To ALL the concerned citizens
of Bay County: I started to notice these anti-patterns developing in our
community some time ago. An anti-pattern
does things wrongly, yet appears attractive for some reason…profitable or easy
in the short term, dysfunctional, wasteful of resources, unsustainable, and
unhealthy in the long term. It also
keeps reappearing.
Inflation expands the money
supply; this legalized form of counterfeiting dilutes the savings of the most
productive members in our society. In
2008 the United States refused to admit bankruptcy and administered the
grossest display of corporate welfare to have ever occurred on U.S. soil,
commonly referred to as the Bailout.
Capitalism had been preached religiously in this country; however when
the time came for these responsible parties to accept their losses as a result
of their own high risk taking, banking institutions in congruence with
government organizations used their financial leverage as a means to
legislatively avoid accounting. In this way the federal system was manipulated
into public losses and private gains, in direct confliction to the previously
agreed upon capitalist motto of private gains and private losses.
The central bank’s
manipulation of interest rates allowed local banks to drastically reduce the
price at which they borrowed money, which increased the amount of borrowing and
thus lead to more land purchases, more construction, and more developers. This caused the price, size, and number of
houses to inflate. This distorted the
entire local economy and siphoned dollars away from other sectors and other
individuals. Condominiums, neighborhoods, complexes, and government buildings
flooded the landscape. None of this seemed odd to developers or buyers at the
time as the mantra was one could always sell the homes for more.
An inherently insolvent
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation claims that certain community banks in
the area were negligently using extravagant appraisal values and an over
reliance on income from completed developments as a source of collateral on
high risk loans. In layman’s terms, in
the hopes of making a lot of money, the richest were taking unlimited risks at
the cost of the lives of the poorest with the belief that they had unlimited
insurance. It remains in the best
interest of the community that these two parties go to a public trial instead
of settling outside of court so that we may gather prized testimony that would
release the information of what these particular financial institutions were up
to.
The oil leak continues to
plague our environment. The physical damage caused to our local waters pains
all the life that surrounds it, however the economic onslaught has yet to been
uncovered. The organizational structure
of the Bay Zoning and Planning Board and the Tourist Development Council
consists of non-elected members who have been granted authority to essentially
design the infrastructure and economic movements of local citizens. Majority of the representatives on the TDC
own numerous and substantial pieces of property. They consist primarily of
wealthy condominium, attraction, and restaurant owners. Research into the political contributions to
the county commission indicates that certain members of the TDC who were
appointed by the commission also contributed to the campaigns of the
commission. The representative on the
commission from the beach received overwhelming support in his campaign from
developers, construction companies, financiers, real estate firms, insurance
corporations, attorneys, and other business groups. Upon further investigation campaign
contributions to the Panama City mayor, the former chairman of the planning
board, the property appraiser, the clerk of court, and the former sheriff links
to a single donor. In the book the Green
Empire this individual was identified as the “unofficial king of
infrastructure in Northwest Florida.” At this point in time assistance in a
more detailed investigation into the alleged accounting fraud and racketeering
of the events surrounding our economic downfall would be heavily welcomed so
the community can relocate the assets from the incompetent and put it into the
hands of the competent.
