Here's a letter to kickstart the post-holiday-weekend discussion.

Because unscrupulous lenders have conned millions of gullible borrowers into taking out loans with so many hidden costs that the borrowers are now forced to default, the interest rates of more responsible savers will now take a dive ("Dow jumps on hopes of rate cut," Aug. 30).

Instead of saving, I guess I should have taken out a second mortgage so that I could have gone down to Wal-Mart and bought more cheap, poisoned, counterfeit, plastic stuff built by slave labor with environmentally destructive technologies which the Chinese have stolen from us.

We used to think that the old-fashioned socialist communism was bad, but it is not nearly as diabolical as this newfangled Chinese "free"-market-based communism! Did you know that the Chinese have brought 200 million rural citizens into the cities to work in their factories? These workers don't get health care, their children don't have access to free primary education, and if they attempt to leave for a better job, they stand to lose several months of their below-subsistence-level back pay.

I know that "free" trade, like supposed "freedom," is not free, but why do both have to be so damned expensive?

William Betz
Newport, Wash.

Anybody have an answer?

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