President Bush addressed the nation in the Rose Garden this morning. He said that the government was pouring more money into the financial system, to the tune of $250 billion, so that it would have “greater stability”. The extra money, please comment if I heard it incorrectly, is being used to buy shares in the smaller banks so that they can lend money to other banks and to people. Upon hearing this, the Dow (as if it’s a person in its own right) shot up 900 points. Once the dust has settled and banks have money again, they can buy all this worthless crap from the government, thereby keeping the debt from passing onto the American taxpayer.
Two really major things could go wrong here:
1. You’re assuming that banks will buy back their $1 trillion worth of purchases (stocks, loans, etc.) If they don’t, we, or worse yet, our children, will have to pay for it somehow.
2. You’re assuming that we’ll learn from this. All we’ve learned is that our government can bail us out so that we can make the same mistakes later on down the road.
No, I’m not going to compare this to the Great Depression because that was 80 years ago and these are different times. There’s way too much money on paper (and not in our hands.) We’ve learned that we can borrow money to get the things in life we really want, but don’t really need and could never afford. We’re throwing money at a gaping wound in the Middle East, hoping that bricks of cash will build schools and hospitals.
Our deficit is at about $10 trillion. When a family’s debt gets too big, the banks and collectors come knocking on the door. Where’s America’s debt collector? If we don’t learn from these colossal mistakes, how is our economy ever going to really recover?
This hurried missive brought to you by your neighborhood curmudgeon.
UPDATE: OK, one mistake I made was that I thought the $250 billion was extra. It’s not, but the principle remains. The American financial system dictates that it’s common practice for banks to loan money all the time to other banks. I know I’m not a genius when it comes to anything heavier than a savings account, but that makes absolutely no sense to me. Everybody loans money to everybody else, and that’s business as usual?
Oh no! I used magenta!