It was not a meltdown

According to our Voice Reporter sources, in 2010 just 400 Americans have the same wealth as half of all Americans combined. Let's revisit that number please-- 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have as much loot, stock and property as the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

And we can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this nation-- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.

Yes, despite popular beliefs, the nation is not broke. New York is not broke.  Governor Cuomo wants to spend less so he is making those who can least afford it suffer the most.  Don't get us wrong-- Cuomo is not a mean-spirited guy and very likable.  It's just that his priorities are just a little screwed up.  That's where we come in. 

Filmmaker Michael Moore
Getty Images

In an impromptu speech to Wisconsinites in Madison on March 2, filmmaker Michael Moore said to help prevent the day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:

1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians.

2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it's goodbye savings accounts; goodbye pensions; goodbye United States Treasury; goodbye jobs and homes and future.

In the words of Mr. Moore, the only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the decision-makers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them.