Sure his mind left us long ago, and his body left us a few years ago, but outlasting both were his treacherous financial plans. Now as we all sit back and watch our investments fall, college graduates unable to find jobs to pay off their student loans, senior laborers calculate the increased number of years they will have to work if their 401k's don't turn around, and the newly unemployed wonder if they're going to make rent among hundreds of more dismal stories, we can take to optimism in the fact that the Reagan era is over.
Apparently the problem is, is that human nature causes us to be-live for the moment idiots. Otherwise why would we repeatedly allow ourselves to be duped into allowing for less controlled markets for temporary gain? Reagan certainly wasn't the first Head of State to masturbate to The Wealth of Nations and unfortunately will not be the last.
It certainly is hard to say no to great economic gain. The Internet bubble of the '90s made a lot of people phenomenal amounts of money. Unfortunately the fall afterward cost many of those same people most or all of that money back. The current bank situation is just another example of how, when allowed to, greed takes over good sense and lot of people get hurt.
The reason that these greedy bastards running the banks were willing to make such shaky business decisions is because they knew that in a “pinch” the government would step in to save them. The same expensive suit wearing, limousine riding, caviar eating assholes that have been touting free market capitalism knew that if their greed got out of control socialism would step in to protect their investment. Suddenly Socialism isn't such a bad word.
It is an atrocity that the American taxpayers are forced to bail out multi-billion dollar companies because they are unable to make good business decisions. Isn't that the reason that they have boards make financial decisions rather than singular people? A room full of well dressed, white businessmen weren't able to realize that giving loans to people who have no chance in hell of paying them back was a bad idea?
This of course isn't to take all of the attention off of idiot American who borrowed too much and can't pay it off. I sometimes wonder if maybe the term “adjustable rate” only rings a danger bell in my head. If you're taking out a fifteen year loan with an adjustable rate, wouldn't it seem likely that somewhere along the line the rate would increase creating a situation where you couldn't afford your premiums? In fifteen years?!
But alas we were left with the decision, very possible financial ruin or a $700,000,000,000 federal bailout. It was a complete necessity, a shameful necessity. Not one penny will be seen by the millions of common people suffering joblessness, homelessness, and 'furturlessness,' This bailout is set up only to help those that already have to much money and want more. Unfortunately the way the system is built, without them we all go down.
So the moral of the story is, we as Americans need to stop being short sighted idiots. Sure we might not see skyrocketing profits when we have a little extra socialism stirred into our economy but at least when the time comes for the cyclical downward slope of the economy it drops like a bunny hill and not like the Atom Bomb.
How is your 401k doing? Aren't you glad we didn't privatize Social Security yet?
Update: "The stock market's prolonged tumble has wiped out about $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings in the past 15 months [401k], a blow that could force workers to stay on the job longer than planned, rein in spending and possibly further stall an economy reliant on consumer dollars, Congress's top budget analyst said yesterday."~Nancy Trejos, The Washington Post
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