The best-laid plans

I was working on a post about the imminent passage of the bailout package when the news came that the deal is in serious danger of falling apart.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the President’s own party that seems to be the one torpedoing the deal, fearing that it is leading to socialism.

I suppose it’s only appropriate.  After all, the first Great Depression happened under a Republican president, Calvin Coolidge.  If the second one happens under Bush, the GOP will be two for two.

Ironically, if the economy does completely collapse, it will probably usher in an era of socialism faster than anything else could.  Norman Thomas must be enjoying the show, wherever he is.

Bankers of the world, unite!

Today was a tempestuous day on Wall Street, to put it mildly.  Public and market reaction to the plan being put forward by the administration was less than unanimously enthusiastic. Perhaps it has something to do with finding this kind of language in it (in all cases, boldface added by me):

Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

(New York Times)

Then there’s the specter of Wall Street fat cats profiting off the bailout…

A billion here, a billion there…

So, according to the New York Times, the federal government could spend $1 trillion dollars to clean up the Wall Street mess.  That’s trillion.  With a T.

For comparison, here’s what the entire Iraq War has cost as of this writing:

Courtesy of the National Priorities Project (http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home)

That’s $555 billion, a bit more than half of what the bailout will cost. Or, if you prefer, the bailout will cost a little less than twice what five years of war has cost us.

And it will be paid by you and me, and our children, and our children’s children, and our children’s children’s children.

Get the picture?

And all because of greed…

The virtue of smallness

In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined that one day I would wake up to find myself an owner of the world’s largest insurance company. Yet, today I and 300 million of my fellow citizens awoke to exactly that, since the U.S. Government has seen fit to take over American International Group in a bailout.  Rod Dreher had this to say:

If we live in a world in which the collapse of a single firm — not even a bank or a manufacturer, but an insurer — could push the US economy (and no doubt the global economy) into a full-blown depression, are we not all living on the skin of a bubble?

Let that sink in for a minute.

OK. That made me think: what if the very bigness of modern corporations carries within itself the seeds of disaster?  Stay with me here, and see if this doesn’t ring some bells…

Notes on 9/11, postscript

Following up on the comment I quoted in the previous post, I had the questionable joy of flying cross-country about a month ago.  I found myself giving the following advice to my wife as we prepared to go through airport security:

“Have your stuff ready. Don’t make waves. Don’t complain about anything. Give them your ID, and cooperate with anything they tell you to do.”

Then it hit me–I’d been given virtually identical advice twenty-seven years ago with respect to the East German Volkspolizei as I prepared to cross the Iron Curtain for the first time. But that isn’t what scares me.

What scares me is that I have a nine-year-old nephew who has never known anything different, and who will grow up thinking that this is normal.  That, more than anything, testifies to the country that we lost.

Notes on 9/11

Some miscellaneous thoughts and ruminations:

1. Anyone else find the timing of Sarah Palin’s first network interview interesting, and her canned responses depressing?  It’s the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and the GOP has nominated a candidate for Vice-President of the United States who doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is.  She’s had the benefit of preparation by the Republican Party’s groomers and experts, and she still looked like a moose caught in the headlights of an approaching Peterbilt. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

2. Over at Rod Dreher’s blog, he posted an article called “9/11 And The Country We Lost.” He spoke mainly of the spirit of community that was evident in the days immediately following the attacks. One of the commenters, David J. White, posted this in response:

False choices

I haven’t blogged anything yet about the nomination of Sarah Palin to be the Republican vice-presidential candidate, because I’ve been waiting for the dust to clear.  Her speech to the GOP convention was about par for the course, albeit delivered flawlessly. It’s the job of the vice-presidential candidate to be an attack dog, and she clearly fulfilled that mandate.  So far, so good.

What has been interesting to me is the reaction of conservatives of all varieties to her nomination. For the most part, they’ve been falling all over themselves to praise her, and even people who should know better are joining the chorus.  There’s been a great deal of talk about how refreshing it is to have someone on the ticket who is such a regular person, someone who knows what it’s like to shop at Wal-Mart, someone who goes hunting and has membership in the NRA. This is usually contrasted with the usual culture-war stuff about the liberal elite and how they’re out of touch with ordinary Americans, how they look down on them and consider themselves to be their betters.