2.20.2009

Screw the Big Banks! Bailout the Small Depositors!

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

It was last fall, as Americans dared hope that a new administration would take office just in time to save America, Bush announced a first big 'bailout' which would, we were told, prevent a financial collapse, a great depression, a panic! Not least among many reasons the bailout failed is the fact that the wrong people got the money. Although Richard Nixon had famously claimed "We are all Keynesians now", nothing could be further from the truth now.

Thanks to the misplaced reverence for Augustus Reagan, we are all still Friedman monetarists --not Keynesians. That is why the bailout failed and it is the reason future bailouts will fail unless something is done to address the root cause of collapse: the wrong people got the money! It was only last fall that the FED and officials of the Treasury Department 'rode to the rescue' of all the wrong people, specifically, the very financial institutions that created this mess to begin with. In the wake of all this failure, incompetence and criminality, there was great hand wringing, wailing, gnashing of teeth because the 'n' word had been uttered. Nationalize the banks! At this point, it won't make any difference.

Read more @ The Existentialist Cowboy

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