Snake Oil Salesmen

The fox in the chicken coop. How does that solve anything substantive, but to solve the problem of non-layers?

America in financial crisis is not a pretty scenario. Not for the United States, and most certainly not for all those other countries' economies and banks which have placed their trust in the capitalist system of national enrichment. Now the problem is, enact legislation to do some patchwork quilting for the future, or let the bodies lie where they've fallen.

Not all the bodies responsible for the fiasco in lending-and-borrowing, mind. Sub-prime mortgages handily bundled into debt instruments sold and re-sold in global financial markets. Some of those elite sub-prime decision-makers have come away hale and hearty.

And no doubt ready and eager to give the game another try. Among them can be counted the U.S. Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. They're top drawer bureaucrats, overseeing the financial stability and health of the American economy, right?

This crisis erupted under their watch, right? That ranks high as an example of extremely poor stewardship. What happened to conventional market discipline, pray tell? Under their tutelage. Who assumes responsibility? Oh, the system.

Let's get this straight, the current administration, concerned about its legacy on so many fronts, although busy internationally, would have liked to exalt the ordinary American to the status of the extraordinary American. Which is to say, even those who didn't have a pot to piss in could place that pot in a home of their own.

Without unduly exerting themselves; no down payment, non-existent interest rate, lackadaisical mortgage payment schedule. Wouldn't this kind of imbecilic bubble be scheduled to burst at some time in the near future? Hello, there?!

Some of them could even play the game of the lenders and borrow against the capital they didn't pay for on rising market prices. Increase their mortgage, withdraw sumptuous sums of expendable cash and buy another property, an SUV, take that trip abroad to see the Pyramids, go to the local Casino and have a ball.

It's only money. You only live once. Might as well live nice and high on the hog. Or the bull market.

No down payment, no liquid assets for the banks, no big deal. And everyone was happy to buy into this free-for-all, this offering to the American public the opportunity to have it all, no sweat equity, nothing untoward like earning the opportunity. Mortgage brokers dove into the fray, getting credit for signing deals, not for bringing in liquid assets.

Credit unbridled, greed re-visited in a manner not thought quite credible, but it seemed to work, never mind those old-fashioned financial critics who thought they knew everything. What's gnu, pal? Why a U.S. deficit that will reach into the stratosphere for the next two years, at $1.5-trillion. Can anyone count that high?

Help is at hand, a bailout, a rescue, taxpayer funded.

Mr. Bernanke has warned Congress it is in everyone's best interests to approve and pass the rescue bill stapled together by the Republican administration; to authorize the Treasury to buy about US$700-billion in bad-ass/ets. Oh, some good assets in there too, of course, and they'll be disposed of at an advantage to the buyer - the U.S. public - at some time in the future, when things begin to settle down.

Meanwhile, the U.S. badly needs foreign investment. Japan, which itself so latterly suffered under a severe depression it is only now edging out from under completely, is offering to buy, buy, and it will, as a good ally. And Warren Buffet wore his patriotism with pride in his charitable giveaway of five billion of his fabled wealth to White-Knight America's faltering economic divestitures.

"I believe if the credit markets are not functioning, that jobs will be lost, that our credit rate will rise, more houses will be foreclosed upon, GDP will contract, that the economy will just not be able to recover in a normal, healthy way", Mr. Bernanke warned Congress. The lawmakers, after their initial tizzy, are now holding out for oversight.

Treasury Secretary Paulson hedged at specifics. "Experimentation" would be the order of the rescue whereby the U.S. Treasury would buy those nastily worthless mortgage-related assets from their disabled banks. Bad word that; wasn't it kind of experimental - the short-cuts and lapsed ethical practises that led to the financial breakdown to begin with?

It's also a little smelly in a fishy kind of way. Mr. Paulson et al was kind enough to pave the way for rescue for Goldman Sachs, permitting them and Morgan Stanley to convert to bank holding companies entitling them to borrowing access from the Federal Reserve. Isn't it odd too that Mr. Paulson had a mind-splitting $700-million of his own invested in Goldman?

There are rescues and there are private opportunities.

Yet if Congress approves the bill as it's written, no one will be able to question any of the moves to rescue the U.S. economy initiated and followed through on the orders of Treasury Secretary Paulson. Supreme authority.