In the wake of his angry privileged rich white male rant on CNBC the other day, Rick Santelli has risen from the rightly deserved relative obscurity he has been enjoying there since giving up his career as a derivatives trader. (For those of you who don't know what a derivatives trader is, just think of those guys with the cardboard boxes running Three Card Monte games on the sidewalk. Same thing only on a much much bigger scale.) It seems Mr. Santelli had had a particularly good three martini lunch before launching into his tirade against the government's plan to save peoples' homes.
The very thought of his hard earned (coughcough) money being used for such an obviously socialist solution to wealth inequity in America made his head almost literally explode. He then proceeded to exhort his former fellow money lenders in the Temple of Greed to bellow their support of his outrage. Mr. Santelli understands the crisis facing millions of Americans but his response in a nutshell is "tough shit".
As far as Mr. Santelli is concerned their problem is the result of their trying to rise above their station and aspire to have the same as their betters. He would say that they made their bed and now must lie in it but unfortunately that bed is now out on the street. Of course, Mr. Santelli in a possibly alcohol-induced haze has forgotten to point out that it was some of his best buds in the finance world who turned to predatory lending tactics in order to prey upon the hope these people had of a better life. They huckstered the American dream of home ownership and buried those folk in insurmountable debt. Yes, I know there were many on the other side of that coin who are equally guilty of wanting to make a fast buck. But does that mean we punish the innocent along with the guilty?
Mr. Santelli seems to think so. He sees no distinction between the two. But he does have a solution to the problem. Remembering all those FEMA trailers left over from the Katrina disaster, he figures we can put them to good use while at the same time solving the problem of the newly homeless. Of course, no one would want all of those people suddenly dropped down in the middle of their own states. Just think of the inconvenience that would create. Like trying to walk down the street without being pestered by small children begging for money. Or all those people who couldn't get a trailer filling up the alleys with cardboard boxes for shelter. And just imagine the strain on the states' welfare coffers. A nightmare scenario indeed.
No, we'd have to find a place to put all those trailers and at the same time ensure a steady supply of large empty cardboard boxes as well as some form of food resources. Of course! It's so obvious. Just send them all to the farthest landfills available.
Problem solved.