Well, a lot's been happening. There was the AIG bonus hullabalu. Who was to blame for these payments going out, and who knew what and when did they know it? And should we really fuss over these bonuses which are a minute fraction of the dough we shilled out to AIG in the first place, some of which has gone to those street people, Goldman Sachs, and foreign companies and on and on. Blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, last year's election losers, and of the election cycle before that, have morphed into tea party people, gathering in small groups around the country to vent about big government, deficits, taxes, and any number of things of which they know little.
Nobody's happy. Everybody's angry. I'm a bit angry, too. Angry, or maybe disallusioned would be a better aproximation, because it seems as if the central facts of the current crisis, the malaise if you will, are still not being made clear. And what are those central facts of which I speak?
Well, while I can't speak with certainty about everything going on today, or to the wisdom or foolishness of the government's latest bailout plan, there are some key facts which seem rather beyond dispute. And those facts are that the free market economy worshipped by our country's elites and conservative yakkers is kaput. It commited suicide last fall, after a long period of deranged and unregulated behavior. And without the government's stepping in to bail out AIG and its cronies, we would be in a lot worse shape than we are today.
Congressional and media Republicans, and the tea people's subsequent complaints about "government" are so 1979. They have no idea of what has happened to their precious market and seemingly no self awareness about anything. If government was the problem in 1980 when Reagan came to power, the free market itself is the culprit today, and the government had to save it (and the rest of us lest the market kill us along with itself). It's as simple as that.
Recommended reading:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0903.galbraith.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover
