Are The Chickens Coming Home To Roost?

This is, bluntly, frightening.

$9 trillion dollars debt.

Now, the apologists will say that it was necessary to save the system.

Really?

This is really the socialization of private and political mistakes.

The private mistakes are the result of the political mistakes.

The political mistakes - which are carried by both the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress - have been, pardon the vernacular, to fuck with markets.

Markets, as I have pointed out here time and time again, don't care about your motives or your intents. Markets just get buyers and sellers together and make everyone happy.

As long as they aren't being fucked with.


The fundamental, underlying cause of the sub-prime crisis and its melt-down effects on the US and world economy is the policy in the United States of subsidizing housing. This started off small and grew, to the point where the housing markets have been severely distorted, with demand driving supply.

You can't blame builders for building when demand is there. It's the right and proper market reaction.

You can't blame buyers from taking advantage of any and all opportunities to buy into the American dream. It's the right and proper market reaction.

You can't blame mortgage bankers for securitizing mortgages and reselling them. It's the right and proper market reaction.

Who can you blame?

Politicians, who are right now doing their damnedest to avoid ANY blame.

Why?

Because they distorted markets.

Distorting markets to achieve a politically motivated end should be considered one of the mortal sins in a free market economy. Nothing more, nothing less.

The chickens are coming home to roost. The $9 trillion debt is nothing more than that. The chickens have been far, far, far away from home, but they're back.

And they're not in a good mood.


So what does this mean?

It means that the edifice that had been created - of cheap housing - is gone. The government has decided that it's everyone's duty to pay for this. It means that our children and grandchildren are paying for the idea that a blue-collar worker should be able to buy a house instead of renting; it means that government finances are going to be crippled for at least two generations because Barney Frank and his henchmen either directly or indirectly allowed the Fannies to be plundered; it means that we're not going to the Moon or Mars again soon because Democratic lawmakers like Rahm Emmanuel and his cronies enriched themselves at the tit of government-backed companies; it means that we won't necessarily have the best military hardware because President Obama and 111th Congress frittered away billions in the search for the chimera of fighting climate change; and, most importantly, the American people have seen the beast for what it is: a parasite, vampiric at best and deadly at worst, becoming increasingly insatiable for power, more than willing to exercise thuggery and deceit to enhance its ability to makes sure that you, the average citizen, can't make your decisions.

While at the same time expressing its disgust with your petty bourgeois conceits and blissfully dismissing your rejection of the demanded subservience as proof of your utter and complete stupidity.

Every country deserves, at some point, the government it gets. What sins have we committed to deserve this one?