It’s been a tough few months, but parasites across the country can rest easy. The cavalry is coming to the rescue, throwing billions into the breach to ease the furrowed brows of investment bankers and irresponsible homeowners alike. The trillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded ‘bailout’ will create loads more red tape, a hiring binge at the federal level, hundreds of hidden earmarks, punishment of the innocent, rewards for the guilty and kudos for the uninvolved.
Let’s start with the red tape. No, it won’t increase enforcement or investigations of investment banks, ratings agencies, service companies or mortgage brokers, BUT the red tape will make it much more inconvenient and difficult for homeowners and small business owners to find and close on financing. This is the usual sham our government hands us when they want to create the illusion that something is being done. It’s like airport security – if you’re standing in a long line holding your shoes in one hand and a baggie with your toothpaste in the other, you surely must believe that a terrorist attack is near-high impossible. Oh, please.
The federal government will create another huge bureaucracy, putting on scores of people to sit around and talk about how best to enforce existing laws and how to interpret new ones tossed in with the bailout package. These new hires will contribute exactly, precisely zero to the oversight process. Wall Street’s game will have slightly different rules and slightly different players, but it will continue. Back in Washington, powerful trade unions will make sure these newly minted bureaucrats are protected from ever actually having to work at their jobs while enjoying taxpayer-funded benefits and a generous, inflation-adjusted retirement.
Of course, Congress will go on a feeding frenzy while this package is being put together, stuffing the bailout bill with billions in giveaways to friends and business partners. The looting will likely be unprecedented in congressional annals, given the size of the bailout package. Taxpayers should expect that a 700 billion dollar bailout will probably have at least 300 billion in pork, totaling a whopping 1 trillion dollars that we’ll never see again. For a bit of a reality check, 300 billion dollars can buy the bottom half of the Fortune 500 on any given day, or a dozen General Motors. That 300 billion dollars is not earned. It wasn’t created from the production of goods or the furnishing of services. It’s printed money from nowhere. It explodes inside the economy like a napalm bomb, igniting inflation and gutting the dollar.
Punishment of the innocent is also part of the bailout. Thousands of financial industry staff will lose their jobs along with thousands more laid off because of slackening demand for everything from unleaded gasoline to golf carts. Real estate will continue its price correction, threatening the net worth and financial stability of even the most conservative, equity-rich homeowners. From shipyards to shoe factories, surgeon’s lounges to skyboxes, the stumbling economy will hurt almost everyone. But, there are a few that will profit from the widespread misery.
Some of them have already taken their money and fled the scene of the crime. Obama ‘housing’ adviser Franklin Raines and Obama VP selection committee leader James A. Johnson both scooped up millions on their way out as successive CEOs of troubled mortgage holder Fannie Mae. Now, they presume to tell the presidential hopeful how to game the system to his own advantage. The collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, WaMu, AIG and others didn’t prevent departing execs from helping themselves to the company cookie jar while Congress and the White House wrangled over bailout details. Thousands of industry insiders in the securitization, ratings, analyses, insurance and brokering businesses have enjoyed quite a nice ride in the years prior to the meltdown and are now carefully guarding overstuffed bank accounts. The profiteers number in the thousands. But, there will be no investigation that will reveal precisely who, what, where and how much.
Lawmakers like Sen. Chris Dodd (D – Connecticut) enjoyed the attentions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lobbyists, diving deeply into the campaign donation pool along with fellow Democrat Barack Obama. They’ll make sure that no one is named, much less indicted.
And of course, regardless of how it all pans out, there will be those who will pose and posture as if they were somehow involved in this attempted rescue of America’s economy, whether or not they were present or even awake at the time. Those who worked hard at defeating anything resembling common sense, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D- Massachusetts), will bask in the media limelight, while those who sweated the details, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, will be criticized and second-guessed.
This day will be remembered as the day that capitalism crumbled and socialism triumphed by those few who can distinguish between the two. Bid a fond farewell to America’s upward mobility and personal opportunity.
