Failin’ (like Palin) and bailin’

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Like John McCain said, the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’m not the sharpest button on the calculator, and if I had an accountant I’m sure they’d have killed themselves by now.

However, I do like to think I have a grasp on the basics. Like, where the current “global financial crisis” is concerned. This, of course, is in no way the latest media-fuelled overblown crisis-of-the-month, although if you followed all the recent hype about food shortages or the credit crunch* or an increase in hurricanes, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought the broadcast networks were just trying to keep the masses occupied.

I digress. So the financial markets are in turmoil because some big bankers and mortgage lenders have been playing fast and loose for years, and now their walls are crumbling round their ears. Okay. And now they’re being offered what are essentially blank cheques to save their asses – with taxpayers’ money.

Am I getting this right? Cos if you watch the English and American news, you’d think these guys are basically about to be saved by the same people whose futures they’ve essentially hijacked. Does that make sense?

Well, call me a commie or a hysterical shrieking populist idiot, but the idea of underwriting some filthy-rich CEO’s fallout from his Bad Mistake seems rather stupid to me. I mean, they were born of, and sustained by The Markets, right?

So let The Markets handle them in their failure. Isn’t that the idea of a Free Market Economy?

That you’re free to Win or, in this case, free to (Epic) Fail?

* Like WTF us a “credit crunch” anyway – and can I eat it?

Published by Joe Black

25 Replies to “Failin’ (like Palin) and bailin’”

  2. Yugoslavia. Hungary. Poland. My goodness, Russia.

    Socialism is also an Epic Fail, not least due to the imperialist machinations of the Western capitalist pigs and their agents of hegemony and globalisation.

    See how long Chavez and his chums last.

  3. unfortunately the markets are heavily influenced by the fortunes of these companies. if their risks are not underwritten by the US treasury, then not only will the fatcats suffer, but its the ordinary man who will suffer.

    so there is an argument to use tax payers funds to ultimately protect tax payers.

    markets always tend to overeact anyway. so there is a posibility that these assets will be bought by the treasury at discount, meaning that a profit could still be made..it will take several years to know the losses/profits made

    for me the issue is where is this 700 billion comming from. i assume theses funds had been budgeted for elsewhere. so what major gvt projects have been deemed non-essential or scrapped. that is the true cost of the bail-out. i assume they are not doin a Gono and printing 700Bill to solve the problem

  4. Because I don’t recall hearing anything about the US having a budget surplus in recent history. In fact, isn’t the US government notorious for always posting a deficit and being in like 10 trillion dollars of debt?

    So … good question there. If the bail-out is federal, where exactly is the federal government funding it from? Bloody Dumbericans!

    Although, as a Zimbo, I can’t really speak about either institutional malfeasance or state-sponsored financial shenanigans.

  5. A credit crunch is that stage that Zimbabwe managed to overlook, mainly because the powers that be managed to somehow bypass it. It was like, one minute, we were the pride of Southern Africa (bread basket and all), the next, the economy had collapsed without warning.

    I have no idea what the credit crunch is. All I know is everyone is over-reacting. It is only 4.something %. It could be worse, it could be in the millions. I really don’t see what the fuss is about. Especially as long as the local supermarkets still stock their economy brands. šŸ™‚ (It is obvious I don’t own any real estate)

  6. So I’m watching Arsenal playing Porto, and they looking a little fragile at the back.

    Well, they do have Fibreglass and Aluminium in their side.

  7. lol… i find it wierd that no ‘gunner’ has stepped up to the plate to defend their side… i guess they know that this run of form … loss … victory … loss shall continue huh

  8. There ARE no true Arsenal fans. Just a bunch of fancy-nancy-boys trying to be hip and showy while achieving fuck-all and looking good doing it!

    Lol.

  13. methinks anon is a ‘gunner’ oh last nights game was top notch.. goals for workaholic Kuyt.. captain fantastic Gerrard got his century and Keane’s got his first of many to come… all in all a good night out i’d say

  14. Kids seem to have been bored while daddy was away. Black start writing something interesting. Take it that you have got over your insomnia.

    Anyone driven to Malawi before?

  15. Yeah I know demolishing the Portuguese champions 4-0 is pretty poor stuff. Yes Hull outplayed us for 90 minutes. Fiberglass is the most overrated player around. Oh and yeah this is Liverpool’s year.

    Please note the sarcasm….

    As for the so called credit crunch, linking financial institutions globally while trading an ever increasing amount of virtual funds (i.e. not liquid assets) combined with a penchant for high-risk speculative borrowing is what created this mess in America. That and their entire economy is based on a “borrow now, figure out how to pay it later” model for growth. Talking to a broker friend yesterday while he sipped a slightly less expensive scotch than usual he told me, “The party is definitely over.”
    Bailing out the big banks and brokerage firms with taxpayer money is insane but it was similar to what FDR did after the great depression – a massive injection of public funds into a volatile and weak economy- and in the long run, the government investment actually produced profit. Japan used a similar technique in the 90’s to combat that whole Asian Financial Crisis thing. It works if you have a government willing to take tax payer dollars and invest them into an economy that will later benefit taxpayers. Neither Obama nor Mccain will do this.

  16. Oh and just to correct you JB-

    Under Clinton (when the economy happened to be booming) the U.S. was posting record year after year budget surplus.

    http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/

    George W. has spent more than any U.S. President in history while turning record surplus into record deficits.

    A small note that seems to have gone unnoticed by the entire world this week. While everyone has been debating a $700 billion USD bail out package, everyone was asleep as the Department of Defense received over $700 billion USD in their new budget.

  17. Sorry for a third straight post here but with elections looming in both Canada and the States, I’ve been trying to explain to people how the election went down in Zim and they just seem to stare back at me with a glazed over expression. “What do you mean the results weren’t released? Didn’t the news stations cover it? What about the internet, couldn’t you find the results there?” The conversations always end when I say that over 30 days passed for the “official” results to be displayed- never mind allegations of fraud. People here, like myself in Zim, simply can’t comprehend that kind of shit.

    Also Canada’s leadership debate (with 5 parties being represented) is on tonight but most Canadians will bypass it in favour of watching the U.S. VP debate. Tells you something about my nation…

  20. I digress. Right, let’s try intelligence …

    So, the bailout is a crock of shit. We all know that. But it’s gonna go through anyway, same with all of Emperor Bush’s demands of the legislative branch since he came into power.

    By that, I mean: Iraq war, FISA and immunity for lawbreakers, Patriot Act etc. It’s no longer a matter of seperate but equal branches of power, it’s a matter of the executive dictating how the legislature behaves, not the other way round.

    That’s America. Until someone comes along to roll back some aspects of the erosion of civil liberties and the investiture of limitless powers in the office of the presidency, no luck for anyone making common sense as long as the views are divergent of White House thinking. So on with the bailout. Yippee-ki=-yay.

    Do your fellow Canadians even know where “Ahhhf-r’kah” is?

  24. I’m going to speak for Canadian urban folk here, as in the hinterlands everywhere ignorance is king, but Canada has a pretty good handle on African affairs compared to our southern neighbours. Toronto and Montreal are jam packed with African expats, our collective consciousness about African problems and our shameful roles in those problems spiked in Somalia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_Affair) and in Romeo Dalliare’s futile actions in Rwanda. Incidentally the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was allowed into Zim during the elections, with my homegirl Adrienne Arsenault reporting- but like all the other foreign journos they didn’t stick around for 6 weeks for the results.

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