Seriously.
How many "the sky is falling!" diatribes have we heard from the press in the last few years? Since the non-event of the Y2K computer disaster we've been told that the earth is getting too warm, too cold, too oily, too wet, too dry, too few species, too many humans, yada, yada, yada, I don't care anymore.
I'm tired of having a bunch of news yahoos running around trying to scare me into buying their mouth.
We aren't looking at a Great Depression.
That's just crap.
If anyone recalls, the 1929 stock market crash was followed by a pretty good economic year. The market ended up tanking in the 1930's because the country (a) was on the gold standard, (b) was trying to inflate Britain's currency to help her get back on the gold standard, thereby putting our own currency at risk (c) suffered the catastrophic weather pattern which caused the Dustbowl and (d) was run by a clueless Democrat, namely FDR, whose stupidity prolonged the problems.
I know the "clueless Democrat" point is kind of redundant, but bear with me.
Today, we aren't in a depression.
We aren't in a recession.
We haven't had a percentage loss on the market anywhere near where the 1929 stock crash went.
The weather hasn't destroyed our food prices.
Oil prices are actually pretty low, given where they have been over the course of the last twelve months.
One of the non-economic reasons for the Great Depression was a lack of consumer confidence in the government, driven in part by the fact that the USSR - which was economically cut off from the rest of the world - suffered no serious consequences from the event. As a result, a lot of people thought the US should follow socialism and dump the whole capitalist mindset.
The lack of confidence in the system was driven by the Kremlin, a shining city on a hill. Sure, that city was built on the bloodied corpses of millions, but when did that ever stop America from wanting to follow the almighty dollar (cf. the modern abortion industry)? If the USSR was economically successful with socialism, then we should follow suit. That was 1930's-style thinking. The economic malaise was driven in no small part by a lack of clear or coherent vision.
Today, as pointed out above, NONE of the necessary pieces are in place for a repeat of the Great Depression.
We aren't on a gold standard, so we have very little economic reason to suffer a depression. Inflation, sure, but not depression.
There is no alternate economic choice. Does anyone really want to follow Russia's economic policies? How about Venezuala? Saudi Arabia? Timbuktu?
Please.
Now, here's an alternative.
Has anyone considered that maybe we have too many banking institutions?
Maybe a lot of them they need to fail.
And, given the differences in the economy between 1930 and 2008, there is no necessary correlation between the number of brick-and-mortar banks and the rest of the economy.
In 1930, no one would have dreamed that a big city might have just one dominant newspaper. Now, it's quite easy to conceive of a town that has no newspapers at all.
In 1970, no one would dream of a television with more than three stations. I got rid of mine because there are too stinking many channels.
Why can't the same be true about banks?
The internet allows a lot more initiatives in wholesaling, retailing and banking then was ever possible during the 1930s. We have a different economy, a different currency, different economic conditions, even the weather is different.
If this were truly a serious crisis, Nancy Pelosi wouldn't have made a five minute speech designed to piss off the opposition. If this were truly a serious crisis, the Democrats should have been able to pass the bailout bill on a party-line vote.
But this isn't a serious crisis. It's a load of bull.
Where did the 700 billion bailout number come from?
According to Forbes Magazine, it was picked out of a hat.
Who wants the $700 billion? The same homosexual lobby who has been fronting for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the last five years: Barney Frank and the dancing Democrats."In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number.""
As early as the CArter administration, the banks were ordered by the Democrats to give money to people with lousy credit. By Clinton's administration, they had to do it or go out of business.
By this century, the banks found the business lucrative, both Democrat and Republican Congresses covered the bad investments with insurance and then got kickbacks from those same banks to keep the game going.
Now, our Congress - being good little pimps - want to make sure they provide the financial insurance that the banks paid all those decades of protection money for (like some Nevada prostitutes, after Congress forced them into the trade, the banks decided they liked it), so the Congressional pimps cook up this government bailout and scream about the sky falling if their little racket doesn't get it.
Too bad.
Fail.
"But Steve, this isn't local! European banks are also going under! This is worldwide!"
Honey, I've got news for you.
European banks have been cracking for years. They will crack regardless of what we do or fail to do. Europeans don't have the population growth or the immigration growth necessary to sustain their economies and they haven't for years. That's why they are slowly dying. If the Muslims weren't wiping them out, someone else would be. The failure of their economy isn't exactly news.
Ultimately, this latest news story is the result of a protection racket gone bad, a racket that created a lot of businesses that don't need to exist, and it isn't going to cause that much of a ripple in the economy when they go away, because they weren't necessary to begin with.
Fail.
Get it over with and let the rest of us get on with our lives.