You've been pre-approved for a trillion dollar loan!!! No credit check! Not thru banks!!! Gov't gteed!!!
How appropriate, now that nationwide loan-sharking excesses have metastasized into a "once in a century" event at the planetary scale, that some of the same loosey-goosey "self-regulation" will continue to apply to those masters of the universe who got us into our present pickle. From the AP article on the Treasury rescue plan unveiled by President Bush:
This would be the 21st century equivalent of the fox guarding the hen house. Feathers everywhere, blood on the chicken coop wall, and they say "Nice foxie?"
You may be forgiven if you no longer know what capitalism consists of: wild gyrations of irrational exuberance followed by vertigo in front of unfathomable numbers ending in illions? Years of "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" (Reagan, Inaugural address January 1981) which has become "government intervention is not only warranted, it is essential" (Bush, yesterday).
If Bush had been truthful (ahem) or 'umble (sic), he might have paraphrased "government intervention" to say "vastly increased borrowing from our creditors in Communist China." But that might not have struck the right note. But just like the Three Trillion Dollar War, it is rare that anything approaching candor applies to our national indebtedness to China.
Update: Here's a notable exception: Helena Cobban, veteran international correspondent who writes about the almost unnoticed visit to the Washington last week of Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan, checking up on his country's almost trillion dollar holdings of T-bills and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt, as well as vast sovereign fund investments in private Wall Street firms. In her blog Just World News, Cobban quotes extensively from a Washington Post article on the Chinese visit hidden in the business section, including this strategic heart stopper from Andy Xie, formerly Morgan Stanley's chief Asia economist: "If the U.S. is not willing to accept that [U.S. assets must be transferred to other countries' ownership] they will have to print money and the dollar will fall. And we will be headed toward a global financial meltdown."
But it was a bad week for our commie creditors too. Something about toxic milk and baby formula. Tends to make Chinese consumers hesitate before buying dairy products. Not good for that booming economy (not to speak of the toll on your tummy).
Apologies to authentic Communists for my previous crack about "commie creditors." There is about as much of true communism in the Chinese leadership as there is authentic capitalism among the Wall Street crowd with their hands stretched out to the taxpayer. A couple of years ago, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday presented their monumental work Mao: The Unknown Story at a Washington bookstore. I asked Jung Chang how China's leaders, who instituted capitalist excesses that even Upton Sinclair's worst villains might abhor, could still call themselves "Communist?" What would Mao make of China's new economic hybrid of worker exploitation and conspicuous consumption?
Dr. Chang's answer was illuminating: Mao would feel right at home, because today's Chinese Communist Party exists for control, especially control of information. Just think Beijing Olympics. Remember the demonstrations in Tibet. Think about Chinese censorship of the internet. Communism is the umbrella, and if capitalist excess can bring in the bucks, it's OK, as long as the new masters of the moneymaking universe don't get any ideas about challenging authority.
If China is "Communist," is the United States "capitalist?" My reference to Upton Sinclair earlier brings me back to our current day "Jungle" - the sub prime crisis. If you want to read one thing about how the jungle looks at the Main Street end of Wall Street's crisis, read Paul Reyes' article in the October Harper's "Bleak Houses: Digging Through the Ruins of the Mortgage Crisis." Here's a link, but you'd do better to buy the issue and keep it on your coffee table as a reminder of capitalism's punishment for those who fall short of "essential government intervention."
Paul Reyes' account of the human cost of the sub prime evictions is breathtaking. The jungle of Florida returning - literally - to thousands of homes abandoned as if hit by the plague. The world of "Cash for keys" and "trash-outs." People on the edge, some trying desperately to hang onto their homes, wretched or not. And this line, from a man whose home Reyes has just emptied:
Is there anything else they can do to me, as an individual? I know the house is gone...
Reyes doesn't have the heart to tell him that yes, they can come after him if he ever happens to earn any money. But Reyes doesn't mention another thing that "they can do to him" - rob him of his vote.
Hitting people while they're down. A toxic time indeed.