In a very real manner of speaking, the quote-unquote Credit Crisis already occurred. It was the wild ride that was so darn fun while it lasted, we didn’t even realize we were on it until it was over. Believe me, I know…I rode it to the end.
The borrowed balances were staggering unto themselves. I remember posting about America’s total credit card debt a couple YEARS ago…when it was “only” SEVEN HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS…with credit card after credit card after credit card run up to its limit. But I will argue that it was the NATURE of the spending even more than the totals that heralded CRISIS!
The urgency and profligacy of the spending, the fabrication of NEEEED, the Madison Avenue mantra of “new and improved.” Even the revolutionary iphone? Good for a season, then we “need” the “new” one.
Shinier hair, whiter teeth, softer skin, bigger houses, greener pastures, happier pets, smarter kids, longer lives, faster credit, easier terms and, always, newer cars. Go, go, go America, spend your way to a peace of mind that the State of the Union will never provide.
It’s not that money buys happiness, we’re not stupid. But money buys Stuff and…what? The more, the merrier? But for life preservers made of paperwork, we would be drowning in our stuff.
The spending crisis is over.
For whom is the solution to maxed-out credit cards more spending, on a different card? America is SUPPOSED to be spending less. America is SUPPOSED to be paying down those cards.
The credit crisis is a misnomer, the suggestion that there is no money to be lent a hoax. Do stuff-starved Americans imagine that, when their own credit cards hit the limit, bankers the world over started burning money? The money supply didn’t disappear, it changed hands.
The hands that hold the money are reluctant to invest? Why? Since when are Money Men not eager to grease the wheels of commerce, for a cut? When they’re not sure they’ll get their cut, that’s when.
Aside from broadcasting to America and the world that crime and stupidity pay, the Great Bailout warns America and the world that charlatans and crooks still run amok in the marketplace. We not only haven’t punished lying cheating conniving N’er-Do-Wells, we have rewarded them. If we will not bring the full force of American jurisprudence to bear against the bullshit, investors know they are up against not only a dicey economy but also against wiley accounting practices, devious cross-collateralizing, blatant lying and a generalized absence of ethics.
Round up the heavy hitters of the Mortgage Mayhem, the ones who willfully rendered their nation’s economy and indeed the world’s economy a shambles in order to amass boupcoup bucks for their ego-ridden selves, and hold them without bail on suspicion of fraud, fiduciary malfeasance, price fixing, collusion, insider trading, conspiracies in restraint of trade and racketeering.
Men worth hundreds of millions of dollars, men with investments and indeed homes abroad, constitute much more of a flight risk than the average bad-ass. Hell, they have their own planes.
Hold them without bail and someone will talk. Loose lips sink ships.
The day the world sees conscienceless Robber Barons locked up like other criminals is the day the world’s investors will know that it’s safe to go back into shark-infested waters. One does not render the high seas navigable by getting rid of sharks. Sharks are part of the market’s ecosystem.
It’s the pirates who must be annihilated. Think gangplank, think a long walk off a short bridge.
As a bonus, American and global morale will inflate at indication that the “leader of the free world” means henceforth to prosecute economically advantaged Assholes as surely as we prosecute economically challenged Assholes.