Lifeboats for senators and bankers only.

Fidelity, which never sends emails, except to market its herd-investing strategies, has suddenly sputtered to life.

This weekend’s missive: “Debt ceiling: what you should know.”

Really. It’s a little late to be sending this now. But what have you got?

It turns out Fidelity is able to direct me to its Web site to get the most clicking, ahem, “best thinking” of its market specialists, who have penned such helpful tidbits as “Inside the U.S. debt drama” and “Fear is not a strategy.”

Fidelity, we know you don’t want us pulling all our money out of our shrinking retirement accounts and stuffing it under our mattresses because that is not good for you. But “Fear is not a strategy”? Come on. That’s pitiful.

We are going down this road no matter what we do now. We’ve heard for a long time something’s gotta’ give. It is just too bad so many people are going to get a lot worse than they deserve.

Just a few letters from the Interblogging universe, written by concerned Americans who now believe their worries will be given more consideration online than by their own congressmen and women…

From George L., New York:

My wife and I worked very hard for decades in good jobs. We never earned more than $250,000 but always lived within our means, paid our taxes, raised two wonderful children, taught them to live the same way, and managed to save a few hundred thousand dollars over the years. The money we saved has been invested wisely (we thought). We are now in our seventies and had every reason to look forward to a comfortable, enjoyable retirement.

A week ago Friday it became clear that the Republican politicians were not interested in negotiations on the debt ceiling debate and broke off talks with the President. They wasted this entire week in fruitless posturing in the House of Representatives, knowing full well that what they were about to propose would not be acceptable to Senate Democrats or the President. Watching this circus, Wall Street became increasingly nervous this last week as the days went by and the formerly unthinkable national default became more and more a possibility.

My family was watching at least as nervously that our investments lost $16,000 during last week. I am not hopeful that we will be able to recover our loss as the US dollar, government and Congress are becoming the laughingstock of the world. Our loss is a lot more than the increase in taxes that we would have had to pay over the years if a reasonable compromise with spending cuts and tax increases had been agreed to.

Well, thank you very much, dysfunctional members of the Congress. Our family and many other families in a similar predicament, hold each and every one of you personally responsible for this unnecessary fiasco. Hasta la vista next November!

—

Richard E.:

The damage  is already done, regardless of when the debt ceiling is raised. T-bonds will be discounted based on the lowered US ratings since none of the plans that the  Democrats are willing to agree will have more than $4 trillion in real cuts to spending.

While Obama and crew assert that any solution must go beyond the 2012 election cycle, even though there are not significant cuts, this problem cannot be worked out.

Most of us don’t care about the election cycle and we want a solution that cuts spending for the same reason that the ratings organizations have espoused: this spending level is not sustainable. And those same companies along with us know that the spending cuts in outlying years are not substantive, mainly because it just kicks the can down the political street.

Real spending cuts must happen now to change the trajectory.

—

Hipo-Crits, Minneapolis:

I think the debt ceiling has been raised for 8 straight years. I may be wrong, but it is close to that. My question for you Republicans is, where were the you when Bush did it?

—

Charles McIntosh, Placerville, CA:

My best friend and I are both in our 80s, Navy veterans, and graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy with wartime service. We wonder why the  big newspapers have failed to mention (and deplore) the intransigence of the Republican Party. They’d rather have the country plunge into  insolvency than accept some of President Barack Obama’s proposals.

The president has been willing to meet them halfway if not more. Mainly what  the House Republicans are so stubborn about is keeping the rich rich at all cost  and the oil companies’ multibillion surpluses untouched – and the rest of the  country can go to hell. This is terribly obvious, so publicize it, please.

—

Ted Thomas, Libertarian, Portland, OR:

As the grand compromise is wired in, true to form, the useless
unlikely-to-be-proposed and never-to-be-ratified Balanced Budget Amendment was used as the key bargaining chip which got Obama what he most wanted: the $2-trillion in borrowing authority he needed to skate past the November 2012 election, and thereby avoid being held accountable for the credit-card spending binge which will eventually crash the economy, and allow Obama and the Democrats to erect an authoritarian socialist “Utopia” on its ruins.

Make no mistake: the established leaders of both parties fully understand that the [Balanced Budget Amendment] is a pre-animated corpse, which can be counted on as a panacea for doing nothing about our malignant spending practices for the remainder of this decade (hanging in limbo as they continue looting the credit and currency).

This is the Standard Operating Procedure which has infected and afflicted this country over the last four decades, and which enables the same cabal of poseurs and opportunists to loot the credit of this nation, while perpetuating their illicit hegemony over public policy.

We now know this American Politburo cannot be voted down,
and it remains for us as citizens to figure out a way to tear it down.