And I thought the banks were supposed to be repentant, and had learned their sub-prime lesson. Cash handouts were made by the government to keep the ol' he-con-o-me [economy] going and they were going to be good.
So is it any surprise I find myself deluged with even more 0% interest teaser credit cards with super-prime rates of 15% or more after the sting is in. And unlike the "good times" every single one comes with a transfer fee so its really 3% interest. Nope, you can't fool me, but I'm sure there are many in-debt mortgage payers going for broke in these babies only to get sub-primed all over again.
I mean what gives? First its the energy crisis, then its the stock market collapse, then its housing market collapse (forgive me if I skipped a few there). Has the entire US economy finally simplified itself down to some perpetual tag-team pyramid scheme not unlike Orwell's perpetual war against Oceania, no scratch that East Asia, no scratch that. Anyway, you get the picture...
I would be a little less bitter but last night I watched, well listened to, Zeitgeist, that well known training flick for neo-conspiracists. It was nothing I hadn't seen already in separate pieces and from different sources but as a whole it certainly either beats you down or sends you away laughing at people's stupidity.
The one striking claim that I took from it was that the Federal Reserve bank at one time manufactured a collapse by pumping cash into the economy causing a spate of lending by small banks. Then a little while later they deliberately tightened the drawstrings causing thousands of small banks to fail and end up getting bought up at a bargain by the big guys - which was the intended purpose. I mean you really can't have just anybody loaning out money...
So as I hear about the billions being pumped into the economy by the central banks of the world, a rash of credit card offers to consumers, I keep wondering how long it will be before fiscal policy is tightened and the next boatload of banks will go tits up. Oh well, as the Captain of the Exxon Valdez said as he swigged on his tenth beer for the night and parked his vessel into the side of Alaska for the night - "It's all good for the economy!".
(Yeah, I know he didn't actualy say that, but it is - as government paid economists currently measure "good").
2 comments:
I should have realised a bit more by the title of your blog, but alas, it was only after reading that I discovered the keen insight and clever wit prevalent in your observations of the world at hand. As a 'twenty-something' year old part of a generation of people who are just beginning to undergo a political, economic, environmental, etc, etc awakening and take an active role in the day-to-day running of the world, I found your blog to be a delightful read, much like the beloved deceased author you have alluded to. Thank you. I'm going to keep up with your posts, and hopefully get around to writing some of my own someday soon, but unfortunately I'm not hosted on anything quite as glamorous as Google, I'm still stuck in the semi-adolescent Pre-Post Collegiate world of Xanga.
Disseminate away, my good man.
JeffroDH
JeffroDH - Sir you flatter me with your comment, but I am more than happy to be flattered thusly! I'm even more happy to hear that people are having political awakenings in their twenties, and not waiting (like me) until their mid-thirties. At that rate of progress we may soon have fully awakened voters at the age of 18 before I'm retired - yay!
Unfortunately I have to say my posts on this blog have pretty much slowed to a trickle, in fact a recent event almost lead me to post a "Blog closed" post this weekend (which I may still do). However as we approach the election I may manage to bash out a few new posts - I just reread my November 2004 post today and I was pretty darned pleased with how it stands up four year on!
But please don't hold your breath waiting for new posts - you will do much better to mine the archives for now since as I'm fond of saying "history repeats" !!!
PS. I just use Google to create my blog entries, all pages are published by FTP to my own domain courtesy of Dream Host. Blogger is a good web based publishing engine adaptable to building entire websites with a little imagination. Not as fancy as Wordpress but real easy to get into (and you know those Google guys aren't going to go away in our life times).
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