News & Politics QotW: Bailout Plan

How do you feel about the $700 billion bailout plan?

Oh, really?  You want to know how I feel about it? 

Let's see, I feel that it rewards people for bad behavior.  This is what people have been talking about with this "moral hazard" shit.  OH, but we can't worry about that now!  Right, just like when a todller throws a tantrum in a restaurant, obviously what we should do is reward it.  He's throwing a tantrum!  He is completely defying every rule he knows is meant to apply to his behavior!  Hey, give that kid a billion dollars!  That will correct it!  Whee!

I also feel that people in the lower rungs of the economic ladder, people who have been increasingly stuck there with stagnating wages and decreased opportunities for decent employment, are going to once again bear the brunt of this.  Yes, this might mean that those of us who have them can keep our houses (well, we weren't in danger of losing ours; we didn't take out a mortgage that we couldn't afford, but many other people in our income bracket and even the brackets above us did), and it might mean that credit is more readily available to help them continue to live lives that they can't afford.  Rather than actually see that our nation once again has jobs, even relatively unskilled jobs, that a family can live off of or that or that the jobs that do exist pay something like a "living wage," we'll just keep giving these people easy credit so that the people who own the credit companies can continue getting rich.  Sweet deal.

I further feel that the entire process was antidemocratic, to say the least.  How many voters out there really know what this $700 billion (plus $150 billion or so in tax incentives, some worthwhile, some not so much) is going to do?  Basically, none, because not even Paulson knows, or if so, he ain't telling.  He hasn't decided what he will pay for assets (last I heard, anyway).  He has said that this is more like a "loan" than a bailout, but he can give no specifics of how or when or how much of this money might ever be recovered.  Voters came out strongly against the first version, without all the "tax incentives" and the House, for once, listened and shot it down.  The Senate, though, completely owned by the fuckers who own and control everything in this country, passed it.  The House was whipped into line, too, and Bush, of course, passed it, but we've known for at least 8 years who owns him.  So, this is business as usual, I guess--government by and for the wealthiest and most fortunate of our nation.  Fantastic.  God, this makes me so proud of my nation and its system of government.  You can't even imagine.

On top of that, I feel that Democrats are being deeply dishonest in blaming the Republicans for deregulation.  Last I checked, some of the deregulation measures that are most correlated with the current crisis were bipartisan and passed during Clinton's presidency.  Greenspan chose not to enforce statutes against predatory lending during Clinton's presidency as well, and I didn't notice Democrats then saying much about it.

Let's see...I also feel even more now than I did before that there is no one in our government who is trustworthy.  I know libertarian-ish people like me are often painted as being merely stingy, like we just don't care enough about other people to give them our money.  That isn't really the point, though.  The point is that a group of people whose express desire is to have power--politicians--are almost inherently, and in our current government almost without exception, not trustworthy.  Why should I want to hand over my money to a group of people who is not trustworthy and will almost certainly squander my hard-earned money on things I want no part of, like wars in the Middle East?  And why, when my husband and I work our asses off to make sure we live within our means, why are we expected now to finance those who recklessly took mortgages, auto loans and leases, and credit card debt that they could not afford?  If they were so irresponsible this time, what assurance do we have that they won't just up and do it again?  Why does this make sense, or, rather, why do some people try to make this a "compassion" issue? 

I'm also pretty sure that this represents the ultimate triumph of the oligarchs over the commoners--not just the stupid redneck ones, but also the urban ones--and I think the commoners will be too stunned and beaten down to properly revolt as they probably should.  Isn't that in one of our founding documents, that when the government has become corrupt, the people should rise up and overthrow it? 

And I don't feel comforted by the almost certain prospect that Paulson will bring in a top Wall Street executive, maybe even an investment banker!, to "fix" this shit, i.e., to hand out cash to his cronies.  I don't feel comforted at all by the fact that our economy can supposedly be ruined by human emotion, i.e., panic.  I cannot take this crisis seriously, because the proximal cause of this mess is a game of chicken.  As long as nobody panics, the game can go on.  But when consumers "lose confidence" and house "values" which were inflated anyway drop, someone with subprime mortgages panics.  Once that guy panics, there is mass panic, like in Chicken Run.  Of course, since we no longer manufacture anything or really offer the world or even ourselves much that is of value, of course our economy is entirely a confidence game.  And for some reason, I don't feel really good about that.

Let me just allow Bill Hicks to speak for me now, because I'm a bit overwrought with all these feelings.  Just substitue "investment banking" for "marketing" although it's relevant to marketing, too.  Come, Bill, cheer me up.

I want to add an irrelevant post-script.  This is probably my all-time favorite Bill Hicks routine.  I have the CD of this, and I've listened to it hundreds of times, and it still makes me laugh.  Laughter:  such a precious commodity.