Sunday, September 7, 2008

Bailouts: Democracy at its finest.

Dear George,

A major responsibility of the leader of a democratic society is to periodically stiff the public. This is what is known as public participation.

Democracy has thrived under deregulation. In theory, deregulation meant corporations were subjected to a much more severe regulator—the market, unless they were "too big to fail". Thanks to deregulation, there was an exponential increase in public participation as citizens took part in the savings and loan bailout, and the Bear Sterns bailout.

But, these have been mere chump change compared to the latest opportunity to present itself—the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie. This is democracy at its finest. Between them, they are guaranteeing some $7 trillion in mortgage backed securities.

The public is so thrilled to have these opportunities to participate in our feral economy that they wouldn’t dream of demanding increased regulation as a quid pro quo for the bailout. What is democracy without a free, unregulated marketplace where Ponzi schemes flourish?

What is especially thrilling is that we are entering a golden age of democracy that will make the Athenian agora look like a police state. According to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), there’s a 1.14 quadrillion roll of toxic toilet paper out there waiting to work its way through the system.

Talk about being too big to fail…

With a number like that, democracy could well go its merry way for generations to come. Who can doubt that capitalism represents the end of history?

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When the state combines with the corporation the result is fascism,textbook definition..But nobody calls them that they stick to the polite euphemism"conservative"even neo-con is much to polite.No wonder they always frame the debate.This failure bothers me a lot.We need to call them what they are, that might be a good start at resisting.I just can`t believe that this country could be completely destroyed with no resistance at all....At least we have Belaqa to keep it real for us.

Case Wagenvoord said...

We do seem to be asleep. Barack won't do anything, and Progressives seem to have too much utopian stardust in their eyes to raise an effective alarm.

Anonymous said...

Fascists learnt to ditch the name and uniform. It doesn't take much to fool the masses.