A few links about the neverending clusterfuck we have gotten ourselves into economically:
Harvard professor and darling-of-the-right Niall Ferguson gave this interview to Vanity Fair, where he asserts that the United States really has no choice but to walk away from its colossal foreign debt, because the only other option is complete collapse. He makes a few other salient points along the way, most notably that China is also completely fucked because of us and can’t really do anything about it economically, but absolutely has the upper hand on any diplomatic disputes that might arise for a long, long time to come. Coincidentally, he’s plugging his new book The Ascent of Money, which he says he planned to have published just as the entire world economy fell into the shitter, since that’s a GREAT way to sell books.
But it looks like he’s not talking out of his ass on this. This article on a financial news website called Seeking Alpha offers pretty much the same conclusions as Ferguson’s, albeit in more technical financial jargon (via Polymeme). The whole damn country is about to miss its mortgage payment, and when that happens you’ll be using your 401(k) statements for toilet paper. So don’t go calling Cash4Gold.com just yet.
Meanwhile, I think a lot of people are still trying to pick their jaws up off the floor over the reports of $18 BILLION dollars being handed out to Wall Street executives using our precious “bailout” money. Not to mention the daily stream of stories about banks spending millions on stadium naming rights, the BofA CEO with the multimillion-dollar decorating bill, and other such rubbing-your-nose-in-it shenanigans. At The Seminal, contributor Chris Edelson did a little quick math to come up with some of the other things we could have done with that $18B besides piss it away on the bailout. For example, the S-CHIP bill, which was passed by both houses of Congress last week (and was vetoed TWICE by George Bush) will add $32 billion per year to a program that already costs $25 billion per year. The bailout bonus money could have paid for that increase for two years running without the increase in cigarette taxes which will be the funding mechanism.
Now, some regular visitors here don’t much like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but I think he’s one of the best representatives any state in America could ask for. Like a lot of us, Bernie is simply PISSED OFF about the bailout and the flagrant contempt with which the Wall Street criminals are raping this country. Last week, Bernie sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry “Gutless Wonder” Reid demanding that the Senate begin investigations into the disbursement and use of TARP funds. President Obama’s “salary cap” proposal is a first step, but a laughable one when you consider the scope of the fraud being committed, and nothing short of an investigating committee with a freshly-sharpened guillotine is going to have any real impact.
Regular readers know that I have posted a couple of times about the economic disaster as it has played out in Iceland, and you probably heard that the government there fell, as well as the story about the new prime minister being a lesbian (which, like Obama being black is all well and good but not particularly relevant at this moment in history). But next on the chopping block is Latvia, where rioting nearly brought down the government last week. The problems in Latvia are strikingly similar to those in Iceland, but a compounding issue for the Balkan country is that a third of the population is Russian, and they are agitating over what they call discrimination against them. That, in turn, could give Russia an excuse to cause trouble, if it so chose.
And while those two cold northern countries are struggling, so is the “Las Vegas of the Arab World”, Dubai. Unlike Iceland and Latvia, though, Dubai’s troubles all come from their overheated real estate speculation. This post at The Daily Clarity outlines the heart of the problem, which has manifested itself in the rapid departure of hundreds of ex-pat workers and businessmen who were fueling the Dubai land grabs. They point to this Times of London article about the recent phenomenon of luxury cars being abandoned at Dubai’s international airport by businessmen getting out while the getting is good. I’m actually a little surprised that American businessmen haven’t started pulling the same shit, but maybe they’re waiting for those bailout bonus checks to clear first.
