Do you hear the gods laughing?

Dear George,

There is a Chinese curse or saying or something that states, “May you be blessed to live in interesting times,” or something like that.

O George, I feel so blessed I’d be canonized if I weren’t stoned!

What a bracing time to be alive and watch our economy self destruct! It moves me to tears to see our government sacrificing itself to keep a gaggle of senile finance capitalists afloat.

My suggestion to Paulson and Bernanke is that they resist the temptation to tally up how much toxic paper they’ve crammed into our Treasury. Accepting toxic paper for good paper has got to be one of the most ingenious schemes ever perpetrated on the American taxpayer.

The neoliberals wanted to shrink government, and they sure found a way to do it: give away money it doesn’t have in the first place.

They’re so busy throwing money at financial idiots they don’t hear the laughter coming from the wings. It’s the God of Unintended Consequences waiting for his cue.

The problem is that foreign bankers are a lot smarter than our bankers, and they’re getting a little nervous as they watch America morph into an indebted deadbeat. This is not good, because we’ve have to borrow billions in foreign capital each year to stay solvent, which is why our sovereign debt stands at $9 trillion.

Now, if I was in hock up to my neck to my bank and kept borrowing money so I could give it to my dead-beat brother-in-law, my bank might be tempted to deny future credit.

I’m sure there are many foreign bankers thinking the same thing about us. Banks loan money in the expectation they will be paid back.

In our hubris, we believe we’ve transcended the mundane rules of economic behavior, just as we’ve transcended the rules of moral behavior. The gods are waiting to set us straight.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones