Leave it to George Will to provide me with the title of today's post.
Mr. Will, who also said sometime back (and here I must paraphrase): If the Democrats can't win this year, they need to get into a different line of work.
Amen, George.
We are (the United States Treasury is) about to spend, in one fell swoop, $700 billion dollars—roughly the amount spent thus far on the Iraq War—to buy up arcane derivatives that the free market can't seem to sell at the moment, and thus take that burden off the private sector.
Treasury is doing this—socializing the losses—because to not do this, they say (and I believe them) would be a disaster, the likes of which the average individual can't begin to comprehend.
We can be sure of this for at least two reasons:
1. Because there's no goddamn way Treasury, drunk and tripping on acid, would even be joking about a $700 billion purchase of assets that no one else wants (after already committing to $85 billion for AIG, and around $200 billion for Fannie and Freddie) unless things weren't already a football field of minefields beyond dire.
2. Because we aren't hearing a peep out of the Ghost of Milton Friedman, nor out of his All Hail the God-like Wisdom of the Free Market disciples, our good friends at the Club for Growth (who, instead, here in Colorado, are putting out ads excoriating Colorado's Democratic candidate for the Senate, Mark Udall, for "Eminent Domain Abuse," which seems an odd thing for bare knuckles capitalists to be getting upset about at the moment), along with the esteemed True Believer Grover Norquist, who is possibly relieved, if he has any exposure to any kind of free market at all right now, that he didn't in fact drown the Big Bad Baby Government he so hates in the bathtub, like he was talking about doing when times were better. Perhaps they are all in a bunker somewhere, with pistols and a gas can, or else deciding how this, too, is the fault of liberals.
The upside: at least, all told, this isn't our money getting utterly pissed down a rat hole, like the $700 billion or so that has so far gone to the Iraq War, where, to paraphrase Scarlet O'Hara, nothing has gone at all like we expected. At least we have something to show for it, something to sell (unlike the oil we thought we would have), though we aren't sure exactly what it is or what it is worth, or who, one day, will buy it.
Perhaps, now that we are doubling down, as it were, on our Iraq party, to pay off the mess of another party, we can get past this discussion of whether The Surge is working or whether it isn't; since, at this point, that is a bit like arguing whether a rape victim had an orgasm or didn't have an orgasm.
Instead, perhaps we can discuss whether taking our country to war on false pretenses is worthy of sending a few people to The Hague, to stand trial for war crimes (or, as Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the Manson Trial, argues in his new book, bring them to trial in this country, on up to 4,000 charges of Conspiracy to Commit Murder).
Perhaps, rather than himming and hawing about The Surge, we can do what Treasury is about to do in less than a week: suck it up and admit we made a big mistake. We trusted it would all be fine, and if it had all been fine, we didn't want to be remembered as the asshole in the corner complaining.
Alas, this time it wasn't. And so we hear Sam Donaldson on ABC this morning (that is a hairpiece, right?), invoking the late Hunter S. Thompson: it's Fear and Loathing out there.
Trickle down misery, says George Will.
And so, maybe, just maybe, we can get to discussing John McCain's past judgment on economic matters: his cosiness with The Keating Five back in 1989 (those people who brought us the S&L Crisis), as well as his recent remarks that our economy is fundamentally sound (which is why Treasury is about to spend nearly a trillion dollars to shore up one of our fundamentally sound economy's biggest drivers), and that a good place to start making things even more fundamentally better would be to fire the head of the SEC, Chris Cox—which, even if you don't much care what happens to Chris Cox, is kind of like putting Pete Rose's bookie in jail, and maybe firing the head of operations at Caesar's Palace, rather than kicking Pete Rose out of baseball for betting on baseball while he was managing one of baseball's teams.
Anyway, Frank Rich has much more to say on John McCain's generally undiscussed history of poor judgment when it comes to economic matters, in today's Must Read editorial in the New York Times.
Before I go, let me say that, considering the fine mess we're in at the moment, considering our limited options, our even more limited time-frame to do something before the whole Ponzi scheme comes right in our front doors, I am okay, relieved almost, that Henry Paulson, a smart man with a tired scratchy voice, a veteran of Wall Street, not a mayor from some small town in Alaska ( and you thought I was going to leave her alone today), is at the helm, taking care of matters. That, in all likelihood, Barney Frank's objections aside, this arcane debt will get handed over, in lots, to a few of the smarter 20% of mutual fund managers, to decode and sell, which, on the surface of it, seems to create an unbelievable conflict of interest, but, as Steve Liesman (sitting next to the lovely Erin Burnett, both of CNBC) said today on Meet the Press: if you're trying to exhume bodies, it might be best to get those who know where the bodies are buried involved. It was the same logic FDR used in putting Joseph Kennedy, one of the grand manipulators of the stock market during the 1920's, in charge of reforming the SEC during The Depression—you want to put up barriers to protect the chickens, talk to a wolf, preferably one who's had his run.
In any case, now that things are serious, it's comforting to know that we aren't arguing to have some clown with no experience or interest in the matter steer the ship out of the mess. That would be silly, wouldn't it?
So, we'll see how it all works out. Until then, do what you can for the bottom line and pay your taxes, shop till you drop. Let's make it a great Christmas season!
1 comment:
Doing this deal with no independent oversight is really dumb. We gave this administration carte blanche and a blank check before and got over 5 years of war.
As I recently read, this is exactly like the Iraq War all over again -- Shock & Awe, followed by an occupation of Wall Street, and all with no exit plan.
Post a Comment