Would you buy this?

So the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs shows up at your door with a two-page purchase and sale agreement. The deal is, you give him $700 Billion to spend any way he wants, and he promises to prevent the utter collapse of the world economy. You get no oversight, no recourse, and no accounting for the money.

I guess that's how the ownership society works. If it gets too hard to steal it in New York, you switch to extorting it in Washington.

Amazing thing is, it seems to be working.

We can't afford it

Can't afford universal healthcare
Can't afford decent schools
Can't afford safe streets
Can't afford clean air and water
Can't afford to keep the national parks open

Can afford a trillion dollar war in Iraq
Can afford huge tax cuts for the wealthiest
Can afford a trillion dollars to bail out Wall Street

You do the math

FAIL

I have been unable to stop myself from obsessively following the ongoing financial market meltdown, which to me resembles nothing so much as a spoiled three year old throwing a tantrum, and his parent endlessly caving in to his demands. (Not like Claire, who is taking it all in stride.)

Reading this morning that our government is preparing to buy up all of this toxic debt, which of course means that nobody, not the issuers, not the buyers, and not the original borrowers will ever be held accountable, made me so mad that I sent the following message to all of my elected representatives:

NO MORE BAILOUTS!

Do not spend my tax dollars to help banks or others who bought bad securities because they were greedy.

Do not spend my tax dollars to help securities companies who issued fraudulent mortgage securities because they were greedy.

Do not spend my tax dollars to help out homeowners who took out mortgages that they could not afford because the were stupid.

If the US Government caves in to the financial markets and bails them out of this mess, there will be no end to it.

The financial geniuses who made tens or even hundreds of million dollar paychecks made this mess, and they can clean it up.

NO MORE BAILOUTS!

Not that, of course, this will make any difference.

Spending time on line -- it's really the same as watching TV

I've really been enjoying not writing blog posts for a while, but I promised myself that as soon as Claire wrote another post, I would too.

Unlike Claire, who wrote a long and considered post about how some of the semi-slimy actions of her partner's employer affected her decision about where to buy health insurance, I am going to commit a typical Hedonic Adjustment hack job.

How to feel RICH!

There are a lot of posts in this blog about how despite being solidly upper-middle class, living in a town full of rich people makes me feel poor. Well the other day I was selling a piece of crap on Craigslist, and the guy showed up to pick up his detritus ($40 in my pocket and one less ankle-whacking thing in the garage). The guy parked at the end of the driveway and knocked at the front door. As we walked from the house back to the garage-cum-barn, he looked around and said, "quite a compound you've got here."

And then I felt rich, for like a second or two.

How to be HAPPY!

So the gummint is going to sink a few billions of dollars into bailing out these big mortgage lenders, and as you can see from today's news, they're likely to sink a few billion more into bailing out imprudent home borrowers as well. This after the billions they used to bail out Bear, and of course the trillions of dollars they've incinerated in the war.

(Parenthetically, I am at a loss to understand how anyone could regard the Democrats as the party of big spenders.)

In the ordinary course of events, any time I would think about this fiasco, it would make me mad. I didn't buy a big house. I didn't take on a moronic loan. But I am going to need to pay, through my taxes, for their stupidity. And my children will pay, probably for their whole lives, for the greed and dishonesty and and and...

But I'm not mad. Because there's nothing I can do about it. Because there's nothing I can do about it.

Of course I'm also not wasting any time feeling sorry for people who are in big trouble because they took on stupid loans. Nice people, with nice kids, who live in nice houses that they bought with 100% financing on option-ARM loans. People who have moving vans coming this month, or next month, or the month after.

A Warm Glow

I've written before about how fond I am of Bill Gross, who runs PIMCO, the big bond mutual fund company. Well he's done it again, making a ton of money on the Fannie/Freddie bailout.

Well, a ton of money for a bond fund anyway.

And That's It

I'm probably not going to post again until Claire goads me into it. Frankly, I think I had been deluding myself in thinking that the time I spend on the internet is in any way a more productive use of my time than, say, watching Biggest Loser reruns on TV. So I've cut way, way back. I've stopped reading blogs (except for Claire). I only go to the Times and Globe web sites once a day. I've given up checking my stocks.

And frankly, I think I'm better off for it.

It's like computers in elementary school. If you're over 40, you probably didn't see a computer until you were in high school. Do you feel that not getting exposed to computers until that late age negatively affected your educational development? What earthly reason is there to plunk a kindergarten student in front of a computer screen, when he or she could be painting at an easel, or running around outside.

In the name of "competitiveness" we have created a generation of couch-bound, pale, flabby children.

Break the chain.

Turn off your computer.

Go outside.