Turns out Bill Maher called this financial and economic crisis with biting precision back in August of 2005. Maybe he should have been running Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Wachovia. It's quite astounding how accurate his predictions are and how true his jokes ring today. How many highly paid Wall Street execs do you think would have laughed at this crazy know-nothing in '05?
Seriously, watch the video. (It gets particularly interesting around the 1:50 mark.)
From the transcript of Real Time With Bill Maher on August 26, 2005:
And finally, New Rule: Not to burst your bubble, but all bubbles burst! I don't want to say real estate is overpriced these days, but I had a refrigerator delivered this morning, and a homeless guy offered me three million for the box! Now, what is so distressing about this situation is that we just went through a bubble-bursting trauma with the dot-com crash. And here we are just five years later with real estate prices that could aptly be compared to Courtney Love: irrationally high and about to collapse.
You know, it's funny, one argument that had always been leveled against marijuana use was that it supposedly affected your short-term memory. You know, it's funny, one argument that had always been leveled against marijuana use was that it supposedly affected your short-term memory. Well, whatever it is--the point is, Americans can no longer remember even recent history. Detroit has completely forgotten the lesson of the '70s, which was, when an oil crisis looms, stop making Godzilla-mobiles.
In Iraq, George Bush totally forgot the lesson of Vietnam: "Call Dad!" And yet, to be fair, it's not in the red states where this market insanity is most acute. It's among the supposedly-savvy coastal elites, where buyers are dumping trillions into mortgages they can't afford, proving again just how much people will pay to not live in Kansas!
No, folks, it is really out of control here in California. One property in San Diego sold five times in one day, with the price going up and up and up until it was just a picture of Donald Trump laughing.
But it won't be funny when the bubble bursts and people start going bankrupt, taking banks down with them, and then the markets and then the dollar, causing mass rebellion against the government. At which point the Republicans will run an election based on renaming Amtrak the "Jesus Choo-Choo." And they'll win it!
And the whole thing will fester to the point where our economic Plan B is to live in caves and barter. Because if there's one thing that Republicans, schooled in the ways of Wall Street, have taught us, it is this: don't spend money you don't have; spend money other people don't have.
Luckily for me, all my money is tied up in Google, sunscreen and guns!
Real Time has slowly become my favorite television show around today. As much as I love Stewart and Colbert, Maher's brilliance at comedy and penetrating truth cannot be found anywhere else.