Unnecessary Pipe Trench Excavation

Posts Tagged ‘REM’

It’s the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine.

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Actually, unlike the REM song, I feel hot and somewhat sticky, as I’m in Savannah, GA at the moment. Maybe it is the heat and humidity that caused Wall Street to melt down, and not years upon years of selling debt and encouraging people  who have no clear means of paying back that debt get more in debt, so that Wall Street can in turn sell that debt, and so on, and loan them more money they’ll never pay back, making financial services people hot and sticky in entirely different ways as they made money hand over fist.

Lehman Brothers survived the crash of October 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. Now it files bankruptcy.  But George W. Bush has faith in the system, so we shouldn’t be worried. And if Obama doesn’t save us with his meaningless rhetoric and empty promises, McCain and Palin will don their white hats and shoot at the big bad ogre of financial collapse with a big gun. Wasn’t it a big shooter from the West in a white hat that got us into this mess?

This is the one big issue I have with libertarianism; business is run by people, and people can’t be trusted when there is no visible means by which they can be punished for doing something obviously stupid for short-term gain. When it doesn’t seemingly hurt anybody that they can see, and they get rich in the process, what’s the problem? Where’s the harm? And thus, history repeats itself ad nauseum.

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Technorati Tags: REM, Wall Street, Lehman Brothers