Seers, futurists, philosophers, prophets, prognosticators, pundits, cult leaders and even my wife have long soothsayed that the end of the world is near.
Well, my friends, only a few of us have peered into the abyss that is the United States Congress and returned unscathed. I am one of them.
Many of us think that whatever used to pass for leadership in America is long gone, replaced today by self-serving, egotistical, preening politicians whose only goals are TV face-time and hyper-partisan one-Bunkumship.
On national news media and in newspapers across the web I see quotes like "Why should American taxpayers have to foot the bill for Wall Street blunders"?
First and probably most realistically, will someone please tell me just how will the American taxpayer will even know they have paid this bill? Will we get a statement in the mail? Will our bank accounts be debited? Will someone come and take away Aunt Trudy's diamond bracelet that we can't wait to get our hands on when she dies so can sell it and get a flat screen TV?
Second, to paraphrase the old baseball legend Casey Stengel (knowing Stenglish well enough to paraphrase him is a black art I am not particularly proud of) "Doesn't anybody remember the Great Depression?"
Doesn't anybody remember how it started, and more frighteningly, how it ended? The Great Depression started with a great loss of capital from the stock market crash. Companies lost capital with which they collateralized the loans they made to make payroll in order to pay workers who couldn't consume the products other companies made so these companies went belly up and these workers didn't have a job so they couldn't get a paycheck and they couldn't get any credit and ah **** it. But wait here comes WWII. Everything is going to be just fine
It's the credit, stupid.
When was the last time you bought anything over $100 for cash? Or for that matter when was the last time you bought anything for cash? We live on credit. Not just this country, the entire world. The economic machine is driven on credit. Governments run on credit. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, tax refunds, anything you can think of is a product of credit.
Is this a good thing? Probably not, but it's the only thing. If the credit-sclerotic clot that is blocking the flow of the arteries of our economic life blood, just what do you think is going to happen?
Wall Street is Main Street, people. It's also Broadway, Pennsylvania Avenue, Downing Street, Le Champs-Elysees, Hollywood. You get the picture. No pun intended, but the availability of credit is everything. Without it, the world as we know it is over.
If the partisan knuckleheads who we, the partisan knuckleheads wannabes, put in charge don't get off their soapbox and into the batter's box, we are toast, baby.
Just thought you might want to know.
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