The irony here, kids, is that the king and his merry men who somehow bamboozled all of us into total market deregulation said that capitalism functions best in an absolutely unrestrained market. They wanted to give the Wall Street wizards ample space to work their magic, so that the riches they created up there in their penthouse office suites would trickle down to the huddled masses below. But now that this wizardry has created an economic meltdown of epic proportions, they want the citizenry to lend the wizards close to a trillion dollars. How does that jibe with free market capitalism, you ask? Good question –one you might want to ask King George.
Thanks for Picking up the Tab, Peasants
What this economic crisis means immediately for the average peasant is that borrowing money for necessary things like cars will be more expensive, and their credit card interest rates will go up. That’s the way supply-side economics work: the smaller the quantity of a given commodity like money to borrow becomes, the more expensive it becomes. A whole lot more commoners can also expect to join the already-numerous ranks of the unemployed. That’s why your poor parents may need a little kindness right now, children. If they’re curled up in a fetal position on the floor, throw an afghan over them. Make them some tapioca pudding, and lose the TV remote: they don’t need to know what the Dow Jones average is right now.
The impact of lending the Wall Street wizards close to a trillion dollars is going to have a depressing wet blanket effect for a long, long time. How many of you think you’ll need loans for college when you go? Well, good luck with that. And many years from now, when your parents are bent and gray, don’t be surprised if they’re knocking at your back door begging for a crust of bread now and again. What with dwindling government funds for Social Security and their plundered retirement funds, their Golden Years won’t be looking so golden. That fat load of money to shore up Wall Street had to come from somewhere, right?
Moral: If you wear really expensive suits, graduate from an Ivy League school, and talk fast enough, you can fool a whole lot of people into forgetting what little they knew about economics in the first place.
