History’s mark-to-market to Third World status may, if we are lucky, awaken a sleeping giant.
To begin with, an economy based on consumption, borrowing andspeculation rather than on production, saving and investment is agreater fool game bound to self-destruct. After all, Perot, Buchananand Paul have diagnosed the illness correctly, yet the electorate wentwith the greater fools.
When a people is happy because everyyear toasters and curling irons get cheaper and shoddier, as do itsjobs and cities, the rot goes deeper than Congress and Wall Street.Besides, a people that would give its votes to such a Congress, and itsmoney to such a Wall Street, deserves to get them good.
When aman who holds an MBA from Harvard advises his nation to go out and shopon 9/12, something is wrong with Harvard. When the American Dream hasmorphed from having personal freedom, to owning real estate with nomoney down, something has gone wrong with American dreaming.The Bailout will fail not because our haplesssolons prevented the mark-to-market mechanism from working itscleansing magic in the realm of finance. It will fail because what ourpolitical and economic leaders are trying to bail out is a patchedscarecrow of moral cowardice, ethical degradation, intellectualcorruption and spiritual delusion – all papered over with fraudulentpropaganda under which self-sabotage has been going on for decades on ascale unknown since the 4th century CE.