Bail Me Out
What’s the old line? “You owe the bank a ten thousand dollars, the bank owns you; you owe the bank ten million dollars, you own the bank.”
I guess we just change the million to a billion and change bank to the government and there were have the story of the current financial crisis.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m all for the government stepping in to shore up the economy before the country sinks into a full-scale Depression (are people still debating whether we’re actually in a recession?), but it is terribly ironic, isn’t it—as others have pointed out—that all these proponents of free-market capitalism are so quick to embrace socialism when it serves them.
The cheesy thing, of course, is that average homeowners who overextend themselves and can’t pay their mortgages lose their homes, while giant insurance companies or investment banks that overextend themselves on thousands of mortgages get to stay in business thanks to the largesse of American taxpayers—and, I guess, foreign investors in China, Russia, Europe, and wherever.
I’ve always heard economics referred to as the “dismal science,” and dismal seems a pretty good adjective to describe how the economy looks these days. It almost feels like the entire superstructure of assumptions and agreements upon which the monetary system is based is at risk; like we’re all waking up simultaneously to the realization that little pieces of paper with numbers printed on them have no intrinsic value so why should we all keep pretending that they do?
The upside of all this—if there is one—might be that individuals and society as a whole come to re-evaluate what we really value, so that instead of glamorizing hedge-fund brokers who pull in multi-million dollar salaries for just moving numbers around, we instead hold people who actually do things—like plumbers, teachers, machinists, bike mechanics, and community organizers—in higher regard.
And let us not, by any means, underestimate the invaluable contributions of 327-word essayists.
I guess we just change the million to a billion and change bank to the government and there were have the story of the current financial crisis.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m all for the government stepping in to shore up the economy before the country sinks into a full-scale Depression (are people still debating whether we’re actually in a recession?), but it is terribly ironic, isn’t it—as others have pointed out—that all these proponents of free-market capitalism are so quick to embrace socialism when it serves them.
The cheesy thing, of course, is that average homeowners who overextend themselves and can’t pay their mortgages lose their homes, while giant insurance companies or investment banks that overextend themselves on thousands of mortgages get to stay in business thanks to the largesse of American taxpayers—and, I guess, foreign investors in China, Russia, Europe, and wherever.
I’ve always heard economics referred to as the “dismal science,” and dismal seems a pretty good adjective to describe how the economy looks these days. It almost feels like the entire superstructure of assumptions and agreements upon which the monetary system is based is at risk; like we’re all waking up simultaneously to the realization that little pieces of paper with numbers printed on them have no intrinsic value so why should we all keep pretending that they do?
The upside of all this—if there is one—might be that individuals and society as a whole come to re-evaluate what we really value, so that instead of glamorizing hedge-fund brokers who pull in multi-million dollar salaries for just moving numbers around, we instead hold people who actually do things—like plumbers, teachers, machinists, bike mechanics, and community organizers—in higher regard.
And let us not, by any means, underestimate the invaluable contributions of 327-word essayists.
posted by Professor Dave at 12:31 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home