Hey, everybody! The banks are failing. Lots of them.
OK, some of them aren’t “failing,” they’re “restructuring.”
Ever build something that fell apart? You could restructure it, but it still failed.
Not to worry. Historically, massive national bank failures are only followed by long periods of crippling economic decline some of the time. And hey, we’ve never tried this while sustaining an expensive international war against a noun. I’m sure this will all turn out very, very well.
Meantime, despite the frantic hand wringing of some, the U.S. presidential election is very close. Much closer than it was at this time in 2004, an election that ended up being settled by less than 3 points nationally at a time when the incumbent party was vastly more popular than it is today. This means that if we all work very hard for the candidate who looks, sounds and governs the least like Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover we could start the arduous task of moving America forward in time to avoid the next Great Depression. (In 1920s it took three men to screw up the country as badly as George W. Bush has all by himself … efficiency!)
It’s just a thought. I’m just a dude from up north. I can send the boys off to find hazelnuts in the woods and we can live on those for a good long time. And I heard tell of an old timer looking to sell his still.
But I’d rather not go down that road.
Bear Stearns made huge contributions to Republicans so it was too important to be allowed to go bankrupt. Instead it got bailed out with a big Republican contributor, Stanley Morgan, getting the profitable pieces and the taxpayers getting the bad loans. Lehman Brothers has contributed five times as much to Obama as McCain, and so it isn’t important enough to get bailed out. That’s the way the “free market” circa 2008 works. Privatize the profits while the public takes the losses.
Merrlill Lynch down in flames, bought up, (at a steal historically), by one of the largest banks in the world…
Unregulated Republican capitalism at its finest. It is actually frightening to think what would happen with four more years of asinine Republican economics. Hopefully my Dad’s back forty with a tent doesn’t have to become home. I guess poaching venison for meat is better than starving though 😉
I am not sure I know the answer. One of government’s fundamental functions is to bridge market failure. Certainly the financial industry is a market failure right now but at what point does the industry have some obligation to be responsible? I hate to see us go the way of the S & L scandal and just pony up with tax dollars. On the other hand, the financials drive so much of our economy. I hope there are far smarter people out there than me that have some ideas…
Amber