OK, I’ve been blogging, reading profusely, and listening to talking heads diligently since before the primaries. Every day, as my work schedule has changed and allowed me to keep track of a lot of politics. While we were in election mode it was easy to see why everyone was getting so worked up as this was the most exciting election of our lives. At the time I remember wondering what everyone was going to do when all of this was settled. This addictive society was going to have some withdrawal symptoms. Little did I know that this society was literally going to withdraw.... money. I propose that much of what is going wrong right now is specifically due to the 24/7 mainstream media’s pure need for hype and the desire for things to stay exciting enough to keep the illusion alive. My confusion, or possible clarity, is ruminated on below the jump.
This is what I perceive we are being told. The economy is falling apart because there was very little oversight in the world’s financial markets, lead by our own Wall Street. The desire to continually find new financial products to sell to unsuspecting investors became repackaged hoards of bad mortgages that had been slung upon the American public busy consuming at the rate in which they were asked to consume (after all we are a consumer nation). While credit card debt was a large part of this crisis, and lord knows the American penchant for plastic is unprecedented, the real driver of this event horizon (truly resembling the entrance to a super massive black hole) was the ever expanding real estate values that enabled the American public to use their home equity as efficiently as ATM machines. While middle class wages continued to slide and people’s real spending power was in a decade long decline, the affects of these realities were not apparent as long as the people were willing to mortgage their future in order to consume.
In real terms the poorer you were the more you had to pay in order to borrow money. So, the interest rates on mortgages and credit cards were introductorily set deceptively low in order to get people to hop onboard the debtor bandwagon. After truly large amounts of debt were incurred interests rates for the poor, borderline poor, and middle classes were raised to rates that were, and always will be, unsustainable. If these people had gained the wherewithal to have better credit and higher salaries, their payments may have been sustainable, but that is not the event horizon that appeared in front of them - ever sucking them in to the only pastime that keeps our economy in the forefront of what makes us number one in the world – spending. Even if you could never afford the life you were having, at least you were having a life. Heaven forbid we look at the true value of people versus property in this country.
A house of cards would be a much more legitimate structure than this mess. By depending on financial services as the predominant driver of our economy we watched our banking system become inextricably entwined with our investment portfolio’s that were all covered by the same insurance company that only covered the incomes of the brokers selling the bank’s bad assets to the world’s investors, and it was all based on the spending ability of people who had no spending ability. The people selling all of this, as always made their commissions. But, as we have learned - like a timeshare that doesn’t exist – unless the local Better Business Bureau is watching, the money is gone before you find out that the apartment sucks, and is nowhere near the beach. I can’t say that any of this is as old as dirt, but OMG it sure is close. Didn’t Jesus complain about the moneychangers? And where does the religious right, who dominated the political party responsible for valuing this economic shell game, get off associating their control of the country’s dialogue with money changers?
OK, that is the problem. It feels like a bad acid trip, or at best a full bottle of Jack that leaves you with the spins no matter how you slice it, but it is easy to see why it didn’t work and the world is in complete agreement that we cannot go anywhere near this setup again. You’d think that the MSM would be happy just to follow the drama. It is a significant drama. We all recognize a reality that is stranger than fiction, isn’t straight reporting enough? Well, evidently not. All weekend I have listened to the estimable experts who are paid to tell us how we should be reacting in accordance with our own personal political proclivities. I want to throw up. Spin, spin, and spin – where is that bottle of Jack? Oh yeah, it’s gone. Now the real shell game begins. Aha! It was a feint within a feint. You thought this mess was the deal. No, getting you to be afraid of the solution is the only thing left for this long line of carnival barkers.
While we are so very lucky to have a President who is smart enough to do whatever needs to be done and is not weighed down by ideology either on the right or the left we are told that it is completely insufficient. Even people who support our President are a little disappointed by the fact that he is not worried about the constant drumbeat of failure wrung out of the stock market every day in a long slow dribble of wash water from a mop that wasn’t big enough for the mess in the first place. Why does anyone listen to these people? They are the aforementioned moneychangers. For those of you who were heavily invested with these people, I feel sorry for you, but you were warned in the bible – remember the problem that is almost as old as dirt? The President isn’t getting the banks in order fast enough to that we can all start borrowing again, and spending can kick back into gear. Warning, Will Robinson, warning!
Of course these people are unhappy. The gravy train has stopped. No amount of financial blackmail through the stock market is going to change those facts. The future they want is not only unsustainable it is, at this point, unattainable. Please note that I fully understand that I am conflating the MSM with the money changers, and the talking head class. But as long as CNBC, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal’s opinions are so prevalent and reported on by the rest of the media I see no alternative.
It seems to me that the President is acutely aware of the dizzying mess that I have been complaining about and is taking the one shot he has at spending the ungodly amount of money we don’t have, to set us off on a direction that will not be repeating the past. He is a student of history. And what is the point of studying history if you don’t get anything out of it? If we are to make a last stab at the only money that has any perception of existing for the foreseeable future it had better be gearing us toward industries that involve manufacturing. Windmills and solar farms not only have to be built, but will get us off foreign oil – eventually. Revamping our health care system is paramount in relieving our beleaguered auto makers of their back breaking legacy costs and saving the small businesses that are not yet a statistic. And, making sure that we do not try to sustain another generation of uneducated ignoratti who not only cannot compete in a global economy, but do not know how to think between the spin cycles and participate in their own democracy is our only hope. How about a generation of people who not only vote their economic self-interests consistently, but handle their money with consistency? There is the three legged stool. The one that gets you high enough, when you are standing on it, to see into the future. Only somebody pretty tall and fairly adept at the three point shot would think like this anyway.