Lazy Youtube Request
I have this great idea for an anti-McCain “ad”, but I have no time and no video editting equipment to make it. If anyone’s interested, drop me a line and I’ll spill.
September 25, 2008
Saved
I do love the Bush economic bailout plan. “We’re gonna take $700 billion and give it to this guy. He’s real smart. He’ll fix it.”
That is really, really, really not a plan. A plan has a “and then we’re gonna to this” and a “and next we’ll do this”, and sometimes a “and if that part doesn’t work, then we’ll do this other thing instead.” A plan involves planning, with beginnings and middles and ends. “We’re gonna give this guy $700 billion” is missing quite a few steps.
Well, okay, the Bush plan does have a Step 2: “then the smart guy will buy a bunch of the bad companies.” Funny story there, though. That Smart Guy? Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson? He used to run Goldman Sachs. Y’know, one of those big investment banks that’s about to tumble through the floorboards. He’s the guy who’s supposed to save us.
So yeah, we’re all pretty fucked.
A friend of mine pointed out this Bush quote to me yesterday:
I’m a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.
Under normal circumstances, I would have followed this course. But these are not normal circumstances. The market is not functioning properly
No, the market is working exactly as it should. “Free enterprise” doesn’t mean “things always go great”. Under free market capitalism, sometimes the economy tanks. Which is brutal, but we don’t even live under capitalism in this country. We live in some sort of crazy, rigged, old boys’ plutocracy, where the hyper-rich are guaranteed diamond-studded bandaids for their tiniest papercuts, the middle class are dangling over their threadbare safety net, and the poor can fuck off and die.
