Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The difference is more of the same.

Dear Barack,

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, let me remind you that I love death, destruction, famine, plague and all of the assorted ills and misfortunes that can befall humanity. I loathe sunny optimism. Don’t trouble me with laughter; all I want to hear are the wails and lamentations of orphans and widows. Every Christmas I buy a copy of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and burn it in the fireplace. That’s my idea of a Yule Log.

So my heart leapt with joy when it turned out that your financial team is made up of Clintonian followers of Rubinomics, the wacked-out ideology that believes in balanced budgets, free trade and, that escapee from the ideological nuthouse, deregulation.

Your selections tell me that the madness will continue. Unbridled growth will be the order of the day as you continue to gut our manufacturing sector with even more free trade agreements. Social programs will be stripped in a vain attempt to balance a budget that fell off a cliff years ago.

But the greatest gift of all will be deregulation. Deregulation is just like removing all of the laws against theft from the criminal code. Let them go forth and multiply their wealth!

Oh, sure. They all say they’ve changed. They say they’ve seen the light and that they’re all hot to regulate the financial sector.

But…

The financial sector owns them just as it owns you. The financial sector owns the media, as well. It’s a simple law of nature that employees don’t regulate their employers.

There will be some tepid regulations passed that will be hyped as the dawning of a new age of financial regulation. But each new regulation will contain loopholes big enough to sail a carrier taskforce though.

I can hardly wait for Christmas. Maybe, this year, I’ll buy two copies of “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

4 comments:

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

Every Christmas I buy a copy of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and burn it in the fireplace. That’s my idea of a Yule Log.

Hooooo Aggghhhh! Hell! If, in this economy, you can afford two copies of "It's a Wonderful Life", why not make it three and burn one for me...?

Case Wagenvoord said...

If my hedge fund is still solvent, I just might.

Good to hear from you, again.

Anonymous said...

On the radio today here in Brisbane, Australia, one of your economists being interviewed by our PBS equivalent said that the difference between the Bush treasury and the Obama treasury is the same difference as that between Visa and Mastercard.

Case Wagenvoord said...

It's business as usual. The only change we can believe in is that it will be conducted with a smile instead of a sneer.