THE WILD RIDE AHEAD - WITHOUT PRECEDENT, WITHOUT REASON, WITHOUT HOPE?Well, we may really have gone and done it this time folks. For all of the turgid talk and frantic-frenetic action, it's lookin' more and more like we're starin' down the barrel of a brand new financial paradigm.
And we ain't gonna like it.
As Boris Badenov (and yes; I'm gonna recycle this metaphor even though I just referenced it in my previous post) used to always exclaim a mere nanosecond before the black bomb sphere with the sputtering fuse (that he always seemed to be holding at the wrong time), blew up in his face:
"HOOOO BOYYY!!!"
David Leonhardt's Oct. 7th NY Times blog column titled " Ignoring Reality Has A Price" quoted some interesting (and, somewhat terrifying) figures from the mouth of Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke himself. In perspective, it seems that Mr. Bernanke's statement that it's "a problem of historic proportions" is a woefully huge understatement.
Ben's "scorecard" tally:
30 billion $ to Bear Stearns
85 billion $ for A.I.G.
"Hundreds of billions, here and there, lent to various banks"
So far, chairman B says, we've dumped in about $800 billion. But wait.
He also notes that this does not yet include "the untold sum that the Fed now plans to spend buying short-term debt so that companies can continue to pay for their daily operations". And it doesn’t include any of the money the Treasury Department is laying out, like the $700 billion "bailout" fund or, the $200 billion that will be spent propping up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And, oh yeah.. there's still that little problem of givin' the US automakers a bunch more billions to "save" them.
Anyway. he then goes on to refer to this as putting "serious money on the line". Geez, Ben - ya think? Total those and you're up to about 70% or so of our current annual budget of $3 trillion.
You and I might state this a bit, um, differently. That's right folks...pardon my French but: we're fucked. We've got a huge deficit to begin with. We've got a huge trade deficit with the world marketplace. We've got a perky but pesky little war that still costs us 10 billion bucks a month or so. The stock market is worth little more than half of what it was a mere couple weeks ago.
But don't worry, the Fed and a number of other central banks around the world announced last night that they're cuttin' interest rates and planning what they call "cash injections". But then, "OOOPS! SHIT!! DANG!!".Today's stock market apparently didn't seem to be reassured... it tanked yet again.
Okay.. so let's see... we're gonna double our annual budget to maybe prop up the world financial market a bit (or, who the Hell knows, maybe not). Other than that, we don't actually have a real understanding let alone a viable, doable 'plan'.
So, I'm'a wonderizin'... Shouldn't we be just a teensy bit concerned that we actually don't have anywhere near that kind of money to begin with? Is anyone (including our next President and his weenie and waning competitor) willing to speculate on just what else that all might cost us? If they are, I sure the heck haven't heard it.
In my newest role here as amateur bigmouth dipshit pandit/pundit, allow me to make a prognostication. All of the scrambling and wailing and hand-wringing so far is NOTHING compared to the "SPLAT" we're gonna hear in the week after the election's finally over when we hear the resounding and sickening dull thuds of how things are really hitting the fan. Hard to imagine that the horrific things we're hearing daily today are actually whitewashing and 'soft-pedaling' just how dire things really are.
Sadly though, odds are, we're still far from seeing the big picture/real impact. And it's likely to be far uglier than any of us can dare to imagine at this particular moment.
And, just for the record, I genuinely hope I'm wrong about that. I am, after all, just an ignorant bystander...
Meanwhile, I guess we wait and see.... Don't worry too much though; your family really doesn't need all those groceries. Think of how glorious all that leisure time will be when your job disappears, all the hobbies you can finally have! And your retirement fund/pension/401K/etc. was really just 'fun money', right?
Don't you think? Or don't you?
(addendum to this post, added Oct. 10, '08)
so... let's see - today the Wall Street "Wheel-of-Fortune-Doom-&-Disaster-Rodeo-Doodah-Ride" took yet another huge & surreal plunge. I shouldn't need to say this but I will anyway. First, let us remember who set the stage for this "horrification continuum" in recent years. OK. But now let us consider that even after all this malarkey that nearly half of the electorate are still considering actually voting for the perpetrators' (perpetraitors?) party's candidate. It could well be that no one person or party has the ability to lead us out of such a mess.
Nevertheless, "regime change" is our ONLY option bearing ANY hope. You know what to do.... so now, let's make sure we do our best to let everyone else in on it too.Ya wanna see even the slightest glimmer of hope? It's simple AND obvious as all get out - we need a landslide in the election. A close race would be both an insult AND a tragedy - if we screw that up, just how the Hell many more chances do ya think we're gonna get?
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