Wave of protest at banks’ rescue
Ian Munro; 27/9/08
Amid conflicting reports about the progress of Washington’s finance industry rescue, demonstrators laid siege to Wall Street yesterday demanding that the finance industry be left to fend for itself. Their message was that taxpayers should not have to rescue the free-spending moneymakers, who awarded themselves seven-figure bonuses until the economy was on the point of collapse. They shouted slogans such as “You broke it: you bought it” and “No deal for Wall Street”, and claimed that “financial terrorists” were worse than al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/world/wave-of-protest-at-banks-rescue-20080926-4ouz.html
On bankers and 500-kilogram gorillas
Richard Glover; 27/9/08
George Bush was unable to help the hurricane-battered poor of New Orleans but somehow he’s located a spare trillion dollars for his distressed friends on Wall Street. It’s a rescue package for bankers - dropped from the skies above Manhattan. You wonder what’s in it. Bespoke suits? Stripy shirts with white collars? Braces? The bankers have been thrilled to receive the help. Offered a trillion dollars of other people’s money, they find themselves instant converts to the world of socialism and government assistance. All that talk about the free market; all that sneering about central government: that is sooo last month. Welcome to the Wall Street branch of the People’s Collective for Distressed Bankers. It’s like watching an atheist on his death bed begging for a Bible; you half expect the bankers to sing The Red Flag at the start of each day’s trade.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/richard-glover/on-bankers-and-500kilogram-gorillas/2008/09/26/1222217490063.html
We can no longer bank on the free market
Richard Ackland; 26/9/08
There were boys of my acquaintance who, having scraped four Bs in the leaving certificate, were presented by their fathers with a red MG and a seat on the Sydney Stock Exchange, as it then was. That’s going back a while now, but some of them are still there. Some even graduated from broking to a higher calling, “merchant banking”. I’ve been worried about markets ever since. Yet we’ve had reassurance from Messrs Rudd and Swan that this country’s system of regulation is second to none, certainly superior to that in the US. The message from the top is that Australia is immune from the uncertainties gripping our powerful friend. Immediately, I’m concerned.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/richard-ackland/we-can-no-longer-bank-on-the-free-market/2008/09/25/1222217427621.html
Philip Adams
The Australian; 27/9/08; No Internet Text; The Weekend Magazine
“As you wander on through life, brother, Whatever be your goal, Keep your eyes upon the donut And not upon the hole.”
Called The Philosopher’s Creed, those very wise words featured on the wall of Melbourne’s Downyflake Restaurant, the 1950s ancestor of Krispy Kreme. It was my first exposure to philosophy. The quatrain was illustrated with the image of a Hamlet-like character contemplating one of Downyflake’s products instead of Yorick’s skull. Later I’d come across similar urgings to optimism, like the one about the glass. Half empty or half full?
But what do you do when the donut disappears and there’s only the hole? Or when the glass contains no liquid at all? As has happened in the US economy. Suddenly the donut is all hole, and it’s a black hole into which a previously mighty Wall Street has vanished, threatening to suck the entire world economy after it. And the glass is empty because despairing merchant bankers have been drowning their sorrows - prior to following the example of their antecedents in the Great Crash of the 1920s and hurling themselves out of their upper stories of their bankrupt offices.
At about the same time as The Philosopher’s Creed I came upon a profound question. “Where do flies go in winter?” I suspect the answer was and remains “the same place as missing socks”: Now the query takes on new meaning. When the donut is consumed by its hole, when the whiskey tumblers of Wall Street have been emptied by drunks prior to tumbling from
skyscrapers thanks to the tumbling market, where does all the money go? All those missing billions?
Great crashes, little crashes and middle-sized crashes lead to the sudden and mysterious disappearance of countless dollars - whether it’s HIH or that other ABC. Where is it? Who’s got it? Or does it go into a vast shredder? Into landfill? Does Donald Duck’s Uncle Scrooge hide it in his silo where he “throws it up and lets it hit him on the head”?
The Whiz-Kids who rab Lehman Brothers like to be called the masters of the Universe.They were also known as the big swining dicks. No they’re revealed as the big swinging dickheads.
The freewheeling, big-dealing privateers of the free market are now in free fall, and serve ‘em right. But where’s the dosh? If the Big Swinging Dicks have lost it - along with the fortunes of their clients - it must be somewhere. With someone. Mustn’t it? And if so, why don’t they give it back? Or at least lend it back? Even at an exorbitant interest rate. I mean, you don’t want capitalism to end in the last hours of the Bush Administration and further confuse the presidential election.
All that euphoria. All that hubris. All those squillion-dollar bonuses. When all the time the Masters of the Universe were the architects of their own destruction. And of the US economy. And of the world’s?
The US loves the death penalty so much that there are more than 3000 people on death row. Will the merchant bankers
who don’t have the decency to hurl themselves off ledges on to the footpaths of Wall Street be told to join them? Surely they should be severely punished - or will the shock-horror of sudden poverty be more than enough - having to hand in their BlackBerries, their corporate credit cards, see their Porsches repossessed? All the focus has been on the collapsing housing market. Wait for the resale values of posh cars to hit, for Tiffany’s to become an op-shop.
We live in the era of the gold credit card, though platinum has become the colour of choice. Remember Fort Knox? That vast subterranean storehouse of real gold, when the dollar was backed by that traditional and tractable metal. Is it still around? Are there still ingots in it? Could they be sold off to help out? Would anyone have the money to buy them? If only on their gold credit cards. Or is it an immense emptiness? Or is it the place that hides all the missing money? Conspiracy theorists! Get to work!
Natural disasters tend to hit poor people. That’s the eerie pattern of earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts and floods. This man-made disaster, based on greed-is-good, greed-is-God, will hit the rich and make them unrich. But then there’s the trickle-down effect. And once again the poor will cop it.
There can be no argument about the vital energies of capitalism. No other economic system has come close to its transformational power, to its encouragement of technological creativity. But there’s the downside. Those times when the hole eats the donut.