I’m so angry right now I almost can’t sleep at night. It’s a boiling, gutteral fury. When I try to speak of it, I begin to sputter and use bad language because I don’t have enough words to express the utter depth of my rage.
My in-laws turned 70 this year. My mother will turn 70 early next year and my father is 75. My parents are extremely fortunate because a relative left them unexpectedly very well off about 14 years ago. However, my in-laws are not in that place.
My father-in-law worked hard all his life. He still works hard. He is 70 years old and with a bachelors degree in economics he works in a hardware store. This year they will not be taking their annual three month winter trip to Florida as they cannot afford it. Financially. Unfortunately, their children and children-in-laws are all holding their breath for the toll this will take on their health. They are good people who depend on the vagaries of the stock market for their fixed income retirement package. They are good people who were depending on the stability of real estate to sell their home of 35 years when they needed to to supplement their retirement income. Now they can do neither.
Remember when I said that the first national election I ever voted in, I voted for John Anderson? Well … I had turned nineteen that May and Ronald Reagan won that election for those of you who remember which race John Anderson ran in. So, for the entirety of my adult life, I have heard lessons on the economy from the conservative side of the street. In a nutshell, those lessons may be summed up by saying, “The market will correct itself, the government does not need to regulate it.” and “We’re not a socialist state, keep the government out of the market.” Don’t fool yourselves, Bill Clinton was no liberal when it came to economics. There was a very good reason why he kept Alan Greenspan in charge of the Federal Reserve for almost the entirety of his presidency. Clinton was a fiscal conservative and only barely a social liberal.
Yet, every time I turn around these same fiscal conservatives … these Republicans who hue and cry about the government staying out of the market … run to the government for a bailout when their greed fails them. When their pride, hubris, greed and foolishness fail and put all of us in jeopardy … they run to the government teat, just like a welfare mother in the projects. I am way past disgust. Just where exactly do they think that government money comes from? The trees? No … I have news for these financiers of great and immortal fame … it comes from me and you. We are now paying for their foolishness.
Those men of millions and billions, who ran their companies into the ground, ran to Uncle Sam for help cleaning up the mess, are now keeping the millions they gained personally and have the unmitigated gall to fight for their 60 and 70 million dollar severance packages. They are keeping their houses (multiples each), their personal jets, their yachts, their jewelry, their … whatever, whatever, whatever AND all their money AND we get to clean up the mess they made; AND we get to pay the court fees for the battle that they’ll stage to keep their severance packages.
The ugly thing about this is this is privatizing gains and socializing losses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the shareholders make out, the counterparties are fine. All the private sector people do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem.
And there’s something very wrong about that. Because all of those people that made all that money are running off here into the distance with the money, carrying it in their bags. And the United States taxpayer is on the hook. Gretchen Morgenson of the Times on Bill Moyers Journal Sept. 19
So … when does the market correct itself? I’m just curious.
I think these people need to help pay for the mistakes and help clean up the mess they’ve made … just like I do with my children. The only thing anyone “needs” is one house and one car. Strip them of everything else and use that money to begin the bailout … that’s market correction. Because I want someone, anyone, to help my in-laws out of this mess. They have lived life well, made responsible, wise, and even generous decisions … so why on earth should they and everyone else who have done likewise be made to clean up this mess?
After all, the only people who didn’t see this coming were those who don’t know their history. That would be … almost everyone.
