Posted by
rycK on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 9:17:36 AM
The Bailout Artists Crawl out of every Crack in the Wall [Street] Community with Advice: Socialism is Best.
Everything a market in the capitalist system swings one way or the other, the leftists and their attendant parrots take to the trees to sing their songs of woe. Tax payer alert!
IN successive days we have solemn pronouncements from the New York Times—aka The Walter Duranty Papers[1]—as to the ‘solution’ for fixing market variations.
In today’s article, entitled the The Bailout Artists, more noise from the Babbling Brooks [2], we are treated to an incoherent ramblage [3]of mixed social and financial metaphors. The day before, we heard similar psychic mantras honked by the NYT’s official non-economist Paul Krugman. [4] This was entitled The B Word.
From Brooks
“Roughly 14 million homeowners will owe more than their houses are worth. Uncertainty about mortgage-backed securities will continue to whack at the foundations of the banking system.”
We might compare this to the 2000 bear market in stocks when 75,000,000 people lost 1/3 of all their holdings in equities. Where was the call to ‘rescue’ investors then?
The dialogue here runs wild in a circular logical circus with questions promptly being answered with non answers [Q: then la la lah A: format. Finally, a conclusion C: :is offered. This is amusing and sophomoric, but what else does the Times have to work with? Truth? Facts? Capitalism?? We have to be reasonable here.
“Q: Who’s to blame?...and then the question is answered: A: Who’s not to blame?”
Nonsense and the very basis of leftist dialogue.
“Q: Why should the government do anything?... A: Our economic system is based on the idea that people take responsibility for their own decisions.”
“Q: But shouldn’t the market be allowed to work?... A: That’s the lesson of the Japanese financial crisis. People aren’t going to buy houses if it seems that prices will continue their gradual fall for another several years.”
This works for buggy whips too. When dealers pay too much for antiques they then become Egyptian Pieces, to be taken to the grave by the buyer for eternity. How about a cliché: “Those who ignore history must repeat their mistakes…………”
Fairness then springs forth in song and rhyme!
“Q: Well, if the government is going to intervene more in the housing market, what principles should we use to organize the response?
A: First, no bailout for the true greedheads: the speculators, the flippers, the people who bought second homes they couldn’t afford. C: Help only those who can stay in their homes with a modest amount of aid.”
Now, this sounds ‘fair.’ But didn’t we read a lot of politics from the NYT and other ragzines about Redlining and the solution Greenlining [5]that would guarantee housing to those people with poor credit, certain criminals and the celebrated drug addicts?[6] And how many houses in Baltimore now in foreclosure are owned by absentee owners? Can we say speculators?
Krugman does not know what to do other than crank up a massive new government program such as the RTC[7]
“C: Looking ahead, we probably need something similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation, which took over bankrupt savings and loan institutions and sold off their assets to reimburse taxpayers. And we need it quickly: things are falling apart as you read this.”[8]
But, previously he thought of Bear Stearns:
“C: Bear, in other words, deserved to be allowed to fail — both on the merits and to teach Wall Street not to expect someone else to clean up its messes.” [9]
This is one of those deep triple reverse psychological statements: We shoodah not evah done dat, but now we gotta do dat for all.
This is phony. The complicated liquidity shortage comes from a direct loss of wealth and only a leftist would both claim that speculators ought to be punished and other speculators, known as greenlined home buyers, not be punished. The investment was bad—the money is gone. Period. Somewhere in the midst of this prattle a new tax hike scheme is being hatched. How about some FDR New Deal stuff!! Watch and wonder how the NYTers present this stale notion:
Back to the babbler:
“Q: So what policy ideas are out there?
A: None are wholly satisfactory. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama and Chris Dodd are proposing federally backed loan guarantees. C: People in danger of defaulting could get new mortgages that reflected the new, lower value of their homes. Lenders would write off some value, but it would be better than nothing.”
Bingo!!
Oh yes!! Let us allow the government to fix the price of housing!! If they are ripped off then let the taxpayers return their ‘loses’ so as to be fair! Didn’t the Russians do this with their stark concrete high rises in Moscow?? Everybody paid the same rent and had, essentially, the same equity, which was zero. Greenlining, a Marxism euphemism for subsidizing housing, means subsidized housing paid for by the taxpayers. Creditworthiness is not a concern. Let some drug-crazed judge in San Francisco ‘adjust’ the principal and interest rates just ‘to be fair.’
And Brooks concludes with:
“Q: So I guess we’re all bailout artists now?
A: We do seem to have reached some Bernanke-era consensus. In normal times, the free market works well. C: But in a crisis like this one, few are willing to sit back and let the market find its own equilibrium.”
So, the eternal quest of the New York Times is revealed after we tear off the fluff and mumblings: Let the government fix things.
Q: Could we have expected any other conclusion from the Walter Duranty Papers??
A: Of course not.
rycK
Comments: ryckki@gmail.com
[1] Walter Duranty. “ He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death.". Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
[3] New word. N. incoherent and random assembly of mutterings having emotion but to logical content.
[7] Resolution Trust Corporation