Didn't know about
Grover's bathtub? Yeah, it's the marvelous free market that relieves government of all but the most basic services--guns, soldiers, cops and, maybe roads. The rest, you're on your own. Just how on your own, 4-years after GWB's privatization and fiduciary spin-off binge? That's up you to wait and find out. Take the Gulf Coast as exhibit B, after Iraq, of the kind of horse you may have backed. Exhibit B comes after Valiant Leader turned to John Ashcroft on 9-12-2001 and said "We must never let this happen again."
Well it did. And there's no doubt whose signatures are on this 10-k.[annual report]
[FYI: I'm mostly a business blogger--Crossposted here]
After the jump, how business has got some serious thinking to do after Lake George.]
To be blunt, the heart of America's oil infrastructure and a few hundred miles of coast has just been taken out by a watery "nuke, " with a week's warning no less: 20% of our shipping capability, gone. 50% of of our refining capacity, gone or down. 30% of the nation's seafood industry, gone. One internationally revered American City, flushed.
But forget the idea of National Security, for now.
How fast do we think that the "Consumer Credit Protection" Bill sought by MBNA, Citi, Capital ONE to narrow their exposure to bankrupty filings will turn around and bite politicians and the card issuers in the ass? I say 90 days. An entire jobs base of millions has been obliterated. Homes gone, means gone, generations of work and equity, gone. Financial services lobbyists even marked out a provision in the bill exempting exactly this kind of disaster, a provision urged by Sheila Jackson-Lee (D). Grover's fan club killed it. Disaster is no friend to balance sheets, nor the Business Roundtable, it seems.
Why have the bill in the first place? Because of shitty metrics, hubris borne of impatience with boring old compound interest, and a newfound, IT-enabled and knife-edged ability to revolutionize "worthy" debt. The simple translation for that is playing fast and loose with prudence and justice for a bit more EBITDA and hoping for the best.
Business, in this case, Financial Services, got not just a golden net, but a golden trampoline. The people? --the customers, which we all claim fealty to? They got shit. And piss. Literally. And it's floating past the houses and businesses of New Orleans, Biloxi, Pascagoula and Mobile. Floating alongside just for ironic measure and Satanic spice are bodies. Young and old, fit and infirm, mostly poor, mostly black. Unclaimed, and, as yet, countless.
This is the endgame of "MORE!." The death-knell of "Hooray for me, to hell with the rest of you."
Forget the politicians, they are the tail of the dog. And that dog, Business, has its head up its collective ass. Profits are booming, yet the whining continues. Give more green! So I can sit on it, look at it, count it, brag about it, but not put it to any productive, ambitious, lengthy or broad, common-wealthy good.
The CEO Adminstration has its head up its collective ass.
[via C&L]I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.... read on
Yes, indeed, Newt. Welcome to the wake. Give Grover the news. The man is out of his depth by more than a levee's worth. Even a
merely competentCEO would never stop-payment on insurance or security to pay for his pet projects. But, to then have the audacity to say the thought of a signicant
business interrupting event never entered his mind.
Well, it boggles the mind, and in normal circumstance where smart people don't lose themselves to childish and selfish ideologies, it would have people buffing resumes (to no doubt dimish that particular career dalliance), and rushing the exits pst haste. But no. This is politics and common sense is checked with hats and coats at the door, on the way in.
To my business friends who rail against the "unfairness of taxes" in this least taxed, freeest market and most unregulated of First-world economies, I say only: lay down with dogs, reap the whirlwind. [sic]
Time to decide who your enemy really is. And what you really want. And to understand what it ain't; to understand that the thing what brung you here is, at heart, a common-wealth, burden-sharing, pooled-capital, dispersed-risk luck of history called America. Or people are gonna decide for you. They're gonna make you understand. And you're not going to like the answer. Nor their method.
You're one strike away--one 7.0+ richter epicenter, maybe--from strangling your Golden Goose while screwing it. Character? Or cash-on-someone-else's-burden? Time to put up, or shut up.
Me? I'm mad. I'm talking, and walking. Just don't tell me you're a proud Republican if we meet on the street.