Your Economy A-splode
So. Wow. An interesting week. Lehman Bros. goes down the shitter, Merrill Lynch gets bought under duress, causing a short sell attack on their buyer, and AIG's credit rating slips, causing our "leaders" to promise about $1 trillion of taxpayer money to sort this mess out. The financial talking heads on the news network have calculated that to be about $3,600 per American. Of course, since it will be done with (yet more) borrowed money, the real cost will be much, much more.
*sigh*
What I find even more disturbing about all of this is so many people are railing away on the government for "allowing" this to happen, that is, for not regulating the activities of these banks. But in reality, this whole mess was _caused_ by government interference. Congress and the Fed have been tinkering with interest rates, printing counterfeit dollars, issuing "emergency loans" in the form of said counterfeit dollars, and otherwise bailing out these assholes on Wall Street for decades now. They've come to expect it, and consequently have been taking lots of stupid risks, knowing that the Fed will ride to the rescue if things go south, and taxpayers will be left holding the bag in the end. With this latest round of bailouts, it's only a matter of time before things settle down and the banks start doling out bad loans again, comfortable in the knowledge that Joe Sixpack will be there in the end to take it on the chin when it all comes crashing down.
This is exacerbated by the fact that many of these companies' boards of directors provide almost no oversight, preferring to invest almost all decision-making power in whatever Harvard-spawned douchebag has the best golfing handicap. Most of these board members' holdings are so diversified that they can weather a few hundred millions in losses if this bank or that bank goes down, so why bother paying attention?
All of this was foreseen by Ron Paul, who predicted a massive collapse of financial markets during the Republican primary, while the rest of the field was encouraging the delusion that it would be confined to the mortgage market. And he's the only person offering a real solution: dismantle the Fed. Time to take off the training wheels and end the bailouts already. Let AIG fail, let Fannie and Freddie go under. Fuck 'em. The institutions that remain will quake in fear and reform themselves. There will be a lot of bloodletting to be sure, but once the markets understand that they, not the American taxpayer, have to sort all this shit out, responsibility will return.
I would add one thing to Paul's plan: make public the home addresses of all the fucktard CEOs of these investment banks who drove them into the ground only to leave with big fat severance checks. Let people show up with their pitchforks and torches and exact a little frontier justice. Time to give these trust-fund fungi some accountability. I want to see these assholes start jumping out of tall buildings, just like after the 1929 crash. Not only would it remove them from the gene pool, but it would provide a nice stimulus for the mortuary industry.
*sigh*
What I find even more disturbing about all of this is so many people are railing away on the government for "allowing" this to happen, that is, for not regulating the activities of these banks. But in reality, this whole mess was _caused_ by government interference. Congress and the Fed have been tinkering with interest rates, printing counterfeit dollars, issuing "emergency loans" in the form of said counterfeit dollars, and otherwise bailing out these assholes on Wall Street for decades now. They've come to expect it, and consequently have been taking lots of stupid risks, knowing that the Fed will ride to the rescue if things go south, and taxpayers will be left holding the bag in the end. With this latest round of bailouts, it's only a matter of time before things settle down and the banks start doling out bad loans again, comfortable in the knowledge that Joe Sixpack will be there in the end to take it on the chin when it all comes crashing down.
This is exacerbated by the fact that many of these companies' boards of directors provide almost no oversight, preferring to invest almost all decision-making power in whatever Harvard-spawned douchebag has the best golfing handicap. Most of these board members' holdings are so diversified that they can weather a few hundred millions in losses if this bank or that bank goes down, so why bother paying attention?
All of this was foreseen by Ron Paul, who predicted a massive collapse of financial markets during the Republican primary, while the rest of the field was encouraging the delusion that it would be confined to the mortgage market. And he's the only person offering a real solution: dismantle the Fed. Time to take off the training wheels and end the bailouts already. Let AIG fail, let Fannie and Freddie go under. Fuck 'em. The institutions that remain will quake in fear and reform themselves. There will be a lot of bloodletting to be sure, but once the markets understand that they, not the American taxpayer, have to sort all this shit out, responsibility will return.
I would add one thing to Paul's plan: make public the home addresses of all the fucktard CEOs of these investment banks who drove them into the ground only to leave with big fat severance checks. Let people show up with their pitchforks and torches and exact a little frontier justice. Time to give these trust-fund fungi some accountability. I want to see these assholes start jumping out of tall buildings, just like after the 1929 crash. Not only would it remove them from the gene pool, but it would provide a nice stimulus for the mortuary industry.