Tuesday, March 18, 2008

looters

Once again I am at a loss to adequately describe what a chickenshit world we live in. All these rugged individualist free market types with there condescending little fuck you attitudes and their 'the market will sort things out' bullshit children's stories.

These assholes fucked us all over and are now expecting to be bailed out again without even a hint of the regulation that you or I might receive for the privilege of food stamps. Please stop what you are doing and read a most excellent rant - I am humbled by the power and grace of this mighty smackdown.

Back? After years of taking the economy out for a drive, and parking it next to his corporate buddies to feed out of the trough, Allen 'Bubbles' Greenspan is playing the the Ronald Regan card and suggesting:
Those of us who look to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder equity have to be in a state of shocked disbelief.
Who might possibly have thought that something might have gone wrong? He says a few other things that are loathsome in the extreme. Actually the whole tone of the article is so swarmy and obsequious that you really have to go read it to experience the whole malevolent effect. In case you are not up for such an unclean adventure, I will select a few choice words. We start at the beginning.
Home price stabilisation will restore much-needed clarity to the marketplace because losses will be realised rather than prospective. The major source of contagion will be removed.
Who in this case will be footing the bill? The companies who created the investment vehicles which are responsible for this current state of illness? No, just you and I - ie the current mortgage holders and more importantly the US taxpayer. Just think about the use of the word contagion. Assholes.

After running on and on about this and that, we get two interesting quotes. The first is a clear declaration that the current system represents the best and greatest hope to get us out of this mess.
I hope that one of the casualties will not be reliance on counterparty surveillance, and more generally financial self-regulation, as the fundamental balance mechanism for global finance.
After all, interfering with financial 'self regulation' might interfere with the steady flow of capitol from your pocket into theirs... At the same time, we get this interesting little tidbit after he goes on and on like some weird Laplacean Ayn Rand fiend - because if only we had the right model, then perhaps we might maximize the flow of capitol from the taxpayer to the nice rich people. The final straw is the following:
But these models do not fully capture what I believe has been, to date, only a peripheral addendum to business-cycle and financial modelling – the innate human responses that result in swings between euphoria and fear that repeat themselves generation after generation with little evidence of a learning curve.
So the real problem is out stupid little monkey brains. Not avarice, filthy greed or the need to assign blame to every other person except ourselves.

Greenspan is falling into the pattern of every other tool in the box of this administration. The same fucking "gee, who would ever think that this would be a problem??" that the entire remainder of the educated world seems to be able to see through. More word games.

And what tossed me over the edge? Just some dumbfuck comment on another article describing the problems with mortgage baked securities. To snip out the quote:
"If anyone deserves a bailout, it's the small homeowners who heard financial authority figures telling them for years that buying a house was a wise decision on any terms"

Yes, those poor soles. The same ones in California that lied about their income in order to qualify for absurdly low teaser rates and option ARMs because they had to have their dream house NOW. The same ones that watched long term interest rates fall to historically low levels, and instead of locking them in, decided to "liberate equity" to buy kitchen upgrades, new cars, vacations, and jet skis. yes, the poor home buyer.
Fucking jet skies. As if the entire system was spun up to move equity from the middle class back to the rich via mortgages and investment vehicles? Remember the stock market and how the middle class was bilked out of trillions in investment pyramid schemes. Same shit, different tool.

This asshole has obviously never tried to save 50 or 75 thousand dollars for a house out in California. You just do not get to put down 10 - 15% without a little help from your parents. If you happen to be supporting your parents, you might just be a little fucked. So we knowingly enter into the fight with the fore-knowledge that the entire system is gamed to make you roadkill.

Too bad I can't just claim that I had no idea that this would happen and can this all just go away.

1 comment:

Spiros said...

I too remember "supply-side" economics from the Reagan era; although I must say I remeber Bush's characterization of the same as "Voodoo Economics" with greater fondness.