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September 24, 2008
Embarrassing Questions
I never expected to be blogging about Economics on an almost daily
basis, but the real-time saga now unfolding before our eyes simply
can’t be ignored; at least by some of us.One of the many questions literally screaming to be answered is: how can we trust the pathetic parade of liars “explaining” the financial crisis they helped create, but still clearly don’t fully understand, to a befuddled nation that trusted them enough to create it?
I’ve already provided my own credentials: seven years studying the results of pot prohibition, another amazingly dishonest US Federal Government folly, through the medical histories of its victims.
Yesterday, on the way home, I listened as Terry Gross received an emergency briefing from NYT columnist Greta Morgenson, who explained the crisis rather simply: it was just another Ponzi scheme like the S & L crisis of the Eighties, or the Enron debacle that oozed out of Houston shortly after “Kenny Boy’s” most important crony had been appointed to the Presidency by a Supreme Court packed by his wussy old man.
What Morgenson left out of her seemingly erudite explanation were answers to a lot of questions neither she— nor the other experts explaining the crisis— ever bother to ask:
1) What has been the role of a feckless and unnecessary “war or terror” that seems to have benefitted no one but the friends of the current administration while compounding our national debt at an unknown rate?
2) Hasn’t this same brand of reckless financial dishonesty been characteristic of human behavior for centuries? Wasn’t the tulipmania of Seventeenth Century Holland a prime example? As it turns out, those with a vested interest in speculation have, like modern Holocaust deniers, even tried to revise that relatively straightforward bit of history.
The really BIG question all experts, including those who were complicit in creating the current problem, are now posing is: if we don’t quite understand the problem, but now know “regulation” was inadequate, how can we believe that those asking for $700 billion won’t simply skim as much as they can and then leave the US taxpayer holding the bag?
Again, the question left unasked is even bigger: how will our creditors around the world respond to the so-far nebulous plan of the world’s biggest deadbeat to make itself (and them) whole?
Just asking,
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at September 24, 2008 05:21 PM