The Crisis In Question

October 2, 2008 · Filed under Politics, Uncategorized

The speech reads:

“This is the bill with the cost of the financial crisis I caused with your subprime mortgages in the process of enriching myself yet some more. You either pay it or you and the conomy will go to Hell.”

Dedicated to all the victims (that’s right, I said victims) of the subprime mortgages, junk credits and other varous greed powered crap thrown at them.

Oh dear. Another decade, another economic crisis. Another crisis, another chance for journalists, politicians, activists, intelectuals, etc to go on and on about the hows and the whys.

Here’s a wide and spot on description of the general crap of the system, by Michael Albert. And here’s another, from Barbara Ehrenreich, with a very different spin, bringing attention to “positive thinking” as one of the culprits of this giant mess.

With so much discussion going on, what can I, from this little corner of the intertubes, possibibly have to offer, aside from one comic strip?

I could ask the same question that is in everybody’s mind. A question so big, so full of well justified anger and frustration that even the Mainstream Media can’t ignore it. And so it gets raised, time and again. The question is big, true, and the Mainstream media can’t afford to “not ask”. But it’s duty to the public interest ends there. The answer isn’t boiling inside people’s throats as the question is. In fact, I am yet to hear anyone attempting to answer it.
Here it is, the most pressing question this current crisis has brought:

Why are profits privatized and losses nationalized? How come when the cash is flowing it ends in the pockets of a few but when troubles begin we ALL have to pay up?

Now I, plucky little thing that I am, do have the courage to give an answer: it’s because the powers that be want to win at every stage, and so they have devised the most andvantageous system they could, one that innevitably screw us all over left and right. Some have termed it “Socialism for the Rich”, an admitedly corrupt use of the term “socialism”.
But why?
Because we live in a Plutocracy, which is the ruling of the wealthy. And if that’s what they want, that’s what they’ll have.
But why?
Because we haven’t changed the system so far.
What system?
Good Question. One thing is clear: this is not capitalism. This is CRAPitalism, meaning “an ism that’s crap for everybody but those at the very top”. This whole “the State steps in to help out the rich (capitalists) when they get in trouble” goes against the most basic laws of the “Free Market”. Though one could argue that, since rampant, unchecked capitalism does lead to huge concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few, it is innevitable that, when this money making entities (corporations) get too large, it would be quite impossible to let them fall without wrecking holy havoc on the whole of the economy. So the laws of capitalism would seem to break down as the system progresses. But that’s going way too far for this wee little leftist brain. At any rate, it was capitalism that brought this on. So that’s where I would put the blame.
In short, WHY does this happen?
Because this system is inherently UNFAIR. It’s unfair as foock. So we have two options:
1) Accept it’s unfair and stop asking, complaining and crying when it does turn our to be unfair.
or 2) Change it.

And I advocate CHANGE.