"This Sucker Could Fail"

It’s the biggest, weirdest story ever. I think I’m glad that I’m around to live through it. So far, my income hasn’t dried up; my house hasn’t been repossessed and the fridge is still well-stocked. So far.

Meanwhile in Washington, George Bush, after eight years of stumbles and malapropisms, has finally uttered a quote that will outlive his sorry presidency:

“If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down.”

“This sucker”, we’re led to understand, is the United States of America.

If you thought the 9/11 terrorists struck at the very heart of America – New York’s Wall Street – what do we call the CEOs and speculators who have looted Wall Street, stole all the money, and now stand around with their hands out, waiting for American taxpayers to bail them out to the tune, once it’s all in, of $1.5 trillion dollars?

I don’t think there is one that would make it through our banned word filters.

And do the American taxpayers have a choice? If they don’t bail out the financial fiddlers, “this sucker could go down.” (Could it be that the real George Bush is a whole lot more interesting than the stiff who showed up at the Oval Office every day for the last eight years?)

And if you think this is just a Made in America crisis, think harder. Just as the Wall Street boys ended up holding bales of worthless paper, (well, not completely worthless; recycled paper is going for a couple of hundred bucks a ton) bankers around the world are experiencing the world’s largest financially-induced hangover.

As I write, they sit at splendid desks made of exotic, extinct tropical hardwoods waiting for the value of their paper to evaporate, which is exactly what will happen if the US government does not agree on a bailout. And that’s the signal to head for the ledge – there’s a recession coming that will rival the great meltdown of the 1930s. And it all started with 50-year, no-interest mortgages in SoCal.

The sad truth is that we’ve all been addicted to easy money since 1981, when it cost more than 20 per cent of the value of the loan to borrow money. Once interest rates began to creep down, we all became hot to spend money we did not have. Lots of great excuses: own my own home, put my kids through college, take that vacation, buy that SUV, stock that wine cellar. And the banks and credit card companies, in a frenzy of greed and competitive paranoia, just kept throwing money at us. Then people borrowed money to invest in all that debt in order to get tax breaks and live comfortably in retirement.

The idea of investing in poorly-secured debt is traditionally the province of Guido and the boys, who can break your kneecaps as collateral. Unfortunately for the US economy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have no such enforcement resources and people just walked away from their debts. Stopped paying, as if they could ever pay in the first place. So, all of those houses, SUVs, vacation condos, college educations built on air are merely elaborate sand castles. That great sighing sound you hear is the collapse of the sand.

So we’re left with a bad gamble. If we bail the authors of this monumental fraud out, they’ll continue as if it’s business as usual, for the most part, evading arrest. They might not even lose their 13 houses, 11 luxury autos and priceless pop art collections. If we don’t bail them out, “this sucker could go down.”

An interesting sidelight…how the US presidential nominees are reacting. Barack Obama’s for the bailout. He understands that if it doesn’t happen – and fast – this sucker, etc. John McCain, on the other hand, has turned into Mr. Dithers. He’s obviously in way over his head. Obama has figured out that the climate in America the day after tomorrow will favor the Democrats. He’ll get some criticism for bailing out the fat cats, but he can condemn the laissez-faire, devil-may-care, damn-the-torpedoes Republican distaste for “red tape” that got us here in the first place. Time for change indeed.

McCain doesn’t know what to do. His new conservative pals don’t care if the whole thing sinks; they can crawl into their survivalist foxholes where the gold is buried and hunker down. His First Bimbo, the honorable Sarah Palin, will stomp her feet and demand her allowance. And he’s left holding the (empty) bag. He should just do the right thing, which, he never tires of telling us, is the McCain Imperative.

In this case, the right thing is to bail those monkeys out and wait until tomorrow to figure out how to get them back into the barrel. I think it’s safe to say there won’t be a tomorrow if he doesn’t.

What do you think?