In brief: the failure of the bailout

[demiurgent]

It's surprisingly simple.

Neither major political party was willing to sacrifice the election to save the nation.

There is nothing more basic than that. Neither party would sacrifice personal power in order to save the economy of the United States of America.

My representative voted Nay. For the first time, I'm considering voting against her in November. I'm certainly calling her office tomorrow to express my deep disappointment in her.

For those who don't want to see the bailout of Wall street firms because gorsh, they's all rich and it's not fair? I hope you really, really enjoy the next ten years.

Comments

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

If we look at the Great Depression -- and let's not kid ourselves, that's where we're heading. Not 'a long term recession.' We're heading to apple sellers and breadlines here -- people didn't tighten their belts. They died. People starved to death. It took a World War to get us out of an economic fugue shocking in its profundity.

I agree. The system is broken. Completely broken. And we're not looking at shoring it up here. There is no area where nationalizing the fucking real estate economy heads that way.

Right now, without the bailout? Things fail, the government forecloses on them, and then sells them to other companies at pennies on the dollar. You think JP Morgan/Chase is bemoaning the economy? They just got WaMu for a fucking song. Every failed mortgage, every foreclosed house, every bad asset will ultimately end up going somewhere.

So let 'em burn? Go for it. And in ten years, when we claw our way out, the top fifteen percent who own everything will have shrunk to the top three percent who own everything, and that three percent will make King George look sane. Second verse, worse than the first.

You think this will lead to people marching into the streets with guns demanding their freedom back? The way it did in Florida in 2000, or after the Patriot Act, or after the suspension of Habias Corpus? Hell, I advocated for Northeast Secession years ago, but it didn't happen and it's not going to happen in six months. But a lot of poor people are going to lose their homes and their lives in the process.

The folks who won't die? Who'll have a few bad weeks and then go on to the next thing or at the least stay pretty where they are? They're the ones you want to burn. I want them to burn too, but they won't. They'll do just fine.

[booklegger.livejournal.com]

You need to read Ms. Shales' The Forgotten Man (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060936428/).

Needless to say, if you think the collapse in 1929 caused the Great Depression by itself, you are delusional. If we can avoid passing a nouveau Smoot-Hawley we'll be fine by the end of 2009.

If we were really worried about saving the Economy, rather than saving Wall St., wouldn't we build a firewall? Wouldn't we be trying to intervene in the markets that need Wall Street, rather than trying to save Wall Street directly?

If the Fed, or the Treasury said, "Fuck it, y'all can sort yourselves out, we're getting into the commercial paper market, and we're going to undercut your rates" It'd be a more efficient use of 700 billion, more profitable, and it'd punish those that need it.