Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:07 am
I never thought that this day would ever come. Well, it's way, way worse than we had even supposed.
For mumbled, muttered reasons that really boil down to the fact that our national government exists to protect not any thing but the interests of large corporations and their officers, the Federal Reserve Bank elected to 'bail out' the tanking pseudo-insurance dodecapus American International Group.
What this means is that eighty-five billion public dollars -- that is, your tax money -- is being used to prop up the "Weekend at Bernie's" style corpse of AIG in 'exchange' for 80% of AIG's shares of stock. So what you get, pal, is a gigantic liability in addition to an immense amount of worthless stock.
Sounds like a pretty good deal, huh? Well, I've got a better one. Overthrow the government.
See, what we have here is a crime. I'll spare you most of the Econ 101 lecture, but here's the basic problem : this government spends a lot of time trumpeting the wonders of the free market (at least the domestic market -- recall 'trickle-down' theory from the 80s?) and adopting policies both social and economic that are putatively designed to allow that market to operate in a way that is minimally hindered. This includes making sure that feisty entrepreneurs have incentive to take the risks that drive business activity by allowing them to keep a pretty good cut of the rewards if their risks pay off. Market activity for profit is gambling, speculative activity doubly so. The incentive to make the smartest, shrewdest choices in the market is provided by what generally happens when risks don't pay off -- one loses one's investment. If you don't think it through when evaluating risk, you find yourself more 'highly exposed' to the risk -- in essence, you can lose a whole lot on a stupid bet. That's what happened here. The mops at AIG gambled on financial products that few understand and nobody ended up profiting from -- mortgage-backed security bundles and so-called 'derivatives,' which are sort of like a bet on the outcome of other bets -- and lost their stupid, slave-made shirts. And that's how it ought to be, because in a market, there are always winners and losers, and sometimes when folks don't use their heads, there are really really big losers.
Now, the government has justified its meddling in the natural workings of the market that it so loudly promotes by saying that AIG was just tooooo big to fail. Too bookoo! Too big! Too big and too enmeshed in the so-called 'financial system' and if they get wiped out, there will be widespread suffering not limited to our own economy, but others in the global market as well. What the deuce, say you? AIG held a lot of insurance policies on bank deposits and other financial accounts, and was involved in apparently innumerable portfolio capers that are so wide-reaching that if they weren't around to guarantee those investments and manipulate those portfolios, your head might catch on fire! Or your dog might turn into a knife and stab you in the spine. Whatever would happen, it'd be real, real, bad. That's why the national government needs to give away your money to these swine.
The really cool thing about this bull feathers justification is that, since the 'Fed' says that firms of a certain size are 'too big to fail,' everybody now has tremendous incentive to :
1) Grow as large as possible to increase the chance that they, too, will be 'too big to fail'
2) Involve themselves in complex investment transactions of high risk with little regard for the risk levels -- in fact the bigger the risk, the better.
See, if you win on a big risk, you usually win a lot. And if you lose on a big risk and you're 'too big to fail,' well, no big deal! Jim and Edna Taxpayer will slip you a little of their bountiful extra cash to chill them individuals out so you can wait for the cavalry.
Don't buy a word of the barf oil that Paulson is spewing about why he done what he done. If we're going to operate on market principles -- good! Free markets usually do, as the slavering yaks of government have been crowing for years, provide the most good for the most people -- 'utility'-- in the long run. Even if some people get hurt along the way. That, buddies, is why when your bondage shop or panaderia fails and you lose your invested life savings on top of innumerable labor hours and maybe even some of your other personal assets if you were dumb enough to commingle them with your business, the general line is "oh too bad, we feel sorry for you, but that's tough -- that's the market." Likewise when your adjustable-rate mortgage goes ape and you can't make the payments on what is now a double-digit interest rate and you default, ruining your life : tough! Shouldn't have taken on that risky ARM. But don't act like we're maintaining a free market if this applies to anybody -- except giant corporations, who have nothing to fear ever. This recent bare-faced turn makes clear two things : the government is not for you, and Henry Paulson is a whore.
Unless you like paying for the bad debts and dumbass moves of coke-snouted corporate goons, you need to write every on of your legislators and call the White House. Do everything you can think of to let the swine know that you don't much care for their plan. If the government is going to put you on the hook for the liabilities of any firm of size "X" or bigger, that's not a free market. The logical response to that situation is that, since it is obviously not acceptable for the taxpayer to have to foot the bill for failed idiot companies, firms must not be allowed to achieve a size that's too big to fail. We shouldn't allow these horses to have it both ways -- free market when it's profitable, Communism when things get dicey. That's rubbish and it's a crime.
The government's not doing what we pay it to do. Instead, it's giving away your money and doing away with your rights. The Federal Reserve and its cow of a Treasury Secretary are paid henchmen that sneak crimes by you behind closed doors and then lie like Oriental rugs about the reasons they steal. Enough of that. It's time to overthrow that criminal order. Overthrow it. You're going to need every right you have left.
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