May 27, 2011
My family has lived in Florida for five generations and most of us have been successful, many owning our own businesses. The financial crash ended all that, and it is directly due to the financial crash brought on by banking and lending practices that never should have been allowed. These unregulated financial schemes have cost us all – all of us except for those bankers and Wall Street actors who have gamed the system and bled the country for their own benefit.
We almost had to close our computer services business last year because money is so tight in North Florida and South Georgia where our customer base is located. We’ve seen many businesses close. We were only able to pay ourselves a little over $10,000 in gross combined salaries for myself and my husband in 2010. That is for two people working 12 hours each! This year it is only slightly better (a four percent increase in the first quarter). We are living in poverty now after years of being able to make a decent living. We cannot afford health care. Our computer services company cannot afford to hire anyone now, so it’s a two person business now. My father has been in the real estate business for nearly fifty years and is now living on savings. He always ran a very ethical business with a terrific reputation for fairness. He has not been treated fairly by the system, and is suffering greatly, as is my mother who turned 90 this year.
If you want to kill the country and its people, then continue to allow unregulated banking Wall Street schemes to continue that will further suck the life’s blood out of its citizens. Watch as our country becomes the victim of greed, the likes of which has never been seen before at the scale that allows it to bleed not only our own country, but other countries as well. How can you allow this to happen? Are you about to allow it again?
Ashley Hotz
Monticello, FL