Gary J Carter
2008-10-06 18:58:17 UTC
They're Stealing from You and Me -- Where's the Outrage?
By Garrison Keillor, International Herald Tribune. Posted October 6,
2008.
It wasn't their money Wall Street was playing with. It was ours.
Where were the cops?
It's just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and
others don't. The train engineer texting at the throttle ("HOW R U? C
U L8R") and missing the red light and 25 people die in the crash -- oh
God, that is way too real -- everyone has had a moment of supreme
stupidity that came close to killing somebody. Even atheists say a
little prayer now and then: Dear God, I am an idiot, thank you for
protecting my children.
On the other hand, the America's federal bailout of the financial
market (yawn) is a calamity that people accept as if it were just one
more hurricane. An air of crisis, the secretary of the Treasury
striding down a hall at the Capitol with minions in his wake,
solemn-faced congressmen at the microphones. Something must be done,
harrumph harrumph.
The Current Occupant pops out of the cuckoo clock and reads a few
lines off a piece of paper, pronouncing all the words correctly. And
the newscaster looks into the camera and says, "Etaoin shrdlu
qwertyuiop."
Where is the outrage?
Poor Senator Larry Craig got a truckload of moral condemnation for
tapping his wingtips in the men's john, but his party proposes to
spend 5 percent of the GDP to buy up bad loans made by men who walk
away with their fortunes intact while retirees see their 401(k) go
pffffffff like a defunct air mattress, and it's business as usual.
John McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers
and bankers do as they please -- remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and
his intervention with federal regulators in behalf of his friend
Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush, the
brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed
enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that
the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small
fine and went skipping off to other things?
McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be
formed to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for
chastity.
Confident men took leave of common sense and bet on the idea of
perpetual profit in the real estate market and crashed. But it wasn't
their money. It was your money they were messing with. And that's why
we need government regulators. Gimlet-eyed men with steel-rim glasses
and crepe-soled shoes who check the numbers and have the power to say,
"This is a scam and a hustle and either you cease and desist or you
spend a few years in a minimum-security federal facility playing
backgammon."
The Republican Party used to specialize in gimlet-eyed, steel-rim,
crepe-soled common sense and then it was taken over by crooked
preachers who demand Americans trust them because they're packing a
Bible and God sent them on a mission to enact lower taxes, less
government. Except when things crash, and then government has to pick
up the pieces.
Some say the tab might come to a trillion dollars. Nobody knows. And
McCain has not one moment of doubt or regret. He switches from First
Deregulation Church to Our Lady of Strict Vigilance like you might go
from decaf to latte. Where is the straight talk? Does the man have no
conscience?
It wasn't their money they were playing with. It was yours. Where were
the cops?
What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of
an American war hero. It is painful.
First, there was McCain's exploitation of a symbolic woman, an eager
zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn't funny anymore.
Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how McCain has made a fool of her.
Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack ads. And now this
chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be shocked. He
was there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators home.
McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White
House so he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in a
department store window, he would do that, or eat live chickens, or
claim to be a reformer. Obviously you can fool a lot of people for a
while and maybe he can stretch it out until mid-November. But the
truth is marching on. A few true conservatives led the charge against
the bailout. Good for them. But how about admitting that their cowboy
economic philosophy was at fault here?
AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political
endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.
AlterNet is making this material available in accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes.
Garrison Keillor is the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, "Liberty."
By Garrison Keillor, International Herald Tribune. Posted October 6,
2008.
It wasn't their money Wall Street was playing with. It was ours.
Where were the cops?
It's just human nature that some calamities register in the brain and
others don't. The train engineer texting at the throttle ("HOW R U? C
U L8R") and missing the red light and 25 people die in the crash -- oh
God, that is way too real -- everyone has had a moment of supreme
stupidity that came close to killing somebody. Even atheists say a
little prayer now and then: Dear God, I am an idiot, thank you for
protecting my children.
On the other hand, the America's federal bailout of the financial
market (yawn) is a calamity that people accept as if it were just one
more hurricane. An air of crisis, the secretary of the Treasury
striding down a hall at the Capitol with minions in his wake,
solemn-faced congressmen at the microphones. Something must be done,
harrumph harrumph.
The Current Occupant pops out of the cuckoo clock and reads a few
lines off a piece of paper, pronouncing all the words correctly. And
the newscaster looks into the camera and says, "Etaoin shrdlu
qwertyuiop."
Where is the outrage?
Poor Senator Larry Craig got a truckload of moral condemnation for
tapping his wingtips in the men's john, but his party proposes to
spend 5 percent of the GDP to buy up bad loans made by men who walk
away with their fortunes intact while retirees see their 401(k) go
pffffffff like a defunct air mattress, and it's business as usual.
John McCain is a lifelong deregulator and believer in letting brokers
and bankers do as they please -- remember Lincoln Savings and Loan and
his intervention with federal regulators in behalf of his friend
Charles Keating, who then went to prison? Remember Neil Bush, the
brother of the C.O., who, as a director of Silverado S&L, bestowed
enormous loans on his friends without telling fellow directors that
the friends were friends and who, when the loans failed, paid a small
fine and went skipping off to other things?
McCain now decries greed on Wall Street and suggests a commission be
formed to look into the problem. This is like Casanova coming out for
chastity.
Confident men took leave of common sense and bet on the idea of
perpetual profit in the real estate market and crashed. But it wasn't
their money. It was your money they were messing with. And that's why
we need government regulators. Gimlet-eyed men with steel-rim glasses
and crepe-soled shoes who check the numbers and have the power to say,
"This is a scam and a hustle and either you cease and desist or you
spend a few years in a minimum-security federal facility playing
backgammon."
The Republican Party used to specialize in gimlet-eyed, steel-rim,
crepe-soled common sense and then it was taken over by crooked
preachers who demand Americans trust them because they're packing a
Bible and God sent them on a mission to enact lower taxes, less
government. Except when things crash, and then government has to pick
up the pieces.
Some say the tab might come to a trillion dollars. Nobody knows. And
McCain has not one moment of doubt or regret. He switches from First
Deregulation Church to Our Lady of Strict Vigilance like you might go
from decaf to latte. Where is the straight talk? Does the man have no
conscience?
It wasn't their money they were playing with. It was yours. Where were
the cops?
What we are seeing is the stuff of a novel, the public corruption of
an American war hero. It is painful.
First, there was McCain's exploitation of a symbolic woman, an eager
zealot who is so far out of her depth that it isn't funny anymore.
Anyone with a heart has to hurt for how McCain has made a fool of her.
Never mind the persistent cheesiness of his attack ads. And now this
chasm of debt and loss and the gentleman pretends to be shocked. He
was there. He turned out the lights. He sent the regulators home.
McCain seems willing to say anything, do anything, to get to the White
House so he can go to war with Iran. If he needs to recline naked in a
department store window, he would do that, or eat live chickens, or
claim to be a reformer. Obviously you can fool a lot of people for a
while and maybe he can stretch it out until mid-November. But the
truth is marching on. A few true conservatives led the charge against
the bailout. Good for them. But how about admitting that their cowboy
economic philosophy was at fault here?
AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political
endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.
AlterNet is making this material available in accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes.
Garrison Keillor is the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, "Liberty."