The Sound of Populism
Jim Cramer screams about his poor financial buddies going down. “Lower interest rates, Fed. I don’t want my rich decadent friends to face their due. They have FAMILIES for Christ sake.” So far the American people are refusing to play ball with this rigged game....
These so-called financial elites are so crass and intoxicated with the latitude granted them by their CEO President, it looks like they won’t even bother to rig a few calls in the game or penalize the other team (the American public) unfairly. At this point, it looks like that won’t be enough, they are so far behind. They’re simply going to try to change the score [through inflation and central bank bailouts]. If this happens, I have no idea what is going to happen. Will we just accept it? No October Surprise and Crash because a few trillion dollars are simply pumped into the system and the interest rates are lowered? Woo boy.
Why don’t they just get it over with and say, "We need about a half-trillion dollar bailout for our buddies, from you, the taxpayer. If you don’t pay up, you won’t be able to buy a house, we’ll fire your asses, spiking unemployment (because we would have to cut back on costs, naturally), and we’ll generally make your life miserable. Pay up if you want "protection." It is not a “decreasing appetite for risk” that is gumming up the works; it’s a system that has been set up to have no consequence, which touts the myth of a risk-free profit that is bringing things down. After all, what risk is there in giving out fraudulent loans and then passing them off as AAA rated mortgage-backed securities? I get the profit from transaction fees and sale of the mortgage securities. Some other sucker can take the shaft.
Oops you mean I also used my ill-gotten gains to lend out money to hedge funds (looking for big interest) which are now collapsing and won’t be able to pay me back, but, but, but... The cannibalism of elites can be very ugly, but they always end up coordinating in the end and turning their appetites on the American tax purse. Internalize profits, externalize liabilities. If you have the right men in government, you can even commit open and outright fraud and produce nasty, shoddy work as Halliburton did in Iraq, by the government’s own assessment, and still get a quarter-billion dollar bonus. “Heckuva job ______ (fill in the blank). You’re one of us."
All the while that same taxpayer now has extreme strictures placed upon his or her ability to file bankruptcy and come out with a clean slate, even though two-thirds of bankruptcies are the result of real emergencies (failing health, lost job, or divorce), not the fabricated ones of the finance industry. The simultaneous mendacity, contempt, and dependence toward the American citizen is a force to behold. I think the best way we may have of calling their bluff, is simply saying, "no bailout". They have to take the pain even if that means pain for us. As a follow-up I think we should get real practical and creative about creating our own circle lending, our own markets (as with farmers markets, etc.) that cut out these non-productive, and indeed, life-draining, parasites. In the words that they not doubt use to condemn the homeless they pass on the way to their high-priced pseudo-profession. "Get a job, a real job!"
