The pundits tell me that the Wall Street Bailout went down because of a public angry enough to pressure their representatives, in a ratio of about ten to one, to vote against it. FiveThiryEight.com says:
Among 38 incumbent congressmen in races rated as "toss-up" or "lean" by Swing State Project, just 8 voted for the bailout as opposed to 30 against: a batting average of .211.
By comparison, the vote among congressmen who don't have as much to worry about was essentially even: 197 for, 198 against.
The public sees this as a bailout for the greedy, corrupt, and wealthy folks who played the market game to their own advantage, leaving the rest of us holding the (empty) bag. And we, the public, are correct, but our understanding is incomplete.
The plan, they say, was not well-marketed. It should have been called something else. [Financial Usury Containment Kombat Unit?] Secretary Paulson, while a savvy financial fellow, just isn't up to public relations, and for some reason we no longer tend to believe our President.
But somehow we must be brought to understand that this plan is necessary for our own financial good. We need a good remedial course in basic economics.
Now, I have a few thoughts about this, as a non-economist (as you know, I think of it all as confetti.)
First, if an average college educated person cannot understand a given financial transaction or intsrument, perhaps that transaction ought to be reconsidered. Maybe it's not such a good idea to be moving money around in a way that most people can't understand.
And second, why is it that so many of us have such a weak understanding of our own economic system? Is it possible that education in this country might be somehow lacking? Perhaps it could use better funding.
Third, they should have made it clear that this game is being played with our own money. And it's true, most folks don't realize that. Most don't quite know that all that confetti is made from our own savings accounts, and Certificates of Deposit, and money market investments, and mortgage payments, and 401K's, manipulated and mangled many times over. Yep, that's your money, or the money you'd hoped to borrow, to hire a new ranch hand, or expand the plant, or send your teen to college, or live off of down the road.
It used to be that executives of failed corporations jumped from their high executive suites when their business went bust, not only because they were suddenly poor, but because they felt some level of responsibility for the unemployment of tens of thousands, and for the failure of their enterprise.
Now they jump with parachutes, golden parachutes worth tens of millions of dollars -- of your money.
How did it happen that they got to play so carelessly with your money? Well, interestingly, it has to do with economic ideology: the free market, the unregulated market. Some of the market is, of course regulated -- largely because of previous crises. But today's smart folks moved your money to the least regulated parts of the market, where they could use it to make even more money.
And this free, unregulated market is exactly the ideology that those congresspeople who voted against the Bailout use to justify their vote. Not just your anger, but the convenience that your anger supports their ideology.
That free market ideology hasn't, in fact, been our practice for -- well, probably for nearly as long as we've been the United States. There have always been restrictions, regulations, trade agreements, that build fences around what can and can't be done. Usually such intrusions occur as a consequence of some actual or expected unfair manipulation. Sometimes they are an unfair manipulation.
But in the past forty years, the ideology of the free market has been much in evidence. The idea of 'trickle down' economics has been the rage. Let the rich get richer, they'll invest, and make jobs for the rest of us. Don't interfere. Put people in charge of regulation who don't believe in regulation. Put people in charge who are invested in the companies they are supposed to be regulating. Party time!
How is that working for you?
In my life (sixty years) Americans have somehow morphed from citizens, with certain rights, duties, obligations and responsibilities, to taxpayer/ consumers, with a business relationship to government that includes the warning: Buyer Beware.
We have little to say about what the product might be, or how (or where) it might be manufactured, whether anyone is checking on its safety or utility, or what it might cost -- but we're expected to buy. And really, that becomes our only obligation: to pay taxes, and to purchase goods. Because our economy isn't based, any more, on our own work. It's based on what we can borrow, in order to purchase more goods. It's a patriotic duty; it's what our President sent us out to do after 9/11.
If we want to keep purchasing goods, we had better support this plan, which might not work, but the alternative is worse. The alternative is more of what has been happening (unnoticed, apparently, by those in charge): even fewer jobs, lower family income, more foreclosed homes, higher prices for necessities.
But if we pass this plan, and it works, then it's time, I say, for a change. I want a change back to citizenship. I want a change back to real work, to making things (bridges, high-speed train systems, public transportation, good roads, schools and community centers and health clinics); to investments in more than paper confetti, to investments in health care and education and infrastructure. Imagine if we had 'borrowed' $700 billion two decades ago, and invested it 'at the bottom' -- in the institutions and infrastructure and teaching that builds jobs, communities, businesses, and citizens.
Imagine if we had an expanded AmeriCorps, and JobCorps, and PeaceCorps.
Imagine all that money trickling up, up into banks and investments and taxes that would then support more of the same.
Imagine.
[A midnight rant, cross-posted from Open Salon. I'm in essay mode.]
From this distant land I watch and listen and agree with this while wondering why fundamentalists of all persuasions: Free enterprise, Christians, Muslims, Party Loyalists, et al et al, fail to see what has been happening. The rest of the world looks by in terror as the US voters make the most important decision of the past hundred years.
Posted by: Fran | 05 October 2008 at 09:58 PM
Let us tend our gardens, be always kinder than necessary and never buy slinkies because altho they are such fun for a girl and a boy, they inevitably end up messed up like that one, when the money would've been much better spent on flower seeds or some juicy grapes.!
Jannie
Posted by: Jannie | 06 October 2008 at 03:23 PM
The best kind of rant - angry but informed and focussed.
Posted by: Dick | 09 October 2008 at 07:18 AM
No time to read this interesting post now. (I will another day.) For now, that slinky photo is awesome!!!
Posted by: GeL(Emerald Eyes) | 04 November 2008 at 07:24 PM