Monday, September 15, 2008

Financial Ruin and "My Pet Goat"

Dear George,

I’ve got to give you credit for consistency. When the planes slammed into the North and South Towers, you sat absorbed in “My Pet Goat.” Now that an exploding housing bubble is bringing down our economy, you seem to have picked up the book again.

What a robust weekend for us gloom and doomers! Two pillars of the financial capitalism collapsed. Lehman Brothers is going bankrupt and Bank of America is snapping up Merrill Lynch, while the American International Group, once considered the granite tower of financial stability, is asking the Fed for $40 billion in short-term financing.

With all this breaking, the silence coming from the Oval Office is deadening. No sir, George, you know better than to dip your toe into unknown waters. You’ve figured that the best way to preserve your legacy is to do nothing. The last thing you need is to become another Hoover.

Meanwhile, your heir apparent, John McCain can’t even remember how many houses he owns, and his opponent is acting like a passenger on the deck of the Titanic reassuring everyone that the ship will dock shortly. Meanwhile, from his underground bunker, all the Big Dick can do is grumble about Russia kicking Georgia’s ass.

When conservatives praise small government and feral capitalism, what they are really praising is a total paralysis of leadership. The only sign of life we’ve seen from the Beltway is Bernanke and Paulson slapping Band-Aids on a patient rapidly bleeding to death.

Ah, the joys of deregulation: you took the collar off Wall Street, and the first thing the dumb dog did was run under the wheels of a speeding car. The financial retards have finally won.

You’re wise not to get involved in this can of worms. When the shit hits the fan, the first thing a wise leader does is lock himself in the closet with a good book.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If my memory serves me right, Stalin hid out in denial for sometime while the German Wehrmacht overran the Russian country-side. Finally when he did respond to the Germans invasion the damage had been done and it took a bigger effort to drive them out. With Dubya it would only make things worse if he actually did something. So maybe it is better if he sequesters himself in denial with some serious liturature like My Pet Goat or even Horton Hears a Who

Case Wagenvoord said...

You make a good point. His solution would be to start another war.

Case Wagenvoord said...

Actually, someone pulled his string, this morning, and he repeated his claim that the economy is strong.

Anonymous said...

They have finally killed the goose who laid the golden eggs and just like in the story all they have to show for that is a dead duck.8 years and Bushco has managed to do what no foreign power could have ever done.The total destruction of the USA.All part of the plan to drive us to the tender mercies of WTO& World Bank.Then we get to experiece what the Russians and the South Americans for example got.This is only the beginning.BD can hardly wait to begin consuming the corpse...