The rest of the world seems to know what the House Republicans seem to have gone dim on: Your break it, you bought it.
Americans, too, seem to have forgotten their history. In the wake of WWI, or the Great War as it was then known, the allies, bloodthirsty for revenge, sowed the seeds of their OWN DESTRUCTION (talk about unintended consequences) by inflicting punishing reparations on Germany. This, in part, lead the world to start numbering the World Wars, the Holocaust, which in turn pretty much led to the need and recognition of Israel, which in turn has left the Middle East as THE smoldering flash point for the beginning of WWIII.
Think the comparison a huge leap? The guys negotiating at Versailles in June of 1919 obviously did not think in terms of unintended consequences.
Main Street may want to punish Wall Street, but the rest of the world wants the U.S. to take the lead to fix the problem WE created. And, BY THE WAY, Main Street is not guilt free in all of this. Main Street took money it KNEW (or should have known) it could not pay back, for the dubious and uniquely American purpose of buying homes and consumer goods to appear wealthy, rather than pursuing hard work and frugality and actually achieving that outcome on the merits.
Lastly, MOST FOLKS working on Wall Street are just well paid working stiffs (believe me on this point. I caught the 6:31am Hudson Line into Manhattan every morning, and if I was not entertaining that evening, I caught the 6:14 home which arrived at 7:00pm. In between, I worked in bloody cave. Hardly "lifestyles of the rich and famous", but infinitely better than my previous occupations, and I was well paid relative to folks working in the local GM factory. There are THOUSANDS of these working stiffs working the lights of the financial industry in order to provide for their families, and they would be hard pressed to understand why anybody should be angry with them. Wall Street is feudal system, and the peasants should not be confused with the Noble Lords).
If you have been reading my stuff for a while you might know that I call the up coming period the "Age of Personal Responsibility". I know it is politically politically expedient to blame "Wall Street Greed" (BTW, what is the difference between "Greedy" and "Ambitious"? Semantics, really. And guys, that was a rhetorical question. Spare me the lecture.) One never hears "Main Street Avarice", the material competitiveness that engulfed the nation over the past several decades - McMansions for a family of four, Cadillac Escapades complete with $4000 spinning rims, etc... Did I miss something here? And was it REALLY Ronald Reagan's fault? Or did the American people not engorge themselves on a feast of debt at a table that they themselves had set? Yes, Wall Street served the meal - and Main Street ordered eagerly from the menu.
And it WAS fun while it lasted.
A new era is here, thankfully, and "January 20, 2009 will be the end of an error" (that was on a bumper sticker. I loved it).
Good Luck!
Mentatt (at) yahoo (d0t) com
8 comments:
We broke it. We fix it by eating our own cake. Not by bailing out the rest of the world.
Con of the Century
nhtnypoJeffers- thank you for addressing the GLD & SLV situation- quite helpful.
Marc Faber has commented in the last few days that gold is the place to be at this time. He adds the caveat that this should be in physical gold and outside the US.
He foresees domestic gold ownership being outlawed at some point. And events are moving along quite rapidly.
It is not unreasonable in the current panicked climate to see the congress or treasury making any number of unwise decisions. Any thoughts on the possibility that this could occur? Or how it would be implemented/structured?
I would hope that we would get a heads-up if this was moving toward implementation.
"The rest of the world seems to know what the House Republicans seem to have gone dim on: Your break it, you bought it."
That sounds like a great idea. Lets go after and sieze the assets of every CEO, CTO, CFO, etc of every one of these financial institutions over the past 10 years and use that to finance the bailout.
After all you break it you buy it. It wasn't the American people that broke it (although it was some of them). Maybe we ought to go after the politicians as well. All the ones who took money from these companies.
We can go after the defaulters too. You know the jingle mail crowd who tried to buy and flip the property and got stuck so walked away.
Other than that you'll never get me to support a bailout with tax payer dollars regardless of how bad it gets.
The majority of people working finance on Wall Street are just trying to feed their families from dark caves, huh? ... yet Jeffers walks away from regular work with a tidy sum (and you're not much older than me) ... appears that Wall Street people have in their pockets a LOT of money. New York doesn't even have a real income tax unless they get the tax money from Wall Streeters.
We can and will cast blame everywhere for the duration of the Obama administration. The bottom line is you can't send 2-3 billion dollars a DAY out of the U.S. and not have consequences from it. You also cannot send all the productive U.S. capacity (the factories) to China and expect people to have an improving life situation here, where all we now do is give loans to each other. The last 20+ years was a debt-fueled charade, and some of us (me!) don't want us to borrow any more! I can eat peanut butter for awhile. I don't need a new living room set.
(P.S. Gold was never 'confiscated' during the FDR era. It was voluntarily turned over. You didn't have to give yours up. Look it up.)
I believe that much of the moves over the past decade toward global markets and outsourcing have been driven by the wallstreet types.
While its great for profits its bad for america and american workers.
And well this is kinda karma for that misstep. Profits at all costs irrespective of your future is part of why we are where we are. And it is those on wall street pushing it that hold as much of the blame as anyone.
So what goes around comes around. They had no issue with blue colar jobs being lost. The bulk of the American people have no issue with the wall street jobs being lost.
Jeffers- what think you? This mess is causing massive global anger toward the US. Capital is beginning to flow outward. The US financial system is no longer viewed as secure in the eyes of foreign money.
How long before this shows up in the oil import numbers????
Bureaucrat:
Clearly you never worked on brokerage or trading floor in Manhattan. For every Master of the Universe their are thousands of grunts - brokers, secretaries, order clerks, compliance personnel, IT personnel, etc... and yes most of them are well paid compared to auto workers in Detroit. Most of their living expenses are in proportion to their income, so they come out the other side of the experience with little more than they went in. Ever rent a Manhattan apartment? For $5k per month you too can have closet with a view of the alley. McDonalds in Manhattan is TWICE what it is in Nashville, etc.. THere is a saying that whatever you make in New York stays in New York.
Yes, bureacrat most of of the folks are just "machen a leben"... making a living.
Auto workers make something of value. Brokers and order clerks make money go in a circle. C'mon, admit it. :)
(Never been to New York)
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