The only solution...

[catsidhe]

The only solution to the Economic Crisis is to give literally unimaginable amounts of money to precisely those people and organisations who have proved that they will piss it up against a wall.


Bailout costs more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget -- combined!


We must keep going with the Money Hole... It's the only possible solution our highly trained economists have come up with.



But there's nothing fundamentally wrong with neo-liberal economics, as has been running the place for forty years or so...



As far as I can tell,
  liberal economic theory is that governments should regulate the market as little as is needed (which amounts to “everyone is responsible for their own screw-ups, but crooks are crooks and need stomping in a timeframe which the market can't always keep to”), and
  socialist economics (as opposed to Marxist or any other strawman) is that government regulation and programs are a vital part of the market, in order to prevent the impersonal nature of the market from crushing people beneath it for no fault of their own, then
  neo-liberal economic theory seems to be that the government should not interfere in the market at all, ever. Except to keep unions in their place, and wages low, and tariffs favourable, and subsidise industries and near monopoly corporations for the very inefficiencies and bureaucratic stupidity which the neo-liberals keep accusing governments of, and generally bail out rich people when they fuck up, but otherwise keep poor muck firmly at the bottom, with the chimerical hope that they too can make billions of dollars by emulating the sociopaths* at the golf club sufficiently well.



[*] I remember an article, not long ago, about how Bear Stearns employees were making fun of Bank of America employees for not wearing as expensive suits as they do, even though it was BoA who saved BS' arse from abject bankruptcy, demonstrating that arrogance will not be slowed by demonstrations of incompetence. Damned if I can find it now.

Comments

[taavi.livejournal.com]

added to that last: and enforce patents, copyrights, limited liability, bankruptcy, and all the other stacked rules of the game.

[cthulu-for-pm.livejournal.com]

Why is it that rich sociopaths are lauded as examples of "being successful", but poor sociopaths are shunned? Their behaviour is the same in each case; the rich ones cause far more damage, though.

[taavi.livejournal.com]

obviously, they are successful in causing damage.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Same old neo-con social ‘argument’:

Definition: virtue is rewarded with wealth.
Conclusion: wealthy people are virtuous, literally by definition.
Corollary: People who are not wealthy are not virtuous.

[enrobso.livejournal.com]

Or to put the syllogism another way:

The harder you work, the more money you can make.

Paris is extremely wealthy.

Therefore Paris must work extremely hard. QED

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

At what point did ‘work’ come into it? If you can make lots of money without any effort on your own part, then this marks you are either really really smart, or just blessed by God, either of which is actually more virtuous than base sweaty physical labour.

[enrobso.livejournal.com]

One thing I am finding amusing is that the Freidmanites and, as you call them "neo-liberals" sound increasingly like the sad old communists from my university days. There's nothing wrong with their economic model, it's just never been put into practice properly.

The most ludicrous example I've seen recently was an article by some IPA twit whose argument was that market-driven economics would work perfectly if only greedy people didn't get involved in the markets. I've developed a perpetual motion engine I'm hoping to sell to him on the basis that it works perfectly as long as you don't expose it to friction.

[catsidhe.livejournal.com]

Analogy Win!

[celsa.livejournal.com]

"The only solution to the Economic Crisis is to give literally unimaginable amounts of money to precisely those people and organisations who have proved that they will piss it up against a wall.
"

So the objective is to keep that wall wet, obviously.

[baralier.livejournal.com]

If the wall dries out the structure will crumble and fall down. And then all those poor economists would have to stoop to shopping at Myer, or *gasp* Target!

[sjl.livejournal.com]

Pronounce it "Tar-zhay" (you know what I mean, even if my "as it sounds" spelling isn't quite right), and that doesn't seem quite so bad. :)

[celsa.livejournal.com]

You mean "The Red Circle Botique"? :-)

[sjl.livejournal.com]

That's the one!

Anyone for "chateau de cardboard" tonight? :)