In watching the financial meltdown south of the border I am struck by something that I haven’t seen: Outrage. Good old fashioned middle-class outrage of the deeply offended kind.
Consider this: In round-numbers, the US Government is going to bail out financial institutions to the tune of $1Trillion dollars. Back of the envelope calculations are: $200 billion for Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac, $85 billion for AIG and roughly $700 billion to set up the investment bank toilet.
Total US Military budget for 2007? $699 Billion while fighting a war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Will you be putting a “We Support Our Derivatives Traders!” magnetic ribbon on your SUV in place of “We Support Our Troops!”
Consider this: Lehman Brothers investment traders have already pieced off their bonuses for this year and the cash is gone now that Barclay’s Bank is looking to buy the Lehman Brothers Investment shop. Lehman’s set aside $2.5 Billion dollars to pay bonuses to their executives brokers and traders, before the Chapter 11 implosion. Barclay’s is going to pay a premium for the investment brokers so they can grow their business. A premium for a bankrupt shop? Am I the only one seeing a disconnect here?
Consider this: Last year, the average pay of a CEO in the S&P 500 was $14.2 million dollars.
Consider this: Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said on Friday in the LA Times: "voracious selfishness" of speculators and "stupid sluggishness" of regulators. And he singled out Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, with startling scorn. "Greenspan was considered a master," Tremonti declared. "Now we must ask ourselves whether he is not, after [Osama] bin Laden, the man who hurt America the most. . . .
OK, it’s over the top, but getting slagged by the Italian Government is like being told how to run a democratic and fair court system by the Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
Where the true disconnect is, is in the reaction of regular folks. Ignore the posing of the politicians and candidates for the time being. I haven’t seen public outrages. I haven’t heard from Spike Lee, Michael Moore, or even Ross Perot. Not one of the ‘intellectuals’ left, right or center, have stood up to say “This is bullshit.”
Nobody is calling for the head of Christopher Cox on a stick. Cox runs the Security and Exchange Commission by the way. Conceptually Cox runs the regulator that is charged with keeping Wall Street in line with the principles of basic math.
Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, who obviously is high, won’t add anything to the bailout to limit executive compensation. Paulson says limits would ruin the recovery of the economy. A week ago Paulson said the economy was in great shape.
All the jackanapes who are pocketing obscene amounts of bonuses and compensation as their companies wind down, are going to take their government money and run. This isn’t just wrong, it’s obscenely wrong.
But still, the big issue facing the water-cooler brigade? What’s the spread on Monday Night Football and what the hell was Heidi Klum thinking of appearing on the red carpet at the Emmy Awards in that outfit?
There are no protests in the streets. If the government offered to buy out the cast of Grey’s Anatomy to stop producing the show, there would be battles supporting McDreamy that would make the Seattle WTO riots seem like a kaffeklatch.
There are no swamping of White House mailboxes with emails and snailmails saying “This is Bullshit”. Nobody calls up their local, state and federal representatives saying “This is Bullshit”.
So we get President Jo Jo The Idiot Boy’s hand-picked village retardate, Henry Paulson, a long-term insider with Wall Street’s arm up him to the elbow, working out the details of the bailout. If it were me, I’d want someone from outside Wall Street putting this deal together.
Letting Henry Paulson, or anyone from the SEC work this deal, is the moral equivalent of letting a drunk driver decide on who is to blame as he staggers out of the wreckage of his car and looks at the school bus full of dead kids next to the smouldering propane tanker. You know how that one ends. The drunk walks away just before the large, loud, explosion.
The problem is this financial mess, created by home grown greed and no regulation by the lawmakers, will be paid for by you, the American Citizen. Your kids are going to be paying for this one too. If we could turn $1Trillion dollars over to the ecologically sound use of oil and development of alternative energy, you’d be self-sufficient in energy within a week and doing it the right way.
But there goes the US populace, nodding in agreement, getting their pants down and stocking up on lubricant. For heaven’s sake folks, you fought a revolution, a civil war, a couple of global world wars and innumerable police actions, over things even more vague; Korea and Viet Nam come to mind.
This financial meltdown is happening because your elected representatives and regulators did nothing to stop the self-appointed Masters of the Universe from Wall Street acting as facilitators of their own greed. They’ve gamed the rules, ignored the laws and now they’re going to get their one last payday under President Jo Jo The Idiot Boy.
The true outrage is there is no outrage. None whatsoever.
RoadDave 